Opening…

Preface

The scope of my History of the Spanish Inquisition precluded a detailed investigation into the careers of individual tribunals. Such an investigation, however, is not without interest, especially with respect to the outlying ones, which were subjected to varying influences and reacted in varying ways on the peoples among whom they were established. Moreover, in some cases, this affords us an inside view of inquisitorial life, of the characters of those to whom were confided the awful irresponsible powers of the Holy Office and of the abuse of those powers by officials whom distance removed from the immediate supervision of the central authority, suggesting a capacity for evil even greater than that manifested in the Peninsula.

This is especially the case with the tribunals of the American Colonies, of which, thanks to the unwearied researches of Don José Toribio Medina, of Santiago de Chile, a fairly complete and minute account can be given, based on the confidential correspondence of the local officials with the Supreme Council and the reports of the visitadores or inspectors, who were occasionally sent in the vain expectation of reducing them to order. While thus in the colonial tribunals we see the Inquisition at its worst, as a portion of the governmental system, we can realize how potent was its influence in contributing to the failure of Spanish colonial policy, by preventing orderly and settled administration and by exciting disaffection which the Council of Indies more than once warned the crown would lead to the loss of its transatlantic empire. It is perhaps not too much to say that these revelations moreover go far to explain the influences which so long retarded the political and industrial development of the emancipated colonies, for it was an evil inheritance weighing heavily on successive generations.

I have not attempted to include the fateful career of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, for this cannot be written until the completion of Professor Paul Fredericq’s monumental “Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis hæreticæ pravitatis Neerlandicæ,” the earlier volumes of which have thrown so much light on the repression of heresy in the Low Countries up to the dawn of the Reformation.

It is scarce necessary for me to make special acknowledgement to Señor Medina in all that relates to the American tribunals, for this is sufficiently attested by the constant reference to his works. With regard to Mexico I am under particular obligation to David Fergusson Esq. for the use of collections made by him during long residence in that Republic and also to the late General Don Vicente Riva Palacio for the communication of a number of interesting documents. To the late Doctor Paz Soldan of Lima my thanks are also due for copies made in the archives of Peru prior to their dispersion in 1881.

PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER, 1907.

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I. SICILY

PAGE

The Old Inquisition in Sicily 1

The Spanish Inquisition introduced in 1487 2

Expulsion of Jews in 1492 3

Tardy Organization of the Tribunal 5

It gradually becomes efficient 7

Financial Mismanagement 9

Popular Disaffection 10

Increasing Activity 12

Complaints of Sicilian Parliament 13

Death of King Ferdinand--Tumult of 1516 14

Re-establishment in 1519 17

Efforts to reform Abuses 18

Renewed Complaints of the Parliament 21

Charles V suspends the Temporal Jurisdiction in 1535 22

Dread of Protestantism--Jurisdiction restored in 1546 24

Official-Immunity--Case of the Duke of Terranova 25

Renewed Activity--Popular Hostility 26

Enormous Increase in Number of Familiars 27

Abuse of official Immunity 28

Attempt at Reform in the Concordia of 1595 31

Increased Aggressiveness of the Tribunal 33

Collisions with the Secular Authority 34

Quarrels with the Bishops 35

Continued Strife--Concordia of 1635 37

Activity during the Seventeenth Century 38

The Inquisition under Austrian Rule--Auto de Fe of 1724--Pragmatic Sanction of 1732 40

Reconquest of Sicily by Spain in 1734--The Inquisition placed under the Holy See--Its Exuberance repressed by Carlos III 42

Suppressed by Ferdinando III in 1782 43

MALTA.

A Dependency of the Sicilian Tribunal 44

Charles V in 1530 grants the Island to the Knights of St. John 45

Episcopal Inquisition under Bishop Cubelles 45

The Tribunal passes under Papal Control 46

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II. NAPLES

The Old Inquisition in Naples--The Jews 49

Refugees from Spain 50

Spanish Conquest in 1503--Capitulation excludes the Spanish Inquisition 52

Julius II revives the Papal Inquisition 53

Ferdinand proposes to introduce the Spanish Inquisition in 1504 53

Neapolitan Organization--the Piazze or Seggi 54

Activity of the Papal Inquisition--Its Subordination to the Royal Power 55

Ferdinand, in 1509, arranges to introduce the Spanish Inquisition 56

Popular Opposition becomes uncontrollable 58

Ferdinand abandons the Attempt 62

His fruitless efforts to stimulate Persecution 63

Inertness of the Papal Inquisition 65

Banishment of Jews in 1540 66

Protestantism in Naples--Juan de Valdés--Bernardino Ochino 67

Organization of Roman Inquisition in 1542--Charles V orders its Introduction in Naples 70

Tentative Efforts create popular Excitement 71

The Tumult of 1547--its Suppression 73

Punishment of the Leaders 76

Recrudescence of Persecution--The Roman Inquisition tacitly introduced 78

The Calabrian Waldenses--Their Extermination 79

The Apulian Waldenses 85

Intermingling of Jurisdictions 86

Philip II promises the Via Ordinaria 87

The Roman Inquisition under Cover of the Episcopal 87

The Accused sent to Rome for Trial and Punishment 88

The Exequatur of the Viceroy is a Condition precedent 89

Gradual Encroachment--A Commissioner of the Roman Inquisition established in Naples 92

He assumes to be an Inquisitor--Rome in 1628 denies the Necessity of the Viceregal Exequatur--Quarrels over it 94

The Roman Inquisition virtually established in Naples 96

Popular dissatisfaction--Demand for the Via Ordinaria 96

Commissioner Piazza banished in 1671 99

Outbreak in 1691--Commissioner Giberti ejected 99

Carlos II prohibits the residence of Commissioners--Permanent Deputation to oppose the Inquisition 100

The Roman Inquisition in 1695 publishes an Edict of Denunciation 101

The Episcopal Inquisition disregards the Via Ordinaria--Struggles under the Austrian Domination 102

Accession of Charles of Spain--Atto di fede of 1746 104

Episcopal Inquisition suppressed--Archbishop Spinelli forced to resign 105

Continued Vigilance of the Deputati until 1764 107

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III. SARDINIA

The Spanish Inquisition introduced in 1492 109

Conflicts with the Authorities 110

Productive Confiscations 112

Decadent condition of the tribunal 114

Charles V endeavors to reanimate it--Its chronic Poverty 115

Interference of the Bishops 117

Multiplication of Officials 117

Quarrels with the Secular Authorities 118

The Inquisition disappears under the House of Savoy 119

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IV. MILAN

The Old and the reorganized Roman Inquisition 121

Energy of Fra Michele Ghislieri (Pius V) 122

Inefficiency of the Inquisition 123

Cardinal Borromeo’s persecuting Zeal 124

Philip II proposes to introduce the Spanish Inquisition 125

Popular Resistance--General Opposition of Italian Bishops 126

Philip II abandons the Project 128

Political and Commercial Questions affecting Lombardy--Intercourse with Heretics 129

Cardinal Borromeo stimulates Persecution 131

His Mission to Mantua 133

The Roman Inquisition perfected--Its Struggle to exclude Swiss Heresy 135

It is suppressed by Maria Theresa in 1775 137

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V. THE CANARIES

Importance of the Islands as a Commercial Centre 139

Episcopal Inquisition by Bishop Muros, in 1499 140

Tribunal established in 1505--It is dependent on Seville 140

Its Activity until 1534 141

It becomes dormant and is suspended 144

It is reorganized in 1567 and rendered independent of Seville 145

Activity of Inquisitor Diego Ortiz de Fúnez 147

Visitation of Doctor Bravo de Zayas in 1570 148

Visitation of Claudio de la Cueva in 1590--Abuses 150

Prosecution of escaped Negro and Moorish Slaves 152

Prosecution of English and Dutch Sailors 153

Number of Relaxations 155

Finances--Early Poverty--Wealth from Confiscations 156

Prosecution of Judaizers 158

Moorish and Negro Slaves--Renegades 159

Trivial Cases 161

Mysticism--Beatas revelanderas 162

Solicitation in the Confessional 163

Sorcery and Superstitions 165

Foreign Heretics--Sailors and Merchants 167 Treaties with England in 1604 and with Holland in 1609 171 Precarious Position of Foreign Merchants 173

Censorship 176 Examination of Houses of Foreign Residents 177 Irreverent religious Objects 178 Visitas de Navíos 179

Quarrels with the Authorities, secular and ecclesiastical 180

Popular hostility--Opposition to Sanbenitos in Churches 188

Suppression in 1813 189

Final Extinction in 1820 190

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VI. MEXICO

Propagation of the Faith the Object of the Conquest 191

Organization of the Colonial Church 192

Attempts to exclude New Christians 193

Episcopal Inquisition 195

Establishment of a Tribunal proposed--Dread of Protestantism 199

Inquisitors sent out in 1570 200

Tribunal installed, November 4, 1571 202

Distance renders it partially Independent 203

Commencement of Activity--The first auto de fe, February 28, 1574 204

Autos of 1575, 1576, 1577, 1578, 1579, 1590, 1596, and 1601 207

Persecution of Judaizers 208

Indians not subject to Inquisition 209

Finances--Temporary royal Subvention--The Tribunal expected to be self-supporting 212 Its early Poverty 213 It claims Indian Repartimientos 215 It refuses to render Account of its Receipts 216 It obtains a Grant of Canonries in 1627 216 Fruitless Efforts to make it account for the Confiscations 217 Large Remittances made to the Suprema from the Autos of 1646, 1648 and 1649 219 Efforts to make it forego and refund the royal Subvention 219 Misrepresentations of the Confiscations and Remittances 223

Comparative Inaction in the first Half of the Seventeenth Century 226

Efficacy of the Edict of Faith 227

Growth of Judaism--Active Persecution commences in 1642 229

Autos de Fe of 1646, 1648 and 1649 230

Auto de Fe of 1659 234 Cases of William Lampor and Joseph Bruñon de Vertiz 236

Inertia during the Rest of the Century 240

Solicitation in the Confessional 241

Temporal Jurisdiction--Immunity of Officials entitled to the Fuero 245 Familiars--Commissioners--Abuse of their Privileges 247 Concordia of 1610 251 Competencias 252 Concordia of 1633 254 Abusive Use of Power by Commissioners 256

Quarrels with Bishops--Case of Bishop Palafox 257 Case of Doctor Juan de la Camara 259

Exemption from Military Service 263

Censorship--Irreverent Use of Sacred Symbols--_Visitas de Navíos_ 264

Repression under the Bourbon Dynasty 267

Decadence of the Tribunal 269

Political Activity caused by the Revolution--Censorship 272

Prosecution of Miguel Hidalgo 276

Suppression in 1813 288

Re-establishment in 1815 290

Prosecution of José María Morelos 292

Extinction in 1820 297

Persistent Intolerance 298

THE PHILIPPINES.

Included in the District of the Mexican Tribunal 299

A Commissioner established there--His Powers 300 Solicitation--Military Deserters 302

Trivial Results 304

Censorship 306

Conflicts with the Authorities 308

Audacity of the Commissioners 310 Commissioner Paternina imprisons Governor Salcedo and rules the Colony 311

Records burnt in 1763 317

Episcopal Inquisition in China 317

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VII. PERU

Deplorable Condition of the Colony 319

Episcopal Inquisition--Its Activity 321 Case of Francisco de Aguirre 322 The Bishops seek to maintain their Jurisdiction 325

The Tribunal established January 29, 1570 326

The first Auto de Fe, November 15, 1573 328

Organization and Powers--Exemption of Indians 329

Supervision over Foreigners 332

Extent of Territory--Commissioners and their Abuses 333

New Granada detached in 1611--Other Divisions proposed 337

Finances--Initial Poverty--Speedy Growth of Confiscations 342 Fruitless Efforts to withdraw the Royal Subvention 344 Suppression of Prebends for the Benefit of the Tribunal 346 Enormous Confiscations in the Auto de Fe of 1639 347 Other Sources of Income 349 Increased Expenses exceed the Revenues 350 Malversations and Embezzlements in the Eighteenth Century 351 Financial Condition at Suppression in 1813 354

Abusive use of arbitrary Power 355 Scandalous conduct of Inquisitor Ulloa 355 Visitation of Juan Ruiz de Prado 357 His charges against Cerezuela and Ulloa 358 Ulloa’s Visitation of the District 360

Abusive use of arbitrary Power: Inquisitor Ordoñez y Flores 362 Inquisitors Gaitan and Mañozca 363 Inquisitors Calderon and Unda 366 Visitation of Antonio de Arenaza 367

Paralysis of the Tribunal--Purchase of Offices 372

Quarrels with the Viceroys 373 Humiliation of Viceroy del Villar 374 Complaints of succeeding Viceroys 380

Conflicts of Jurisdictions 382

Limitation of the Temporal Jurisdiction by Fernando VI 386

Quarrels of Inquisitor Amusquíbar with Archbishop Barroeta 389

Activity of the Tribunal--Bigamy, Blasphemy, Sorcery 390 Propositions 392 Solicitation in the Confessional 393 Mystic Impostors--Maria Pizarro 396 Angela Carranza 400 Quietism--The Jesuit Ulloa and his Disciples 406 Protestantism--English Prisoners of War 412 Judaism 419 Portuguese Immigration through Brazil and Buenos Ayres 421 Case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva 423 The Complicidad Grande--Auto de Fe of 1639 425 Decline of Judaism--Case of Doña Ana de Castro 433

Punishments 437 Arbitrary Inconsistency--Case of François Moyen 439

Censorship 444 Morals and Politics 446

Decadence and Suppression 447

Re-establishment and Extinction 449

Work accomplished 451

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VIII. NEW GRANADA

Settlement of New Granada 453

Commissioners appointed by Tribunal of Lima 454

Demand for an Independent Tribunal 455

Extent of District--Attempt to include Florida 457

Tribunal established in 1610 at Cartagena 460

Early Operations 461 Sorcery and Witchcraft--Blasphemy 462 Judaism 466

Inertia--Sack of Cartagena in 1697 467

Decadence 468

Censorship--The Copernican System 470

Quarrels with the Authorities 473 Arbitrary Control exercised by Inquisitor Mañozca 473 Incessant Broils--Inquisitor Vélez de Asas y Argos--Fiscal Juan Ortiz 476

Visitation of Dr. Martin Real in 1643--Its Failure 480 Internal Dissensions and external Quarrels 483

Visitation of Pedro Medina Rico in 1648--Death of Inquisitor Pereira and Secretary Uriarte 485

Internal and external Quarrels continue 488

Degradation of the Tribunal 489

Quarrel with Bishop Benavides y Piedrola--Inquisitor Valera 491

Humiliation of Governor Ceballos 498

Decadence after the Sack of 1697 499

Finances--The Royal Subvention 500 Wealth accruing from Confiscations 501 Quarrels over the Subvention 502 Asserted Distress of the Tribunal 505

The Revolutionary Junta banishes the Tribunal in 1810 506

It takes Refuge in Santa Marta and Puertobelo 508

It returns to Cartagena in 1815 508

It is extinguished by the United States of Colombia in 1821 510

Influence of the Inquisition on the Spanish Colonies 511

APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS 517

THE INQUISITION

IN THE

SPANISH DEPENDENCIES.

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I. SICILY

The island of Sicily, in the fifteenth century, was a portion of the dominions of Aragon. Like the rest of the possessions of that crown, it had enjoyed the benefits of the old papal Inquisition under the conduct of the Dominicans, but, as elsewhere, towards the close of the Middle Ages, the institution had become nearly dormant, and at most was employed occasionally to wring money from the Jews. An effort to galvanize it, however, was made, in 1451, by the Inquisitor Fra Enrico Lugardi, who produced a fictitious decree, purporting to have been issued in 1224, by the Emperor Frederic II, granting to the inquisitors a third of the confiscations, together with yearly contributions from Jews and infidels; this was confirmed by King Alfonso of Naples, and again, in 1477, by Ferdinand and Isabella.[1] When, in 1484, the Spanish Inquisition was extended to Aragon, Ferdinand did not at first seek to carry its blessings to his insular possessions. February 12, 1481, he had appointed Filippo de’Barbari, one of his confessors, as inquisitor of Sicily, Malta, Gozo and Pantelaria, who apparently did nothing to further the cause of the faith, for Sixtus IV, in letters of February 23, 1483, to Isabella, complained of the prevalence in the island of the same heresies that pervaded Spain; to repress these he had issued sundry bulls, which had proved inoperative in consequence of the opposition of the royal officials, to his no little grief. Seeing the zeal displayed in Spain, he prayed and exhorted that it should be extended to Sicily and that the necessary royal favor be exhibited to the measures which he had taken and might take in the future.[2] There is no evidence that this produced any effect, and the institution seems to have remained inert until, about 1487, Torquemada, as Inquisitor-general of Aragon, appointed Fray Antonio de la Peña as inquisitor who, on August 18th of that year, celebrated the first auto de fe, in which Eulalia Tamarit, apparently a refugee from Saragossa, was burnt. It seems that a Dominican, named Giacomo Roda, had been exercising the functions under a commission from the General of his Order, who subsequently instructed the provincial, Giacomo Manso, to dismiss him. In 1488 la Peña left Sicily, appointing Manso to act during his absence, when Roda reasserted himself and it required a brief from Innocent VIII, February 7, 1489, to make him desist. In fact, at this time there seems to have been some confusion between the claims of the papal and Spanish Inquisitions, for we hear of another Dominican inquisitor, Pietro Ranzano, Bishop of Lucera, to whom the senate of Palermo, on January 19, 1488, took the customary oath of obedience.[3]

In Sicily, as in Spain, the objects of the principal labors of the Holy Office were the converts from Judaism. The Jews were numerous and rich and, although popular hatred was perhaps not so active as in Spain, it was sufficiently vigorous, in 1474, to bring about a massacre, under the pretext that they were endeavoring to undermine the Catholic faith by argument. The viceroy, Lope Ximenes de Urrea, hanged six of the leaders of the movement, in the hope of suppressing it but, undeterred by this, the populace, in many places, sacked the Juderías and put the inmates to the sword; five hundred thus were slain in Noto, six hundred in Modica and, for several years, the Jews were in constant fear of massacre, in spite of royal and vice-regal edicts.[4] The number of victims in these troubles indicates how considerable was the Jewish population; indeed, in 1450, they petitioned that, in the assessment of a donation to King Alfonso of 10,000 florins they might be reckoned as a tenth of the population, a favor which was refused and, when in 1491, the Jews were banished from Provence, a large portion of them flocked to Sicily, attracted by the favorable conditions which had long been accorded there to the race.[5]

The edict of expulsion from Spain, in 1492, was operative in Sicily, under conditions even more repulsively cruel. It was published June 18th, and the day of departure was fixed at September 18th, under pain of death and confiscation. At once all their valuables were seized, in a house to house investigation, and inventories were made of their other possessions. They were required, within the three months, not only to collect what was due to them and to pay their debts, but also to indemnify the king for their special tributes by capitalizing the annual aggregate, on a basis of four per cent. interest. On August 13th an order was issued to license each to take a suit of common clothes, a mattress, a pair of worn sheets, a coverlet, three tari in money (equivalent to half a florin), and a few provisions for the journey. Reduced to despair, the Jews of Palermo petitioned to be allowed to retain money enough to pay their passages; that the rich could leave their property on deposit, and that poor debtors might be discharged from prison a month in advance. This drew from the viceroy an edict allowing the rich to take twice as much as the poor, except in the matter of clothes. Not only their mattresses were to be searched for money and jewels, but even the cavities of their bodies, for which examiners of both sexes were appointed. A payment of fifty thousand florins to the king procured a postponement of three months, until December 18th, and during the interval the composition for their tributes was agreed upon, at a hundred thousand more, on payment of which they were to be allowed to take what was left of their inventoried goods, but all precious metals and jewels were required to be turned into merchandise. There was delay in collecting these sums, causing a further postponement of departure until January 12, 1493.[6] As the object of the measure was the salvation of souls, the alternative of conversion was offered, to which the Jews were urged by a proclamation of Torquemada and by promises from the bishops and the viceroy. Ferdinand, however, was not disposed thus to forego the opportunity of despoiling his Jewish subjects, and issued an order requiring them to purchase the privilege of baptism with the surrender of forty-five per cent. of their property, which must have brought him in a considerable sum for, in spite of it, the rigorous terms imposed upon the exiles drove many into the Christian fold.[7]

These compulsory Christians, always suspected, and generally with reason, of secretly cherishing their ancient faith, furnished a larger and more lucrative field for inquisitorial operations, but there seems to have been no immediate haste to cultivate it, and there is no trace of increased inquisitorial activity during the remaining years of the century. In December, 1497, Micer Sancho Marin, inquisitor of Sardinia, was ordered to transfer himself to Sicily; he was in no haste to obey and, on March 11, 1498, Ferdinand wrote to him angrily that he was doing no good where he was and was much wanted in his new post, wherefore he was commanded summarily to go there and leave all the effects of the Sardinian tribunal for his successor. Short as was his career in Sicily, he managed to disorganize the Inquisition and to incur general detestation. Before the year was out, Ferdinand ordered him home and, on January 20, 1499, he sent for all the other officials to return. To get back, Marin borrowed three hundred ounces,[8] without making provision for repayment; to settle this and other debts and to pay for the homeward voyage of the officials, Ferdinand ordered his viceroy to give to the receiver of confiscations, who was practically the treasurer, eight hundred ducats, with a significant order to see that the parties were not maltreated, which indicates the feelings popularly entertained for them. The eight hundred ducats apparently were not easily raised, for correspondence continued during the rest of the year as to the payment of debts and salaries; Pedro de Urrea, the receiver, fell into disgrace and Ferdinand, in August, sent the notary, Ximeno Mayoral, to make copies of all the papers in the tribunal, in order to be able to straighten out matters.[9] Apparently the officials had been intent solely upon their own gains, allowing the affairs of the tribunal to fall into complete confusion, and had confined their operations to selling pardons and exemptions for, when the auditor examining Urrea’s accounts asked for certificates of all who were condemned or penanced during his tenure of office, Ferdinand epigrammatically replied that, as there were none condemned or penanced, no certificates were required. It is true that there is mention of a certain Iñigo de Medina as having died in prison, but he had not been arrested as a heretic and his sequestrated property was ordered to be returned to his widow.[10]

