the learned Vergara, and other distinguished persons, also enjoyed the countenance of this Grand Inquisitor,* who contrasts so gloriously with his predecessors. The severity of Ximenes was turned against the functionaries of the Inquisition themselves, and the strictest account was demanded of the manner in which they fulfilled their various duties. Officials who exceeded their allotted limit of power were imprisoned or dismissed, and unnecessary severity in inflicting punishment became, under his administration, a heinous crime. † The secretary of the Grand Inquisitorial Council was himself deposed, ‡ and certain offences into which officers of the tribunal had fallen were made punishable by death. $ Some zealot subordinates made complaints to the Pope of the fancied lukewarmness of their Grand Superior; but the answer from Rome was an emphatic declaration in favour of the benign policy Ximenes had pursued. || During the ten years of his rule it cannot be doubted that capital punishment was, where deserved, inflicted; still, Llorente does not record a single death penalty, although, with his usual malignity, he endeavours, by vague accusations of unproved cruelties, to blacken the fame of this great man. The exertions of Cardinal Ximenes to restore to the Inquisition its primitive character of a purely ecclesiastical tribunal, were, however, notwithstanding his power, and the unrivalled influence he possessed with the King, of no avail whatsoever. On the 11th of February, 1509, he besought Ferdinand that laymen might, thenceforth, be excluded from among the councillors appointed to its tribunals by the Crown. The King answered, that the Inquisitorial Council was dependent upon the Royal will alone, and that he recognized no other rule than his own good pleasure in filling up its vacancies.** Ximenes had no power of resisting; but, when he became Regent, after the death of Ferdinand, lay councillors were dismissed from office.†† In truth, the Spanish Crown was so jealous of ecclesiastical influence, independently of royal authority, that, on the 31st of August, 1509, Ferdinand the Catholic (?) issued a decree, that any one who should procure from the Pope, or his Legate, and publish any document prejudicial to the Inquisi Llorente, 1. c. t. ii., p. 8, n. ii. ; p. 454. + Llorente, t. i., p. 358, n. viii. ; p. 359, n. x. ‡ lbid., p. 360, n. xi. & Ibid., p. 359, n. ix. Ibid. Hefele, s. 360. *Hefele, s. 364.-Llorente, t. i., p. 368, n. iii.-Llorente, of course, praises this bloody edict, because it was issued in opposition to Rome. + Llorente, 1. c. t. i., p. 365, n. iv. Hefele, s. 280, proves this by the following passage in the celebrated Brief of Clement XIV. in 1773, suppressing the Jesuit order :-" Multæ hinc ortæ adversus societatem querimoniæ, quæ nonnullorum, etiam principum auctoritate manitæ*** fuerunt. In his fuit claræ memoriæ Philippus II. Hispaniarum rex Catholicus, qui tum gravissimas, quibus ille vehementer impellebatur rationes, tum etiam eos quos ab Hispaniarum Inquisitoribus adversus immoderata societatis privilegia ac regiminis formam acceperat clamores ***Sixto V. prædecessori exponenda curavit." In 1695, the celebrated Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, publishing under the direction of the learned F. Daniel Papebroch, was condemned by the Inquisition as containing heretical propositions, although it had been praised and encouraged by the Holy See. In Portugal, the Inquisition was used to banish the Jesuits from the kingdom. and the infamous Pombal made it the means of burning F. Malagrida excommunication, moderated its excessive rigour. Julius II. and Leo X. nominated special judges to rescue prisoners, who appealed to them, from the grasp of the Inquisition.* Again and again did the Popes quash the sentences of the Holy Office, and again and again did they, or their Nuncios, summon its functionaries before them, and menace them with excommunication, if they oppressed any one that appealed to the Holy See. In some cases the ban was really laid upon them by Rome; as, for instance, when Leo X., in 1519, to the great wrath of Charles V., excommunicated the Inquisitors of Toledo. On the 14th of December of the preceding year, the same Pontiff, to prevent the frequency of malicious accusations, had issued a solemn decree, providing that the death penalty should be incurred by those who might be guilty of the crime of bearing false witness.§ Leo wished entirely to reform the Spanish Inquisition; but the strenuous efforts of Charles V. effectually foiled this, as so many other good designs, and three Briefs, which had been already issued, were prevented from coming into operation by the determined hostility of the Government. The Spanish monarchs even intercepted Papal indults to the State Inquisitors,¶ or, with diabolical malice, caused sentences of death to be so hastily executed that the pardon arrived too late,** but they, still more frequently, positively refused to obey the Pope's commands.†† The merciful endeavours of the Court of Rome were sometimes attended with a favourable result; but it was, too frequently, in only preventing lighter punishments, or in saving from infamy the memory of those that were dead.‡‡ Every effort was made in behalf of the children of the condemned, that they might not suffer, in character or in property, for the sins of their fathers; but the Papal decrees in their favour were rarely respected.§§ * Llorente, 1. c. t. i., p. 457, n. v.; p. 409, n. vii. ; p. 411, n. xi.; p. 413, n. xiii.; p. 414, n. xvii. + Hefele, s. 300. Llorente, t. i., p. 413, n. xiv., xv.; p. 408, n. v. ; p. 364, n. ii.