CHAPTER I.

CONFISCATION.

When the Inquisition was established it was expected to be not only a self-sustaining institution but a source of profit. To what extent the anticipation of gain, by seizing the substance of their subjects, may have influenced Ferdinand and Isabella, in adopting this method of vindicating the faith, it would be useless now to enquire, but they refused to permit any division of the spoils as in the older papal Inquisition of Italy. These were reserved to the crown and, when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville, in 1480, they were accompanied by a receiver of confiscations--a royal official whose appointment shows what were the expectations entertained. Yet the support of the Inquisition had to come out of the product of its labors; the basis of its finances was confiscation and the use which it made of its powers in this respect, whether for its own benefit or for that of the sovereign, exercised so large an influence on the prosperity of Spain that it demands a somewhat careful examination. Spoliation on such a scale, continued unremittingly for nearly three centuries, was a tremendous burden on the productivity of the most industrious class of the population. At the commencement, a very large portion of the accessible wealth of Spain was in the hands of the Jews and Conversos. By the expulsion of the former and the prosecution of the latter they were stripped of it. The marvellous persistence of the New Christians, their tireless activity and business aptitude, kept them incessantly at work making acquisitions which continued to render persecution profitable and contributed to maintain the institution which was laboring, with equal persistence, for their destruction. It would not be wholly true to assert that the exhaustion of confiscations caused the inertia of the later decades of the Inquisition, but it unquestionably was a contributing factor.

The cruelty of confiscation was equal to its effectiveness. To strip a man, perhaps advanced in years, of the results of the labors of a life-time and to turn his wife and children penniless on the street was a severity of infliction which rendered the sparing of his life a doubtful mercy, and it was not without reason that the legists deemed it equivalent to capital punishment.[915] To the persecutor this was a recommendation, in addition to its financial advantages, and we can readily understand why it was enforced with such remorseless perseverance.

* * * * *

Confiscation as a punishment for crime was too settled a principle of the imperial jurisprudence for any jurist to call in question its propriety. As heresy was held to be treason to God, more detestable than treason to an earthly prince, the Church naturally adopted it as soon as, in the twelfth century, persecution became systematized. In 1163, Alexander III, at the Council of Tours, commanded all potentates to seize heretics and confiscate their possessions, and Lucius III, in his Verona decree of 1184, sought to divert this to the benefit of the Church.[916] Under the Roman law of treason, the property of a traitor was forfeited from the time when he first conceived his crime and this was applied to the heretic, whose earliest act of heresy was the date from which the fisc claimed his estate--a provision of much importance in the settlement of debts.

[Sidenote: _RESPONSIBILITY_]

In Aragon, the introduction of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century rendered confiscation for heresy a matter of course. In Castile a more tolerant spirit, as expressed in the laws of Alfonso X, forbade it, so long as there were Catholic heirs or kindred; if there were none, the king inherited, subject to the right of the Church, if the culprit were a cleric, to claim it within a year.[917] This code however was not confirmed until 1348, by which time scruple had diminished, for Alfonso XI, followed by Henry III, confiscated to the royal treasury one-half of the possessions of the convicted heretic.[918] It was reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella tacitly to accept the canon law in all its rigor, while diverting to the royal treasury all the proceeds. A contemporary asserts that they divided it into thirds--one for the war with the Moors, one for the support of the Inquisition and the third for pious uses,[919] but there is no trace of such allotment and we shall see that the crown made such use as it pleased of its acquisitions.

Strictly speaking, the Inquisition did not confiscate but merely pronounced the culprit guilty of that which implied confiscation, and it seems to have felt some hesitation as to assuming the responsibility. In the earliest trials that have reached us, there is no settled formula, either in the demand of the fiscal for punishment or in the sentences, confiscation being sometimes expressed and sometimes inferred and left for the alcalde to pronounce.[920] The Instructions of 1484 are silent as to confiscation in cases of the living but, in treating of prosecution of the dead, they order the heirs to be heard, so that the property may be confiscated and applied to the fisc of the sovereigns, and it is noteworthy that in sentences on the dead, immediately after this, the Instructions are referred to as though to shield the inquisitor from responsibility.[921]