Evidently the Sicilian Inquisition thus far had been a failure and thorough reorganization was necessary. It was for this that Ferdinand had recalled the officials and, after an interval of some months, he proceeded to replace them. A letter of July 27, 1500, to Montoro, Bishop of Cefalù, announced his appointment as inquisitor, together with that of the bearer, Doctor Giovanni Sgalambro as his colleague, with whom were sent Diego de Obregon as receiver, and Martin de Vallejo as alguazil, the rest of the officials being left for his selection. At the same time the viceroy was instructed to show them all favor, to lodge them in some suitable building and to advance to Obregon 780 gold ducats for salaries, the sum to be repaid out of the expected confiscations.[11] The Sicilian tribunal, however, was doomed to be unlucky. Ferdinand speedily discovered that Sgalambro was utterly unfit for the position and, on November 6th, we find him writing in hot haste to Inquisitor-general Deza that, after it had had so unfortunate a beginning, Sgalambro’s incumbency would destroy it; he had sent to Valencia to stop his departure, but too late, and now he instructs Deza to select some good jurist for the place, as soon as possible, and before some evil is wrought in Sicily.[12] This eagerness, however, speedily subsided and Sgalambro was allowed to retain his office for a year. On November 8th, Montoro and he issued an edict requiring the surrender of all official papers by those formerly connected with the tribunal; also one prohibiting all Conversos, or baptized Jews, from leaving the island without special licence, under pain of excommunication, confiscation and arbitrary penalties, and offering to informers ten per cent. of the confiscations. In December, the viceroy and all public officials took the customary oath of obedience and the inquisitors issued an Edict of Grace, promising relief from death and confiscation to all heretics who would, within fifteen days, come forward and confess fully as to themselves and their associates. This was accompanied with an Edict of Faith, ordering all cognizant of heresy to denounce it within fifteen days, threatening those who omitted to do so with prosecution for fautorship of heresy and promising secrecy for informers. This latter edict apparently brought in few denunciations, for it was repeated on January 14, 1501, and, at the same time, was published a decree of the inquisitor-general, announcing the disabilities of the descendants of those convicted of heresy. That these proceedings were as yet a novelty in Sicily is apparent from a monition issued by the inquisitors to the president of the states of the Camera reginale not to impede in those districts the publication of the edicts.[13]

Evidently the Inquisition was rapidly becoming organized for work, but it still lacked a fixed habitation for, on August 22d, Ferdinand wrote to his viceroy that a house was necessary for it and, as the one occupied by Mosen Johan Chilestro, the royal carver, was suitable, it was to be taken for the purpose; he had no recollection that it had been given to the latter except for life but, if the heirs could prove a gift in perpetuity, they should be paid a suitable rent. Apparently the labors of the tribunal were beginning to promise results in the long-expected confiscations, for a letter of September 4th empowers the receiver Obregon to compound a suit against Johan de San Martin, for property derived through his brother and father, for five thousand florins and more if it could be obtained. It would seem, however, that as yet the status and privileges of the officials were not clearly recognized in Sicily, for a letter of September 10th to the viceroy urges him to see that the inquisitors enjoy the immunities and exemptions conceded to them by the Holy See and that the officials are as well treated as in the rest of the Spanish dominions.[14]

At length a successor was found for Sgalambro in the person of Pedro de Belorado, an old Spanish inquisitor, now Archbishop-elect of Messina, to whom Obregon was ordered, September 30th, to pay the same salary.[15] The people had not even yet become accustomed to the arbitrary methods of the Holy Office, for the earliest act by which Belorado makes himself known to us is his excommunication of the magistrates and judges of the town of Catania as impeders of the Inquisition, because they had prevented the alguazil Martin de Vallejo from removing from their city certain New Christians whom he had arrested. Vallejo had vindicated his office by imposing on the spot a fine of a thousand ducats on the offenders, and this Belorado confirmed. In 1502 we find him issuing fresh Edicts of Grace and of Faith and, in 1503, Deza empowered him and Montoro to act either independently or conjointly.[16] It would seem that the governor of the districts of the Camera reginale was still recalcitrant, for a letter from Ferdinand, August 13, 1504, orders him to favor the operations of the tribunal, “for our officials have naught to do but what we ourself do, which is to obey the Holy Office.”[17]

There is not much evidence of activity at this period, but an auto de fe was celebrated, August 11, 1506, in which was burnt Olivieri de Mauro, a renegade Christian.[18] Probably this was followed by others, of which the records have not reached us, but the troubles of the tribunal were not yet over and, in 1509, it was practically suspended for awhile, for the Bishop of Cefalù was transferred to Naples, as we shall see hereafter; Belorado died, the receiver Obregon was in Spain, and the other officials apparently dispersed, as there was no money to pay their salaries. At length a successor was found in Doctor Alonso Bernal, whose appointment Ferdinand announced to the viceroy, January 19, 1510, but he was in no haste to assume the duties for, on April 2d Ferdinand was obliged to furnish him with sixty ducats to expedite his departure from Valencia. Obregon accompanied him and, as the whole staff of the tribunal had disappeared, he was empowered to fill their places and regulate their salaries, which were to be paid out of three hundred ducats to be advanced by the royal treasurer and to be repaid out of the first proceeds of the expected confiscations.[19] The need of money was doubtless an incentive to active work. Bernal lost no time in getting the tribunal into shape and, by August 27th, we hear of his having many prisoners, for whose safe-keeping he had spent fifty ducats in arranging a gaol.[20] The result of this industry manifested itself in an auto de fe, celebrated June 6, 1511, in which eight persons were burnt.[21]

He was speedily furnished with a colleague, for royal letters of June 18th and 24th inform us of the appointment of a second inquisitor, in the person of Doctor Diego de Bonilla, promoted from the position of fiscal, to whom Obregon was ordered to pay a salary of 6000 sueldos, while the new fiscal, Leonardo Vázquez de Cepeda was to receive 2000 and the notary, Pedro de Barahona the same. It was one thing, however, to grant salaries and quite another to get them paid, in the habitual mismanagement of inquisitorial business. From a letter of September 17th we learn that Obregon had left Sicily in the fleet, placing as his substitute his son, a boy of 15 or 16. The salaries had fallen greatly in arrears and the boy declared that he had no funds save twenty ounces, while Inquisitor Bernal asserted that he had imposed fines and pecuniary penances to the amount of thirteen hundred ducats, besides considerable confiscations, which should be ample to meet all salaries and expenses, whereupon Ferdinand ordered the viceroy to investigate the accounts and discover where the money had gone.[22]

These were not the only difficulties which the tribunal had to encounter. Accustomed as the people had been for centuries to the existence of the Inquisition, the Spanish institution was a very different affair, not only as to activity and severity but still more from the privileges and immunities claimed and enforced by its officials and their servants and familiars, especially their exemption from taxes and import dues and their fuero or right to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, whether as plaintiffs or defendants, giving rise to perpetual irritation through the oppression and injustice thus rendered possible. These innovations were not admitted without resistance, which Ferdinand sought to repress by a letter of September 10, 1508, ordering Belorado to see that his officials were as well treated in these respects as elsewhere in the Spanish dominions. This received scant obedience for, on November 14, 1509, he wrote to the stratico of Palermo expressing extreme displeasure on learning that he had arrested a scrivener of the tribunal and had deprived other officials of their arms; in future he must maintain their privileges and exemptions and show them every favor and protection.[23] Yet Ferdinand knew that the troubles arose from the over-weening pretensions of the tribunal and its officials for, in a letter of July 30, 1510, to Bernal he attributed them to the exorbitant invasions of the royal jurisdiction by the inquisitors and their appointment of men of evil life who caused scandal and infamy. Bernal must bear in mind that, in Sicily, the prerogatives of the crown were greater than elsewhere; whenever he had to take action in matters unconnected with heresy he must consult the viceroy or advocate fiscal, so as to avoid prejudice to the royal pre-eminence; he must also furnish to the viceroy a list of officials, servants and familiars, the latter not to exceed ten in number.[24]

Inquisitors, especially of distant tribunals, were not accustomed to pay much heed to instructions inculcating moderation in the exercise of their powers and the Sicilians were indisposed to submission. We learn from a royal letter of December 25, 1510, that the jurats objected to taking the customary oath of obedience to inquisitors and that the local authorities persisted in levying taxes on the officials.[25] Relations were strained and disaffection grew until there was an explosion on St. Bernard’s day, August 20, 1511, when the people rose with demands that the privileges of the officials should be curtailed--a rising which cost, it is said, the lives of a thousand Spanish soldiers.[26] Neither this warning nor Ferdinand’s exhortations abated the pretensions of the Holy Office. A letter of the viceroy, Hugo de Moncada, September 6, 1512, relates that when some troops pursued a band of robbers and arrested them in the country-house of an inquisitor, where they had sought refuge, the latter threatened the captain and his men with excommunication if the prisoners were not released and then claimed jurisdiction to try them, on the ground of the place of their capture.[27] This was by no means an isolated case for soon afterwards two other flagrant examples of similar character evoked from Ferdinand, October 25th, an order to rescind their action, coupled with an expression of extreme displeasure at their thus affording protection to malefactors on one pretext or another. Their behavior in the custom-house to evade the payment of duties was a further subject of animadversion and he warned them sternly to avoid in future creating such scandals.[28]

This somewhat exuberant zeal in asserting their privileges was accompanied with corresponding activity in the performance of their regular duties. In 1513 there were three autos de fe celebrated, in which the burnings aggregated thirty-nine, a large portion being of those who had been previously reconciled and had relapsed, thus indicating the increased vigilance of the tribunal.[29] A further evidence of this was the arrival, in September, 1513, at Naples, of four hundred fugitives, including a number of priests and friars, to escape the rigor of the inquisitors, who they said were endeavoring to force confessors to reveal the confessions of their penitents.[30] One gratifying result of this activity was the financial ease afforded by the resultant large confiscations. A letter of Ferdinand’s to Obregon, June 27, 1513, calls his attention to them and to those anticipated from the number of prisoners on trial, requiring greater care than had hitherto been devoted to the management; the officials were now receiving their salaries and doing their duty. In spite of this warning we find, a year later, that Obregon had abruptly quitted Palermo, leaving the affairs of the office in confusion, rendering necessary the appointment, June 15, 1514, of a successor, Garcí Cid, who was instructed to reduce it to order and to invest in ground-rents twelve hundred ounces which Obregon had deposited in a bank.[31] That the profits of persecution continued is evidenced by a gift made, March 30, 1515, by Ferdinand, to his wife, Queen Germaine, of all the confiscations of that year, in the city of Syracuse and district of the Camera reginale, up to the sum of ten thousand florins--a gift which Garcí Cid was ordered to keep secret until after he should have rendered a statement of all that was on hand and was expected.[32]

It is perhaps not surprising that this increased effectiveness of the tribunal stimulated popular discontent, which found expression in a petition from the Sicilian Parliament asking Ferdinand that the Inquisition be required to observe the ancient canons and methods of procedure, for many of those burnt in the autos asserted their innocence, declaring that their confessions had been extorted by torture and dying with every sign of being good Christians. It was further asked that some limit be put to the issue of licences to bear arms and as to the kind of persons licensed; that the judge of confiscations should have a fixed salary and should not exact fees and that there should be an appeal from him to the viceroy; also that those who in good faith entered into contracts with persons reputed to be good Christians should be able to collect their debts, in place of having them included in the confiscation, the contrary practice being destructive to trade and commerce.[33] There was also a special embassy from Palermo, complaining that the inquisitors required the city authorities to renew every year the oath of obedience and that they issued licences to bear arms to men of evil life who caused much disorder and scandal.[34] Ferdinand promised relief of these grievances and, in due course, a fresh series of instructions was issued, in 1515, by Bishop Martin de Aspeitia and the Aragonese Supreme Council, or Suprema. It limited the number of familiars to thirty for Palermo, to twenty for Messina and Catania, to fifteen for Syracuse and Trapani and to not over ten in other places; they were to be men of approved character and were to carry certificates identifying them, in the absence of which they could be disarmed by the secular authorities. If officials were accused of serious crime, the evidence was to be sent to the inquisitor-general when, if the proof was sufficient, the offender would be dismissed and the inquisitor who had tolerated it would be punished. Officials were deprived of the voz activa or right as plaintiffs to the jurisdiction of the tribunal, although Dr. Martin Real assures us that experience had already shown that they could not exist without it, so universally were they detested. Their buying up of claims and matters in litigation, in which they had the benefit of the tribunal as a court, was prohibited. The dowries of wives were protected from confiscation when husbands were convicted and dealings with those in good repute as Christians were held good, in case of confiscation, so that the claims of creditors were allowed and, if the fisc desired to seize alienated real estate, it was required to refund the purchase-money to the buyer.[35] There were various other reforms embodied in the instructions, all indicating a desire to avoid injustice to innocent third parties, but the whole is interesting rather as an exposure of customary abuses than as effecting their removal, although when, towards the close of 1514 a new inquisitor, Miguel Cervera by name, was sent to Sicily, he was ordered to obey to the letter the instructions of Torquemada and his successors and not to increase the number of officials without permission.[36]

However praiseworthy may have been the intentions at headquarters, it was impossible to control the tribunal or to allay popular hostility, which found opportunity for expression after the death of Ferdinand, February 23, 1516. Hugo de Moncada had held the office of viceroy for six years and had earned universal hatred by his cruelty, greed and lust. Among other devices, he had monopolized the corn-trade and, by his exportations, had reduced the island almost to starvation, though its fertility rendered it the granary of the Mediterranean, while the poverty of the people was aggravated by an adulterated currency.[37] He concealed the news of Ferdinand’s death, in hopes of reappointment by Charles V, but it became known and the people, led by some powerful nobles, claimed that his commission had expired. While the popular mind was thus excited, Fra Hieronimo da Verona, in his lenten sermons in Palermo, denounced as sacrilegious the wearing of red crosses on the green penitential sanbenitos of the reconciled heretics, who were very numerous, and he urged the people to tear off the symbol of Christ from the heretical penitents. His advice was followed and the aspect of the mob grew more and more threatening. Moncada attempted to quiet matters by proclaiming Charles and Juana, abolishing an obnoxious corn-tax and exhibiting letters from Charles confirming him in office. These were denounced as forgeries; a man who demanded to see them was arrested by the prefect and rescued by the people, while the prefect was obliged to fly for his life. That night, March 7, 1516, an immense crowd, with artillery taken from the arsenal, besieged the vice-regal palace; Moncada, disguised as a serving-man, escaped by a postern to the house of a friend, whence he took refuge on a ship in the harbor and sailed for Messina, which consented to receive him. After sacking the palace, the mob turned its attention to the Inquisition. Cervera saved his life by taking a consecrated host in a monstrance, under protection of which he gained the harbor, amid the jeers and insults of the people, who cried that he was an inquisitor and hunter of money, not of heretics. He took ship for Spain, while the mob released the prisoners, destroyed the records and pillaged the property of the Inquisition. The Palermitans followed this with an embassy to Charles, complaining of the evil doings of Moncada and the disorders caused by the Inquisition which had well-nigh destroyed their city. The sole object of its officials they said was to accumulate money and they would lay down their lives rather than see it restored, except under the ancient form as carried on by the bishops and Dominicans. Cervera betook himself to Flanders to solicit his restoration, but the island held out and, for three years, there was no Inquisition in Sicily, except in Messina and its territory.[38]

Enlightened by the insurrection and the Palermitan complaints, the Suprema or supreme council of Aragon, on August 29, 1516, sent to Centelles, Bishop of Syracuse, a commission to investigate the tribunal, with a list of interrogatories from which it appears that Cervera had filled the office with his kindred and servants, while every kind of pillage and oppression is suggested, even to the rifling of the treasure-chest by the officials on the day of the tumult. Bishop Centelles, however, had died on August 22d; of course no investigation was made and the Suprema contented itself with expressing, on October 27th, to Charles its gratification at his determination to restore with the greatest honor the tribunal which had been expelled with such disgrace.[39] This, however, was not so readily accomplished. Some seven months later, on June 15, 1517, Charles wrote to the Sicilian viceroy ordering Cervera to be received back and obeyed under penalty of the royal wrath and three thousand crowns but, for a time, this was a dead letter. Cervera returned to Spain when Charles went there, in 1517, and it was not until 1519 that Sicily was sufficiently pacified to render it expedient to send him back. A royal cédula of May 29, 1519, announces this and orders Garcí Cid, the receiver, to pay him 343 ducats for his accrued salary without deduction for absence, and, when the cédula of June 15, 1517, was published at last on July 6, 1519, it was not in Palermo but in Messina, where the Marquis of Monteleone, the new viceroy, was still residing. Meanwhile a certain Giovanni Martino da Aquino had been enjoying the title of inquisitor there, but he was removed, May 20, 1519, in favor of Cervera. A second inquisitor, Tristan Calvete had been appointed in 1517 and had been welcomed in Messina.[40]

Calvete’s first act was to issue an edict, May 16, 1518, requiring, under pain of excommunication, all papers and property of the Inquisition to be returned within fifteen days and the anathema duly followed on June 6th.[41] Presumably this produced little result; Palermo, the seat of the tribunal and scene of insurrection, had not yet returned to obedience; the records had been destroyed and their lack long remained a source of embarrassment. The tribunal however, in 1519, was re-established and fully manned; it celebrated an auto de fe, June 11, 1519 and, for five or six years, there seems to have been one nearly every year, but the number of executions was not large.[42] Popular antagonism was by no means disarmed, for we find Calvete issuing, September 29, 1525, two edicts, one commanding everyone to aid and favor the Inquisition and not to defend heretics, and the other summoning all cognizant of the numerous penitenciados and their descendants, who disregarded the disabilities imposed on them, to denounce them.[43]

There was ample cause for disaffection, arising, not from sympathy with heresy, but from the arbitrary proceedings of those who regarded persecution primarily as a source of enrichment. Instructions given, July 31, 1517, by Cardinal Adrian to Calvete, commence with the remark that all inquisitors thus far sent to Sicily had disregarded the rules of the Holy Office, both as to civil and criminal procedure, as to confiscations and as to familiars. It was therefore ordered that all officials, under pain of excommunication, should inviolably observe the instructions, including those given to Melchor Cervera; the whole body of these rules was ordered to be read in presence of all the officials assembled for the purpose, a notarial act being taken to attest the fact. Moreover, in addition to excommunication for violations of the rules, the special penalties provided were to be irrevocably enforced. Following this were particular instructions for the correction of abuses which indicate how completely the interests of the fisc and the rights of the people were subordinated to official cupidity. One of the practices prohibited shows how repulsive the religion of Christ, in such hands, was rendered to converts. The inquisitors, it appears, were in the habit of making reconciled penitents and baptized neophytes labor on the fortifications of the castle; when they did not appear at the appointed hour they were fined and these fines, which were collected by Zamporron, the messenger of the tribunal, amounted to a considerable sum, of which no account was rendered.[44] In this, as in all similar denunciations of malversations and abuses, a noteworthy feature is that punishment is always threatened for the future and none is inflicted for the past; no one is dismissed and the thieving and corrupt officials are allowed unmolested to continue their career of plunder and oppression.

