CHAPTER IV.

THE EDICT OF FAITH.

Occasional allusions have been made above to the Edicts of Faith, whereby the tribunals obtained knowledge of offences coming within their jurisdiction. This was one of the most efficient methods by which that jurisdiction was exercised and was brought home to the consciences of the people as an ever-present power. It rendered every individual an agent of the Inquisition, bound under fearful penalties spiritual and temporal, to aid it in maintaining the purity of the faith and, at the same time, it made every man conscious that his lightest word or act might subject him to prosecution by that terrible court whose very name inspired dread. No more ingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to paralyze its intellect and to reduce it to blind obedience. It elevated delation to the rank of high religious duty, it filled the land with spies and it rendered every man an object of suspicion, not only to his neighbor but to the members of his own family and to the stranger whom he might chance to meet. Continued through generations, this could not fail to leave its impress on the national character. Even Mariana, in enumerating the results of the Inquisition, ventures to allude to the cautious reserve which it rendered habitual among Spaniards.[249]

A somewhat crude prototype of the Edict of Faith is found in the old Inquisition, when inquisitors visited their districts and, at each town, summoned an assembly of the people, preached to them and caused to be read an edict calling upon all the inhabitants to come forward within a specified time and reveal anything that might tend to the suspicion that any one was a heretic, under pain of _ipso facto_ excommunication, removable only by them or by the pope.[250] While this was nominally preserved in the Aragonese Inquisition, that institution had become so inert that we may assume that the inquisitors no longer visited their districts or had occasion to issue edicts. In Castile, when the Inquisition was founded, this practice was evidently unknown, for the Instructions of 1484 merely order that when the inquisitors open their tribunal in any town, after the sermon they shall publish a monition with censures against all who resist or contradict them.[251] By 1500, however, the efficacy of what became known as the Edict of Faith had been discovered, and Inquisitor-general Deza, in ordering yearly visitations of the districts, specifies that, on arriving at every town or village, a general edict shall be issued, summoning those who know anything of heresy to come forward and reveal it.[252] The form of this was probably the same as that which, in the same year 1500, the inquisitors of Sicily, Dr. Sgalambro and Montoro Bishop of Cefalù, issued, requiring all cognizant of heresy to denounce it within fifteen days, promising secrecy to the informer and threatening with prosecution, as fautors of heresy, those who failed to do so.[253] In Catalonia, the Concordia of 1512, in alluding to the edict requiring the denunciation of all offences against the faith, shows that it was already an established custom,[254] while, in 1514, the Instructions of Inquisitor-general Mercader prove that the various offences included in the expanding jurisdiction of the Inquisition were specifically enumerated, for the general term of heresy no longer sufficed.[255] The effect on the people of these proclamations, with their threats and anathemas, is vividly expressed in the description of the terror excited by the publication of the edict, when the tribunal of Jaen made a raid on Arjona.[256]

[Sidenote: _DETAILS OF THE EDICT_]

As, in the course of time, new fields of activity were opened to the Inquisition the enumeration of offences requiring denunciation grew to be a long and detailed catalogue, in which all the acts by which they could be recognized were specified so that there could be no excuse for omission. The simplest and oldest formula which I have met is that published in Mexico at the installation of the Inquisition, in 1571, and, in view of its comparative brevity, it is given in the Appendix. Subsequently the edict grew to portentous dimensions, the purport of which can be gathered from an abstract of that of 1696.

It begins by reciting that the fiscal has represented that for some time there has been no visitation or inquest made in many places of the province, whereby numerous crimes against the faith remain unpunished. Seeing this complaint to be justified, the edict is addressed to every one individually, so that, if he has known or heard say that any one, living or dead, present or absent, has done or uttered or believed any act, word or opinion, heretical, suspect, erroneous, rash, ill-sounding, scandalous or heretically blasphemous, it must be revealed to the tribunal within six days. Then follows an enumeration of all Jewish rites and customs; then similar lists concerning Mahometanism, Protestantism and Illuminism; then, under the heading of "Diversas Heregias," follow blasphemy, with specimens of heretical oaths; keeping or invoking familiar demons; witchcraft; pacts tacit or expressed with the devil; mixing for this purpose sacred and profane objects and attributing to the creature that which belongs to the Creator; marrying in Orders; solicitation of women in confession; bigamy; saying that there is no sin in simple fornication, or usury, or perjury, or that concubinage is better than marriage; insulting or maltreating crucifixes or images of saints; disbelieving or doubting any article of faith; remaining a year under excommunication or despising the censures of the Church; having recourse to astrology, which is described at length and pronounced fictitious; being guilty of sorcery or divination, the practices of which are described with instructive profusion; possessing books condemned in the Index, including Lutheran and Mahometan works and Bibles in the vernacular; neglecting to perform the duty of denouncing what has been seen or heard, or persuading others to omit it; giving false witness in the Inquisition; concealing or befriending heretics; impeding the Inquisition; removing _sanbenitos_ placed by the Inquisition; throwing off sanbenitos or non-performance of penance by reconciled penitents, or their saying that they confessed in the Inquisition through fear; saying that those relaxed by the Inquisition were innocent martyrs; non-observance of disabilities by reconciled penitents, their children or grandchildren; possession by scriveners or notaries of papers concerning the above-enumerated crimes. Confessors, moreover, were ordered, under the same penalties, to withhold absolution from penitents who had not denounced all offences coming to their knowledge.[257] This was a tolerably searching grand inquest in which the whole population was summoned to assist, and the ceremonies of its publication were designed to render it as impressive as possible.