There evidently was popular repugnance to this spoliation and no one wished to be responsible for it. Ferdinand, in a proclamation of October 29, 1485, declared that the confiscations were made by order of the pope, in discharge of his conscience and by virtue of his obedience to holy Mother Church.[922] It was probably owing to his instructions that the tribunals finally assumed the responsibility, as is seen in a sentence of July 8, 1491, in Saragossa, on the deceased Juan de la Caballería, where the king is ordered, in virtue of holy obedience, to take the property and hold it as his own.[923] Apparently all did not acquiesce promptly for we find him, in 1510, ordering the inquisitor of Majorca, when pronouncing any one to be a heretic, to add at the end of the sentence that he declares the property confiscated and applied to the royal fisc and orders the receiver to take it, when the receiver is to do so in virtue of the sentence.[924] In accordance with this the official formula adopted bore that the tribunal found the culprit guilty of heresy and as such to have incurred excommunication and the confiscation and loss of all his property, which it applied to the royal treasury and to the receiver in the name of the king, from the time when he commenced to commit the crime of heresy. Or, if the offender was an ecclesiastic, it was applied to whom it lawfully belonged. This rather evaded the question whether confiscation was self-acting, but the _Fe de confiscacion_, given by the notary to the judge of confiscations, formally asserts that the inquisitors and Ordinary had confiscated the property to the king's treasury and by the sentence had applied it to his receiver in his name.[925] If any uncertainty remained, it was removed by a carta acordada of 1626, which ordered that, in all cases of formal heresy, the sentence should include confiscation for, if there was to be any mitigation, the granting of such grace belonged to the inquisitor-general.[926] The anterior date to which the confiscation operated was determined, under the Instructions of 1561, by the consulta de fe when voting on the sentence.[927]

[Sidenote: _GRANTS TO FEUDAL LORDS_]

The phrase, in the case of ecclesiastics, of adjudging the property to whom it legally belonged, was a recognition of the claims of the Church. What these were seems to have been open to question. Under the Partidas the Church had the right, if it put forward the demand within a year, but Ferdinand, in a letter of March 11, 1498, says he is told that he has a right to a third in such cases. Whence this was derived we are not told, but he established the rule and it remained in force as late as 1559 when two-thirds of the estate of Dr. Agustin Cazalla passed to the Bishop of Palencia who, however, transferred it back to the Inquisition.[928] This was probably a compromise, for the Inquisition had asserted its right to the whole, and Bishop Simancas, in 1552, had said that many hold that the property of clerics goes to the bishop, but the truer opinion, which had always been followed in Spain, was that it belongs to the fisc, for the use of the Inquisition.[929] The question, however, was not definitely settled for, in 1568, the Suprema called upon all the tribunals to report without delay what was their practice and what was their formula of sentence.[930] It was inevitable that any doubts should eventually be construed in favor of the Holy Office and, in the seventeenth century, the authorities assume as a matter of course that the confiscations of clerics enure to the tribunals, although the sentence still attributed them to whom they lawfully pertained. Forfeited benefices of heretics, however, were a papal perquisite, by decree of Paul IV, June 18, 1556 and this is cited, about 1640, as still in force in Spain.[931]

For awhile the confiscations were subject to another diversion. The feudal lords, who saw the property of their vassals swept into the royal maelstrom, grew restless and, although they do not seem to have put forth any legal claim, Ferdinand, in many cases, deemed it wise to pacify them with a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in their estates. The earliest grant of the kind that I have happened to meet is to the Infante Enrique, Duke of Segorbe, April 20, 1491.[932] These grants were subject to a deduction for the expenses of the trials, which led to a good deal of friction, as none of the parties concerned were over-scrupulous. If the grantee quarrelled with the receiver over the question of expenses he had a fashion, when the customary auction of the property was held, of announcing that he desired to bid and that nobody should bid against him. By this device the Duke of Bejar enforced a settlement in 1514 and again in 1517.[933] The experience of the Duke del Infantado shows how skilful were the officials in neutralizing these grants. In 1515 he obtained a grant of one-half of confiscations up to that time and one-third for the future, subject to expenses. Disputes arose as a matter of course and, in 1519, he prevented auction sales till he should be paid and, in 1520, he compromised for two hundred ducats in settlement of claims up to that time and ten per cent. for the future, free of expenses.[934] It is safe to say that Ximenes was exposed to no such trouble in his settlements but, with his enormous revenues and his position as inquisitor-general, it would have better comported with his dignity to have abstained from procuring, in 1515, a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in his estates and in the Cazorla lands assigned for the expenses of his table.[935] With the gradual weeding out of the wealthier Conversos and the increasing expenses of the tribunals, the share of the feudal lords doubtless diminished until it was not worth contesting, for shortly after this period we cease to hear of this division of the proceeds.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _VERIFICATION OF PROPERTY_]