Apparently Cardinal Adrian was advised that his instructions were not obeyed and he sent Master Benito Mercader as “visitor” or inspector to report on the condition of the tribunal. Before this report was received, Adrian had passed through the papacy to the tomb, and it was acted upon by his successor, Manrique, Archbishop of Seville, who issued, January 31, 1525, a fresh set of instructions, based on its revelations. From this it would appear that there was little in which the inquisitors and their officials did not violate the rules, both in the conduct of trials and management of the finances. There seems, in fact, to have been a Saturnalia of peculation. Collections were made by both authorized and unauthorized persons, of which no accounts were kept. The fines and pecuniary penances, which formed so lucrative a source of income, were kept from the knowledge of the notary of sequestrations so that he could make no charge of them to the receiver. Officials claimed and received twenty or twenty-five per cent. for discovering hidden confiscated property, their knowledge of which was acquired officially. The Christian slaves of condemned heretics were sold in place of being set free, according to law. Inquisitors and their subordinates received “presents,” or rather bribes, from penitents and litigants, which perhaps explains the complaint that sentences to the galleys and other penalties were not executed and that the disabilities and sanbenitos of those reconciled were not enforced. There is significance in the instructions for the collection of the two hundred gold ducats, which the late inquisitor, Melchor Cervera, had bequeathed to the Inquisition for the discharge of his conscience--probably but a small portion of the irregular gains for which he had had ample opportunity. As a whole, this inside picture of the Holy Office shows us how completely it was converted into an engine for oppression and peculation and how little there was of genuine fanaticism to serve as an excuse for its existence, but, as usual, there are no dismissals or punishments inflicted and the only remedy proposed is the formal semi-annual reading of the instructions to the officials. That they should continue to be the objects of popular detestation was inevitable, and the complaint is made that their maltreatment and the resistance offered to them remain unpunished.[45]

This was the only point on which reformation was attempted. Charles V, in a letter to his viceroy, October 22, 1525, says that he understands that the royal courts take cognizance of the cases of the officials of the tribunal, which displeases him greatly; it is his will that the Holy Office shall be cherished and favored and that in all cases, civil and criminal, its officials are to enjoy the immunities and privileges to which they are entitled; they are to exercise their functions with all freedom, under the royal protection, guarded by the penalties expressed in the royal concessions. This was supplemented by another cédula of August 25, 1526, taking the inquisitors and their officials under the royal safeguard and ordering that they should have all aid and support and protection from the secular authorities.[46]

As for the wrongs committed by the inquisitors, their continuance is shown by repeated petitions from the Sicilian Parliament, which indicate how completely the instructions of 1515 and 1517 were ignored, while Charles’s replies--probably drawn up for him by the Suprema--prove how little hope there was of redress through an appeal to the throne. The Parliament represented that the Conversos who remained were few and poor, the rest having fled or been condemned, wherefore the inquisitors despoiled the native Christians of their property, to remedy which it asked as before that in future the Inquisition should be conducted by the bishops and Dominicans as of old. To this the answer was that he would consult the pope. It was also asked that Christians who had, in good faith, made contracts with reputed Catholics and thus were their creditors, should have their claims recognized and satisfied out of the confiscated property of a condemned debtor. This shows that the instructions of 1515 to this effect had been disregarded and there was little hope of improvement in Charles’s assent with the nullifying proviso that there must be a prescription of thirty years’ possession, concerning which he would write to the pope. A further request was that the dowries of orthodox wives should not be subject to confiscation and that children’s portions should be exempted, to which the reply was “agreed as to dowries received before the commission of heresy; for the rest, the pope will be consulted.” Another point was that, in case of denial of justice or evident scandal, the viceroy could appoint some prelate who, with the Gran Corte or the doctors, could decide the matter. This was rejected with the declaration that all appeals must be to the inquisitor-general. It was further asked that each inquisitor when he came should file his commission in the ordinary public registers, so that every one could learn what was his authority, for the inquisitors often exceeded their lawful powers. Complaint was also made that the officials abused their immunities and privileges by engaging in trade and it was asked that in suits thence arising they should be subjected to the vice-regal or episcopal courts, to which Charles replied that he had given orders to the inquisitor-general to see to this.[47]

Thus supported, the Inquisition pursued its course and held one or more autos de fe every year, until 1534, though the number of burnings was not excessive, the summary for the nine years showing only thirty-nine victims relaxed to the secular arm, the most of whom suffered for relapse after previous conviction and reconciliation.[48] While thus performing its full duties to the faith, the consciousness of imperial support had not led it to mend its ways or to reform abuses, and popular opposition was undiminished, for Charles found it necessary to issue another rescript, January 18, 1535, addressed to Viceroy Monteleone, confirming at much length the privileges and exemptions of the officials from secular jurisdiction and their right to bear arms.[49] When, however, in the following September, Charles visited Palermo, on his return from his crusade to Tunis, and listened to the earnest representations of the Parliament, his convictions changed--a change possibly facilitated by a subsidy granted to him of two hundred and fifty thousand ducats over and above the ordinary revenue.[50] He suspended, for a period of five years, the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in all cases involving the death-penalty and not connected with matters of faith, and, when this term had elapsed, he prolonged the suspension for five years more.[51] The historians of the Inquisition tell us that this resulted in the unchecked multiplication of heretics among the noblest families, while the hatred of the people for its representatives manifested itself without fear of punishment. There can, in fact, be little doubt that its operations were crippled on this account, for its officials were no longer shielded from popular anger as soon as offences committed against them became cognizable by the secular courts in sympathy with the offenders. Thus when the Inquisitor Bartolomé Sebastian made a visitation of the town of Jaca, with his officials and servants, and published the Edict of Faith, the inhabitants piled up wood around the house in which they were lodged and would have burnt them all had not the Baroness de la Florida assembled her kinsmen and retainers, raised the siege and enabled them to escape. Soon afterwards, when the alguazil and his assistants went to San Marcos to arrest some heretics, they were set upon by Matteo Garruba and his accomplices; he was left for dead and some of his people were slain.[52] Apparently the danger, of which these are examples, caused the inquisitors to confine their labors to the larger cities for, in January, 1543, Inquisitor-general Tavera ordered a general visitation of the island, which he says had not been performed for a long while. In June a new inquisitor, the Licentiate Gongora, was sent with special instructions to carry out this visitation and peremptory orders were issued by Prince Philip that he and his officials should be efficiently protected.[53] Another manifestation of popular repugnance was the resistance offered to the invariable custom in Spain of hanging in the churches the sanbenitos of the condemned, or linens with inscriptions of their names, heresies and punishment, thus perpetuating their infamy, which was one of the severest features of the penalty of heresy. Páramo explains that this was not observed in Sicily for when, in 1543, Inquisitor Cervera endeavored to introduce it, by hanging them in the church of St. Dominic, there arose so great a tumult that he was obliged to abandon the attempt and it had never since then been possible to effect it, up to his time (1598).[54] To add to the embarrassment of the tribunal, it was or professed to be impoverished. When its alguazil Marcos Calderon died, there was owing to him for arrears of salary 155 ounces, 24 tarines and 9 granos, and in February, 1543, the receiver Francisco Cid declared his inability to pay this to the heirs. To relieve him the Suprema agreed to place half the burden of this on the tribunal of Granada and, by letter of May 30, 1544, ordered Cid to pay the other half.[55]

In spite of popular disaffection and curtailment of temporal jurisdiction, the Inquisition continued its deadly work. On May 30, 1541, there was celebrated at Palermo an auto in which twenty-two culprits appeared, nineteen of them for Judaizing and three for Lutheranism--among the latter Fra Perruccio Campagna, a tertiary of San Francisco de Paola, who courted martyrdom and was burnt as an obstinate impenitent heretic.[56] By this time Lutheranism was much more dreaded than Judaism. In view of its threatening spread and of the occasional outbursts of popular detestation, there was probably little difficulty in convincing Charles that he had made a mistake in limiting the exemptions of the officials; he announced in advance his intention of not prolonging the limitation and, by letters of February 27, 1543, he ordered his Sicilian officials, after the expiration of the term, to give the Inquisition full liberty of action and not to interfere with it in any way under a penalty of two thousand ounces. When the term expired, Prince Philip, as regent of the Spanish dominions, by a decree of June 18, 1546, published the letters of 1543 and ordered their strict observance.[57]

It would seem that even before the expiration of the term the tribunal arrogantly and successfully asserted the immunity of its officials from secular law. Juan de Aragon, Duke of Terranova, was Constable and Admiral of Naples, a Spanish grandee of the first class and kinsman of Charles V, acting as President or Governor of Sicily, in the absence of the viceroy. In this capacity he had occasion to torture and condemn to the galleys Maestro Antonio Bertin, a familiar, and to imprison some other familiars. The inquisitors took up the matter and sentenced him to perform public penance, to release Bertin and to pay him a solatium of two hundred ducats. The case was of course carried to Spain, where both sides were heard and as usual the decision was against the crown and in favor of the Inquisition. Prince Philip conveyed this to Terranova by letter of December 16, 1543, exhorting him to submit to it willingly and not to wait to be compelled by excommunication. Terranova recalcitrated against the public humiliation and finally a letter of Philip, April 24, 1544, remitted the penance, when the duke released and compensated the criminal.[58]

Such an occurrence does not justify the assertion made by Prince Philip, June 15, 1546, when a new inquisitor, Bartolomé Sebastian, was sent to Palermo, that the officials of the Sicilian Holy Office were held in such contempt and were so impeded in their functions that they could scarce discharge their duties, wherefore special injunctions were laid on him to exact from all authorities the oath of obedience, while every assistance was emphatically ordered to be rendered to him.[59] In fact, almost simultaneously with these utterances, an auto de fe, held June 6, 1546, showed that there was no impediment to the discharge of the proper functions of the inquisition. In this auto there were no living bodies delivered to the stake, but the effigies of four fugitives answered the purpose of demonstrating that the authority of the tribunal was undiminished. Sebastian indicated how far that authority extended when, in 1547, he repeated the prohibition of Conversos expatriating themselves and their families under pain of confiscation, while a fine of two hundred ounces was decreed against shipmasters transporting such persons without special licence. This recrudescence of inquisitorial activity aroused the Parliament, which petitioned Charles V that the accused should have copies of the evidence against them, with the names of the witnesses, so that his faithful subjects should not perish undefended, through false testimony suborned by enmity, but the emperor turned this off with a vague promise that Sicilians should not be unduly molested. This did not soothe popular hostility, for a letter of the Regent Juana to the Viceroy Juan de Vega, September 29, 1549, thanks him for the solicitude which he has shown in protecting the rights and immunities of the Inquisition, seeing that recently some of its officials have been wounded and slain while discharging their duties. Possibly this may refer to the case of Giacomo Achiti, who was relaxed to the secular arm, May 19, 1549, for having with others resisted and slain Giovanni de Landeras, a minister of the Inquisition. Yet whatever may have been the good will of Vega, it was impossible for a viceroy to perform his duties and remain on good terms with the Holy Office. In this same year, 1549, a certain D. Pietro di Gregorio had torture administered to a familiar, for which Alberto Albertini, Bishop of Patti and inquisitor, threw him in prison, when Vega liberated him by force and was duly reproved therefore by Charles.[60]

In the numerous autos de fe which are recorded during the following years, it is interesting to observe that Judaism sinks into the background and that the predominant heresies punished are Protestant. The Inquisition was aroused to renewed activity and its victims, whether burnt or penanced, were numbered by scores.[61] It is probable that peculation and waste continued for a letter of the inquisitors, April 2, 1560, to Philip II congratulates him on the prospect of some large confiscations impending; these, they say, will relieve the tribunal, which is deeply in debt and it is suggested to the king that if he will invest the proceeds in ground-rents, the income will go far to pay the salaries and perpetuate the institution. Apparently the suggestion was unheeded for the complaints of poverty and indebtedness continue; the convicts are mostly poor people, whose property barely meets their prison expenses, and some rich abbey is asked for, of which the revenues may be devoted to this holy cause.[62]

Whether the complaint of poverty be true or not, the inquisitors had ample opportunity of irregular gains. The privileges and immunities of its officials rendered the position of familiar eagerly sought for and, in an age of corruption, we may reasonably assume that it was liberally paid for. In addition to this, the exclusive jurisdiction over them, in both civil and criminal matters, was very lucrative, not only from the fees exacted for every transaction in suits and trials, but from the custom of punishment by fines for all delinquencies. It is noteworthy that in the discussions which arose, it was assumed on all sides that the fuero of the tribunal was equivalent to immunity for crime, and so it was as far as corporal penalties were concerned, but pecuniary ones were a profitable substitute, which enured exclusively to the tribunal. I have not met with any trials of Sicilian officials, but this was the custom in the Peninsula and it is an unavoidable assumption that the example was followed in the island. In addition to this was the influence derivable from thus enrolling an army under the inquisitorial banner, and thus there were ample motives for disregarding the limitations placed by the instructions on the number of appointments. The viceroy, Marc’ Antonio Colonna, in a letter of November 3, 1577, states that there were twenty-five thousand familiars and that the inquisitors proposed to increase them to thirty thousand; they included, he says, all the nobles, the rich men and the criminals.[63] It was practically an alliance between the tribunal on one side and the influential and the dangerous classes on the other, against the vice-regal government and the courts, rendering impossible the orderly administration of justice and the maintenance of public peace. The viceroys were involved in perpetual struggles with the Holy Office and were constantly remonstrating with the home government, but to little effect. An attempt was made to amend the situation by an agreement, known as the Concordia of Badajoz, July 4, 1580, which was, in reality, a surrender of the secular authorities to the Inquisition. In Castile, a number of the more serious crimes were excepted from the exemption of familiars, but in Sicily they were entitled to the jurisdiction of the tribunal for all offences, however atrocious. This was continued by the Concordia, which provided that, whenever a case involving an official or familiar should come before the viceroy, he should promptly hand it over to the tribunal. The inquisitors were empowered to excommunicate judges who interfered with their jurisdiction and the judge so excommunicated was required to present himself before them, to beg for absolution and to promise obedience. Provision however was made for competencias, or conferences between judges and inquisitors on disputed questions when, if they could not agree, the matter was referred to the king for final decision--a process which usually prolonged it indefinitely.[64]

The secular authorities were naturally restive under this and quarrels continued. In 1589 there was an outbreak, when the Gran Corte undertook to try a familiar named Antonio Ferrante. The Inquisition claimed him; the viceroy, the Count of Alva, was less enduring than some of his predecessors; he caused the sentence of hanging to be executed and, in the ensuing recriminations, he imprisoned the consultors of the Inquisition and its judge of confiscations. Both parties appealed to Philip II who, after examining all the documents, wrote to Alba, March 29, 1590, strongly reproving him for bringing such scandal and discredit on an institution so necessary for the peace and quiet of the land. In future he must strictly observe the Concordia and the judges of the Gran Corte must present themselves individually before the inquisitors and obey their commands. Alba apparently had argued that the consultors were not formally officials, for in 1591 Philip decided that they were so and were entitled to all the privileges of that position.[65]

Philip was firmly convinced that the Inquisition was essential to keep Sicily in subjection, which accounts for his upholding it against his own representatives, but his eyes were somewhat opened by another case which was in progress at the same time. Count Mussumelli, a familiar, was charged with the murder of Giuseppe Bajola, fiscal of the Gran Corte; he was claimed by the Inquisition and took refuge in its prison. From this the Count of Alva took him forcibly, whereupon the inquisitors excommunicated the subordinates concerned in the act and, finding this ineffective, on April 6, 1590, they not only laid an interdict on the whole city, but stretched their jurisdiction by prohibiting all vessels from leaving the port. This brought Alba to terms; Mussumelli was restored to the inquisitorial prison and the interdict was lifted.[66] The case was necessarily carried up to the king and, as usual, was referred to a junta consisting of two members each of the Suprema and of the Council of Italy. To the consulta which they in due course presented, Philip replied, expressing his grief at the atrocious crimes of recent occurrence in Sicily. That of the Count Mussumelli was so aggravated that its impunity would render difficult the enforcement of justice and he must therefore be remitted to the viceroy and judges of the Gran Corte. As for the Count of Rocalmuto and the Marquis of la Rochela, they were to be left to the Inquisition, in full confidence that their punishment would correspond to the enormity of their offences, for which he charged the inquisitor-general and Suprema. Moreover, to prevent such occurrences for the future, he decreed that the crime of assassination should be excepted from the immunity enjoyed by familiars and should not be made the subject of competencias. In addition to this, he proceeded to state that experience had shown the great troubles and scandals arising from nobles being officials and familiars--positions which they sought, not to discharge their duties but to commit crimes under the protection of the Inquisition, thus creating many quarrels between the jurisdictions to the discredit of both, to scandal of the people and hindrance of justice. It would therefore be well for the inquisitor-general and Suprema to order that Sicilian nobles be no longer appointed as officials and familiars and that existing appointments be called in and revoked, for he had resolved to order the viceroys and judges to hold that they are not entitled to the fuero of the Inquisition. It was unreasonable that so holy a business should serve as a cover for delinquents and evil-doers and there was ample experience that this was their sole object in seeking these positions, so that he greatly wondered that the Inquisition should persist in a course so damaging to its reputation and so foreign to the object of its foundation.[67]

Such rebuke and such action could only have been elicited from a monarch like Philip II by a profound conviction of the unbearable abuses of inquisitorial jurisdiction. He would more wisely have followed the example of his father in suspending wholly that jurisdiction, for the tribunal continued to exercise it in a manner provocative of continual disturbance. At length, in 1595, a junta or conference was formed, consisting of two members of the Suprema, Doctors Juan de Zuñiga and Caldas, and two regents of the Gran Corte, Bruñol and Escudero, to reach, if possible, an agreement that should lead to peace. There were many discussions and tentative attempts which finally resulted in a consulta presented to Philip as a compromise acceptable to both sides. This commences by stating that the special cases in dispute had been settled or laid aside, awaiting further documents, and that for the future it had been agreed that the Concordia of 1580 should be observed with certain amendments. The Inquisition was not to protect officials or familiars guilty of treason against the viceroy or his counsellors, of assassination, of shooting from ambush, of insulting, wounding or killing any one in presence of judges of the Gran Corte or Real Patrimonio. It was the same with familiars who were notaries and committed frauds in that capacity, or were warehousemen and adulterated commodities stored with them, or dealers in provisions who used false weights, or bankers or other debtors delinquent to the Real Patrimonio, or delinquent taxpayers in general. Widows of officials were to enjoy the fuero only so long as they remained unmarried, and servants were only to be entitled to it when they were really part of the household and not merely serving for food and wages, concerning which inquisitors were strictly enjoined not to commit frauds. In Palermo and its suburbs the number of familiars was limited to one hundred; in towns of sixty hearths, to one; in other places the Suprema was to decide; they were to be prohibited from carrying guns in the country and fire-arms of any kind in the cities. If a judge arrested a familiar or official, he was at once to send the papers in the case to the inquisitors that they might see whether it was excepted or whether there should be a competencia and, in the latter case, the judges were to be invited courteously to meet them and not be summoned as inferiors. The judges, when excommunicated, were to apply for absolution and not refuse as heretofore to do so, thus discrediting inquisitorial censures, but the viceroy was not to be excommunicated without the assent of the inquisitor-general. The Regent Bruñol argued earnestly in favor of including rape among the excepted crimes, pointing out how provocative it was of assassination, when the husband of a woman thus injured saw the culprit walking the streets unpunished, and he seems to have succeeded in getting it added to the scanty list of those which the Inquisition would permit to be dealt with in the secular courts.[68]

Thus far the conferees agreed, but they differed on the exclusion of nobles from official position. The members of the Suprema represented to the king that, since he had ordered their removal, the Inquisition had fallen greatly in public estimation and found much difficulty in making arrests; therefore they asked that there might be thirty, who would always be selected from the most quiet and peaceable; otherwise the tribunal would be confined to men of low extraction, who could not make arrests. To this the regents replied that the maintenance of the royal order was the only means of keeping the nobles and barons obedient to the viceroy; in Sicily more than elsewhere this was necessary and without it matters would be worse than before, when the tribunal excommunicated the viceroy in the affair of Count Mussumelli; heresy was unknown, the nobles and barons had never made an arrest and they obtained the positions solely to gain the privileges.[69] These arguments were unanswerable and the prohibition was maintained. With the accession of Philip III an attempt was again made to have it repealed; Inquisitor Páramo, in a letter of March 8, 1600, to the new king described the condition of the tribunal as most deplorable in consequence of it, but the appeal was unsuccessful. Philip contented himself with secret instructions to the viceroy to enforce the cédula of January 18, 1535, and the Concordia and to endeavor to come to some understanding with the inquisitors.[70]

So far, indeed, was the Inquisition from being oppressed, that it was seeking to assert exclusive claim to the obedience of its “subjects,” as though they were released in all things from the control of the civil authorities. Thus, in 1591, the tribunal issued an edict condemning all its “subjects” who had not revealed the amount of corn possessed by them or had sold it at unlawful prices--evidently referring to certain measures taken by the government, as was frequently done in times of scarcity. The Viceroy Alba was quick to recognize this attempt to supplant the civil power and he stopped the publication of the edict. He was soon afterwards succeeded by Count Olivares, whose temper Inquisitor Páramo, with characteristic pertinacity, proceeded to test with a proclamation of April 23, 1592, published throughout the island to sound of trumpet, reciting the disturbance of public order by bands of robbers, against whom and all harboring or favoring them the viceroy had issued edicts, wherefore he summoned all those subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition to abstain from sheltering the said bandits, under the penalties provided by the laws and of a thousand ounces applicable to the Holy Office. Olivares was no more disposed than his predecessor to admit that his actions required inquisitorial confirmation and, on May 30th, he issued an edict prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the publication of the proclamation; if, in any place, it had been entered on the records of the magistrates, the entry was to be erased and no similar orders of the Inquisition were to be received in future. He moreover told the inquisitors that it was none of their business to issue decrees on this or any other matter of general policy, but simply to obey the laws; that it had been done merely to enlarge their jurisdiction illegally and that the government could not be divided into two heads with one body.[71]

Between conflicting pretensions such as these, harmony was impossible and the conclusions of the junta of 1595 did not restore it. Collisions were frequent and the extremes to which they were sometimes carried are seen in one occurring in 1602, when the Gran Corte prosecuted Mariano Agliata, a familiar, for the murder of Don Diego de Zúñiga and Don Diego Sandoval, a captain and a sergeant of the royal troops. The inquisitors arrested him and claimed jurisdiction and, when the Gran Corte refused to abandon the prosecution, they excommunicated the judges. Excommunication by an inquisitor could be removed only by the power which fulminated it or by the pope, but the viceroy, the Duke of Feria, persuaded the archbishop, Diego de Haëdo, to absolve the judges, whereupon the inquisitors interdicted him from performing any functions until he should admit that his absolutions were invalid. At this the viceroy lost his temper and despatched, August 7th, two companies of soldiers to the Inquisition, with a gallows and the executioner. They remained in front of the building until two o’clock in the morning and returned on the 8th in greater force, erected six gallows, each with its hangman, and stood with lighted matchlocks pointed at the windows. The inquisitors were not daunted by this impotent display of force; they barred the doors, hoisted the standard of the Inquisition, with a papal flag and a crucifix, and flung out of the windows among the troops notices of excommunication. Undeterred by this, the Spaniards broke their way in and, after some parley, the inquisitors promised to absolve them. Feria had gone as far as he dared without result and the victory remained with the inquisitors, for the case of Agliata was surrendered to them, on their removing the interdict on the archbishop and the excommunication of the judges.[72] To emphasize Feria’s defeat, Philip III, in 1603, issued a general letter to all of his viceroys, lauding the services of the Inquisition and ordering them to give it all the favor and assistance it might ask for, and to maintain intact the privileges, exemptions and liberties, assured to its ministers and familiars, by law, by the concordias, by the royal cédulas, by use and custom and by any other source.[73]

* * * * *

As though these sempiternal conflicts with the civil authorities were not sufficiently disturbing to the public peace, the Inquisition was involved in a similar series with the bishops, in which it did not fare so well, entrenched as they were behind the canon law, which the monarchs could not set aside. A portion of the officials of the Holy Office were clerics, of whose immunity from the secular courts there could be no question, but the bishops claimed, under divine and canon law, an imprescriptible right of cognizance of their offences, when these did not concern the faith or their official functions. The inquisitors held that they possessed exclusive jurisdiction over their subordinates and the conflict was waged with abundant lack of Christian charity, causing great popular scandal until, as we are told, the people were in the habit of asking where was the God of the clergy. The contest raged chiefly over the commissioners appointed everywhere throughout the island, whose duty it was to investigate cases of heresy in their districts and report or, if necessary, make arrests and send the culprits to Palermo for trial. In 1625 the Suprema endeavored to effect a compromise, by designating what offences were cognizable by the bishops exclusively, what by the inquisitors and what cumulatively by either jurisdiction, for that of the bishops could not be denied and the Inquisition had no papal letters to show in support of its claims. This seems only to have emboldened the bishops and the quarrels continued. In 1630 Philip IV and the inquisitor-general wrote to the viceroy and the inquisitors, enquiring what was the established custom in such cases, but apparently the two ecclesiastical camps could not agree on terms of peace and nothing was done. In 1642 the inquisitor, Gonsalvo Bravo Grosero submitted to the Suprema a long and learned paper in which he describes the condition of the Sicilian Inquisition as most deplorable, in consequence of the implacable hostility of the bishops. It could not possibly do without commissioners, for the inquisitors could not travel around to visit the provinces; the roads were too bad and their salaries too meagre to bear the expense, as they could not venture into the country without a guard of at least forty men, in view of the robbers and bandits. There was not money to pay the commissioners a salary and their only inducement to accept the office was to gain immunity from episcopal jurisdiction. As this was virtually denied to them, it became impossible to find fitting clerics to undertake the duties, so there were many vacancies that could not be filled.

