thus vindicated inquisitors were not apt to condone any failure, real or imaginary, in the respect which they held to be their due, and the offender was made to feel the awful authority which shrouded the tribunal and its judges. As their powers were largely discretional, with undefined limits, the manner in which they were exercised was sometimes eccentric. In 1569, for instance, the Jesuits of Palermo prepared for representation in their church a tragedy of St. Catherine and, on October 4th, they gave a private rehearsal to which were invited the viceroy and principal dignitaries. The inquisitor, Juan Biserra, came as one of the guests and finding the door closed knocked repeatedly without announcing himself or demanding admittance. The janitor, thinking it to be some unauthorized person, paid no attention to the knocking and Biserra departed, highly incensed. When the Jesuits heard of it, the rector and principal fathers called on him to apologize, but, after keeping them waiting for some time he refused to see them. The public representation was announced for October 8th; the church was crowded with the nobility awaiting the rising of the curtain, when a messenger from Biserra notified the Jesuits that he forbade the performance, under pain of excommunication and other penalties at his discretion, until after the piece should have been examined and approved by him. The audience was dismissed and the next day the MS. was sent to Biserra who submitted it to Dominican censors. Although they returned it with their approval he discovered in it two objectionable points, so absurdly trifling as to show that he wanted merely to make a wanton exhibition of his power. The censors replied to his criticism and he finally allowed the performance to proceed. We may not unreasonably assume that this may have been one of the freaks for which Biserra was suspended in 1572, on the report made of him by the visitor Quintanilla. Then, with customary tenderness, he was employed in the responsible post of visitor at Barcelona, where he died soon afterwards.[905]
The sensitiveness to disrespect and the terrorism which its arbitrary punishment diffused through the community were well illustrated when, in 1617, Fray Diego Vinegas preached the Lenten sermons in the Hospital of N. Señora de la Gracia of Saragossa. He was a distinguished Benedictine, who had held high offices in his Order, and his eloquence on this occasion brought in alms amounting to eight thousand crowns. On January 21st the inquisitors sent him a message to come to them the next day at 2 P.M., to which he replied in writing that he was indisposed and closely occupied with his sermons; if they wished to order him to preach the Edict of Faith, he held himself already charged to do so and begged them to excuse his coming. A second message the same day told him to come at the same hour another day, when he would be told what was wanted of him, to which he answered that he would come but that if it was only to order him to preach the sermon he would return at once to Castile, without again mounting the pulpit. Whether anything underlay this somewhat mysterious action does not appear; the significance of the affair lies in the fact that it at once became a matter of general public concern. When that same night the governor of the Hospital heard of it he recognized the injury that would accrue to the institution and to the whole city and forthwith reported it to the viceroy, who commissioned the Licentiate Balthasar Navarro to undo the mischief. The result of his labors was that the inquisitors declared that as Fray Vinegas pleaded indisposition they would excuse him from preaching the Edict of Faith. The affair appeared to be settled and Vinegas begged permission to call on the two inquisitors, Santos and Salcedo, and pay them the Easter compliments. They graciously acceded and on Easter Monday he waited on them, exculpated himself, and begged their pardon for having been prevented by indisposition from preaching the Edict, all of which they accepted with great courtesy. The community breathed freer, for some vindication of the honor of the Inquisition had been expected. The inquisitors however had been consulting the Suprema and vengeance was at hand. The next day, Tuesday, was the last of the series of sermons; Vinegas preached successfully to a crowded church when, on descending from the pulpit, he was arrested by an alguazil of the Inquisition, dragged through the crowd like a heresiarch attempting escape, thrown into a coach and carried to the Aljafería. There he was placed on a bench like a criminal, interrogated as one and then, without being listened to, was sentenced to perpetual deprivation of the honors of the Inquisition (preaching at autos, the edicts, etc.) and reprimanded with the utmost severity. The mark of infamy thus inflicted was indelible and the scandal was immense. The people flocked in crowds to the viceroy in the greatest excitement and he had much ado to quiet them by promising that it should be remedied. Vinegas applied for the reinstatement of his honor to the Council of Aragon, which replied that it had no jurisdiction; then he applied to the Suprema, which refused to hear him. He sent a memorial to the king, who referred it to the Council of Aragon and he continued his efforts for more than a year but it does not appear that he ever obtained relief.[906]
ENFORCEMENT OF RESPECT
As a rule, any criticism of the justice of the Inquisition and any complaint by one who had passed through its hands were offences to be punished with more or less severity. To this, however, there was an exception in a case the singularity of which deserves mention. Perhaps the most distinguished Franciscan theologian of his day was Miguel de Medina. He fell under suspicion of Lutheranism, was arrested and tried and died during trial, May 1, 1578, in the secret prison of Toledo after four years of detention. Another Franciscan, Francisco Ortiz, espoused his cause so zealously that, in a public sermon in 1576 he pronounced the trial to be unjust, for it was the work of a conspiracy among his brother frailes; the arrest was a mortal sin, as though it were St. Jerome or St. Augustin, and the inquisitor-general (Espinosa) who had signed the warrant was in hell unless he had repented; the inquisitors were ashamed and were seeking to avert the disgrace from themselves, when they ought to be punishing the perjury of those who had testified. This was flat blasphemy against the Holy Office, and it is not easy to understand why the daring fraile escaped, when tried by the tribunal of Toledo, with a reprimand administered privately in the audience-chamber and a prohibition to enter Madrid without permission—a sentence which was duly confirmed by the Suprema.[907] We shall see hereafter that another Fray Francisco Ortiz, for a similar offence, did not escape so easily.
These were the defences thrown around the Inquisition to secure its effectiveness in its supreme function of maintaining religious unity, and these were the efforts which it made to secure the recognition of the supremacy to which it aspired. It was an institution suddenly introduced into an established ecclesiastical and secular hierarchy, which regarded the intruder with natural jealousy and dislike and resented its manifest resolve to use its spiritual authority for their humiliation. Its arrogant self-assertion led it into frequent mistakes in which even its royal protectors could not justify it, but it gradually won its way under the Hapsburgs. The advent of the Bourbons brought into play a new theory as to the relations between Church and State and the civil authorities were able in time to vindicate their equality and independence. We shall have the opportunity of following this struggle, in which religion was in no way concerned, for the defence of the faith was a pretext under which the Holy Office sought to arrogate to itself control over a constantly widening area of secular affairs, while claiming release from secular obligations.
CHAPTER III.
PRIVILEGES AND EXEMPTIONS.
BEFORE the Revolution introduced the theory of equality, class privileges were the rule. The public burdens were eluded by those best able to bear them and were accumulated on the toilers. The mortmain lands held by the Church were exempt from both taxation and military service and, though Philip V, in the Concordat of 1737, obtained the privilege of taxing such as might subsequently be acquired, the repeated decrees for its enforcement show the impossibility of enforcing it.[908] The complete immunity of ecclesiastics from taxation was emphatically asserted by Boniface VIII in the bull Clericis laicos and, although this was revoked by the Council of Vienne in 1312, care was taken to enunciate the principle as still in vigor.[909] Yet in the kingdoms of Aragon they were subject to all imposts on sales, to import and export dues and other local taxation and, when resistance was offered to this, Charles V procured from Adrian VI, in 1522, and from Clement VII, in 1524, briefs confirming their liability.[910] Hidalguia, or gentle blood,
