of the Junta. Then, in 1657, the Junta Grande was resuscitated and we meet with an allusion to it in 1659, but it appears to have been abandoned soon afterwards.[1247] Ingenuity was at fault to alleviate the evils inseparable from the permanent antagonism between the rival jurisdictions. Of these evils the one most keenly felt was the interminable delay in the settlement of cases. The councils from which the members were drawn were crowded with their more legitimate business; there was rarely accord in the junta; the matter would be argued without expectation of agreement; each side would be obstinate; perhaps the case would be referred to the king or years would pass before a settlement would be reached; perhaps, indeed, it would be silently dropped without a decision, especially when a decision might be undesirable because one or both sides feared a troublesome precedent. Meanwhile the case remained petrified in the condition existing at the time the competencia was formed. Until the so-called Concordia of 1679 permitted the release of prisoners on bail, if any one had been arrested, he remained in prison, perhaps to die there as sometimes occurred. In 1638 the Inquisition complained of this, when its officers happened to be the prisoners, for competencias were always slow of settlement and the work of the tribunals was crippled for lack of their ministers, while their poverty precluded their giving adequate salaries to substitutes.[1248] It was not until 1721 that a remedy for this procrastination was sought by Philip V in a decree reciting the long delays and the frequency of cases remaining undecided by reason of a dead-lock in the junta, wherefore in future when a junta was formed, he was to be notified in order that he might appoint a fifth member, thus assuring a majority.[1249] It does not seem however that this accomplished its purpose and, when Carlos III consolidated the cumbrous framework of government by instituting the Junta de Estado, composed of the ministers of the several departments, Floridablanca enumerates, among the benefits accruing, the expediting of cases of competencia and avoiding the interminable delays caused by the etiquette of the tribunals and the intrigues of the parties concerned.[1250]
I have dwelt thus in detail on this subject, not only because it absorbed so large a portion of the activity of the Inquisition, but because of its importance in the relations between the Holy Office and the other institutions of Spain and in explaining the detestation which the Inquisition excited. If the people regarded it as a whole with awe and veneration, as the bulwark of the Catholic faith, their hatred was none the less for its members, and the perpetual struggle against the tremendous odds of its power, supported by the unflinching favor of the Hapsburgs, bears equal testimony to the tenacity of the Spanish character and to the magnitude of the evils with which the Inquisition afflicted the nation.
CHAPTER V.
POPULAR HOSTILITY
THE preceding chapters illustrate some of the causes that provoked popular hatred of the Inquisition, but these were by no means all. It enjoyed, as we have said, enthusiastic support in the exercise of its appropriate functions in defending the faith, but apart from this, it had infinite ways of exciting hostility. This was the inevitable result of entrusting irresponsible power to men, for the most part overbearing and arrogant, who owed obedience only to the Suprema and who early learned that, while it might disapprove of their acts, it always supported them against complaints and, while it might administer rebuke in secret, it hesitated long before it would compromise the asserted infallibility of the Holy Office by dismissal or any other public demonstration. There was no other power to call them to account and they could rely upon its indulgence. This indulgence they extended to their subordinates, over whom, indeed, they had not the power of removal, and the consequence was that the whole body thoroughly earned the detestation of the people by the abuse of their privileges, creating irritation which was none the less exasperating because its causes might be trivial. The situation finds expression in a carta acordada of October 12, 1561, in which the Suprema begs the tribunals, for the love of God, to inflict no wrong or oppression for, since they are accused when they do right, what is to be expected when they give just grounds of complaint?[1251]
Whether just or not, grounds of complaint were never lacking. The power of the inquisitor had practically scarce any bounds but his own discretion, and the temptation to its abuse was irresistible to the kind of men who mostly filled the position. In the memorial of Llerena to Philip and Juana, in 1506, complaint is made that the officials seized all the houses that they wanted and in one case, when some young orphan girls did not vacate as quickly as ordered, they fastened up the street-door and the occupants were obliged to make an opening in order to leave it.[1252] The same spirit was shown to parties not quite so defenceless in 1642, when its exhibition in Córdova nearly provoked a disastrous tumult. There was a vacant house which Juan de Ribera, one of the inquisitors, talked of renting, but he went to Murcia without taking it. On his return he found that it had been leased to a son of Don Pedro de Cardenas, one of the veinticuatros, or town-councillors. He sent for Cardenas and asked whether he knew that he had engaged the house. Cardenas professed ignorance, adding that, if he had not moved his family into it, he would abandon it. Ribera ordered him to leave it and, on his refusal, the tribunal took up the quarrel by serving on him a notice to quit. As he did not obey, it cited him to appear and forced him to give security. His kinsmen and friends rallied around him and promised to sustain him by force; the matter became town-talk and the tribunal felt its honor engaged to sustain its commands by violence. It assembled the two companies of soldiers which it kept in the alcázar, while the caballeros armed themselves and guarded the house. The corregidor appealed to the tribunal not to drench the city in blood by exposing the poor civic militia to the swords of the gentlemen, and it consented to carry the matter to the king. The Council of Castile ordered that the tenant be maintained in possession, while the Suprema instructed the tribunal not to yield a jot, but to eject him by whatever means it could.[1253] What was the outcome does not appear, but the case illustrates the extent to which the Inquisition magnified its powers and the determination with which it employed them.
ABUSES
It was impossible to prevent these lawless abuses. The Suprema might scold and threaten but, as it rarely punished and always protected the offenders, its restraining efforts amounted to little. The visitadores, or inspectors, duly reported disorders, and instructions would be issued to reform them, but to these the inquisitors paid little respect. There is no reason to suppose that the Barcelona tribunal was worse than any other and a series of reports of visitations there gives us an insight into the evils inflicted on the people. In 1544, Doctor Alonso Pérez sent in a report in consequence of which the Suprema roundly rebuked all the subordinates, except the judge of confiscations. All but two were defamed for improper relations with women; all accepted presents; all made extra and illegal charges; all neglected their duties and most of them quarrelled with each other. The fiscal was especially objectionable for his improper conduct of prosecutions and for appropriating articles belonging to the tribunal; he refused to pay his debts; he arrested a candle-maker for not furnishing candles as promptly as he demanded; when a certain party bought some sheep from a peasant and was dissatisfied with his bargain, the fiscal cited the peasant, asserted that the purchase money was his and forced the peasant to take back the sheep and return the money. Yet the Suprema was too tender of the honor of the Holy Office to dismiss a single one of the peccant officials. It ordered them to be severely reprimanded, a few debts to be paid and presents to be returned and uttered some vague threats of what it would do if they continued in their evil courses.[1254]
The natural result of this indulgence appears in the next visitation by the Licenciado Vaca, in 1549. The same abuses were flourishing, with the addition that the inquisitor, Diego de Sarmiento, had accepted the position of commissioner of the Cruzada indulgence and had appointed as its preachers and collectors the commissioners and familiars of the tribunal, to the great oppression and vexation of the people, whose dread of the Holy Office prevented complaints. Sarmiento was dismissed in 1550, but in 1552 he was reappointed to Barcelona; the fiscal and notary, who were specially inculpated, were suspended for six months and the gaoler, for ill-treatment of prisoners, was mulcted in one month’s wages.[1255]