Grosero evidently did not pause to consider the reflection cast on the character of the clerics thus anxious to find refuge in the Inquisition from the courts of their bishops, but the cases which he mentions, if not exaggerated, testify amply to the virulence of episcopal vindictiveness. Recently, he says, the tribunal became involved in a quarrel with the Bishop of Syracuse over the case of a familiar. Indignant at its methods, the bishop indulged in reprisals on the unlucky commissioner of Lentini, on a charge of incontinence; he was seized by a band of armed clerics, stripped and carried on a mule to prison as a malefactor and cast into a dungeon where he lay, deprived of all communication with his friends, until the Bishop of Cefalù, then governor of the island, procured his release, but his persecution continued for two years. So the Bishop of Girgenti seized the commissioner of Caltanexeda because he had, under orders from the tribunal, stopped the prosecution of a familiar. He was confined in a damp, underground cell for forty days, until the viceroy procured his release, and his unwholesome confinement nearly cost him his life. The impelling cause of Grosero’s memorial was a pending case, which scarcely evokes sympathy with his complaints. Alessandro Turano, commissioner of Burgio, had given refuge in his house to a kinsman, a monk guilty of murder, and had refused admission to the officers who came to arrest the criminal. For this the Bishop of Girgenti was prosecuting him, and Grosero appeals to the Suprema to intervene and put an end to such violations of the immunity necessary to enable the Inquisition to perform its pious work.[74] It is not likely that the Suprema succeeded in establishing concord between the irreconcilable pretensions of the two ecclesiastical bodies, but the struggle is worth passing attention as affording a glimpse into the social conditions of the period under such institutions.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the incessant bickering with the civil authorities continued as active and as bitter as ever. No attention was paid to the limitations prescribed in the Concordias, or to the protests of the viceroys until, in 1635, an attempt was made, in a new Concordia, to remedy some of the more crying evils by empowering the viceroy, in cases of exceptional gravity, to banish criminal officials, after notice to the senior inquisitor, so that he might appeal to Madrid, and in these cases the inquisitors were forbidden to excommunicate the officers of justice.[75] Slender as was this concession, the inquisitors, in a letter of April 26, 1652, to the Suprema, did not hesitate to assert that the exemptions of the officials were reduced to those of the vilest plebeians and that their revenue suffered heavily through the limitation of their jurisdiction and the great reduction in the number of those who applied for appointments.[76] On the other hand, if we may believe the Consulta Magna, drawn up, in 1696, by a special junta composed of representatives of all the royal councils except the Suprema, the Sicilian tribunal paid no respect whatever to the Concordias, held itself as wholly independent of all rules and enforced its arbitrary acts by the constant abuse of excommunication, which rendered the condition of the island most deplorable. The inquisitors refused to meet the judges in competencias on disputed cases and though, by the Concordia of 1635, such refusal incurred a fine of five hundred ducats for a first offence and dismissal for a second, yet as the enforcement of this required the issue by the Suprema of a commission to the Council of Italy, it was easily eluded. As a matter of course the suggestion of the junta was ineffective that those oppressed by the abuse of spiritual censures should have the right of appeal to the royal judges.[77]

* * * * *

These quarrels and the exercise of its widely extended temporal jurisdiction by no means distracted wholly the tribunal from its legitimate functions of preserving the purity of the faith. In 1640 it held a notable auto de fe in which one case is worth alluding to as an illustration of inquisitorial dealings with the insane. Carlo Tabaloro of Calabria was an Augustinian lay-brother, who had conceived the idea that he was the Son of God and the Messiah, Christ having been merely the Redeemer. He had written a gospel about himself and framed a series of novel religious observances. Arrested by the Palermo tribunal, in 1635, he had imagined it to be for the purpose of enabling him to convert the inquisitors and through them the people. For five years the theologians labored to disabuse him, but to no purpose; he was condemned as an obstinate and pertinacious heretic and was led forth in the auto of 1640 to be burnt alive. On his way to the stake he still expected that torrents of rain would extinguish the fires, but finding himself disappointed and shrinking from the awful death, at the last moment he professed conversion and was mercifully strangled before the pile was lighted.[78] At another auto, June 2, 1647, there were thirty-four penitents and six months later another, January 12, 1648, with thirty-seven, followed, December 13th of the same year, by one with forty-three. January 22, 1651, there was another with thirty-nine, honored moreover with the presence of Don John of Austria, fresh from the triumph of suppressing the Neapolitan revolt of Masaniello. In fact, in a letter of April 26, 1652, the inquisitors boasted that they had punished two hundred and seven culprits in public autos, besides nearly as many who had been despatched privately in the audience chamber. This would show an average of about eighty cases a year, greatly more than at this time was customary in Spain. The offences were mostly blasphemy, bigamy and sorcery, with an occasional Protestant or Alumbrado, the Judaizers by this time having almost disappeared.[79] The position of inquisitor was not wholly without danger, for Juan López de Cisneros died of a wound in the forehead inflicted by Fray Diego la Mattina, a prisoner whom he was visiting in his cell and who was burnt alive in the auto of March 17, 1658.[80] The activity of the tribunal must at times have brought in considerable profits for, in 1640, we happen to learn that it was contributing yearly twenty-four thousand reales in silver to the Suprema and not long afterwards it was called upon to send five hundred ducats, plata doble, to that of Majorca, which had been impoverished by a pestilence. Still these gains were fluctuating and the demands on the tribunal seem to have brought it into financial straits, from which the Suprema sought to relieve it by an appeal, August 6, 1652, to Philip IV, to grant it benefices to the amount of twenty-five hundred ducats a year.[81]

The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, gave Sicily to Savoy, but the Inquisition remained Spanish and nominally subject to the Suprema. There was, however, an immediate change of personnel, for we find the inquisitor, José de la Rosa Cozio, early in 1714, taking refuge in Spain and billeted upon the tribunal of Valencia.[82] When, in 1718, Savoy exchanged Sicily with Austria for Sardinia, the Emperor Charles VI would not endure this dependence of the tribunal upon a foreign power and procured, in 1720, from Clement XI a brief transferring the supremacy to Vienna. In accordance, however, with the persistent Hapsburg claims on the crown of Spain, the Inquisition remained Spanish. A supreme council for it was created in Vienna, with Juan Navarro, Bishop of Albarracin as chief who, although resident there gratified himself with the title of Inquisidor-general de España, but in 1723 he was succeeded by Cardinal Emeric, Archbishop of Kolocz. Apparently it was deemed necessary to justify this elaborate machinery with a demonstration and, on April 6, 1724, an auto de fe was celebrated at Palermo with great splendor, the expenses being defrayed by the emperor. Twenty-six delinquents were penanced, consisting as usual mostly of cases of blasphemy, bigamy and sorcery, but the spectacle would have been incomplete without concremation and two unfortunates, who had languished in prison since 1699, were brought out for that purpose. They were Geltruda, a beguine, and Fra Romualdo, a friar, accused of Quietism and Molinism, with the accompanying heresies of illuminism and impeccability. Their long imprisonment, with torture and ill-usage, seems to have turned their brains, and they had been condemned to relaxation as impenitent in 1705 and 1709, but the sentences had never been carried out and they were now brought from their dungeons and burnt alive.[83] Less notable was an auto de fe of March 22, 1732, in which Antonio Canzoneri was burnt alive as a contumacious and relapsed heretic.[84]

Although the zeal of Charles VI led to increased activity of the tribunal in matters of faith, he was little disposed to tolerate its abuse of its temporal jurisdiction, which had led to so many fruitless remonstrances under Spanish domination. In letters of January 26, 1729, to his viceroy the Count of Sástago, he recites the complaints made to him, by the English factory, that foreign merchants were exposed to constant frauds by bankruptcies of debtors who claimed the forum of the Inquisition or of the Santa Cruzada, where creditors could get no justice or even ascertain whether the bankruptcies were fictitious or not. The emperor therefore orders that in future the Concordias shall be strictly construed and rigidly adhered to; that if the inquisitors proceed by excommunication they shall experience the effect of “los remedios económicos” (presumably the suspension of their emoluments) and that in future all mercantile cases, whether civil or criminal, shall not be entitled to the forum of the Inquisition--all of which was duly proclaimed by the viceroy in an edict of March 17th. At the same time the legal functionaries were required to investigate the whole subject and report what further measures might be essential to prevent interference with the course of justice. The result of their labors is embodied in a Pragmatic Sanction of May 12, 1732, consisting of eleven articles, whereby it was ordered that the inquisitorial forum should not include exemption from military service and taxes; that widows of stipendiary officials should enjoy the forum only during widowhood; that the privilege of bearing arms should be exercised only when in actual service of the Inquisition; that commissions as messengers should not be given to shipmasters; nobles holding fiefs were not to be enrolled as familiars; the forum was not to exempt from serving in onerous public office and the use of excommunication in cases of impeding jurisdiction was allowed under certain limitations. This latter is explained by a decision of March 6, 1734, on cases in which the inquisitors had excommunicated D. Antonio Crimibela, a judge of the Gran Corte and D. Felipe Venuto, capitan de justicia of Paternò, when it was ordered that excommunications could only be employed in matters of faith and in cases where the secular tribunals had refused the conference preliminary to forming a competencia to decide as to the jurisdiction.[85]

The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Charles III, in 1734, led the inquisitors to imagine that, under a Spanish dynasty, they could reassert their superiority over the law, but they were promptly undeceived. D. Sisto Poidimani, when on trial, recused them for enmity as judges in his case and the Giunta of Presidents recognized his reasons as sufficient, whereupon Viceroy de Castro ordered them, October 2, 1735, to take no further action except to appoint some one to act in their place. To this they demurred and de Castro repeated the order, January 24, 1736, and again on February 19th. Finally, on April 21st he told them that they were actuated, not by reason but by disobedience, and that, if the order was not promptly obeyed, the senior inquisitor must sail, within forty-eight hours, for Naples to render to the king an account of his actions.[86]

The various changes that had occurred rendered the position of the Sicilian tribunal somewhat anomalous and to remedy this the king obtained, in 1738, from Clement XIII the appointment of Pietro Galletti, Bishop of Catania, as inquisitor-general of Sicily, with power to deputize subordinates, who was followed, in 1742, by Giacomo Bonanno, Bishop of Patti, appointed by Benedict XIV.[87] Thus the severance from Spain was perpetuated and it was rendered independent. This seems to have revived its aggressiveness and it assumed that the limitations imposed by the Emperor Charles VI had become obsolete with the change of sovereigns for, in 1739, it endeavored to intervene in the bankruptcy case of Giuseppe Maria Gerardi, who was entitled to its forum, but the attempt was promptly annulled by the Viceroy Corsini. A further blow was inflicted by a decree of July 12, 1746, suppressing the system of competencias, for the settlement of conflicting cases of jurisdiction, and substituting, in all cases not of faith, the decision of the viceroy, who could, in matters of grave importance, refer them to the king.[88] Thus gradually the secular business of the Holy Office was circumscribed; in its spiritual field of activity there were no more burnings, though it occasionally held autos de fe, in which figured mostly women accused of the vulgar arts of sorcery, and in addition it interfered with scholars in its capacity of censor.

The enlightened views of Charles III were not abandoned, when he was summoned to the throne of Spain in 1759, and left that of Naples to his young son, Ferdinando IV, then a child eight years of age. Public opinion in Italy was rapidly rendering the Holy Office an anachronism and Ferdinando only expressed the general sentiment when, by a decree of March 16, 1782, he pronounced its suppression. He gave as a reason that all attempts had failed to make it alter its vicious system, which deprived the accused of legitimate means of defence; he restored to the bishops their original jurisdiction in all matters of faith, but required them to observe the same procedure as the secular courts of justice and to submit to the viceroy for approval all citations to appear, all orders for arrest and all sentences proposed; moreover, he appropriated the property of the Inquisition to continuing for life the salaries of the officials, with a provision that, as these pensions should fall in, the money should be used for the public benefit. The revenues, in fact, amounted to ten thousand crowns a year and eventually they served to found chairs in mathematics and experimental physics and to build an observatory. When the royal officials took possession of the Inquisition, they found only three prisoners to liberate--women accused of witchcraft. A few more had previously been discharged, in anticipation of the suppression, by the inquisitor-general, Salvatore Ventimiglia, Archbishop of Nicodemia.[89]

In its career, since 1487, Franchina, writing in 1744, boasts that the Holy Office had handed over to the secular arm for burning two hundred and one living heretics and apostates and two hundred and seventy-nine effigies of the dead or fugitives.[90] It illustrates forcibly the changed spirit of the age that Viceroy Caraccioli, in writing to D’Alembert an account of the abolition, says that he shed tears of joy in proceeding to the Inquisition with the great dignitaries of State and Church, when he caused the royal rescript to be read to the inquisitor and the arms of the Holy Office to be erased from the portal amid the rejoicing of the assembled people.[91]

MALTA.

Malta, if we may believe Salelles, enjoyed the honor of having St. Paul as the founder of its Inquisition, when he was cast ashore there on his voyage to Rome.[92] In the sixteenth century, however, as a dependency of Sicily, it was under the Sicilian tribunal, which maintained an organization there, under a commissioner.[93] When, in 1530, Charles V gave the island to the Knights of St. John, the Sicilian jurisdiction lapsed but, even without the Holy Office, the Church had efficient machinery for the suppression of heresy. In 1546 a Frenchman named Gesuald was found to have been for ten years infecting the islanders with Calvinist opinions, and the Aragonese Domingo Cubelles, the Bishop of Malta, was at no loss in exercising his episcopal jurisdiction. Gesuald was obstinate in his faith and was duly burnt alive; on his way to the stake he called out “Why do priests hesitate to take wives, since it is lawful?” whereupon Cubelles ordered him to be gagged and he perished in silence. His converts lacked his stubborn convictions and were reconciled--among them two priests who had secretly married their concubines, for which they were condemned to wear the sanbenito. In 1553, the Grand Master, Juan de Omedes, constituted three of the knights and a chaplain as an Inquisition, but there is no trace of their labors and Cubelles continued to exercise his episcopal jurisdiction in several cases during the following years. In 1560, however, when a Maltese, named Doctor Pietro Combo, fell under suspicion, Cubelles seems to have felt uncertain what to do with him and sent him in chains to the Roman Inquisition, where he was acquitted. Cubelles informed the cardinals that the Lutheran heresy was spreading in the island and this probably explains why, by letters of October 21, 1561, the Roman Inquisition, while recognizing the episcopal jurisdiction of Cubelles, enlarged it to that of an inquisitor-general, empowering him to appoint deputies and to proceed against all persons, whether clerics or laymen, to try them, torture them, relax them or reconcile them with appropriate penance.[94]

In his zeal for the effective discharge of his duties, Cubelles sent to Palermo for detailed information as to the conduct of the Inquisition and was furnished with copies of the Spanish instructions and forms. This seems to have provoked the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office, between which and the Spanish there was perpetual jealousy, and it sent to Malta a Dominican to act as his assistant and to direct him. He was succeeded, both as bishop and inquisitor, by Martin Rojas de Portorubio, to whom in 1573 Gregory XIII sent a commission. Apparently it was impossible for the Inquisition to maintain harmonious relations with the temporal power and, already in 1574, he complained to Rome that his officials were beaten and that the Grand Master, Jean l’Evesque de la Cassière, threatened to throw him out of the window if he came to the palace. This created considerable scandal, but Rome, unlike Spain, was not accustomed to support inquisitors through thick and thin, and the result was that, by brief of July 3, 1574, Gregory revoked his commission and sent Dr. Pietro Duzzina as apostolic vicar to conduct the Inquisition. In thus separating it from the episcopate no provision was made for its expenses, but soon after this the confiscated property of Mathieu Faison, a rich heretic burnt in effigy, yielded a revenue of three hundred crowns and, when Bishop Rojas died, March 19, 1577, opportunity was taken to burden the see with a pension of six hundred more for its benefit.[95] It was thus rendered permanent, but a protracted struggle with successive grandmasters was necessary to secure for its officials the privileges of the forum and the immunities and exemptions which they claimed.[96]

Yet the Spanish Inquisition was not satisfied to be thus completely superseded by that of Rome, even in so remote and inconspicuous a spot as Malta. In 1575 Duzzina arrested a man as a heretic; it was known that testimony against him had been taken in Sicily and application for it was made to the inquisitors of Palermo. They applied for instructions to the Suprema, which ordered them not to give it but to claim the prisoner. The result was that the Maltese tribunal tried him on what had occurred on the island and discharged him.[97] This emphasized its absolute separation from the Spanish Holy Office and its history need not be further followed here, except to allude to the most celebrated case in its annals, when the two Quakeresses, Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, moved by the Spirit, went to Malta on a mission of conversion and suffered an imprisonment of four years.[98]

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II. NAPLES

In Naples the Inquisition had been introduced by Charles of Anjou after the battle of Benevento had acquired for him the succession to the unfortunate Manfred. The house of Aragon, which followed that of Anjou, had permitted its existence, but under conditions of such subjection to the crown that it was for the most part inert. Yet Naples offered an abundant harvest for the zealous laborer. The Waldenses from Savoy, who had settled and multiplied in Calabria and Apulia, had obtained, in 1497, from King Frederic, a confirmation of their agreements with their immediate suzerains, the nobles, and felt secure from persecution.[99] Still more inviting were the banished Jews and fugitive New Christians from Spain, who found there a tolerably safe refuge. There was also a considerable number of indigenous Jews. In the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela describes flourishing synagogues in Capua, Naples, Salerno, Amalfi, Benevento, Melfi, Ascoli-Satriano, Tarento, Bernaldo and Otranto, and these doubtless were representatives of others existing outside of the line of his wanderings.[100] They had probably gone on increasing, although, in 1427, Joanna II called in the ruthless St. Giovanni da Capistrano to suppress their usury and, in 1447, Nicholas V appointed him conservator to enforce the disabilities and humiliations prescribed in a cruel bull which he had just issued.[101] Possibly, under this rigorous treatment, some of them may have sought baptism for, in 1449, we find Nicholas despatching to Naples Fra Matteo da Reggio as inquisitor to exterminate the apostate Judaizers, who were said to be numerous.[102] If we may believe Zurita, when Charles VIII of France made his transitory conquest of Naples, in 1495, the Jews were all compulsorily baptized, with the usual result that their Christianity was only nominal.[103] Such unwilling converts of course called for inquisitorial solicitude but, when Ferdinand of Spain obtained possession of the land, it was the fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition that rendered him especially desirous of extending its jurisdiction over his dominions on the Italian mainland.

A single example will illustrate this and also throw light on the resistance which, as we shall see, the Neapolitans offered to the introduction of the Holy Office after the Spanish pattern. In the inquisitorial documents of the period, no name occurs more frequently than that of Manuel Esparza de Pantolosa, who was condemned in absentia as a heretic, in Tarragona. He had evidently sought safety in flight, abandoning his property which was confiscated and sold, June 4, 1493, for 9000 libras to his brother, Micer Luis Esparza, a jurist of Valencia, whose final payment for it is dated February 2, 1499, when the inquisitor, Juan de Monasterio, was authorized to retain a hundred ducats in reward for his labors.