On the Saturday previous, a proclamation was made by the inquisitors, requiring all persons over the age of twelve (or of fourteen in some texts) to assemble to hear the edict and, on the following Sundays to hear the anathema, under pain of excommunication and of fifty ducats.[258] In the smaller towns this proclamation was made by the town-crier or, if there were none, by house-to-house notification. The next day, at the offertory in the mass, the edict was to be read slowly, distinctly and in a loud voice, after which the priest was to explain the obligation to denounce whatever was known of the living and of the dead, of themselves or of others, and the peril of omitting it; it was not to be talked about but was to be done directly, even if it was known that others had done so, otherwise the penalty was incurred.[259]

In larger cities, especially the seats of tribunals, the ceremonies were more imposing. In Seville, for instance, on the afternoon of Saturday before the second Sunday of Lent, the familiars assembled on horseback at the castle of Triana, where they formed a procession with drummers and trumpeters and the town-crier to escort the alguazil mayor and one of the secretaries of the Inquisition. This wound through the city, stopping at eight principal places, to publish the proclamation and to order that there should be no sermons in other churches on the days of the publication and anathemas. Then, on those Sundays, other processions were timed to meet the inquisitors at the doors of the cathedral and San Salvador--the churches designated for the ceremonies. Inside, the secretary, at the proper time, mounted the pulpit and read the edict; the sermon followed and then the mass was resumed.[260]

[Sidenote: _THE ANATHEMA_]

When the six days allowed for denunciation or confession had elapsed, a second proclamation was made, reciting the former one and adding that the fiscal complained that many had not complied with it and he demanded the fulmination of the censures in the most aggravated form. An edict was therefore addressed to all priests requiring them at high mass, when the people were assembled, to denounce as publicly excommunicated and anathematized all who had not obeyed the first edict, sprinkling holy water to drive away the demons who kept them in their toils and praying Christ to bring them back to the bosom of the Church. If they persisted in contumacy, all faithful Christians were ordered within three days to withdraw from all intercourse with them, under pain of similar excommunication. Both those who should have confessed and those who should have denounced, but who continued contumacious, were involved in the anathema pronounced on the third Sunday.

This was an awe-inspiring solemnity. The clergy marched in procession; the cross was covered with black and two flaming torches were on the altar, where the priests stood in profound silence during the reading of the curse.--"We excommunicate and anathematize, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, in form of law, all apostate heretics from our holy Catholic faith, their fautors and concealers who do not reveal them, and we curse them that they may be accursed as members of the devil and separated from the bosom and unity of the holy Mother Church. And we order all the faithful to hold them as such and to curse them so that they may fall into the wrath and indignation of Almighty God. May all the curses and plagues of Egypt which befell King Pharaoh come upon them because they disobey the commandments of God! May they be accursed wherever they be, in the city, or in the country, in eating and in drinking, in waking and in sleeping, in living and in dying! May the fruits of their lands be accursed and the cattle thereof! May God send them hunger and pestilence to consume them! May they be a scorn to their enemies and be abhorred of all men! May the devil be at their right hand! When they come to judgement may they be condemned! May they be driven from their homes, may their enemies take their possessions and prevail against them! May their wives and children rise against them and be orphans and beggars with none to assist them in their need! May their wickedness ever be remembered in the presence of God! May they be accursed with all the curses of the Old Covenant and of the New! May the curse of Sodom and Gomorrha overtake them and its fire burn them! May the earth swallow them alive, like Dathan and Abiram for the sin of disobedience! May they be accursed as Lucifer, with all the devils of hell, where may they remain with Judas and the damned forever, if they do not acknowledge their sin, beg mercy and amend their lives!" Then the people responded Amen! while the clergy again marched in procession, chanting the Psalms _Deus laudem meam_ and _Miserere_, to the chapel or altar. The great bells tolled as for a death and the bearers of the torches extinguished them in the font of holy water saying "As these torches die in the water, so will their souls in hell!" and the procession was resumed to the sacristy. After this, the edict continues, any one knowing these things and not revealing them, and remaining contumaciously and persistently thus for a year, is held suspect in the faith and shall be prosecuted with all the rigor of the law.[261]