Confiscation, as we have seen, was one of the invariable penalties of heresy under the canon law. The heretic was outside of the Church; if persistent he was relaxed and burnt; if he repented and professed conversion he was "reconciled" to the Church, but though he thus escaped death the forfeiture of his property remained. Reconciliation, as a rule, inferred confiscation. An exception to this was when a Term of Grace was published, usually of thirty or forty days, during which those who made full confession of their sins and gave full information about others were received to reconciliation, under promise of release from imprisonment and confiscation, but subject to public penance and giving as "alms" such portion of their property as the inquisitors should designate.[936] This was an abandonment by the king of the property which had become forfeit through heresy and was confirmed by a formal grant by him to them of what was lawfully his, empowering them to sell and convey a good title, which otherwise they could not do.[937] This did not apply to what the penitent suffered from the crimes of others, and thus children so reconciled could not claim estates forfeited by their parents. Outside of the Term of Grace there was no escape. _Espontaneados_--those coming forward spontaneously--after its expiration, had already forfeited all their possessions and, as it was explained, it was not the intention of the sovereigns to remit the penalty to them, save when, in special cases, they might exercise clemency.[938] This covetous policy, which discouraged the repentant sinner, was continued until, in 1597, the Suprema ordered that espontaneados should be reconciled without confiscation.[939] Yet, in spite of this, when, in 1677, Alvaro Núñez de Velasco, came forward voluntarily to denounce himself and was reconciled, his sentence included confiscation.[940]

Occasional instances are met in which confiscation was spared on account of the extreme youth of the penitent, but I have been unable to find any formal rule to that effect and it seems to have been discretional with the tribunal. In 1501, at Barcelona, when Florencia, daughter of Manuel de Puigmija, was condemned to perpetual prison, it is said that her property was spared in view of her tender age. In the reconciliation, at Toledo, April 20, 1659, of Ana Pereira, aged ten, confiscation was included; in that of Beatriz Jorje of the same age, December 8, 1659, there is no allusion to confiscation and, in that of Diego de Castro, aged ten, December 8, 1681, it is stated that confiscation is omitted in view of his age.[941]

* * * * *

The enforcement of confiscation was a business matter, reduced to a thorough and pitiless system. The sufferers naturally sought to elude it and every possible means that experience could suggest were adopted to prevent the loss of the minutest fragment. When the accused was arrested, all his visible possessions were simultaneously sequestrated and inventoried. His papers and books of account were examined to ascertain what debts were owing to him, and he was at once subjected to an _audiencia de hacienda_ in which he was interrogated under oath, in the most searching manner, as to all his property, his debts and credits, his marriage settlement, dowries or gifts to his children, their estates if they were dead, whether he had secreted anything in apprehension of arrest, and every detail that the circumstances suggested. Any failure to answer fully and truly was perjury, for which he could be punished, as occurred in the case of Louis de Perlas, tried in Valencia for Lutheranism in 1552.[942] The most repulsive incident in this perquisition was the advantage taken of the terrors of approaching death, when the confessors of those who were to be executed in an auto de fe were employed during the preceding night in exhorting them to reveal any portion of property that might have escaped previous investigations. Thus, June 29, 1526, Fray Castell reported that Pedro Pomar, whom he had confessed during the night of the auto de fe "estando en el suplicio de la muerte" had revealed where certain account books could be found and also some debts due to him. So, December 21, 1529, Anton Ruiz, under the same circumstances, confessed to debts due to him which had eluded previous search.[943]

[Sidenote: _EMPLOYMENT OF INFORMERS_]

This prostitution of religion to the service of greed was exploited to the utmost. Excommunication was so habitually abused for temporal purposes that it was naturally resorted to, and all who concealed or held any property of a convicted heretic were subjected to it. In 1486 Ferdinand writes that certain notaries refuse to give copies of contracts passed before them, relative to obligations due to heretics, to which they must be constrained by censures and the invocation, if necessary, of the secular arm, and the same course must be taken with debtors refusing to pay what they owe.[944] October 17, 1500, he scolds some inquisitors for their negligence; those who know that they are suspected commonly hide their property or place it in the hands of third parties and "in this way those who hold such property become excommunicated to the great damage of their souls, for they continue under the censure and my fisc suffers, for the property escapes confiscation."[945] In 1645 a writer gives us the form adopted in such cases. If the fiscal thought that there was property of a confiscated estate concealed or debts due to it unrevealed, the tribunal issued an edict to be read from the pulpits, ordering under pain of excommunication every one holding such property, or cognizant of facts concerning it, to make it known to the commissinoner or to the parish priest within three days. On the expiration of this term the priests were required to denounce from their pulpits all such persons as excommunicated and to be avoided by all Christians. Then, after three days more, followed the anathema, in its awful solemnities of bell, book and candle, with the imprecatory psalm, and invoking the wrath of Almighty God and the glorious Virgin his Mother and of the Apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints of heaven and all the plagues of Egypt on the wicked ones who were withholding its own from the Holy Office.[946]

This spiritual punishment did not exclude temporal. In 1671, Manuel Fernández Chaves, tried in Toledo for the "occultation" of confiscated effects, was fined in five hundred ducats and was banished for two years from Toledo, Pastrana and Madrid. When the concealment was for the benefit of a culprit, there was the additional charge of fautorship, as in the case of Gabriel de la Sola and Joseph López de Sossa, who secreted property of the latter's sister Beatriz and whose trial, in 1697, in Valladolid, lasted for two years.[947]

