the queen submissively did whatever he required, for he assured her that the case was the most serious that had arisen since the foundation of the Inquisition and that, on its rightful decision, depended the preservation or extinction, not alone of the Majorca tribunal, but of all those under the crown of Aragon. To emphasize this he summoned the bishop to appear before him, personally or by procurator, within a term designated, in default of which he would be prosecuted in contumacia. To this the queen, in October, added her commands to the Council of Aragon; as the preservation of the Catholic faith required the maintenance of the authority of the Inquisition, the Council was ordered to write to the bishop to comply with the summons, and to the viceroy to assist the tribunal if necessary; the bishop must not appeal to Rome and if he had done so the letters must be intercepted and placed in her hands.
The Council of Aragon did not obey. It held the matter until January 21, 1668, when it presented a consulta warning the queen of the consequences of her action and pointing out that the pope was the sole judge of bishops in important cases, as were provincial synods in trivial matters. Nithard, however, was superior to the Council of Trent, and the Suprema commenced a criminal prosecution of Bishop Manjarre, while, on February 5th, an answer was prepared for the Council of Aragon, couched in a tone of bitterness and scarcely veiled contempt, which showed how fierce were the passions at work. The queen was assured that her action was in accordance with all previous royal provisions and she was asked to order the Council of Aragon to obey and not to interfere hereafter with ecclesiastical controversies. Before this missive was delivered, however, news came from Majorca that the culprit Dameto had withdrawn his appeal to the tribunal and had applied for absolution to the bishop, who considered the whole matter as settled. This was a staggering blow from which it took Nithard a month to recover, but finally he sent the consulta of February 5th with a postscript of March 12th, arguing that a subject cannot impair his judge’s jurisdiction by accepting another and consequently that the situation was unaltered.
The queen of course adopted this view and repeated her orders, but again the Council disobeyed her and presented, March 18th, a consulta adjuring her in solemn terms to reflect calmly, for she was making the inquisitor-general a judge of all the bishops in her dominions, not only as to conflicts of jurisdiction but also as to criminal accusations, without his holding faculties from the pope, while, at the same time, she was forbidding appeals to the Holy See which was the only proper judge. She was warned that it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of the questions at issue and she was implored, before making so momentous a decision, to consult the Councils of Castile, Italy and the Indies, for the interests of the whole monarchy were involved as well as the supreme power of the pope. To this her reply was merely a repetition of her former orders and a demand for a duplicate of the letters of the Council to the Viceroy. For the third time it disobeyed her and sent none and there are intimations that it was engaged in arousing the whole Spanish episcopate to a sense of the impending danger.
Then the affair suddenly assumed another phase. On March 7th the queen had written to her ambassador in Rome to procure the abstention of the pope from the matter, but, on that very day, the Congregation of the Inquisition, with the approval of the pope, had pronounced invalid the censures fulminated by the inquisitor. It was late in May before this was communicated to the queen by the nuncio, who said that the pope had recognized the gravity of the assault by an inquisitor on the episcopal dignity and the magnitude of the ensuing scandal, and had caused the whole subject to be carefully considered by the Congregation with the above result. The pope had felt deeply, not only the indignity offered to the episcopal office, but also that the fiscal of the Inquisition had applied to the queen to summon the bishop before it, solely on the ground of his having appealed to the Holy See. In the name of the pope the nuncio therefore asked the queen to order inquisitors not to proceed against bishops and to reject the application of the fiscal.
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
Even this did not shake the determination of Nithard to reduce the episcopate to subjection. A long and argumentative consulta was presented to the queen, proving that the papal decision was surreptitious and therefore invalid, and that anyhow the decrees of the Roman Inquisition had no currency in Spain. The old prohibitions of appeals to Rome were invoked and the queen was told that one of the most precious jewels of the Spanish crown was at stake, for, unless the regalías were preserved, the Inquisition must disappear, delinquents would be unpunished, religion would suffer and, with the loss of its unity, there would no longer be obedience to the throne. The queen was therefore urged to stand firm; the prosecution of the bishop must not be suspended and the Council of Aragon must be forced to obey the royal commands.
Nithard was ready to risk an open breach with the Holy See in his audacious ambition to render the Inquisition supreme in the Spanish Church. How far the queen would have suffered herself to be carried in the execution of his plans cannot be told, as the documents fail us here. His career, however, was drawing to a close. In February, 1669, he was driven from Spain amid universal execration, yet the prosecution of Bishop Manjarre was not abandoned, for the Inquisition was not accustomed openly to admit defeat. It dragged until his death, December 26, 1670, when it was quietly dropped.[1196]
Practically the intervention of Rome gave the victory to the Mallorquins, of which they took advantage. In 1671 there arose another quarrel over a fine incurred by a canon who was also a consultor of the tribunal. Both sides exchanged excommunications and Inquisitor-general Valladares, profiting by his predecessor’s experience, showed moderation. On the plea that it was a matter of government rather than of jurisdiction, the Suprema ordered the tribunal to abandon the case and remove the censures imposed on the canons, but the latter were not content with this and procured from the Roman Holy Office a decree declaring invalid the censures of the inquisitors and valid those of the executors of the brief. The Council of Aragon communicated this to the queen who submissively signed a letter, January 25, 1672, to the chapter, expressing her confidence that in its use they would pay fitting attention to the peace and advantage of the Church.[1197]
The Inquisition was not accustomed to defeat and it chafed under this, as was shown when, in 1690, a quarrel arose because a priest of Minorca, named Juan Bruells, used insulting words to the commissioner, Rafael Pons. For this he was prosecuted and the case threw all the islands into confusion. The viceroy, the Audiencia and the clergy all united against the Inquisition. The Ordinary of Minorca, as executor of the brief of 1642, forcibly released Bruells, forbade the inquisitor to proceed and, on his disobeying, excommunicated him. About this time the Mallorquin tribunal had claims to consideration arising from its vigorous proceedings against Judaizers and the large resultant confiscations. The Suprema espoused its cause with the usual energy and, in repeated consultas to Carlos III, denounced the papal briefs as surreptitious and invalid, full of defects and nullities. The feeble king issued repeated commands for the prosecution of Bruells and the surrender of the briefs, but no one paid attention to them. The Mallorquin clergy procured from the Congregation of the Inquisition a decree validating the censures pronounced by the Ordinary and annulling those of the inquisitor; the pope confirmed this but subsequently suspended it at the earnest solicitation of the Spanish ambassador, at the same time ordering his nuncio to make the king understand that the Congregation had supreme power to decide all questions of jurisdiction. The affair did not result to the satisfaction of the Inquisition for the last we hear of it is a bitter complaint by the Suprema, March 11, 1693, of the contumacious Mallorquins and the miserable condition to which they had reduced the Inquisition. In Minorca, the clergy and their dependents were so hostile that Pons could not find a church in which to celebrate mass, while the officials were shunned as excommunicated heretics.[1198]
MILITARY ORDERS
Another jurisdiction with which there were occasional quarrels was that of the army, for soldiers were exempt from the secular courts. In such competencias settlements were made by a junta of two members each of the Suprema and the Council of War, with final reference to the king in case of disagreement. I have happened to meet with but few cases of this and they seem never to have attained the importance of those with the secular and ecclesiastical courts. One occurred in 1629, arising from disputes with the garrison that had occupied the Aljafería