Thus all the resources of religious terrorism were exhausted to impress upon the popular conscience the supreme duty of denouncing kindred and friends for the slightest act or word which might be held to infer suspicion of heresy or of the varied classes of offences over which the Inquisition had succeeded in extending its jurisdiction. It is true that the constant abuse of anathemas in the pettiest quarrels with officials, lay and clerical, must have somewhat blunted their effect. It is also true that casuistry, early in the seventeenth century, had no difficulty in proving that, when the obligation to denounce involved danger to life or reputation, the natural law of self-protection overrode the positive law of denunciation, with its threat of excommunication.[262] Still, to those not trained in such subtilties and who piously believed in the power of the keys, it was impossible that this terrible cumulation of curses, temporal and spiritual, should not overcome natural affection and human kindliness. It was not the fault of the Inquisition if Spain was not converted into a nation of spies and informers, in which no man could trust those nearest and dearest to him.

[Sidenote: _ITS DISTRIBUTION_]

The Edict of Faith was published annually, on a Sunday in Lent, in cities which were the seat of a tribunal and, during the earlier times, elsewhere, when the inquisitors went on their visitations; indeed, we are told, in 1560, that it was of little service unless the inquisitors visited their districts, for people would not incur the labor and expense of coming from a distance and the publication was regarded as the chief object of the visiting inquisitor who was directed to see that it was made in the monasteries as well as in the churches.[263] Visiting their districts, as we shall see, was the duty most disliked by the inquisitors, which they shirked whenever possible, and, with the development of postal communication, it was easier and more speedy to send the printed edicts to commissioners for distribution. What was the total number thus annually showered upon the land we have no means of knowing, but it must have been large. In 1595, the Inquisitor Arevalo de Zuazo, reporting his visitation of the mountainous dioceses of Urgel, Vich and Solsona, states that he distributed six hundred copies among the parish churches, besides personally publishing it in all the towns. From a printer's bill of June 7, 1759, when the custom was declining, it appears that in Valencia the edition printed was four hundred and a list of churches in the city, in which it was posted, amounted to sixty-three.[264]

This device was not confined to Spain, though Rome was somewhat tardy in adopting it. The Congregation of the Inquisition issued, January 3, 1623 a brief edict, commanding the denunciation, within twelve days, of all heretics, under pain of excommunication removable only by it or by the pope.[265] This was followed, January 10, 1666, by one more in detail, specifying the offences to be denounced. It was universal in its character and therefore applied to Spain, but as usual the Spanish Inquisition maintained its independence and continued to employ its own more elaborate formulas.[266]

Although the annual publication remained the rule, there were occasional intermissions. In 1638, for instance, it was suspended without a reason being assigned and again in 1689 on account of the death of María Luisa, wife of Carlos II.[267] Local causes, also, sometimes interfered with it, especially when questions of etiquette arose, as that which we have seen at Valladolid, in 1635, over the point whether, at its reading, a bow should be made to the sacrament or to the inquisitors. Sixteen years later, we are told that since then there had been no reading of the edict at Valladolid and that in consequence, during the visitations of the inquisitors, other places refused to have it read, on the ground that this was not done in the city where there was a full tribunal.[268] A similar trouble arose at Quito, because the Audiencia refused to allow the commissioner of the Inquisition a seat with a cushion during the reading; for this, in 1699 and again in 1700, he appealed to the viceroy, stating that, in consequence of this, it had been many years since the edict had been published there.[269]

With the decline in the activity of the Inquisition, towards the close of the eighteenth century, there grew to be negligence in the annual publication. In 1775 the Suprema ordered that there should be no change with regard to it. A document of 1777 indicates that it was still customary, but on inquiry, in 1784, by the Suprema of the tribunals, whether or not it had been suspended, shows that it was falling into desuetude, and another of 1806, asking how long it had been since the publication ceased, indicates that it had become obsolete.[270]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _ITS INFLUENCE_]