More effective, at least in the earlier period, when the press of business rendered minute investigation difficult, was the offer of heavy commissions to those who would furnish information as to confiscated property that had escaped the search of the receivers. This resulted in creating a gang of professional detectives and informers of whom a certain Pedro de Madrid, "delator," may be taken as the type. Under a provision of 1490 he was entitled to one-third of all the hidden property that he might discover, whether alienated or conveyed under other names or otherwise concealed. In 1494 he complained that this was not enough, in view of his heavy expenses, travelling to France, sharing with other informers, etc., whereupon Ferdinand agreed to give him one-half, and moreover to those who should furnish information he pardoned the offence committed by their knowing without revealing; the inquisitors were to remove the excommunication and all receivers were to comply with these instructions under penalty of a thousand florins.[948] Ferdinand however did not always play fair with these gentry. Under the stimulus of his fifty per cent., Pedro worked hard and successfully but, when in 1499 the account of a receiver who had settled with him came in for audit, Ferdinand ordered the payments to be disallowed for the present; Pedro ought not to have such large sums; his success was attributable to the negligence of the receiver rather than to his own activity and, in fact, it was a voluntary gift to him. A year later we find Ferdinand agreeing to let him have one-half of thirty libras that he had discovered and promising to determine what share he should have when other properties unearthed by him should be settled.[949]

The frequent allusions to these transactions in Ferdinand's correspondence show what an active business it was, both with professionals and volunteers, and Ferdinand was sometimes liberal in rewarding the zeal of the latter as when, in 1501, he made a gift to Don Antonio Cortes, his sacristan mayor, of a house and an oil warehouse in Seville, which Cortes had discovered to be the property of Beatriz Fernández, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, which had escaped the receiver.[950] This indicates that men of standing did not disdain to engage in this disreputable business, and it would seem that Juan de Anchias, the secretary of the Saragossa tribunal, to whom we owe the _Libro Verde_, gave up his office to speculate in it for, in 1509, we find him complaining that the receiver refused to pay him the one-third which he had been promised on certain discoveries and Ferdinand ordering the bargain to be carried out. There was no settled rate of commissions. About this same time Clíment Roderes, of Barcelona, was only allowed one-seventh of the property recovered through his investigations, while the Majorca tribunal was authorized to offer twenty-five per cent. and, when the case seemed desperate, in 1514, Juan Martínez was encouraged by a promise of fifty per cent. to devote himself to looking up the concealments in Teruel and Albarracin, which were understood to be large.[951]

[Sidenote: _INVALIDATION OF CONTRACTS_]

While doubtless the fisc, by thus stimulating detectives, recovered property which might otherwise have escaped, the system was one which invited collusion between them and the officials. Frauds of this kind were probably not uncommon for, in 1525, the Suprema complained of the abuses that had sprung up through the disregard by the receivers of their instructions. These were to be strictly observed and, in future, commissions must be paid only on property of which nothing had been known to the officials, and the informer must not be an official whose knowledge had been acquired in the discharge of his duties. Moreover the compensation was strictly limited to twenty per cent. of the amount realized through the information furnished.[952] This is the latest allusion that I have met with to this phase of the business; it evidently diminished with the falling off in the confiscations, though doubtless special transactions continued to occur, for it was inevitable that the victims should exhaust their ingenuity in the effort to save for their children some fragments of their possessions.

* * * * *

Cruel as was confiscation in principle, its enforcement by the older papal Inquisition was iniquitous to a degree which multiplied to the utmost its cruelty and power of evil. The forfeiture of property from the time when the first act of heresy had been committed was construed to invalidate all subsequent acts of the heretic, for he had lost his dominion over all his possessions. All alienations thus were void, all debts contracted and all obligations given were invalid and the prescription of time against the Church had to be at least forty years' possession by undoubted Catholics, ignorant of the former owner's heresy. Prosecutions of the dead, moreover, for which there was no limit, carried back to previous generations the claim of the Inquisition to upset titles. Thus in practice, when a man was adjudged a heretic, all debts due to him were rigorously collected, while all due by him were cancelled, and all real estate that he had sold was reclaimed. The only mitigation of this was a declaration, by Innocent IV in 1247, giving to a Catholic wife, under certain conditions, a life-interest in her dowry, expiring at her death, for her children were incapable of inheritance.[953]

It is pleasant to be able to say that, in time, some of the worst features of this all-grasping rapacity were softened in the Spanish Inquisition. Its early operations were so extensive and the commerce of the land was so largely in the hands of the New Christians, that we can readily imagine the general consternation aroused by the strict enforcement of the canon laws which vitiated all alienations and stripped all creditors of their claims. It could lead only to wide-spread ruin and general paralysis of trade, and there doubtless arose a cry for relief which the sovereigns could not disregard. With a wise liberality, therefore, they consented to a partial abandonment of their claims, which is set forth in the Instructions of 1484, in a manner showing how fully they knew what were their rights. The clause recites that they could recover all alienations and refuse to pay all debts unless the proceeds could be identified among the effects of the confiscated estate, whether of those condemned or of those reconciled outside of the term of grace, but, out of clemency and to avoid oppression of vassals who had dealt with heretics, they ordered that all sales, donations, exchanges and contracts, prior to the year 1479, should be valid, if duly proved to be genuine. Attempts to take fraudulent advantage of this were declared punishable, in reconciled heretics, with a hundred lashes and branding in the face with a hot iron; in Christians, with confiscation, deprivation of office and penalties at the royal discretion.[954]

