Don Juan of Austria, son of Philip IV by a woman known as la Calderona; he stood high in popular esteem, for he had the reputation of suppressing the Neapolitan revolt of 1648 and of ending the Catalan rebellion by the capture of Barcelona in 1652. Between him and Nithard there inevitably arose hostility which ripened into the bitterest hatred. To get him out of the country, he was given command of an expedition about to sail for Flanders; he went to Coruña but refused to sail; he was ordered to retire to Consuegra, whither a troop of horse was sent to arrest him, but he had fled to Catalonia, leaving a letter addressed to the queen in which he said that the execrable wickedness of Nithard had forced him to provide for his safety; his refusal to sail had been caused by his desire to remove from her side that wild beast, so unworthy of his sacred office; he did not propose to kill him for he did not wish to plunge into perdition a soul in such evil state, but he would devote himself to relieving the kingdom of this basilisk, confident that the queen would recognize the service thus rendered to the king.
This letter and a similar one of November 13th were widely circulated and inflamed the popular detestation of Nithard. Don Juan stood forward as the champion of the people against the hated foreigner and continued to issue inflammatory addresses. Letters came pouring into the court, from the cities represented in the Córtes, praying the queen to accede to his demands but, though her councillors wavered, she stood firm. December 3d she wrote to him to return to Consuegra or to come near to Madrid, where negotiations could be carried on. While taking advantage of this he avoided the trap by writing that, as his life was endangered, her envoy, the Duke of Osuna, had furnished him with a guard of three companies of horse—about 250 men in all. With this escort he started from Barcelona by way of Saragossa. It was in vain that orders were sent from the court to insult him on the road. Everywhere his journey was like a royal progress. Nobles and peoples gathered to applaud him and, in Saragossa even the tribunal of the Inquisition bore a part, while the students carried around the effigy of a Jesuit and burnt it before the Jesuit house, forcing the rector to witness it from the window.
As he drew near to Madrid with his handful of men, Nithard called on the nobles of his party to assemble with their armed retainers, but the Council of Regency prohibited this. Don Juan was in no haste; on February 9th he reached Junquera, some ten leagues from Madrid and, on the 22d, he was at Torrejon de Ardoz, about five leagues distant. Imminent danger was felt that if he advanced the populace would rise and murder the ministers to whom they attributed their sufferings, and all idea of resistance was abandoned. Nithard induced the papal nuncio to see Don Juan, February 24th, and ask further time for negotiation but at 9 P.M. the nuncio returned with word that Nithard must leave Spain at once. The Royal Council sat until 10 P.M. and reached the same conclusion. The next day the city was in an uproar; people carried their valuables to the convents for safe keeping and a mob assembled around the palace, where the Junto de Gobierno drew up a decree that Nithard must depart within three hours. It bore that he had supplicated permission to leave and in granting it the queen, to express her satisfaction with his services, appointed him ambassador to Germany or to Rome as he might elect, with retention of all his offices and salaries. The queen signed this and the Archbishop of Toledo and the Count of Peñaranda were deputed to carry it to Nithard, who received it without a trace of emotion and placed himself at their disposal. It was arranged that they should call for him at 6 P.M. The archbishop and the Duke of Maqueda came with two coaches and Nithard entered, carrying with him nothing but his breviary. Thrice, in the streets, the howling mob threatened an attack, but were deterred by the sight of a cross with which the archbishop had prudently provided himself. They drove him to Fuencarral, about two leagues from the city and left him at the house of the cura. The next day he went to San Agustin, about ten leagues distant, where he lingered for awhile in the vain hope of recall.