The efficacy of the Edict of Faith is incontestable, although, in 1578, the Inquisitor Francisco de Ribera, in reporting his visitation of the dioceses of Gerona and Elne and his publication of it in places which had never before been visited, complains that it did not render the people disposed to make denunciations, which he attributes to their limited intelligence.[271] In more enlightened centres its effectiveness is seen in the frequency with which accusers preface their charges with the statement that their attention has been called to the duty by the publication of the edict. It naturally set men to searching their memories for what they had seen or heard respecting the various offences so elaborately enumerated and described. For instance, the edict was published in Madrid on September 4, 1569 and, the next day, Hans de Evalo appeared before the inquisitor to denounce Hans Brunsvi and Costancio, two members of the royal Guarda Tudesca, for things which he had heard and known of them, but of which he had thought nothing until he heard the edict read.[272] It was the same in stimulating self-denunciation, whether through pricks of conscience or fear of accusation by others. Thus, in 1581 we have two cases following each other, in which Juan González and Bartolomé Benito accuse themselves of having, in conversation with their wives, asserted that fornication is no sin, for which both were duly penanced and fined. The wives were sent for and confirmed the confessions, which we may safely attribute to the fear that the spouses might be led to denounce them.[273]

The habit of delation in which the Spaniard was thus trained continued after the Edict of Faith ceased to be published and was stimulated by the assurance of immunity through the profound secrecy which denied to the accused all knowledge of his accuser. The records of the tribunals show how these were welcomed, no matter how flimsy was the evidence, nor through how many months it had passed. Thus, January 5, 1816, the Dominican Fray Vicente Manendo writes to the tribunal of Barcelona that he had heard Joseph Castellar of Manlleu say that, on Easter day, 1815, he had been discussing some pending suits with the advocate Balderich when the time came for hearing mass and he said "Let us go to mass" to which Balderich replied by a contemptuous expression. Instructions were therefore forthwith sent to the commissioner at Panelada to put the denunciation into formal legal shape for prosecuting Balderich. Informers thus were not put to the trouble of coming forward personally and facilities for delation were brought to every man's door. Thus on June 28, 1807 Dr. Pedro Reguart of Suria writes to the tribunal of Barcelona that he has a denunciation to make and asks that a commission be sent to some one in Suria to receive it. Full instructions were accordingly sent to the parish priest of Suria, when deposition was made to the effect that, eighteen months before, at the clinic in Barcelona, Reguart had seen, in the possession of a student named Pedro Sitzas, a book entitled Eusebio, which he understood to be prohibited, and a year ago he had also seen a copy in the hands of another student named Jaime Coll. In this case the tribunal, with rare moderation, only ordered its apparitor to seize the books in the hands of the students.[274] So carefully were accusers protected against recognition that when, in 1818, Don Francisco de Mora, a retired lieutenant of artillery, accused Don Thomas Sans, of the same corps, to the tribunal of Valencia, because, in a loose conversation between them, he had asserted that there was no sin in fornication, and when Mora found himself obliged to testify that another officer, Manuel Moreno was present, the tribunal dropped the case at his request because Moreno would have identified the source of the accusation.[275]

The very triviality of these cases is the measure of their importance. It was not merely the Judaizing converso or the secret Protestant, but the whole body of the Catholic nation that was exposed to prosecution and infamy for a thoughtless word, the denunciation of which was commanded by the Edict of Faith and invited by the impenetrable secrecy of the tribunal. The shadow of the Holy Office lay over the land and no one could feel sure that a trusted comrade might not at any moment become a spy and an informer, or might not repeat an incautious word until it reached some one who recognized the inexorable duty imposed on all--a duty more deeply felt by the conscientious than by those of easy morals.

[Sidenote: _ITS INFLUENCE_]

There was, moreover, the fatal facility afforded for the safe gratification of malice, as in the case of Don Joseph del Campillo, whose merits raised him from obscurity to the position of finance minister under Philip V, in 1740. In 1726, when holding a responsible office in the administration of the navy, he had a quarrel with a Gerónimite fraile over the occupancy of a house. The fraile forthwith collected gossip about him, especially from a dissolute chaplain whom he had dismissed from the service, and all this was welcomed by the tribunal of Logroño, which commenced to gather testimony against him with a view to prosecution. It came to his ears through the boasts of the frailes as to what they had done, and the profound horror which seized him at the prospect of being dishonored for life, by the mere suspicion that he was liable to prosecution, shows how terrible a weapon the system placed at the service of malignity.[276]

* * * * *

In the life of a nation, outward calamities can be survived and recovery from their effects is but the work of time. Far more lasting and benumbing are the results of the perpetual and unrelaxing vigilance which seeks to penetrate into the secret heart of every man, to control his thoughts, to stifle their expression, to repress every effort to move out of a beaten and prescribed track, to destroy mutual confidence and to lead each individual to regard his fellows as the possible destroyers of his reputation and career. Such was the system imposed on Spain by the Inquisition, and its appropriate expression is found in the Edict of Faith.