[Sidenote: _INVALIDATION OF CONTRACTS_]

While there was substantial relief in this abandonment of the right to upset all transactions prior to the introduction of the Inquisition, yet it was retained with regard to all subsequent dealings and no man could know whether the banker or merchant or tradesman with whom he dealt might not soon fall into the hands of the Holy Office. It thus can readily be conceived how fatally credit was affected and what risks were encountered in the daily transactions of business. That there was difficulty in making the tribunals respect even this concession is visible in its promulgation anew by the Suprema in 1491 and again in 1502.[955] Cases, in fact, occur which show that the officials paid slender attention to it. Thus in 1499, Costanza Ramirez appealed to Ferdinand for property comprised in the dowry given to her mother, in 1475, by her grandfather Juan López Beltran, whose estate had been recently declared confiscated, and the king ordered its restoration if the statement was true. So, in 1509, the widow and wards of Johan Pérez de Oliva petitioned him for the release of certain houses which Oliva had bought in 1474 and which were now claimed as having been purchased from a condemned heretic.[956] Here was a perfectly legitimate transaction, thirty-five years old, which the Inquisition was endeavoring to set aside.

In the Instructions of 1484, prosecutions against the dead, including confiscation, were ordered, even if they had died forty or fifty years before. As it stands in the printed collections, this virtually postponed indefinitely the prescription against the Inquisition, as the transactions of the deceased might have extended anteriorly through forty or fifty years and, in fact, it was quoted, about 1640, as a proof that there was no prescription.[957] This however was a later additional severity for, in a MS. copy of the Instructions of 1484, there is a clause, omitted by the official compilers, to the effect that, if the heretic had died more than fifty years before the accusation was brought and, if the heirs or owners of the property had been good Catholics and had held it in good faith, they were not to be disturbed.[958] There is significance in this suppression and, under such a system, it is conceivable what a cloud hung over the titles of all property that had ever passed through the hands of a New Christian, and how poignant was the feeling of insecurity of its possessors.

In the struggle made by the kingdoms of Aragon against the oppression of the Inquisition the iniquities of confiscation were prominent. They were illustrated in the Córtes of Monzon, in 1512, by a special grievance which illustrates the working of the system. The local government had borrowed money and secured it by a censo or obligation given to Maestro Miro and Juan Bertran, who were condemned for heresy and the censo was demanded. The authorities showed that the censo had been paid off and the debt cancelled twenty-nine years before, but the receiver insisted on their paying it again because the heretical acts of Miro and Bertran were anterior and their release of the censo was therefore invalid. They petitioned Ferdinand for relief but he contented himself with ordering that they should not be unduly oppressed, which left the matter open.[959] Still, one of the concessions granted in 1512 was that prescription of time should be reduced to thirty years; this was confirmed in Mercader's Instructions of 1514 and when, in 1515, the Catalans complained of its inobservance, Ferdinand ordered it to be maintained. Leo X went even further in his bull of 1516, confirming the Concordia of 1512 and, in that of 1520 this was defined as protecting from confiscation all property acquired in good faith from those not publicly noted for heresy even though they should subsequently be condemned and the prescription of thirty years had not expired. This was declared applicable to all pending cases and, to render it more emphatic, Charles V made a formal grant of all such property to the holders.[960] We have seen, however, how completely the Inquisition ignored this settlement, denying its authority and even its existence. Castile was no more successful for, when the Córtes of 1534 petitioned that possession for three years in the hands of Catholics should confer immunity from confiscation and that dowries of Catholic wives should be exempt, Charles flatly refused both requests.[961] Finally the question settled itself in the canonical prescription of forty years' undisturbed possession by orthodox Catholics, for this is what Simancas informs us was the rule. The old Instructions requiring longer possession, he says, had been abrogated and, although some authorities argued that five years sufficed, or at most twenty, these were not recognized by the tribunals.[962] How business adjusted, itself to the risks attending all transactions with New Christians, we can only conjecture.