THE INQUISITOR-GENERALSHIP
Don Juan fell back to Guadalajara, where terms were agreed upon, the principal articles being that Nithard should immediately resign all his offices and never return to Spain and that Diego de Valladares, Don Juan’s special enemy, should have nothing to do in any matter affecting him. Nithard accordingly went to Rome, but he had no commission to show and no instructions. He reported this to the Council of State, which told him to urge the definition by the Holy See of the Immaculate Conception. The queen endeavored by a subterfuge to obtain for him a cardinal’s hat, which had been promised to Spain, but failed. He still hoped for a return to his honors, stimulated by the correspondence of his confidential agent, the Jesuit Salinas, but a letter warning him not to resign the inquisitor-generalship, for things were tending towards his return, with a lodging in the queen’s palace, chanced to fall into the hands of the nuncio, who placed it where it would do the most good. The result was a peremptory order for him to resign in favor of Valladares, who had been nominated as his successor. When this was handed to him by San Roman, the Spanish ambassador, he is said to have fainted and not to have recovered his senses for an hour. The coveted cardinal’s hat was bestowed on Portocarrero, Dean of Toledo, and when the news of this reached the queen it threw her into a tertian fever. The Jesuit General Oliva, seeing Nithard thus stripped of his offices and offended at his arrogance, ordered him to leave Rome and he retired to a convent, but he was amply provided with funds and, for some years at least, he was carried on the books of the Suprema and received his salary regularly. Moreover, in 1672, the queen procured from Clement X what Clement IX had persistently refused and Nithard was created Archbishop of Edessa and cardinal.[780]
Valladares had received his appointment September 15, 1669. It was not until 1677 that he resigned his see of Plasencia and he held the inquisitor-generalship until his death, January 29, 1695. He was succeeded by Juan Thomás de Rocaberti, Archbishop of Valencia, for whom Innocent XII, at the request of Carlos II, granted a dispensation from residence, conditioned on his making proper provision for the spiritual and temporal care of his see.[781] He died June 13, 1699, and his successor, Alfonso Fernández de Aguilar, Cardinal of Córdova, followed him September 19th, the very day that his commission arrived, after a brief illness and not without grave suspicions of poison.[782] The choice then fell on Balthasar de Mendoza y Sandoval, Bishop of Segovia, who became involved, as we shall see, in a deadly quarrel with his colleagues of the Suprema over the case of Fray Froilan Díaz. In the confusion of the concluding months of the disastrous reign of Carlos II, who died November 1, 1700, Mendoza made the mistake of embracing the Austrian side; his arbitrary action, in the case of Froilan Díaz, served as a sufficient excuse for his removal and Philip V, apparently in 1703, ordered him to return to his see. He is generally said to have resigned in 1705 but, in the papal commission, March 24, 1705, for his successor Vidal Marin, Clement XI states that he has seen fit to relieve Mendoza of the office because his presence is necessary at Segovia.[783] Vidal Marin served till his death in 1709 and so did his successor Riva-Herrera, Archbishop of Saragossa, who, however, enjoyed his dignity for little more than a year.
THE INQUISITOR-GENERALSHIP
Philip V had brought to Spain the Gallicanism and the principles of high royal prerogative which were incompatible with the pretensions of the curia and the quasi-independence of the Inquisition. With the Bourbons there opens a new era in the relations between the crown and the Holy Office. Yet in his first open trial of strength, Philip’s fatal vacillation, under the varying influences of his counsellors, confessors and wives, left him with a dubious victory. In 1711 he selected as inquisitor-general Cardinal Giudice, Archbishop of Monreal in Sicily, a Neapolitan of much ambition and little scruple. The recognition of the Archduke Charles as King of Spain by Clement XI, in 1709, had caused relations to be broken off between Madrid and Rome. Philip dismissed the nuncio, closed the tribunal of the nunciatura and forbade the transmission of money to Rome. There was talk in the curia of reviving the medieval methods of reducing disobedient monarchs to submission and Philip, to prepare for the struggle, ordered, December 12, 1713, the Council of Castile to draw up a statement of the regalías which would justify resistance to the demands of the curia and to the jurisdiction exercised by nuncios. It was a quarrel which had been in progress for a century and a half, now breaking out fiercely and then smothered, but none the less bitter. The Council entrusted the task to its fiscal, Melchor Rafael de Macanaz, a hard-headed lawyer, fully imbued with convictions of royal prerogative, whose report was, in general and in detail, thoroughly subversive of Ultramontanism