Meanwhile Pantolosa had prospered in Naples as a banker and had become one of the farmers of the revenue. As a condemned heretic, however, all dealings with him were unlawful to Spaniards. It was difficult to avoid these in transactions between Spain and Naples and, in February, 1499, the inquisitors of Barcelona created much scandal by arresting a number of merchants for maintaining business relations with him, an excess of zeal for which Ferdinand scolded them, while ordering the release of the prisoners. Pantolosa seems to have held out some hopes of returning and standing trial, for a safe-conduct was issued to him, October 4, 1499, good for twelve months, during which he and his property were to be exempt from seizure, dealings with him were permitted and ship-masters were authorized to transport him and, on the plea that he had been impeded, the safe-conduct was extended, August 22, 1500, for two years. There was manifest policy in suspending the customary disabilities for a personage of such importance, as appears from one or two instances. When, in the autumn of 1499, Ferdinand’s sister, Juana, Queen of Naples, and her stepson, the Cardinal of Aragon, came to Spain, they provided themselves with bills of exchange drawn by the farmers of revenue--Pantolosa, Gaspar de Caballería and others--on Luis de Santangel, Ferdinand’s escribano de racion, or privy purse. They could not anticipate any trouble in a transaction between officials of Spain and Naples, but Santangel, also a Converso, had reason to be cautious as to his relations with the Inquisition and he refused to honor the bills, because the drawers were fugitive condemned heretics, with whom he could have no dealings. Ferdinand was obliged to confer with the inquisitors-general, after which he authorized Santangel to supply the necessities of the royal visitors. Possibly in this case the association with Caballería neutralized Pantolosa’s safe-conduct, but this disturbing element was absent from a flagrant exhibition of inquisitorial audacity when, in 1500, Ferdinand sent the Archbishop of Tarragona to Naples on business connected with his sister, the queen. Requiring money while there the archbishop sold bills of exchange to Pantolosa and, when they were presented in Tarragona, the inquisitors, apparently regarding them as a debt due to a condemned heretic, forbade their payment and sequestrated the archiepiscopal revenues to collect the amount. The bills were returned and were sent back with a fresh demand for payment, when Ferdinand intervened and, by letters of July 3d, ordered the inquisitors to remove the sequestration so that they could be paid and the archbishop’s credit be preserved.[104] It is easy to understand how Ferdinand felt towards the Neapolitan asylum for condemned Spanish heretics and banished Jews and how Naples regarded the arbitrary processes of the Spanish Holy Office.

When, in 1500, Ferdinand had seized Calabria and Apulia, in fulfilment of the robber bargain between him and Louis XII, he lost little time in turning to account his new acquisition for the benefit of the Sicilian Holy Office. A letter of August 7, 1501, to his representatives recites that the inquisitors of Sicily say that they will be aided in their work by the testimony of the New Christians of Calabria, wherefore all whom they may designate are to be compelled to give the evidence required.[105] When, in 1503, Ferdinand obtained the whole kingdom by ousting his accomplice Louis, Gonsalvo de Córdova, to facilitate the surrender of Naples, made an engagement that the Spanish Inquisition should not be introduced, for its evil reputation rendered it a universal object of dread, to which the numerous Spanish refugees had doubtless largely contributed.[106] The Neapolitans also desired to destroy the principal incentive of the existing Inquisition by a condition that confiscation should be restricted to cases of high treason, but this they were unable to secure and the final articles allowed its use in heresy and treason.[107] Ferdinand’s order of August, 1501, as to obtaining evidence for Sicily, seems to have met with slack obedience, for there is a letter of November 16, 1504, from Gonsalvo to the royal officials in general, reciting that Archbishop Belorado, as Inquisitor of Sicily, had sent to Reggio, to obtain certain necessary depositions, but that the officials had prevented it, wherefore he reminds them of the royal commands and imposes a penalty of a thousand ducats for all future cases of disobedience.[108]

No sooner was the conquest of Naples assured than Ferdinand proceeded to clear the land of Judaism by ordering Gonsalvo to banish all the Jews. The persecution at the time of Charles VIII had left few of them de señal--those who openly avowed their faith by wearing the prescribed letter Tau--and Gonsalvo seems to have reported that prosecution of the secret apostates was the only method practicable. Julius II opportunely set the example by instituting a severe inquisition, under the Dominican organization at Benevento.[109] Ferdinand regarded with extreme jealousy all exercise of papal jurisdiction within his dominions and to prevent the extension of this he naturally had recourse to the commission of his inquisitor-general which covered all the territories of the Spanish crown. A secret letter was drawn up, June 30, 1504, by Ferdinand and Isabella, in conjunction with the Suprema, or Supreme Council of the Inquisition, addressed to all the royal officials in Naples, reciting that as numerous heretics duly burnt in effigy in Spain had found refuge there, the Inquisitor-general Deza had resolved to extend over the kingdom the jurisdiction of Archbishop Belorado, Inquisitor of Sicily, and had asked the sovereigns to support him in his labors of arresting and punishing heretics and confiscating their property. All officials were therefore ordered, under pain of ten thousand ounces, to protect him and his subordinates and to do their bidding as to arresting, transporting and punishing the guilty, all oaths and compacts to the contrary notwithstanding. At the same time a personal letter to Gonsalvo expressed the determination of the sovereigns to introduce the Inquisition, their founding of which they believed to be the cause why God had favored them with victories and benefits. Gonsalvo was warned not to allow the suspect to leave the kingdom while, to avoid arousing suspicion, Belorado would come to Naples as though on his way to Rome and Gonsalvo was to guard all ports and passes through which the heretics could escape. To prepare for the expected confiscations, the commission of Diego de Obregon, receiver of Sicily, was extended over Naples and Francisco de Rojas, then ambassador at Rome, was instructed to obtain from the pope whatever was necessary to perfect the functions of the Neapolitan Holy Office.[110]

Everything thus was prepared for the organization of the Spanish Inquisition in Naples, but even Ferdinand’s resolute will was forced to abandon for the time the projected enterprise with its prospective profits. What occurred we do not know; the historian, to whom we are indebted for the documents in the matter, merely says that Ferdinand, in spite of his efforts, was prevented from carrying out his plans by difficulties which arose.[111] We can conjecture however that Gonsalvo convinced him of the impolicy of provoking a revolt in his newly acquired and as yet unstable dominions. The Neapolitans were somewhat noted for turbulence and had an organization which afforded a means of expressing and executing the popular will. From of old the citizens were divided into six associations, known as Piazze or Seggi, in which they met to discuss public affairs. Of these five, designated as Capuana, Nido, Porta, Porta nueva and Montagna, were formed of the nobles and the sixth was the Seggio del Popolo, divided into twenty-nine districts, called Ottine. Each piazza elected a chief, known as the Eletto, and these six, when assembled together, formed the Tribunale di San Lorenzo, which thus represented the whole population. There were Piazze in other cities but when, under Charles V, the national Parliament was discontinued, the Piazze of Naples arrogated to themselves its powers and framed legislation for the whole kingdom. A Spanish writer, in 1691, informs us that no viceroy could govern successfully who had not dexterity to secure the favor of a majority of the Piazze, for the people were obstinate and tempestuous, easy to excite and difficult to pacify, and, if the nobles and people were united, God alone could find a remedy to quiet them.[112] In the unsettled condition of Italian affairs, to provoke revolt in such a community was evidently most unwise; there is no appearance that Belorado made his threatened visit, and when Ferdinand himself came to Naples, in 1506 and 1507, he seems to have tacitly acquiesced in the postponement of his purpose.

The popular repugnance was wholly directed to the Spanish Inquisition and there was no objection to the papal institution, which had long been a matter accepted. In 1505 a letter of Gonsalvo directs the arrest in Manfredonia of three fugitives from Benevento, who are seeking to escape to Turkey; he does this, he says, at the request of the inquisitor and of the Bishop of Bertinoro papal commissioner.[113] Evidently there must have been active persecution on foot in Benevento and, though the inquisitor is not named, he was probably the Dominican Barnaba Capograsso, whom we find, in 1506, styled “generale inquisitore de la fede” when, in conjunction with the vicar-general of the archbishop and the judges of the vicariate, he burned three women for witchcraft.[114] Yet anxious as was Ferdinand for the extirpation of heresy, he would not abate a jot of the royal supremacy and would allow no one to exercise inquisitorial functions without his licence. The correspondence of the Count of Ribagorza, who succeeded Gonsalvo as lieutenant-general and viceroy during the years 1507, 1508, and 1509, shows that Fra Barnaba held a commission directly from the king. When a certain Fra Vincenzo da Fernandina endeavored in Barletta to conduct an inquisition, Ribagorza expressed surprise at his audacity in doing so without exhibiting his commission; he was summoned to come forthwith and submit it so that due action could be taken without exposing him to ignominy. So minute was this supervision that, when Fra Barnaba reported that a colleague had received a papal brief respecting a certain Lorenzo da Scala, addressed to the two inquisitors and the Bishop of Scala, Ribagorza ordered it to be surrendered unopened to the regent of the royal chancery and that all three addressees should come to Naples when, in their presence and his, it should be opened and the necessary action be ordered. From a letter of February 24, 1508, it appears that the old Neapolitan rule was maintained and that inquisitors had no power to order arrests, but had to report to Ribagorza, who issued the necessary instructions to the officials; indeed, a commission of January 14, 1509, indicates that heretics were seized and brought to Naples before the viceroy, without the intervention of the Holy Office. At the same time, when inquisitors were duly commissioned and recognized, the authorities were required to render them all needful assistance and any impediment thrown in their way was severely reproved, with threats of condign punishment.[115]

Thus quietly and by degrees the old papal Inquisition was roused into activity and was moulded into an instrument controlled by the royal power even more directly than in Spain. Yet this did not satisfy Ferdinand, who had never abandoned his intention of introducing the Spanish Inquisition, and apparently he thought, in 1509, that the Neapolitans had become sufficiently accustomed to his rule to endure the innovation. Rumors of his purpose spread, causing popular agitation, and Julius II, who wanted his aid against the French in Northern Italy, earnestly deprecated action which might necessitate the recall of his troops to put down insurrection. To the Spanish ambassador the pope represented the danger of exciting the turbulent population; the time would come when the Spanish Inquisition might safely be imposed on Naples, but so long as the French were in possession of Genoa, the king must be cautious.[116]

Ferdinand was not to be diverted from his course by such considerations and, on August 31, 1509, a series of letters was addressed to Naples showing that the organization had been fully and elaborately prepared. Montoro, Bishop of Cefalù, whose acquaintance we have made in Sicily, and Doctor Andrés de Palacios, a layman and experienced inquisitor, were appointed to conduct the office, with a full complement of subordinates, whose liberal salaries were to be paid out of the confiscations, showing that a plentiful harvest was expected.[117] Viceroy Ribagorza and all royal officials and ecclesiastics were instructed to give them all necessary support and assistance under penalty of ten thousand ounces and punishment at the royal pleasure, notwithstanding any previous compacts or conventions, for agreements contrary to the faith were not to be observed by Catholics. On arrival they were to be established in the Incoronata or, if they preferred other quarters, the occupants were to be summarily ejected and a proper rent be paid. The Cardinal-archbishop of Naples was ordered to give them powers to act as his ordinaries and vicars; a pragmatic sanction was drawn up for publication, forbidding, under heavy penalties, the use of any papal letters of absolution until they should have received the royal assent. The local officials were also written to, ordering them to aid the inquisitors in every way and a circular to the same effect was sent to all the barons of the kingdom. As it was expected that, as soon as the letters were published, the heretics would endeavor to escape, the viceroy was ordered to take measures that none should be allowed to embark, or to send away property or merchandise, and all who should attempt it were to be delivered forthwith to the inquisitors.[118] Evidently the matter had been thoroughly worked out in detail and Ferdinand was resolved to enforce his will. Then followed, however, an unexpected delay. Ribagorza left Naples, October 8th, probably resigning or being removed owing to his conviction of the difficulty of the task imposed on him, and his successor, Ramon de Cardona, did not arrive until October 23d, showing that the change was sudden and unexpected. The Bishop of Cefalù, also, did not reach Naples until October 18th and, although officially received, he exhibited no commission as inquisitor and took no action, awaiting his colleague Palacios, whose coming was delayed until December 29th.

Meanwhile rumors of what was proposed had been spreading, popular excitement had been growing and it now became uncontrollable. It was openly declared by all classes that the Inquisition would not be tolerated and, when it was reported that, on a certain Sunday, the inquisitor would preach the customary sermon in the cathedral, an unanimous resolution was adopted, January 4, 1510, that such an attempt would be resisted, if necessary by force of arms. A delegation, selected as usual by all the Piazze, was sent to the viceroy and overwhelmed him with fierce denunciations of the detested institution as developed in Spain--the tortures and the burnings inflicted for the most trivial causes, the sentences against the dead and the burning of bones, the execution of pregnant women, the disinheriting of children, the scourging of naked virgins through the streets and the seizure of their dowries, the innocent impelled to flight by terror and consequently condemned in order to confiscate their property, while their servants were tortured to find out whether anything was concealed, and the stories of sacrilege invented in order to gratify rapacity. Although most of this was the ordinary inquisitorial practice, it was sufficiently embellished to show that the refugee New Christians had been busy in fanning the excitement which now burst upon the viceroy. Every delegate sought to outdo his colleagues in vociferously enumerating the horrors which justified the evil reputation of the dreaded institution, and the viceroy was told that they never would allow themselves to be subjected to the accusations of informers, whose names were concealed and whose perjuries were stimulated by a share in the spoils; the whole business was not to protect religion but to get money and they would not be dishonored and put to death and despoiled as infidels under such pretexts. If he valued the peace of the realm, he would prohibit the sermon. Cardona listened to the storm of objurgation and, when it had exhausted itself, he replied that he had the king’s orders to receive the inquisitors and would obey them. This aroused a greater uproar than before and he weakened under it. He retired to consult the council and on his return he told the deputies that they might send envoys to the king to expound their views and learn his decision; meanwhile he would prevent the inquisitors from acting and they must preserve the peace.

The agitation continued; daily assemblies were held in the Seggi and, on January 9th and 10th, a formal agreement was drawn up and executed between the nobles and the people, in which they bound themselves to sacrifice life and property sooner than to permit the introduction of the Inquisition and, at the same time, they elected Francesco Filomarino as envoy to Ferdinand. The next day a trivial occurrence nearly produced a serious outbreak, showing how dangerous was the tension of popular feeling. Luca Russo, who was one of the most active agitators, had an old quarrel, arising from a lawsuit, with Roberto Bonifacio, the justiciary of the city; he chanced to meet Colantonio Sanguigno, a retainer of Bonifacio; words passed between them and Sanguigno made a hostile demonstration, which started a rumor that Russo was slain. The shops forthwith were closed, the populace rushed to arms, shouting ferro, ferro! serra, serra! and the house of the justiciary was besieged by an enormous mob thirsting for his blood, but on the production of the supposed victim they quietly dispersed. During all this we hear nothing of the Bishop of Cefalù, but his colleague, Andrés Palacios, was expelled from one domicile after another; he was a dangerous inmate and finally found refuge in the palace of the Admiral of Naples, Villamari, Count of Capaccio, where he lay in retirement for some months.

Filomarino, the envoy to Ferdinand, did not start for Spain until April and the reports received from him during the summer were such that the people lost hope of a peaceful solution. Yet during the whole of this anxious time, although the kingdom everywhere was united in support of the capital, though all the troops in the land had been sent to the wars in Northern Italy and there was not a man-at-arms left, factions were hushed; Angevines and Aragonese and even Spaniards unanimously agreed that they would endure the greatest sufferings rather than consent to the Inquisition and perfect internal peace and quiet were everywhere preserved. This did not indicate that agitation had subsided, for peace was seriously imperilled on September 24th, when a rumor spread that royal letters had been received ordering the Inquisition to be set to work. Meetings of the Seggi were held and it was proposed to close the shops and ring the bells to call the people to arms, but moderate counsels prevailed and a deputation was sent to the viceroy to assure him that they were ready to suffer all things in preference to the Inquisition. He expressed his surprise; he had no letters from the king, to whom he would write earnestly begging him to desist, and meanwhile he exhorted them to abstain from violence. Another month passed, in alternations of hope and despair; the nobles and people made a closer union, in which they pledged their lives and property for mutual defence and this was solemnized, October 28th, with a great procession of both orders, seven thousand in number, each man bearing a lighted torch.

How little Ferdinand at first thought of yielding is seen in a letter of March 18th to the inquisitors, acknowledging receipt of reports from them and the viceroy; he was awaiting the envoy and meanwhile counselled patience and moderation; they must persuade the people that matters of faith alone were concerned and when this was understood the opposition would subside. He had ordered the payment of four months’ salaries and they could rely on his providing everything. Then, a few days later, he announced that the vacant place of gaoler had been filled by the appointment of the bearer, Francisco Velázquez, to whom salary was to be paid from the date of his departure. If Ferdinand had had only the Neapolitans to reckon with he would undoubtedly have imposed on them the Inquisition at the cost of a revolt, but there were larger questions involved which counselled prudence. In preparation for trouble in Naples, he began to withdraw his troops from Verona. Julius II took the alarm at this interference with his plans and urged that the Neapolitans be pacified. At the same time, with an eye to the possible revendication of the old papal claims on Naples, he sought popular favor by promises to the archbishop to revoke the commissions of the inquisitors and inhibit the Inquisition, thus creating a wholly unforeseen factor in the situation. The viceroy clearly comprehended the danger of the position, when a revolution could so readily be brought about and the people would gladly transfer their allegiance to the pope or to France, thus costing a new conquest to regain the kingdom. It is doubtful whether he acted under positive orders from Ferdinand, or whether he assumed a certain measure of responsibility, stimulated by a fresh excitement arising from a rumor that the Inquisition had commenced operations at Monopoli. However this may have been, on November 19th he sent word to the popular chiefs, inviting them to the Castello Nuovo to hear a letter from the king. Five nobles from each Seggio were deputed for the purpose, who were followed by a crowd numbering three thousand. The viceroy read to them two pragmáticas, by which all Jews and Conversos of Apulia and Calabria, including those who had fled from Spain after condemnation by the Inquisition, were ordered, under pain of forfeiture of person and property, to leave the country by the first of March, taking with them their belongings, except gold and silver, the export of which was forbidden by the laws. From this the corollary followed, that as the land would thus be purged of heresy, there would be no necessity for the Inquisition. Thus the unfortunate Hebrews and New Christians were offered up as a sacrifice to enable the government to retreat from an untenable position.

The news at first was received with general rejoicings and some quarters of the town were illuminated, but the people had not been taught to trust their rulers; doubts speedily arose that it was intended to introduce the Inquisition by stealth and, when on November 22d the heralds came forth to proclaim the new laws, they were mobbed and driven back before they could perform the duty. The next day a delegation waited on the viceroy and asked him to postpone the proclamation for two days, during which they could examine the pragmáticas. This was an assumption of supervision over the legislative function which the viceroy naturally denounced as presumptuous, but the necessity of satisfying the people was supreme and, on the next day, the Eletti by further insistence secured a preamble to the first pragmática, in which the king was made to declare formally that, in view of the ancient religion and Catholic faith of the city and kingdom, he ordered the Inquisition to be removed, for the benefit of all. In this shape the proclamation was made on November 24th, and on it was founded the claim which, for more than two centuries, Naples persistently made that exemption from the Inquisition was one of its special privileges. Andrés Palacios departed on December 3d and thus the victory was won without bloodshed, after a struggle lasting for a year.[119]

Even the pragmáticas ordering the expulsion of Jews and Conversos were not obeyed and the situation was rendered more aggravating by the facilities of escape from the Sicilian Inquisition afforded by the proximity of the Neapolitan territories. In June of 1513 Ferdinand wrote to the viceroy concerning this ever-present grievance and ordered him to hunt up all refugees and send them back with their property, while at the same time a royal letter to the alcaide of Reggio rebuked him for permitting their transit and threatened him with condign punishment for continued negligence.[120] That it continued is shown by the escape, from Sicily to Naples, in the following September, of some four hundred of these unfortunates (see p. 12) and they doubtless carried with them funds sufficient to close the eyes of those whose duty it was to turn them back. There does not seem to have been in Italy the popular abhorrence felt in Spain for the Hebrew race or any desire for active persecution, but at the same time there was no opposition to the existence of the Inquisition, provided always that it was not of the dreaded Spanish type. In December of the same year, 1513, the Dominican Barnaba, now styling himself papal Inquisitor of Naples, applied to Ferdinand, stating that in Calabria and Apulia the New Christians lived as Jews and held their synagogues publicly; he evidently could have had no support from the local authorities, for he solicited the aid of the king. Ferdinand promptly replied, December 31st, ordering him to investigate secretly and, if he could catch the culprits in the act he was, with the assistance of the Bishop of Isola, to arrest and punish them and the viceroy and governor of the province were instructed to lend whatever aid was necessary. At the same time Ferdinand sought to make this an entering wedge for the Spanish Inquisition, for Barnaba was told to obey the instructions of Bishop Mercader, Inquisitor-general of Aragon, with whom he was put into communication and to whom he reported. He evidently did what he could, in the absence of secular support, for a letter of June 14, 1514, to a bishop instructs him to assist Barnaba and the Bishop of Isola who are about to visit his diocese to punish some descendants of Jews who are living under the Mosaic Law, but his efforts were fruitless. When he applied to the viceroy and to the Governors of Calabria and Apulia for aid in making arrests, they replied that they would have to consult the king. Moreover the viceroy reported that the pragmáticas of 1511 were not enforced because they were construed as applicable only to natives and not to foreigners such as Spaniards and Sicilians. All this stirred Ferdinand’s indignation, which found expression in a letter of June 15, 1514, to the viceroy, accusing him and the regents and governors of sheltering the refugees, characterizing as absurd the construction put on the pragmáticas and ordering anew that every assistance should be given to Barnaba and the Bishop of Isola. In spite of all this there was a deplorable slackness on the part of the secular authorities--the spirit of persecution seemed unable to cross the Faro. The Neapolitan officials would not arrest the Sicilian refugees without formal requisitions from the Sicilian inquisitors, brought by a duly accredited official. From what we have seen of the disorganization of the Sicilian tribunal we can readily believe their assertion that they had applied to both Alonso Bernal and Melchor Cervera, but that neither had given the matter attention. Ferdinand thereupon wrote to Cervera expressing his surprise at this neglect, especially as it was understood that the refugees had large amounts of property concealed. This seems to have produced little effect for when, six months later, Ferdinand scolded Don Francisco Dalagon, Alcaide of Reggio, about the refuge granted to the Sicilian fugitives, the alcaide replied that, if he had proper authorization he would seize them all, whereupon Ferdinand wrote, September 7th, to Cervera, ordering him to send to Dalagon a list of the fugitives, with a commission for their arrest--an order which seems to have been as resultless as its predecessors.[121]