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[Sidenote: _RECOGNITION OF CREDITORS_]

In one important respect the Inquisition mitigated the iniquitous harshness of the older institution by recognizing the claims of the creditors of the condemned heretic. This, however, was not the case at first and it would not be easy to exaggerate the general confusion and distress when it came to be understood that confiscation included the debits as well as the credits of the victims. The early extensive arrests were followed by the wholesale flight of those who felt themselves under suspicion; flight was regarded as confession and the fugitives were condemned _in absentia_ as soon as the necessary formalities could be despatched. The losses of the consequent confiscation of debits fell not only on individuals connected with their extensive transactions but on the public bodies and ecclesiastical establishments, the collection of whose revenues was largely in their hands. The conditions thus created are impressively reflected in the records of Xeres de la Frontera, where the municipal taxes were largely farmed to Conversos who had fled; the public funds had been in their hands and they were naturally in debt to the town as well as to churches and private persons. It would appear that all these obligations were calmly ignored by the Inquisition and the municipality appealed to the sovereigns who replied, December 6, 1481, that the matter had been referred to the Licenciado Ferrand Yañez de Lobon--the very commissioner who, for about a year, had been busy in enforcing the collections of the confiscations. This boded ill for relief; the documents do not reveal the outcome but, as all the efforts of the authorities only brought them in contact with the officials engaged in gathering the spoils, it is evident that the sovereigns did not propose to abandon their rights.[963]

We have seen that the Instructions of 1484-5, when recognizing the validity of transactions anterior to 1479, asserted absolutely the right of the fisc to refuse payment of debts and made no concessions as to those contracted subsequently to that period. At the same time a clause concerning claims made by nobles, who had received fugitives in their lands, shows that the Inquisition felt the matter to be within its discretion.[964] The earliest positive admission that I have met of an obligation to pay debts due by a confiscated estate is an order by Ferdinand, May 12, 1486, to Alfonso de Mesa, receiver at Teruel, that wages due in good faith by heretics to their Moorish servants, are to be paid--but this may perhaps be attributable to the special preference allowed to servants' wages by the laws of Aragon.[965] Various contradictory decisions illustrate the uncertainty hanging over the matter at this time, and it is clearly manifested by two letters of Ferdinand, evidently drawn up for him by his unscrupulous secretary Calcena. The first of these, March 6, 1498, relates to the Castillo de Calanya, which Calcena had obtained from the confiscated estate of Johan Benete and against which certain parties held censos (ground-rents) and other claims. The king is made to order the receiver to suspend action, because the debts had been contracted after Benete had committed acts of heresy. The other letter, March 11, 1498, reiterates an order of August 29, 1497, to a receiver to pay out of the sequestrated property of Antoni Cones a hundred ducats which Calcena had lent him and to pay him before any other creditors.[966]

By this time however the claims of creditors were beginning to be officially recognized. The Instructions of 1498 give detailed orders as to surrendering property belonging to others, and promptly paying debts clearly due out of sequestrated estates and, when confiscation was pronounced, a proclamation was to be made to all claimants to present their claims within a designated time, which in 1499 was fixed at thirty days, while no property was to be sold until the claims against it had been determined.[967] Yet, in spite of this, the rights of creditors were admitted with difficulty by the receivers and numerous instances occur in which they were obliged to appeal to Ferdinand. As late as 1515, Margarita Dartes, wife of Doctor Francisco Dartes, assessor of the Valencia tribunal, complained that in 1499 she had bought a censo secured on a house of Aldonza Cocarredes; Aldonza had now been relaxed and Aliaga, the receiver, refused to recognize the censo because it had been created after she had committed heresy. Ferdinand admitted the validity of this argument and said that, in the rigor of justice, she had lost her claim but, in view of the fact that her husband had been in the service of the Inquisition since its foundation, he ordered it paid as a favor.[968]

[Sidenote: _OBSTACLES OFFERED TO CREDITORS_]