—As early as 1489, Puigblanch admits (Inquisition Unmasked, t. ii., p. 237), that Sixtus IV. had deposed Father Christopher Galvez, Inquisitor at Valencia. § Llorente, 1. c. t. 1, p. 417, n. xxii. || Idem, p. 396, n. xiii.; p. 398, n. xvi.; p. 399, n. xvii. ; p. 414, n. xv. According to Llorente, the Spanish Ambassador counselled Charles to excite the fears of Leo, and thus prevent his interference with the injustices of the Inquisition, by affecting to favour Luther. Idem, p. 413, n. xiii. ** Idem, p. 343, n. vii.; p. 409, n. vii.; p. 413, n. xv. ; p. 414, n. xviii.; p. 417, n. xxi. Idem, p. 403, n. xxvi.; p. 283, n. vi. ; p. 287, n. vii.; p. 413, n. xi. ; p. 409, n. xii. Idem, p. 396, n. xii. ; p. 363, n. ii. ; p. 364, n. iii. Even Llorente affirms that the Spanish Government made it a point to take the part of the Inquisitors, in every case where the Head of the Church enjoined what was displeasing to that tribunal.* In the celebrated instance of Bartholemew Caranza, Archbishop of Toledo, imprisoned on a charge of heresy concerning which it was the province of the Pope alone to decide, the interference of Pius IV., united with the protest of the Council of Trent, were of no avail to procure his liberation.† Throughout all Spain the eyes of every prisoner, Christian, Jew or Moor, were turned towards Rome for rescue, and they knew that, if their appeal was made in vain, it was because the Popes were absolutely devoid of power to help them.‡ Aside from the principles of charity by which the Holy See was governed, it could not but perceive that its own spiritual ascendancy was endangered by the power of an institution in the immediate service of political absolutism, which included among its aims to break down the credit of the higher clergy. At the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella to the throne, the clergy, nobility, and municipal corporations divided the strength of the State, and, from different causes, were all inimical to the royal prerogatives.§ The excessive popularity enjoyed by the Inquisition among the masses of the people is ascribed by Ranke to its humbling this ecclesiastical and civil aristocracy, by whom they felt more oppressed than by the Crown. By the higher ranks, on the contrary, the Inquisition was hated, and particularly by the Prelates, more than any other class; because they were involved in endless It had not escaped the processes with that institution.T watchfulness of the Popes that the tendency, in all parts of Europe, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was to centralise power in the hands of individuals; and there is no element more directly subversive of the influence of the Catholic Church over its subjects than their separation from its head by the will of absolute monarchs. It was, therefore, for the interest of Christianity, that the intermediate authorities the State was striving to destroy, should be upheld; and, thus, the Holy See could never countenance a secular purpose, + Lacordaire, Apology for the Order of S. Dominic, pp. 133, 134 (Vid. Religious Cabinet, p. 462). Under Philip II. the Inquisition retained so little of a religious character that it extended to affairs of commerce, war, and finance; AND IT WAS EVEN DECLARED HERESY TO SELL HORSES TO THE Balmes, p. 208. FRENCH. & Ranke, a. a. O. Theil. i., s. 215, 216.-Hefele, 279, 280. 980 like that of Spain, of employing ecclesiastical weapons to undermine. That this was the object of the Spanish Inquisition has been perfectly recognised by Protestant as well as Catholic historians. Ranke remarks, with a fairness he is seldom to be commended for:-"The power of the Sovereign was completely consolidated by the Inquisition; for it gave him an authority from which no Grandee nor Archbishop could escape. It was one of those spoils of priestly power, such as administering the grand commanderies, and filling the Episcopal Sees, which had served to aggrandize the Spanish Government; it was, above all things, in its spirit and object, a political institute. It was for the interest of the Pope to withstand it, and he did so as often as he could; but it was for the interest of the king to preserve its power undiminished. The Inquisitors were functionaries of the king. He had the right to appoint and to dismiss them; like other offices, the Courts of the Inquisition were subject to royal visitations. It was in vain Cardinal Ximenes objected to the appointment of a layman on the part of King Ferdinand the Catholic, to the Council of Inquisitors. 'Do you not know,' replied Ferdinand, that if this Council possesses any judicial powers, it is from the king it derives them.'"* Professor Leo, at the time he wrote, equally unfavourable to Catholics, expressed himself in a similar manner. "By the Inquisition," says he, "which was an ecclesiastical institute, entirely dependant on the Crown, and was levelled at clergy and laity alike, Isabella contrived to bend the nobles and churchmen of Castile to her will." † Guizot remarks, "The Inquisition was, at first, more political than religious, and destined rather for the maintenance of order than the defence of faith."‡ "The Havemann, of Goettingen, as quoted by Hefele, says, king appointed the Presidents of the Inquisition, and drew up their instructions. The confirmation of the Holy Father was only retained to preserve ecclesiastical forms. No Grandee, no Archbishop, not even the knights of the three powerful orders, who had long, by means of their Fueros, successfully asserted their independence, could withdraw themselves from this tribunal." § Abundant similar testimonies of sectarian, anti-Catholic *Ranke, Fürsten und Völker, Bd. i., s. 242, 245. (Vid. Hefele, s. 283.) + Leo, Weltgeschichte, Bd. ii., s. 431. 1030 |