When Ferdinand’s restless energy exhausted itself ineffectually on the inertia or corruptibility of the Neapolitan authorities, there was little chance that, after his death, in February, 1516, the business of persecution would be more successfully prosecuted. There was no inherent objection to it and the old Dominican Inquisition with its limitations continued to exist but, in the absence of the secular support so essentially necessary to its success, its operations were spasmodic and it affords but an occasional manifestation of activity, of which few records have reached us. The only instances, during the next twenty years, which the industry of Signor Amabile has discovered, are those of Angelo Squazzi, in 1521 and of Pirro Loyse Carafa, in 1536.[122] It was a remarkable development from the events of 1510 that the secular courts came to assume jurisdiction over heresy and claimed that the pragmática of Ferdinand deprived the bishops of cognizance of such cases. That an assumption so subversive of the recognized principles of canon law should call for protest was inevitable and, in the general Parliament of 1536, the ninth article set forth the grievance that a lay judge had gone to Manfredonia and thrown in prison several heretics. Complaint was made to the viceroy, Pedro of Toledo, of this invasion of episcopal rights, when he ordered the cases to be referred to the Bishop of Biscaglie but, in spite of this, the prisoners were not surrendered and remained for two years, some in the Castello Nuovo of Naples and some in the castle of Manfredonia and, although an appeal was made to the pope and briefs were obtained from him, these were not allowed to reach the bishop, wherefore the barons supplicated the emperor to order the cases to be remitted to the bishop and to forbid the intrusion of the secular courts.[123] The affair is significant of the contempt into which the Inquisition, both episcopal and Dominican, had fallen. Charles was in Naples in 1536, when a letter from the Suprema to Secretary Urries alludes to a previous one of February 8th, urging upon the emperor his duty to revive the institution on the Spanish model and the secretary is exhorted to lose no opportunity of advancing the matter, but policy prevailed and nothing was done.[124]

Still, there came a sudden resolve to enforce the pragmática of 1510, which seems to have been completely ignored hitherto and, in 1540, the Jews were banished, after vainly pleading with Charles V at Ratisbon. Most of them went to Turkey, and the expulsion was attended with the misfortunes inseparable from such compulsory and wholesale expatriation. Many were drowned and some were captured at sea and carried to Marseilles, where Francis I generously set them free without ransom and sent them to the Levant. Their absence speedily made itself felt through the deprivation of facilities for borrowing money and, to supply the vacancy, the viceroy founded the Sagro Monte della Pietà, or public pawnbroking establishment.[125] This expulsion, however, does not seem to indicate a recrudescence of intolerance and, if there were apostate Conversos and Judaizing Christians, the authorities did not trouble themselves about them. Yet the time was at hand when a more threatening heresy would arouse afresh the persecuting spirit and lead the Church to bare its sharpest weapons.

Lutheranism had not penetrated as far south as Naples, but the spirit of inquiry and unrest was in the air and a local centre of revolt developed there independently. A gifted Spanish youth, Juan de Valdés, brought up in the court of Charles V and a favorite of his sovereign, attracted the attention of the Inquisition and, to avoid unpleasant consequences, abandoned his native land in 1529. After some years of wandering he settled in Naples, in 1534, where he drew around him the choicest spirits of the time, until his death about 1540.[126] Among those whom he deeply influenced may be mentioned Pietro Martire Vermigli, Bernardino Ochino, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Manrique, Giulia Gonzaga and Costanza d’Avalos--names which reveal to us how Naples became a centre from which radiated throughout Italy the reformatory influences of the age.[127] Valdés was not a follower of Luther or of Zwingli; rather was he a disciple of Erasmus, whose teachings he developed to their logical results with a hardihood from which the scholar of Rotterdam shrank, after the fierce passions aroused by the Lutheran movement had taught him caution. Though not driven like Luther, by disputation and persecution to deny the authority of the Holy See, there is an infinite potentiality of rebellion against the whole ecclesiastical system in Valdés’s description of the false conception which men are taught to entertain of God, as a being sensitive of offence and vindictive in punishment, who is to be placated by self-inflicted austerities and by gifts of gold and silver and worldly wealth.[128] He was also largely tinged with mysticism, even to the point of dejamiento or Quietism, the result possibly of his intercourse with Pedro Luis de Alcaraz, in 1524, when they were together in the household of the Marquis of Villena at Escalona--Alcaraz being the leader of a knot of Alumbrados, who was severely handled by the Inquisition.[129] This is manifested in Valdés’s conception of the kingdom of God, in which man renounces the use of reason and abandons himself to divine inspiration.[130] In his little catechism, moreover, there is a strong Lutheran tendency in the doctrine that man is saved by faith; there is no intercessor but Christ and the whole sacramental system, save baptism, is condemned by being significantly passed over in silence.[131] Still more significant is his classification, in the Suma de la predicazion Cristiana, of those who rely on vain ceremonial observances, with the worldly and wicked, as fit only to be ejected from the Church of Christ.[132]

All these were dangerous doctrines, even when merely discussed in the little circle of bright intelligences which Vaidés drew around him. They did not, moreover, lack public exposition in a guarded way. Bernardino Ochino, the General Minister of the Capuchins, was reckoned the most eloquent preacher in Italy. In 1536 he visited Naples, where he came in contact with Valdés and preached the Lenten sermons with such success that he emptied all the other churches. On February 4th of the same year Charles V, then at Naples, issued an edict forbidding, under pain of death and confiscation, any one from holding intercourse with Lutherans and, on his departure, he impressed on Pedro de Toledo, the viceroy, the supreme importance of preventing the introduction of heresy. Envious friars accused Ochino of disseminating errors in his sermons and Toledo ordered him to cease preaching until he should express himself clearly in the pulpit as to the errors imputed to him, but he defended himself so skilfully that he was allowed to continue and, on his departure, he left numerous disciples. Three years later he returned and made a similar impression, veiling his heretical tendencies with such dexterity that they passed without reprehension. Yet the seed had been sown; it was a time when theological questions were matters of universal interest and soon the city was full of men of all ranks who were discussing the Pauline Epistles and debating over difficult texts. No good could come of such inquiries by the unlearned and the viceroy felt that some action was necessary.[133] With the year 1542 came a sort of crisis in the religious movement, not only of Naples but of Italy. The Archbishops of Naples, who were customarily cardinals residing in Rome, had long neglected the moral and spiritual condition of their see but, in that year, the archbishop-cardinal, Francesco Carafa, conducted a visitation there--the first for many years--and doubtless found much cause for disquietude.[134] In that same year also, by the bull Licet ab initio, July 21st, Paul III reorganized the papal Inquisition, placed it under the conduct of a congregation of six cardinals, and gave it the form of which the terrible efficiency was so thoroughly demonstrated during the second half of the century.[135] In September of that year, moreover, Ochino and Vermigli threw off all disguise and openly embraced Protestantism. This naturally cast suspicion on their admirers and the viceroy commenced a persecution; preachers were set to work to controvert the heretical doctrines; an edict was issued requiring the surrender of heretical books, of which large numbers were collected and solemnly burnt, and a pragmática of October 15, 1544, established a censorship of the press. Finally, Toledo wrote to the emperor that sterner measures were necessary to check the evil and Charles ordered him to introduce the Inquisition as cautiously as possible.[136]

It seems to have been recognized as useless to endeavor to establish the Spanish Inquisition and Charles was not as firmly attached to that institution as his grandfather Ferdinand had been, but it was hoped that, by dexterous management, the way might be opened to bring in the papal Holy Office.[137] Towards the end of 1546 Toledo wrote to his brother, the Cardinal of San Sisto, who was one of the six members of the Congregation, expressing his desire to introduce the Inquisition and his dread of the consequences, for the very name was an abomination to all, from the highest to the lowest, and he feared that it might lead to a successful revolution. To encompass the object, it was finally resolved to procure from the pope a commission for an inquisitor against heresy which was prevalent among the clergy, both regular and secular. The required commission was issued, in February, 1547, to the prior and the lector of the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina; Toledo did not personally grant the exequatur for it but caused this to be done by the regents of the Consiglio Collaterale, but this precaution and the profound secrecy observed were useless. Rumors spread among the people that orders had been received from the cardinals to proceed against regular and secular clerks; the old animosity against anything but the episcopal Inquisition at once flamed up and deputies were sent to the viceroy to beg him not to grant the exequatur. He assured them that he wondered himself at the fact; he had written to the pope that it was not Charles’s will or intention that the Inquisition should be introduced and that meanwhile he had not granted the exequatur. Little faith was placed in his statements and the general belief was that Paul III was eager to create strife in Naples in order to give the emperor occupation there and check his growing ascendency. It is said that he actually sent two inquisitors but, if so, they never dared to show themselves, for there is no allusion to them in the detailed accounts of the ensuing troubles.

To carry out the plot, action was commenced in a tentative way by the archiepiscopal vicar affixing at the door of his palace an edict forbidding the discussion of religion by laymen and announcing that he would proceed by inquisition to examine into the beliefs held by the clergy. The very word inquisition was sufficient to inflame the people; cries of serra, serra! were heard and the aspect of affairs was so alarming that the vicar went into hiding and the edict was removed. The Piazze of the nobles were assembled and elected deputies charged with enforcing the observance of the capitoli, or liberties of the city. The Piazza del Popolo was crippled, for the viceroy some months previously, in preparation for the struggle, had dismissed the Eletto and replaced him with Domenico Terracina, a creature of his own, who did not assemble his Piazza but appointed the deputies himself. Then, on Palm Sunday (April 3d), Toledo sent for Terracina and the heads of the Ottine and charged them to see that those guilty of the agitation were punished but, in place of doing this the Piazze assembled and sent to him deputies who boldly represented the universal abhorrence felt for the Inquisition which gave such facilities for false witness that it would ruin the city and kingdom, and they expressed the universal suspicion felt that the edict portended its introduction. The viceroy soothed them with the assurance that the emperor had no such intention; as for himself, if the emperor should attempt it, he would tire him out with supplications to desist and, if unsuccessful, would resign his post and leave the city. But, as there were people who talked about religion without understanding, it was necessary that they should be punished according to the canons by the ordinary jurisdiction. This answer satisfied the majority, but still there were some who regarded with anxiety the implied threat conveyed in the last phrase.

Then, on May 11th, the patience of the people was further tested by another edict affixed on the archiepiscopal doors, which hinted more clearly at the Inquisition. At once the city rose, with cries of armi, armi! serra, serra! The edict was torn down; Terracina was compelled against his will to convene the Piazza del Popolo, where he and his subordinates were promptly dismissed from office and replaced with men who could be relied upon. The ejected officials could scarce show themselves in the streets and three of them were only saved from popular vengeance by taking sanctuary. The viceroy came from his winter residence at Pozzuoli breathing vengeance. He garrisoned the Castello Nuovo with three thousand Spanish troops and ordered the popular leaders to be prosecuted. By a curious coincidence, one of these was Tommaso Aniello, whose homonym, a century later, led the revolt of 1647. He it was who had torn down the edict and forced Terracina to assemble the Piazza. He was summoned to appear in court, but he came accompanied with so great a crowd, under the command of Cesare Mormile, that the judges were afraid to proceed and when the people seized Terracina’s children as hostages, Aniello was discharged. Then Mormile was cited and went accompanied by forty men, armed under their garments and carrying papers like pleaders; the presiding judge was informed of this and dismissed the case.

Finding legal measures useless the viceroy adopted severer methods. On May 16th the garrison made a sortie as far as the Rua Castillana, firing houses and slaying without distinction of age or sex. The bells of San Lorenzo tolled to arms; shops were closed and the people rushed to the castle, where they found the Spaniards drawn up in battle array. Blinded with rage, they flung themselves on the troops and lost some two hundred and fifty men uselessly, while the cannon from the castle bombarded the city. Angry recrimination and threats followed; the citizens determined to arm the city, not for rebellion, as they asserted, but to preserve it for the emperor. Throughout the whole of this unhappy business, they were strenuously eager to demonstrate their loyalty and, when the news came of Charles’s victory over the German Protestants at Muhlberg, April 24th, the city manifested its rejoicing by an illumination for three nights. So when, on May 22d, the viceroy ordered another sortie, in which there was considerable slaughter, the citizens hoisted on San Lorenzo a banner with the imperial arms and their war-cry was “Imperio e Spagna.” They raised some troops and placed them under the command of Gianfrancesco and Pasquale Caracciolo and Cesare Mormile, but it was difficult to form a standing army, owing to the question of pay, as the money had to be raised by voluntary subscription.

Bad as was the situation, it was embittered when some catch-poles of the Vicariat arrested a man for debt. On the way to prison he resisted and called for aid; three young nobles stopped to enquire the cause and, during the parley, the prisoner escaped. This enraged Toledo, who had the youths arrested at night and condemned with scarce a pretext of trial. On May 24th they were brought out on the bridge in front of the Castello Nuovo, where their throats were cut by a slave and the corpses were left in blood and mud, with a placard prohibiting their removal. This gratuitous cruelty inflamed the people almost to madness; houses and shops were closed, arms were seized and crowds rushed through the streets, threatening they scarce knew what. To manifest his contempt for the populace, Toledo rode quietly through the town, where he would infallibly have been shot had not Cesare Mormile, the Prior of Bari and others of the popular leaders earnestly dissuaded reprisals. Meetings were held in which the nobles and people formally united for the common defence, which was always regarded as a most threatening portent for the sovereign, and they resolved to send envoys to the emperor, for which office they selected the Prince of Salerno, the greatest noble of the land, and Placido di Sangro, a gentleman of high quality. Toledo summoned the envoys and told them that, if their mission concerned the Inquisition, it was superfluous, for he would pledge himself within two months to have a letter from the emperor declaring that nothing more should be done about it; if it was about the Capitoli, he could assure them that any infraction of the city’s privileges would be duly punished; if it was to complain of him, they were welcome to go. The envoys were too well pleased with their appointment to accept his offer and wait two months for its fulfilment; the people suspected the viceroy of trickery and the envoys set out. Six days later they were followed by the Marquis della Valle, sent by the viceroy to counteract their mission; the prince dallied in Rome with the cardinals, so that della Valle reached the court before him and gained the ear of the emperor.

Meanwhile crowds of exiles and adventurers, under chosen leaders, came flocking into the city and a guerrilla warfare was organized against the Spaniards, who had advanced from house to house up to the Cancellaria vecchia, making loop-holes in the walls and shooting everyone within range. With the aid of these reinforcements the Spaniards were gradually driven back to the Incoronata. On the other hand Antonio Doria came with his galleys, bringing a large force of Spanish troops. Of course the courts were closed and a state of virtual anarchy might be expected, yet the chronicler tells us that four things were remarkable. First, there were no homicides, assaults, or other crimes. Second, although there was no government of the city, yet food and wine were abundant and cheap and no fraud or violence was committed on those who came with provisions. Third, although there were great numbers of exiles or bandits, with their chiefs, some of them bitterly hostile towards each other, there was no quarrelling or treachery; on one occasion two mortal enemies met, each at the head of his band and a fight was expected, but one said “Camillo, this is not the time to settle our affair,” to which the other replied “Certainly; let us fight the common enemy; there will be ample time afterwards for our matter.” Fourth, the prison of the Vicaria was full of prisoners, some condemned to death and others held for debt, but no attempt was made to rescue them and food was sent to them as usual by women and children. Evidently the people felt that they were fighting for their liberties and would not allow their cause to be compromised by common lawlessness.

At length Toledo’s preparations for a decisive stroke were completed and, on July 22d, a sortie was made in force, while the guns of the fortresses and galleys bombarded the city. There was much slaughter and some four hundred houses were burnt, whose ruins blockaded the streets. Desultory fighting continued for some days and then a truce was agreed upon until the envoys should return. On August 7th came Placido di Sangro, the bearer of a simple order, signed by Secretary Vargas, to the effect that the Prince of Salerno should remain in the court, while he should return and tell the people of Naples to lay down their arms and obey the viceroy. This cruel disappointment came near producing a violent outbreak, but the Prior of Bari succeeded in quieting the people and persuading them to obey the emperor. The next day, by order of the Eletti, a huge collection of arms was made, loaded on wagons and carried to the viceroy. Then the tribunals were opened and every one returned to his private business. On August 12th the viceroy summoned the Eletti and read to them a royal indult, which purported to be granted at his request, pardoning the people for their revolt, except those already condemned and seventeen other specified persons. Most of those deeply compromised had, however, already sought safety in flight.

This doubtful mercy did not amount to much. A bishop came, commissioned by the emperor, to try the city for its misdeeds when, as we are told, through the procurement of the viceroy, witnesses were found to swear that the cry of Francia, Francia! was often raised. Whether this was true or not, the letters of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, imperial ambassador at Rome, show that active negotiations had been carried on with both France and the pope, and the sovereignty of Naples had even been offered to Cardinal Farnese, the grandson of the latter. Mendoza evidently regarded Paul III as ready to take advantage of the situation if occasion offered and, when the revolt was suppressed, he mentions that the fugitives received a warm welcome in Rome. It is not surprising therefore that the decision of the episcopal commissioner was adverse to the city, containing, among other things, a fine of a hundred thousand ducats for ringing the bells as a call to arms.

The viceroy, moreover, by no means confined himself to the persons excepted from pardon, but threw into prison all the leaders whom he could seize. He had already published a considerable list of those excluded and the seventeen also grew to fifty-six, of whom twenty-six were condemned to death, although it does not appear that any were actually executed, and the prisoners were gradually liberated, twenty-four at one time, four at another and all the rest in 1553. Among them was Placido di Sangro, whose friends could not learn the cause of his confinement and sent Luigi di Sangro to the emperor to find out. Charles said that Placido was buon cavaliero, but that he was a great talker and that orders had already been sent to the viceroy about him. The incident which left on the emperor the impression of Placido’s loquacity is too characteristic of the former’s good-nature to be omitted. Once, as he left his chamber, Placido followed him, pleading for the city; he appeared not to listen and Placido had the audacity to pluck his mantle and ask his attention. Charles turned smilingly and said “Go on Placido, I am listening.” The Duke of Alva was close behind and Placido said “Signore, I cannot talk, for the Duke of Alva hears all I say,” to which Charles replied, laughing, “Tell him not to hear it” and then obligingly drew Placido to one side and let him say all that he wanted. The conclusion of the whole business was that their arms were returned to the citizens and the emperor contented himself with the fine, but the hated viceroy kept his post until his death in 1553, and no assurance against the Inquisition was obtained.[138]

Yet the stubborn endurance of the Neapolitans had won a temporary victory. Although they gained no formal condition of exemption from the papal Inquisition, the attempt to introduce it was, for the moment, abandoned. For awhile even the episcopal jurisdiction over heresy appears to have been inert, as it has left no traces during the next few years. This respite, however, was brief, for the tide of persecution was arising in Italy. In March, 1551, Julius III issued a savage bull, pronouncing by the authority of God eternal malediction on all who should interfere with bishop or inquisitor in their prosecution of heretics.[139] Paul III, in 1549, on the resignation of Cardinal Farnese, had appointed, as archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Carafa, who was unsparing in the extirpation of heresy and had been the leader in promoting the reorganization of the papal Inquisition in 1542, of which he was made the head. Charles V had refused to grant his exequatur to Carafa, but yielded, in July, 1551, to the urgency of Julius, and Carafa lost no time in appointing Scipione Rebiba as his vicar-general, through whom the papal Inquisition was introduced into Naples.[140] It was at first confined to his archiepiscopate, for various letters to bishops, in 1552, from the viceroy Toledo show them to be busy in the prosecution of heretics.[141] Toledo died, February 12, 1553 and was succeeded by Cardinal Pacheco, who did not reach Naples until June. The interval, under Toledo’s son Luis, seems to have been thought opportune for extending the jurisdiction of the papal Inquisition for, by a decree of the Congregation, May 30, 1553, Rebiba was created its delegate and subsequently styled himself “Vicar of Naples and Commissioner of the Holy Inquisition of Rome.”[142]

In 1555 the episcopal jurisdiction was completely subordinated to the papal, for we find several instances in which prisoners of bishops were demanded by the Roman Inquisition, when Mendoza, the lieutenant of the Viceroy Pacheco, orders them sent under good guard to Naples, in order to be transmitted to Rome and, in 1556, it would even seem that bishops were required to obtain Roman commissions, for a letter of Mendoza to the Bishop of Reggio reproves him for publishing his commission before it had received the vice-regal exequatur.[143] It was probably to reconcile the Neapolitans to this intrusion of the authority of the abhorred institution that, by a brief of April 7, 1554, Julius III abolished the penalty of confiscation, but this grace was illusory, for it required the assent of the sovereign which was withheld and the brief itself was revoked by Paul IV in 1556.[144]

It was not long after this that occasion offered to extend still more directly the authority of Rome. Early in the fourteenth century, bands of Waldenses, from the Alpine valleys, flying from persecution, had settled in the mountains of Calabria and Apulia. Their example was followed by others; they increased and multiplied in peace, under covenants from the crown and from the nobles, on whose lands they settled and made productive, until it was estimated that they numbered ten thousand souls. As a matter of self-protection they strictly prohibited marriage with the natives, they used only their own language and their faith was kept pure by biennial visits from the barbes or travelling pastors of their sect, but it was under a prudent reserve, for they occasionally went to mass, they allowed their children to be baptized and they were punctual in the payment of tithes, which secured for them the benevolent indifference of the local priesthood.[145] More than two centuries of this undisturbed existence seemed to promise perpetual immunity, but the passions aroused on both sides by the Lutheran revolt were too violent to admit of toleration earned by dissimulation. The heretical movement in Naples seems to have aroused more watchful scrutiny for, in January, 1551, the Spanish Holy Office had information, through its Sicilian tribunal, about the Waldenses, whom it styled Lutherans, and it wrote to Charles V urging him to adopt measures for their eradication.[146] Nothing came of this, however, and the peaceful sectaries might possibly have remained in obscurity had they not commenced to feel dissatisfied with their ancestral teachings and sent to Geneva for more modern instructors. Religious zeal in Geneva was at a white heat and the missionaries despatched--Giovan Liugi Pascale and Giacomo Bonelli--were not men to make compromises with Satan. They made no secret of their beliefs and they paid the penalty, the one being strangled and burnt in Rome, September 15, 1560, and the other in Palermo.[147] Pascale had been arrested, about May 1, 1559, by Salvatore Spinello, lord of La Guardia, apparently to preserve his vassals from persecution for, since the coming of the ardent missionaries, they had ceased to attend mass.[148] With his companions he was carried to Cosenza and delivered to the archiepiscopal authorities. Then the viceroy, the Duke of Alcalá, intervened in a manner to show how uncertain as yet was the inquisitorial jurisdiction, for in letters of February 9, 1560, he urged the episcopal Ordinary to try the prisoners for heresy and, to prevent errors, he was to call for advice and assistance on a lay judge, Maestro Bernardino Santacroce, to whom powers and instructions were duly sent, thus constituting a mixed tribunal under royal authority.[149] Eventually however the papal Inquisition claimed and took Pascale, who was carried to Rome and executed.