An examination of the records of the Valencia court of confiscations, in 1531 and 1532, evinces on the whole an evident desire to administer the law rigidly, whether in favor of or against the fisc. Among the claimants were a number of serving women for wages, which were always allowed, although the court exercised somewhat arbitrary discretion in cutting down the amounts.[969] Gradually the honest policy prevailed and, in 1543, the Suprema instructed the tribunals that the first thing to be paid were the debts that were properly proved--a rule which apparently was difficult to enforce, for the order had to be repeated in 1546 and again in 1547.[970] Yet it was no easy matter for creditors to obtain payment against the resistance offered by receivers and their advocates. In 1565, after Pierre and Gilles de Bonneville were burnt for Protestantism in Toledo, the fiscal reported to the inquisitors that numerous creditors had come forward whose claims were pending before the _juez de los bienes_, wherefore he asked for a certificate as to the date of the culprits' heresies, in order to use it before the court. The inquisitors duly certified that the date was about 1550, the object being to plead the obsolete canonical rule that subsequent obligations were invalid.[971] That chicanery of all kinds was employed to exhaust the patience of creditors and accumulate costs is plainly admitted in the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema, which states that, in the suits of creditors, there is much that brings discredit on the Inquisition, for confiscations are managed solely for the benefit of those who administer them, the appointees of the _juez de los bienes_ and ordinarily his kinsmen or friends, for whose advantage the suits are prolonged until they become immortal.[972] Abuses such as these were inevitable in a system which confined everything within the circle of the Inquisition, permitting no outside interference or supervision, while dealing so tenderly with official malfeasance. It would be difficult to overestimate the wide-spread damage resulting when the accused were merchants with extensive and complicated transactions, as in the immense confiscations in Mexico and Peru from 1630 to 1650 and those of Majorca in 1678, when funds and merchandise of correspondents were tied up for an indefinite time to the destruction of their credit. The hazards to which business was thus exposed was a factor, and by no means the least important, in the decay of Spanish commerce, for no one could foresee at what moment the blow might fall. Sequestration accompanied arrest and, in 1635, it was ordered that, during the pending of a trial, no payments or delivery of property should be made to creditors, no matter what evidence they presented, without awaiting the decision of the Suprema, the only exception being claims of the king, which were to be paid without delay. In 1721 this prohibition to pay debts was made absolute, excepting a few trivial matters such as servants' wages and house-rent.[973] That foreigners dealing with Spain had ample cause to dread the decisions of the _juez de los bienes_ is shown by a remarkable clause in the English treaty of 1665 which provided that, in case of sequestration of property by any tribunal of either nation, the effects or debts belonging to a subject of the other should not suffer confiscation but should be restored to the owner.[974] On the whole, however, the Spanish Inquisition is entitled to the credit of mitigating, in favor of creditors, the abhorrent harshness of the inquisitorial law of confiscation, although in practice its officials were guilty of minimising, as far as they could, the benefits of this moderation.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _DOWRIES_]

In the matter of dowries there was also a partial mitigation of the old severity. The dowry was forfeited by the wife's heresy but not by that of the husband and, in the latter case, it descended to her children. There was one provision, however, which worked infinite hardship for, if the parents of the wife had been guilty of heresy at the time of her marriage, it was forfeited on the ground that all their property then belonged to the fisc and they had no power of alienation. The cases are numerous in which the parties, after prolonged married life, thus suddenly found themselves despoiled by the condemnation of parents who had enjoyed the reputation of faithful Christians and, in the inter-marriages, so frequent in the earlier period, the blow thus often fell upon Old Christians. We hear of these cases through despairing appeals to Ferdinand for mercy--appeals to which he not infrequently responded by abandoning his claims or surrendering a part. A typical case, illustrative of many others, is that Juan Quirat, of Elche, whose petition to the king, in 1513, represents that, twenty-five years before, he had married Violante Propinan, receiving ten thousand sueldos as her dowry from her parents, Luis and Blanca. Eight years ago they were condemned, and now the receiver claims the dowry; he is a poor _escudero_ or squire and the enforcement of the claim would send him with his wife and children to the hospital, in view of all which Ferdinand charitably waived his right.[975] More peculiar was the case of Juan Castellon of Majorca who, when trading in Tunis, was enslaved by a brother of Barbarossa; after forty-two months of captivity he was ransomed for four hundred ducats and returned home in 1520 to find that his wife's mother, Isabel Luna, had been condemned and the dowry received from her was claimed by the receiver. He petitioned Cardinal Adrian; the matter was referred to Charles V, who humanely ordered that, if his story was true and he was unable to pay, the confiscation should be remitted.[976] The hardship was sometimes aggravated by an ostentatious custom of inserting in the marriage-contract a larger sum than was actually paid. Thus, in 1531, the magnifico Diego de Montemayor, Baile of the Grau of Valencia, swore that he received only three thousand sueldos of the six thousand specified in his marriage-contract with Beatriz Scrivana, in 1510, and that the larger sum had been inserted _honoris causa_.[977]

The dowries of nuns were subject to the same merciless absorption. In 1510, the convent of Santa Inez of Córdova appealed to Ferdinand, stating that, some twenty years previous, Pedro Syllero had placed his niece there as a nun, giving as her dowry certain houses which it had peacefully enjoyed until her grandfather had recently been condemned for heresy and the property was seized as part of his confiscated estate. This was strictly legal and it was a pure act of grace when the king ordered the houses to be released.[978]

Still, the dowry of an orthodox wife was exempt from the confiscation of a heretic husband's estate, but it was imperilled by the possibility that the estate might be exhausted in the maintenance of the husband in prison during a prolonged trial and by the sacrifice of values in the realization of assets at auction, which was imperative. In the proceedings of the _juzgado de bienes_ of Valencia in 1531 there are numerous cases which show that this claim of the wife was fully recognized and a fair adjudication made in the complicated questions which frequently arose.[979]