Its attention was thus called to the Calabrian heretics, but it was not until November 13, 1560, that the Dominican Valerio Malvicino da Piacenza presented himself at Cosenza as inquisitor commissioned by Rome to take the affair in charge. He wandered around among the Waldensian villages of Montalto, San Sisto and La Guardia, distinguishing himself, we are told, as a glutton and drunkard, and investigating the beliefs of the people. Then at San Sisto he ordered them all to abjure their errors and wear the “habitello” or sanbenito. This they refused, nor had he more success at Montalto, though at La Guardia many abjured on his telling them that their brethren at San Sisto had done so. Castañeto, the Spanish Governor of Montalto, prepared to arrest the principal inhabitants of San Sisto, when the whole population took to the woods, and Fra Valerio returned to Cosenza to seek aid from the Marquis of Bucchianico, Governor of Calabria, who chanced to be there. He ordered the people to lay down their arms and return to San Sisto, which they obediently did, on May 8, 1561, but they took flight again on being commanded to present themselves in Cosenza with their wives and children. Castañeto then raised a force to reduce them; he allowed them to send the women and children back to San Sisto, before attacking them, but when he did so he fell with fifty of his men. This victory availed little to the victors. San Sisto was burnt; the women and children, subjected to every species of outrage, scattered through the mountains, where most of them were captured and sent to Cosenza; hunger forced the men to disband and nearly all of them fell into the hands of Bucchianico.

San Sisto being thus settled, Bucchianico proceeded to La Guardia with Fra Valerio and a commissioner named Pansa appointed by the viceroy to execute justice. Many of the inhabitants fled, but returned under promise of pardon--their flight being subsequently held as relapse into the errors which they had previously abjured. These numbered 300 men and 100 women, the latter of whom were sent to Cosenza, while the former, together with the captives of San Sisto, were carried to Montalto, where a sort of inquisitorial tribunal was formed, consisting of Fra Valerio, Pansa, and two auditors, Barone and Cove. These divided the prisoners between them and each proceeded to employ torture indiscriminately to force them to confess the foul practices ascribed to them and to profess conversion. Those who were condemned were confined in a warehouse and their sentence was read in presence of a crowd gathered from all the neighboring towns. The auto de fe which followed, June 11, 1561, is described in a letter written the same day from Montalto by a Catholic who cannot conceal his profound horror at the scene. From their place of confinement the executioner led his victims one by one, bandaging their eyes with the bloody rag which had served for their predecessors. Like sheep to the slaughter they were thus taken to the public square where he cut their throats; they were then quartered and the fragments were distributed on poles along the roads from one end of Calabria to the other--a spectacle which another pious contemporary describes as fearful to the heretic while confirming the true believer in the faith. The number thus butchered on that day amounted to eighty-eight, while in addition there were seven who had triumphed over the torture and refused to recant their heresies, and these were to be burnt alive as impenitents. Sentence of death was also pronounced against a hundred of the older women; the whole number of captives was reckoned at 1600, all of whom were condemned. The writer adds that unless the Holy See and the viceroy interfere, Bucchianico will not hold his hand until he has destroyed them all.[150]

He doubtless continued his cruel work with the rest of his prisoners, but details are lacking for our next source of information is a letter of June 27th, written from Montalto by Luigi d’Appiano (apparently an official of the Archbishop of Reggio) to the Abate Parpaglia. Rome had taken alarm at the butchery of June 11th and had commissioned the archbishop, then returning to Naples, to take charge of the affair and conduct it in more regular fashion. D’Appiano explains that the prisoners from La Guardia were regarded as relapsed (and consequently to be abandoned to the secular arm), because they had abjured, while those from San Sisto, who had not, were simple heretics, whom the Church would receive back on their submission. He tells us that Bucchianico, with the commissioner and the archiepiscopal vicar of Cosenza, had concluded to impose a salutary penance on the least guilty; those more obstinate were to be sent to the galleys, and the ministers and leaders to the stake; of these five had already been sent to Cosenza to be burnt alive, after smearing them with pitch so as to prolong their sufferings and serve as a terrifying example. A reward of ten crowns a head had been offered for the capture of fugitives and they were being daily brought in. Many women prisoners, who were instruments of the devil, were to be burnt and of these five, who had confessed to the nocturnal orgies attributed to the heretics, would be executed at Cosenza the next day.[151] All children under fifteen years of age were scattered among Catholic families, at a distance of at least eight miles from the Waldensian settlements and were forbidden to intermarry.[152] How long the persecution lasted does not appear, but a letter of December 12, 1561, from the viceroy, alludes to prisoners whose trials he ordered to be expedited.[153]

That the persecution was religious and not political is seen in the fact that the people of San Sisto, who had risen in arms and had defended themselves, were treated with much less harshness than those of La Guardia whose offence was technically construed as relapse into heresy. The conditions imposed on those who were spared the galleys or the stake confirm this. The Roman Inquisition prescribed that all should wear the yellow habitello with the red cross; that all should hear mass every day, before going to labor, under heavy fines; that confession and communion should be observed on the prescribed feast-days by all of proper age; that for twenty-five years there should be no intermarriage between them; that all communication with Piedmont and Geneva should cease, together with various other prescriptions looking to the training of the children in the faith and the instruction of the elders. To these Fra Valerio added that not more than six persons should assemble together and that their native tongue, which they had sedulously preserved, should be abandoned for Italian.[154]

In the exigencies of the moment the papal Inquisition had thus obtained a recognition in Neapolitan territory for which it had hitherto been vainly struggling, but it was intermingled with the episcopal and royal jurisdictions in a manner indicating how little organization there was for action in an emergency. The royal jurisdiction, moreover, asserted itself still further when, November 13, 1561, the viceroy issued a commission to Fra Valerio as inspector of heretical books throughout the kingdom, authorizing him to go to the points of importation and empowering him to summon to his aid the secular magistrates--a commission which was renewed May 8, 1562.[155] The viceroy also enforced one of the provisions of the Spanish Inquisition, for he laid claim to the confiscations and, on September 17, 1561, he commissioned Dr. Antonio Moles to proceed to the spot and take possession of all the property of those convicted, including the debts due to them. Apparently there had been general plunder, for he was empowered to enforce the surrender of what had been taken. Dr. Moles seems to have had much trouble with clerics, who had been active in the spoiling and had committed many enormous offences; as clerics they were beyond his jurisdiction, but the vicar of Cosenza sent him an assistant to exercise the necessary spiritual jurisdiction.[156] As La Guardia and San Sisto had both been burnt and the country laid waste, there cannot have been much left to confiscate, but Dr. Moles seems to have conscientiously stripped the land bare, for when the results were sent to Naples and sold at auction they produced a handsome amount of money.[157] This evidently represents only the movable property; the real-estate seems to have been granted by Philip II to the Confraternity for the redemption of captives; it was valued at 5000 ducats and was sold for 2500 by the Confraternity to Salvatore Spinello. He had been created Marquis of Fuscaldo in recompense for the zeal with which he had aided the Inquisition in destroying his vassals, and he finally sold the lands to the communities for an annual revenue of 180 ducats.[158] Strenuous as were the methods of the Inquisition, however, deeply rooted faiths have power of protracted resistance, and some correspondence of the Roman Congregation with the Duchess of Montesalto, in 1599 and 1600, would indicate that there were still remnants of these heretics in Calabria and that there was talk of establishing a school for their conversion.[159]

The Waldenses of Apulia had a milder fate. The ruin and butchery in Calabria was a warning to all parties. Their lords were powerful nobles--the Prince of Molfetta, the Duke of Airola, the Count of Biccari and others--who did not wish to see their lands laid waste and depopulated. Fra Valerio was not called in, but a papal commission was procured for Ferdinando Anna, Bishop of Bovino, in whose diocese most of the infected district lay; less inhuman measures were employed and doubtless the savage work in Calabria led the heretics to be accommodating. Only a few of the more zealous were prosecuted; the mass of the population submitted and seem to have been taken to the bosom of Mother Church without severe penalties.[160]

Possibly Fra Valerio may have been engaged in more congenial occupation in the province of Reggio, where at this time there were discovered some survivors of those who had embraced the doctrines taught by Juan de Valdés. The viceroy sent thither the Commissioner Panza, fresh from his labors at Montalto. He must have had inquisitorial assistance and though, in the fragmentary records, Fra Valerio’s name does not appear, he was the most probable collaborator in the active work which ensued. Four citizens of Reggio and eleven of San Lorenzo were burnt, while a number abjured and escaped with imposition of the habitello.[161]

* * * * *

In all these proceedings there is an incongruous intermingling of jurisdictions--papal, episcopal and secular--which shows how well the people had thus far succeeded in preventing the establishment of an organized Inquisition. They looked with complacency on the sufferings of the heretics and offered no opposition to the measures adopted, satisfied with the participation of the civil and episcopal powers. They had, however, lost none of their horror of the Spanish institution and, when Philip II endeavored to force it upon Milan, their fears were aroused that it might be imposed upon Naples. In 1564 there was much popular excitement; the Piazze assembled and adopted strong declarations; Pius IV, who did not wish to see the Spanish Inquisition in Italy, seconded these efforts and peremptorily ordered the Theatin Paolo d’Arezzo--subsequently cardinal and archbishop of Naples--to accept the mission with which the city charged him to Philip, to remonstrate against the threatened introduction of the Inquisition and also to ask for the revival of the brief of Julius III abolishing confiscations. The latter request Philip refused but, in letters of March 10, 1565, he assured his subjects that he had no intention of introducing the Spanish Inquisition and that trials for heresy should be conducted in the ordinary way as heretofore.[162]

The “via ordinaria” meant episcopal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with the practice of the spiritual courts in other criminal trials as distinguished from the secret procedure of the Inquisition, which denied to the accused almost every means of defence. This in the subsequent struggles was constantly cited by the Neapolitans as their protection, but it was easily evaded. The Roman Inquisition, it is true, was not allowed to organize a tribunal with an inquisitor at its head and commissioners in all the cities, as was the case in the northern provinces of Italy, and to exhibit its power with the spectacle of autos de fe, but it had its agents more or less openly and its victims were transmitted to Rome for trial and execution. Alongside of this, for a time at least, the episcopal jurisdiction over heresy was fully recognized and a number of vice-regal letters of the period show that it was vigorously exercised by some of the prelates, though whether by the via ordinaria or not does not appear.[163] This gratified the Neapolitans who, in 1571, sent a deputation to Archbishop Carafa to congratulate him on his holy labors against the heretics and Jews and to ask him to express to the pope their satisfaction that these people should be punished and extirpated by the episcopal Ordinaries, according to the canons and without the interposition of the secular court.[164] This is a scarcely veiled hint of the popular detestation of the Inquisition, whether Spanish or papal, and that this continued unabated is manifested by the Venetian envoy, Girolamo Lippomani who, in his relation of 1575, describes the Neapolitans as most religious and filled with zeal for the love of God, but nevertheless they will not endure the very name of the Inquisition and would be ready to rise against it as they have done in the past.[165]

The occasion of this address to the archbishop presumably was a lively persecution of Judaizers then on foot. There had been many abjurations, some burnings, and the archbishop was preparing to build cells attached to the walls of his palace to provide for the confinement of those sentenced to perpetual prison. There was considerable popular excitement because an inquisitorial deputy, with the title of vicar, had been sent from Rome, and there was faction among the citizens, for the number of accused was large, with kinships ramifying throughout the community. Cardinal Granvelle, then recently appointed viceroy, in a letter of July 31, 1571, to the Cardinal of Pisa, head of the Roman Inquisition, expressed his fears of a tumult; he had asked the archbishop to suspend the prosecutions and postpone building the cells; it would be better to send, as the pope desired, the accused to Rome, where they would be vigorously punished. In effect, towards the end of December, four women and three men were sent as Judaizers to Rome, where they were duly strangled and burnt on February 9, 1572.[166]

This sending of the accused to the Roman Inquisition, whether for trial or execution, gradually became the accepted custom, as a sort of compromise between the pretensions of the Holy Office and the settled repugnance of the people. It was not, however, without some complications. Of old, no arrests by the Inquisition were permitted without the royal assent in each case, but in the absence of an organized Inquisition this salutary rule seems to have been forgotten and it evidently was not observed in the Calabrian persecutions. When, however, in 1568, the authorities of Reggio were ordered by the Sicilian tribunal to arrest and forward two individuals charged with heresy, obedience was refused and the Duke of Alcalá, still viceroy, was notified. He approved the position taken but instructed the officials to arrest the parties and hold them until the Sicilian tribunal should report whether the alleged offences were committed in Sicily or in Naples; in the former case he was to forward them; in the latter to hold them until it should be determined whether they were justiciable by the Ordinary or by the Roman Holy Office, and such was to be the rule hereafter. The Sicilian tribunal did not relish this interference with its arbitrary methods and the next month there came news that two of its emissaries had landed at Reggio, gone inland and carried off to Messina a friar from an Augustinian convent; moreover they were now endeavoring to do the same with another of the brethren. Thereupon the viceroy ordered the utmost watchfulness to be observed and, if any attempt of the kind were made, the inquisitorial agents were to be thrown in prison and held for his instructions.[167]

If this caution was necessary in dealing with a province under the same crown, much more was it applicable to the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition. No independent state could permit its citizens to be abducted, without the knowledge of the authorities, at the bidding of a foreign prince whose policy at any moment might be hostile. To submit to such a claim was an abdication of sovereignty.[168] Moreover, nearly all Catholic kingdoms had been forced, by the perpetual meddling of the papacy with their internal affairs, to adopt the rule that no papal rescript of any kind should be enforced without first submitting it to the government for its exequatur. Naples, as especially exposed to papal encroachments, was particularly careful as to this, and no brief, however trivial, was allowed to take effect without being submitted to the authorities for approval.[169] In 1567 we find Pius V exhaling his indignation to Philip II at the violation of the rights of the Holy See because a bishop, whom he had sent to Naples as visitor to report on the condition of the clergy, was not allowed to exercise his functions without the exequatur.[170]

This necessarily applied to the citations and orders of arrest with which the Roman Inquisition was endeavoring to extend its jurisdiction over Naples. In April, 1564, Hieronimo de Monte, Apostolic Commissioner in Benevento (a papal enclave in Neapolitan territory), in the case of the Marquis of Vico, was taking testimony to the effect that no one would dare to serve a summons from Rome on him without the vice-regal exequatur, as he would thus expose himself to punishment, including perhaps the galleys.[171] Rome endeavored to evade this limitation on its jurisdiction and was met with consistent firmness. In 1568 Alcalá was informed that, under orders from the Inquisition, the bishop had arrested a citizen named Martino Bagnato and was holding him for transmission to Rome. The bishop was at once notified that he must surrender the prisoner to the captain of the city, to be held subject to prosecution in the via ordinaria by his competent judge, and the captain was ordered, in case of refusal, to take him by force. This did not avail Bagnato much, for the Roman Inquisition then wrote to the viceroy, asking to have the prisoner forwarded, which presumably was done.[172]

There was in this merely an assertion of sovereignty and no desire to shield the heretic, for when the Inquisition accepted the inevitable and made application to the viceroy, it was granted almost as a matter of course. The formality was simple. The application was referred to the chief chaplain, who made a show of consulting with the judges of the Audiencia and reported that it was in due form, when the exequatur was granted. Occasionally, however, some question might be raised when the process called attention to some abusive extension of inquisitorial jurisdiction. Thus in 1610 a certain Fabio Orzolino asked for the exequatur on a citation which he had obtained directed to the Abate Angelo and Carlo della Rocca of Traetto (Gaeta). On this the chief chaplain reported that the parties owed to Orzolino 88 ducats, for non-payment of which they had been publicly excommunicated. Under this excommunication they had lain for a year, which, according to the canon law, rendered them suspect of heresy and thus, by a strained construction, subjected them to inquisitorial action. It is not easy to understand the decision of the chaplain that the exequatur should be granted as to the abate and not as to the layman.[173] A more wholesome case was one in 1574, shown in the application of Giovanni Tomase, Modesto Abate and Sebastiano Luca for an exequatur to the order of the Roman Inquisition to sell the property of Nicola Pegna and Giovanni Mateo of Tagio, to reimburse the applicants for expenses amounting to 338 crowns arising from false accusations of heresy brought against them by Pegna and Mateo, who had been condemned for false-witness to scourging in Rome, with the addition of the galleys for Mateo.[174]

Under this system the Roman Inquisition had a tolerably free hand in Naples and its arrests were sufficiently numerous for it to establish a regular service of vessels to carry its prisoners, transportation by sea being much more economical than by land. The latter was expensive, as we chance to learn from a letter of March 8, 1586, ordering Captain Amoroso to be forwarded by land because the tempestuous weather prevented vessels from putting to sea. He was to have a guard of six soldiers who were to bring back a certificate of his delivery to the Inquisition, and the expenses of the journey were to be defrayed from the property of the prisoner.[175] The sea service, however, was not without its risks. When, in 1593, Fray Gerónimo Gracian, the disciple of Santa Teresa, left Naples for Rome, it was on a fragata de la Inquisicion, which is described as well provided with chains and shackles for securing prisoners. It chanced to be captured by the Moors and Gracian narrowly escaped burning, as he was supposed to be an inquisitor.[176]

Still Rome was not satisfied with this and it found Viceroy Osuna (1582-86) obsequious to its exigencies. About 1585 he allowed Sixtus V to establish in Naples a regular Commissioner of the Inquisition, with jurisdiction practically superseding that of the archbishop. By this time the spirit of the Neapolitans had been effectually broken. Already, in 1580, the Venetian envoy Alvise Lando, in describing how they had been subdued by the universal misery attendant on the Spanish domination, especially under the vice-royalty of the Marquis of Mondéjar (1575-79), adds that it is the opinion of many that if the king chose to establish the Inquisition, so greatly abhorred, there would be little opposition.[177] How speedily under these circumstances the episcopal functions became atrophied is illustrated by a case occurring in 1592. In 1590 a French youth named Jacques Girard was captured by a Barbary corsair, circumcised and forced to embrace Islam. In 1592 he was sent on shore in Calabria with a boat’s crew to procure water, when he escaped and, being taken for a Moor, was thrown in prison at Cosenza. He applied to the archbishop for reconciliation to the Church; the prelate felt unable to act, even in so simple a matter, and wrote to the Roman Inquisition for instructions. Before these came, Jacques had been transferred to Naples; a second application was made to Rome and the necessary powers were sent to the Archbishop of Naples, with orders to report the result.[178] So, in the trial for heresy of the celebrated Fra Tommaso Campanella, in 1600, Clement VIII designated as a court his nuncio at Naples, the archiepiscopal vicar and the Bishop of Termoli, and they were to transmit to Rome a summary of the case, with their opinions, before rendering sentence.[179]

Under such a viceroy as Osuna, the inquisitorial commissioner was superfluous, for all the powers of the state were put at the disposition of the papal representatives. As early as 1582 we find the nuncio assuming jurisdiction and requesting Osuna to execute a sentence of scourging which he had passed on the Venetian Giulio Secamonte for suspicion of heresy, a request which was promptly granted. The Roman Inquisition had only to ask for the arrest of any one throughout the kingdom, when immediately orders were given to the local authorities to seize him and send him to Naples for transmission to Rome, and if necessary to take possession of and forward all his books and papers. From this the highest in the land were not secure. In 1583 Cardinal Savelli, then secretary of the Inquisition, wrote that the person of Prince Gianbattista Spinello was wanted in Rome to answer for matters of faith, when immediately Osuna issued orders to seize him wherever he might be found and bring him to the Royal Audiencia, where he was to give security in 25,000 ducats to present himself within a month to the Holy Office and not to leave Rome without its permission.[180]

Osuna’s successor, Juan de Zuñiga, Count of Miranda, was equally subservient, but he insisted on the observance of the formalities when Rome sought to act independently without vice-regal intervention. In 1587, at the order of Cardinal Savelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Lecce induced the Audiencia of the Terra d’Otranto to arrest Giantonio Stomeo. This was overslaughing the viceroy who rebuked the Audiencia, telling it that it should have referred the matter to him and awaited his instructions, meanwhile assuring itself of the person of the individual. It was purely a matter of etiquette for, in the end, after some further correspondence, Miranda ordered Stomeo to be forwarded to Naples by the first chain (of galley slaves), giving advices so that arrangements could be made for his transmission to Rome. There seems to have been some doubt as to the correctness of the stand taken by Miranda for subsequently Annibale Moles, Regent of the Vicaria, was called upon for a consulta in which he stated the rule to be that arrests for the Inquisition must always pass through the hands of the viceroy, who always ordered their execution.[181]

Rome was not satisfied with this and continued its encroachments, taking advantage of any weakness of the civil power to establish precedents and claim them as rights. In 1628 we find it represented by the Dominican Fra Giacinto Petronio, Bishop of Molfetta, who styled himself inquisitor and was especially audacious in extending his powers. He arrested Dr. Tomas Calendrino, a Sicilian, because he assisted in the escape from Benevento of a contumacious person. He was carried to the Archbishop of Naples and placed on the papal galleys for transmission to Rome, but the Neapolitan spirit was rising again and the Collaterale and Junta de Jurisdicion called on Viceroy Alba to demand his surrender under threat of not allowing the galleys to depart and of banishing Fra Petronio within 24 hours. Alba however conferred with the nuncio and archbishop, who assured him that it was customary to arrest and send people to Rome without notice to him. In this perplexity Alba referred the matter to his master Philip IV, who warmly praised his prudence in so doing. The papal nuncio at Madrid, he said, had received orders from Rome to protest against the attempted innovation of requiring notice to the viceroy and he therefore ordered Alba, as the matter was of the highest importance, to investigate precedents of persons arrested with or without notice, and not to introduce any novelty. What was the ultimate result as respects Calendrino does not appear, but this nerveless way of treating the matter was not calculated to check the insolence of Fra Petronio who, in the course of the affair, excommunicated the judges Calefano and Osorio, summoned the auditor Figueroa to present himself to the Roman Inquisition and finally arrested him with his own armed sbirri. This was no novelty, for he had no scruple in imprisoning and maltreating royal officials for executing orders of the government.[182]

Philip was accustomed to allow his own officials to be thus abused by the Spanish Inquisition, but the Neapolitan temper was stubborn and, in 1630, the Collaterale reminded Fra Petronio that all commissions to arrest required the exequatur; it ordered him to present within three days all that he had received from Rome, and moreover forbade him to keep armed retainers. It made complaints to the king and to the Spanish ambassador at Rome, while Urban VIII issued briefs defending him, under which encouragement he continued his arbitrary methods. At length Philip, by a letter of March 18, 1631, ordered that no papal brief should be executed without the exequatur; a new viceroy, the Count of Monterey, was prompted to defend the royal jurisdiction and Fra Petronio complained to Rome that the aid of the secular arm was withheld unless he would state the names of those whom he desired to imprison. The pope appealed to Philip IV, who apparently had forgotten about the matter and, in a letter of November 27, 1632, asked for explanations. Then Fra Petronio commenced taking evidence against the auditor Brandolino, but when the Collaterale deliberated, January 31, 1633, on a proposition to banish him, he yielded. Monterey negotiated with Rome to have him replaced with some one less objectionable and also that the new incumbent should not hold a tribunal but should only report to the Congregation the cases occurring. Urban VIII offered to appoint any one whom they might select, and when the name was presented of Antonio Ricciullo, Bishop of Belcastro, then their ambassador at Rome, he was duly commissioned.[183]

There was nothing gained by the change. Ricciullo styled himself inquisitor-general; he held a tribunal and in his time condemned four clerics for functioning without priest’s orders--three strangled and burnt in public, and one strangled privately. The pope ordered that the Dominican convent should serve as an inquisitorial prison and its prior should be a consultor, and thus after a struggle of nearly a century the papal Inquisition was fairly established in Naples.[184]

Ricciullo died, May 17, 1642, and was succeeded by Felice Tamburello, Bishop of Sora. He died in 1656 and was replaced temporarily by the nuncio Giulio Spinola, who served until 1659, when Camillo Piazza, Bishop of Dragona was appointed. That Naples should be impatient at finding itself thus gradually and imperceptibly brought under the yoke of the papal Inquisition was natural. The turbulent city had gallantly resisted, at no little cost to itself, the imposition of the Spanish Holy Office, through times in which unity of faith was seriously threatened by successive heresies. Now all such danger was past. There were no Cathari or Waldenses or Protestants to rend in Italy the seamless garment of the Church and the period was one of spiritual apathy, wholly averse to proselytism. Only the unappeasable longing of Rome to make its power manifest everywhere could explain its persistence in thus insinuating the abhorred jurisdiction in a city which prided itself on its piety, on the number of churches and convents which impoverished it, on the obedience of the people to the priesthood and on the strictness of its religious observance. The only field of inquisitorial activity lay in reckless speeches which might savor of irreligion, in the blasphemy through which anger or despair found expression, in the superstitious arts of wise-women, in burning clerics who administered sacraments without having received the requisite orders and in such offences as bigamy and seduction in the confessional, all of which could only by a strained construction be deemed as savoring of heresy, and could readily be disposed of by the ordinary spiritual or secular courts. The Holy Office was a manifest superfluity and its imposition was all the more galling.

Nor was there any alleviation in the fact that the tribunal was papal and not Spanish, for there was nothing to choose between them, in spite of frequent appeals to the pledge of Philip II that the via ordinaria alone should be observed. There were the same confiscation and impoverishment of families. There were the same travesty of justice and denial of rightful defence to the accused. There were the same secrecy of procedure and withholding from the prisoner the names of his accuser and of the witnesses. There was the same readiness to accept the denunciations and testimony of the vilest, who could be heard in no other court, but who, in the Inquisition, could gratify malignity, secure that they would remain unknown. There was even greater freedom in the use of torture, as the habitual solvent of all doubts, whether as to fact or intention. There were the same prolonged and heartbreaking delays during which the accused was secluded from all communication with the outside world. A careless speech overheard and distorted by an enemy--or perhaps invented by him--sufficed to cast a man into the secret prison, where he might lie for four or five years, while his trial proceeded leisurely and his family might starve. It would probably end in his torture, to make him confess if he denied the utterance, or to ascertain his intention if he admitted and sought to explain it. If he succumbed in the torture he was subjected to a humiliating penance, to wearing the habitello and to infamy--probably also to confiscation. If his endurance in the torture-chamber enabled him to “purge the evidence,” as the legists phrased it, he was discharged with a verdict of not proven, with nothing to make amends for his sufferings and wasted years. Such was the fate which hung over every citizen and it was felt acutely.[185] How little was required to arouse inquisitorial vigilance was shown in 1683, when Agostino Mazza, a priest employed in teaching philosophy, was thrown in prison by the Commissioner of the Inquisition and humiliated by having to abjure in public two abstract propositions which to the ordinary mind have the least possible bearing on the faith--“The definition of man is not that he is a reasoning animal” and “Brutes have a kind of imperfect reason.”[186] The human intellect evidently had small chance of development under such conditions.

It is easy therefore to understand the growing uneasiness of the people when they saw the commissioner, Monsignor Piazza, appointed in 1659, gradually erect a formal inquisitorial tribunal, with a fiscal and other customary officials and a corps of armed familiars, recruited, as we are told, from the lowest class of the population. His activity was such that he constructed eight prisons in as many convents, where even women were confined, without respect to rank or condition, under the guardianship of the frati. He celebrated atti di fede in public, where abjurations were administered, followed by scourgings through the streets, and he levied on the resources of the Regular Orders to defray the expenses of his court. Indignation gathered and, on April 2, 1661, the Piazze ordered their representative body, the Capitolo di San Lorenzo, to consider the innovations of the commissioner. The aspect of the people grew threatening and Count Peñaranda, the viceroy, ordered Monsignor Piazza to leave the kingdom, which he did on April 10th, under escort of a troop of horse to assure his safety. This did not appease the deputies who, on May 18th, presented a memorial to the viceroy, in which they further drew attention to the subject of confiscation and asked that the prohibitory bull of Julius III, in 1554, should be enforced. Consultations and negotiations were long continued during which discussion became so hot that Peñaranda threw some of the deputies in prison, but, on October 24th, he announced that Philip IV had decided that the grant of Philip II must be maintained and the via ordinaria alone must be followed. Nothing was said as to the abandonment of confiscation and efforts to procure it were protracted, but without success.[187]

If the Neapolitans flattered themselves that they had obtained release from the odious institution, they were mistaken. Rome continued to send commissioners and they continued to disregard the privileges of the kingdom. Another outbreak occurred in 1691 when, under orders from the Roman Congregation, its commissioner--Giovanni Giberti, Bishop of Cava--seized several persons without obtaining the exequatur of the viceroy. The Collaterale, or Council, notified him that there was no Inquisition in Naples and that the prisoners must be transferred to the archiepiscopal prison, under pain of legal proceedings against him. He treated with contempt the notary who bore this message and threatened him with the savage penalties provided for impeding the Inquisition, in response to which the Collaterale hustled him out of the kingdom, barely allowing him time to perform quarantine at Gaeta. Innocent XII felt this keenly, for he was a Neapolitan and had been Archbishop of Naples, and a warm correspondence ensued with the Spanish court. It was claimed by the curia that the pope was omnipotent in matters of faith; that he could abrogate local laws and enact new ones at his pleasure, while the papal nuncio at Madrid warned the king that Naples would be given over to atheism without the Inquisition and the whole vast monarchy of Spain might be destroyed. The city of Naples was equally vigorous in asserting its rights and complained of the numerous officials of the commissioner, exempted from secular jurisdiction and committing scandals with impunity. The pope threatened an interdict and the Piazze threatened to rise; the latter danger was to Carlos II the most imminent and, in 1692, he prohibited all further residence in Naples of papal delegates or commissioners. To render secure the fruits of this victory, the Piazze took the decided step of appointing a permanent deputation whose duty it was to guard the city from further dangers of the same nature.[188]

If again the good people of Naples imagined that they had at last shaken off the dreaded Holy Office they underrated the persistence of Rome. Trials for heresy continued in the archiepiscopal court, conducted in inquisitorial fashion and not by the via ordinaria. This caused renewed dissatisfaction and, in hopes of reaching some terms of accommodation, envoys were sent to Rome in 1693 to ask that the procedure should be open, the names of the witnesses and the testimony being communicated to the accused; that no one should be imprisoned without competent proof against him; that the city should be allowed to supply an advocate for the poor and that two lay assistants should be appointed to see that these provisions were enforced. Prolonged discussions followed, the cardinals entrusted with the matter seeking to gain readmission for the commissioner and arguing that the bishops were mostly unfit to exercise the jurisdiction.[189] There was little prospect of reaching an agreement when Naples was startled with a wholly novel aggression. February 1, 1695, there was published in Rome by the Inquisition an Edict of Denunciation which, under its orders, was similarly published in at least one of the Neapolitan dioceses. Such edicts were issued annually in Spain, but in Naples they were unknown and the present one was evidently intended for that kingdom, for it included the episcopal ordinaries as well as inquisitors, as the parties to whom every one was required, under pain of excommunication latæ sententiæ, removable only by the Inquisition, and other penalties, to denounce whatever cases might come in any way to his cognizance, of a list of offences ranging from apostasy to bigamy, blasphemy and sorcery. The Deputati took the matter up in a long memorial addressed to the Collaterale, pointing out the invasion of the prerogative in publishing the edict without the necessary exequatur and the evils to be expected from converting the population into spies and creating a universal feeling of insecurity. There was also the fact that the edict assumed the jurisdiction of the Inquisition over Naples, that it made the bishops its agents, authorized as its deputies to employ the inquisitorial process, and that it comprised not only offences which the Neapolitans contended to belong to the secular courts but a general clause, vaguely embracing whatever else might be claimed as subject to the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.[190]

This shrewd device of the Roman Inquisition was successful. The bishops to a considerable extent exercised the powers delegated to them and the Deputati found constant occupation in endeavoring to protect those whom they imprisoned and tried by inquisitorial methods. Then came the troublous times of the War of Succession which followed the death of Carlos II in 1700. After a fruitless struggle Philip V was obliged to abandon Naples in 1707 to his rival, Charles of Austria, and during the interval the Inquisition succeeded in re-introducing a commissioner, who made free use of his powers. The new monarch sought to secure the loyalty of his subjects and from Barcelona sent orders to his viceroy, Cardinal Grimani to support the Deputati in their efforts to uphold the privileges of the kingdom. In spite of this the Deputati were obliged to appeal to him, in a petition of July 31, 1709, representing that, after the publication of his despatch to Grimani, the ecclesiastics proceeded to the greatest imaginable oppressions and violence, so that their condition was worse than ever, wherefore they prayed for relief at his hands, so that trials should be conducted in the via ordinaria. To this Charles replied, September 15th, to Grimani, commanding that matters of faith should be confined strictly to the bishops, to be handled by the via ordinaria; any departure from this was to be severely punished and the authorities were to use the whole royal power, through whatever means were necessary, for the enforcement of his orders.[191]

This won as little obedience as the previous royal utterance and the Deputati were kept busy in attending to the cases of those who suffered from the persistent employment of inquisitorial methods--efforts which were sometimes successful but more frequently in vain. It was probably some special outrage that induced the Deputati, in 1711, to employ Nicolò Capasso to draw up a report on inquisitorial methods. The work is a storehouse of inquisitorial principles as set forth by accredited inquisitorial authorities--papal decretals and manuals of practice such as those of Eymerich, Peña, Simancas, Albertino, Rojas, the Sacro Arsenale etc., admirably calculated to excite abhorrence by laying bare the complete denial of justice in every step of procedure, the pitiless cruelty of the system and the manner in which the lives, the fortunes and the honor of every citizen were at the mercy of the malignant and of the temper of the tribunal. Yet so far from being an advocate of toleration, Capasso commences by arguing against it at much length. Religion, he says, is the foundation of social order and the principle of toleration infers toleration of irreligion. Protestants are intolerant between themselves and the Catholic system cannot endure toleration. That which is taught by the philosophers is chimerical, and a community to be stable must be united in faith, but the enforcement of this unity is a matter for the secular power. Punishment must be corporal and the Church has authority over the spirit alone, not over the body. An allusion to the gravissime agitazioni of the people would indicate that his labors were called forth by some action which had aroused especial resentment.[192]

It was all in vain. By the death of his brother Joseph I, Charles VI succeeded to the empire in 1711. Wars and other interests diverted his attention from Naples and, though he consistently resisted the pressure from Rome to give the Inquisition recognition, the bishops continued to exercise inquisitorial jurisdiction in inquisitorial fashion. The Deputati did what they could, but the success of their efforts depended upon the uncertain temper of the successive imperial viceroys, who, though they might sometimes manifest a spasmodic readiness to enforce the royal decrees, did not countervail the persistent ecclesiastical determination to wield the power afforded by inquisitorial methods.[193]

A change was at hand when, in 1734, Carlo VII (better known as Carlos III of Spain) drove the Austrians out of Naples and assumed the throne. The kingdom, after two centuries of viceroyalties, at last had a resident monarch of its own, anxious to win the affection of his new subjects and inclined, as his subsequent career showed, to curb exorbitant ecclesiastical pretensions. His royal oath included a pledge to observe the privileges of the land, including those concerning the Inquisition granted by his predecessor. Apparently for some years there was hesitation in testing the quality of the new régime, but in 1738 and 1739, as though by concerted action under orders from Rome, Cardinal Spinelli, the Archbishop of Naples, and various bishops throughout the kingdom, undertook prosecutions in the prohibited fashion. Complaints reached the Deputati, who appealed to the king. He reproached them for negligence, ordered the proceedings stopped and the processes to be sent to Naples, and gave to Spinelli a warning that such irregularities would not be permitted. Undeterred by this, the episcopal Inquisition continued at work and in 1743 three bishops, of Nusco, Ortono and Cassano, were called to account; the papers of trials held by them were examined and pronounced irregular; in one case the Bishop of Nusco had cruelly tortured a parish priest named Gaetano de Arco, after holding him in prison for eight months.[194]

It seems incredible that under such circumstances ecclesiastical persistence should defiantly call public attention to its disregard of the laws, yet on September 26, 1746, the octave of San Gennaro--a time when the popular afflux to the churches was greatest--an atto di fede, conducted according to inquisitorial practice, was celebrated in the archiepiscopal church, where a Sicilian priest named Antonio Nava abjured certain errors and was condemned to perpetual irremissible prison. Popular indignation was aroused, the cry arose that Spinelli was endeavoring to introduce the Inquisition and he was insulted in his carriage by crowds as he drove through the streets. The Deputati represented to the king that they had been appealed to by three prisoners whose trials were not conducted by the via ordinaria, showing that the ecclesiastics were seeking to impose the abhorred Inquisition on the kingdom. Spinelli protested that the trials were open and according to the via ordinaria and that he was ready to obey whatever commands he might receive from the king. Carlos sent all the papers to his council, known as the Camera di Santa Chiara, with orders to investigate and report.

The Camera made a thorough examination and reported, December 19th, that Nava had lain in prison since April, 1741; another prisoner, a layman named Trascogna, had been incarcerated for three years and his trial was yet unfinished; the third, a deacon named Angelo Petriello, was accused of celebrating mass on July 24th last and was about to put in his defence. The archbishop argued that, unlike his predecessors, he did not conceal the witnesses’ names and therefore the process was the ordinary one, but investigation showed that in other respects inquisitorial practice was followed and inquisitorial authorities were cited; during the trial the prisoner was kept incomunicado in his cell and debarred from all communication with the outside world. In the papers the expression “Tribunale della Santa Fede” was constantly used; in the marble lintel of the door leading to the rooms occupied by it the words “Sanctum Officium” were cut and the part of the prison used by it was called “del Sant’ Officio.” It had a full corps of special officials and in a passage-way there had been for five or six years a tablet bearing their names and positions, with the inscription “Inquisitori del Tribunale del S. Uffizio.” It also had a seal different from that of the court of the Ordinary, bearing for device two hands, one of St. Peter with the key, the other of St. Paul with a naked sword and the legend “Sanctum Officium Archiep. Neap.” The Camera thence concluded that it was the old Inquisition under various devices and only awaiting an opportunity to establish itself openly, as was shown by the occurrences in 1691, 1711 and 1739 and, as it was impossible to place reliance on the promises of ecclesiastics, so often made and broken, it advised that all the officials of the pretended Tribunal of Faith should be banished as disturbers of the public peace; the three processes should be sealed and filed away in the public archives, the accused should be restored to their original position and be tried again by the via ordinaria. Everything connected with the Tribunal should be abolished--officials, prison, seal and inscription--and notice be given that any one in future assuming such offices would incur the royal indignation. All spiritual courts should be notified that, in actions of the faith against either clerics or laymen, before arrest the informations must be laid before the king for his assent and before sentence the whole process, so as to make sure that there were no irregularities. The accused while in prison must have full liberty of writing and talking to whom he pleased and be furnished with an advocate chosen by the Deputati or the Camera. To protect the laity against prosecutions for simple sorcery or blasphemy or other matters not subject to spiritual jurisdiction, the nature of the alleged crime must be clearly expressed when applying for licence to arrest.[195]

These suggestions were promptly adopted and were embodied in a royal decree of December 29th, by which two of the officials were banished within eight days and similar punishment was threatened for any future attempt to exercise such functions. By January 5, 1747, the Marchese Brancone, under royal order, was able to report to the Deputati that the seal and commissions had been surrendered, the inscription over the door had been changed to “Archivium” and the name of the prison altered to prisons of S. Francesco and S. Paolo. Archbishop Spinelli was compelled to resign and, when Benedict XIV sent Cardinal Landi to Naples to seek some method of re-establishing the tribunal, he was in danger of being mobbed and was obliged to return without having secured an official audience. Thus the Inquisition ceased to have a recognized existence in Naples; the rejoicing was general and, as an expression of its gratitude, the city made a voluntary offering to Carlos of three hundred thousand ducats. Yet the Deputati did not disband; taught by past experience they kept vigilant watch to see that the detested institution or its methods were not smuggled in and that the ecclesiastical courts observed the new rules. Carlos was called to the throne of Spain in 1759, by the death of his half-brother Fernando VI, leaving Naples to his young son, Ferdinando IV. Possibly it may have been thought that during a minority there was an opportunity to revive the institution for, in 1761, the Deputati made an appeal to the king. The Regent Tanucci was not a man to relinquish the advantage gained. The decree of 1746 was again sent to all prelates with commands that it be strictly obeyed and the royal thanks were conveyed to the Deputati for their vigilance, which they were ordered not to relax.[196]

They heeded the injunction and, in 1764, they addressed to the king a memorial on the case of Padre Leopoldo di S. Pasquale, a Bare-footed Augustinian, who had been tried by his brethren on charges of financial irregularities and unchastity. Inquisitorial procedure had been employed, no opportunity for defence had been allowed and, for seven years, the unfortunate friar had been subjected by his superiors to a series of inhuman cruelties.[197] What was the result I have no means of ascertaining, but this prolonged vigilance indicates the profound and enduring impression entertained of the Inquisition by the Neapolitans.

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