Correlative to this was the liability of the husband to pay to the fisc the dowry of a wife condemned or reconciled for heresy. How pitilessly in time this was exacted is manifested in 1549 by a petition to Valdés from Don Pedro Gascon, who represents himself as an hidalgo whose ancestors had served the king faithfully. The judge of confiscations at Cuenca had condemned him in a hundred and fifty ducats for the dowry of his wife and the receiver had cast him in prison to enforce payment. While there he had sold a large part of his property and had paid fifty ducats, but the rest of his estate would not produce the remaining hundred. Ferdinand would have forgiven him the balance, but Valdés only looked to obtaining assurance of ultimate payment when he empowered the receiver to grant him six years' time on his furnishing good security.[980]

[Sidenote: _SYSTEMATIC ABSORPTION_]

Another feature, which frequently complicated these settlements, was the question of the conquests--the _ganancias_ or _creix_--the gains made during married life, in which both spouses had an equal share. The laws of Toro, in 1505, provide that neither husband nor wife could forfeit claim to half the _ganancias_ for the crime of the other, even if the crime were heresy, and the _ganancia_ is defined to be the whole increase during wedlock until the decree of confiscation, no matter when the crime was committed--a rule which remained in force.[981] The complexity introduced by these various interests in the settlement of confiscations is illustrated in the case of Diego López, a merchant of Zamora, reconciled in the auto de fe of Valladolid, in June, 1520. He kept no books and the number of debits and credits rendered his affairs exceedingly complicated; moreover the paternal estate had never been divided between him and his brothers, while his wife put in claims for her dowry and share of the _ganancias_. In this perplexity the only solution was a compromise, which was reached by the wife and brothers agreeing to pay four hundred and fifty thousand maravedís in instalments, giving adequate security.[982] The Valencia court of confiscations, however, invented a method of evading the wifely claim to the accretions for, in 1532, when Angela Pérez, widow of Luis Gilabert, burnt for heresy, demanded her dowry of three thousand sueldos and the _creix_, the court ordered the receiver to pay the dowry but refused the _creix_ on the ground that the date of his committing heresy showed that he could not lawfully make any gains.[983]

The exemption from confiscation of those who came in under Edicts of Grace, confessed and were reconciled, gave rise to an impressive illustration of the passionate greed aroused among all classes by the legalized spoliation of the New Christians and the corollary that they had no rights. Prelates and chapters of churches, abbots and priors of convents, rectors of hospitals and pious institutions and other ecclesiastics and laymen, who had mortgaged their properties to the heretics or had sold ground-rents to them or otherwise hypothecated them, repudiated their engagements and would render no satisfaction, whereby, we are told, many were deterred from seeking reconciliation. A more practical objection was that those who were thus despoiled were hindered in paying the heavy fines laid upon them by the inquisitors. Ferdinand and Isabella therefore applied to Innocent VIII for a remedy which he furnished, in 1486, by a brief in which, after reciting the above, he granted to those thus reconciled the mortgages and censos and other liens which they held on properties, forbidding the debtors from claiming release and pronouncing invalid any judgements which they might obtain.[984]

* * * * *

While thus the Spanish Inquisition, in some respects, dealt more liberally than its medieval predecessor with the unfortunates subjected to its operations, it was ruthlessly systematic in its absorption of everything that was not covered by the above exceptions. It was in vain that, in 1486, Innocent VIII--probably induced by the gold of the Conversos--represented to the sovereigns that, as the confiscations had been conceded to them, it would stimulate the penitents to be firm in the faith if their property was restored to those who were reconciled.[985] It was much more profitable for greed to disguise itself as zeal for religion, as when, in 1533, at the Córtes of Monzon, Valencia petitioned that an exemption from confiscation granted to the forcibly converted Moriscos should be extended to their children, and the Suprema replied that confiscation was the penalty most dreaded and that which most deterred from heresy; as for relying on the terror of burning as a preventive, the fact was that the Church received to reconciliation all who repented and, if they were not punished with confiscation, they would enjoy immunity.[986] In the same spirit, Bishop Simancas argued that it was for the public benefit that the children of heretics should be beggared and therefore the old laws which allowed Catholic children to inherit had justly been abrogated.[987]

This heartless remark indicates that, by the middle of the sixteenth century, there was no compassion for the helpless offspring, but at first there was some responsibility felt for them, possibly through a reminiscence of the old laws. The Instructions of 1484 provide that, when the children of those condemned to the stake or to perpetual prison are under age and unmarried, they were to be given to respectable Catholics or to religious, to be brought up in the faith, and a record of such cases was to be kept, for it was the intention of the sovereigns that, if they proved to be good Christians, they should have alms, especially the girls, to enable them to marry or to enter religion.[988] There is no trace of any systematic attempt to carry out this humane provision, but when cases of special hardship were called to Ferdinand's attention, he occasionally was moved to make liberal concessions. When, however, in 1486, the inquisitors of Saragossa asked for authority to grant relief to some poor culprits, not very guilty, who were encumbered with daughters likely to be forced to evil courses, the canny monarch evidently distrusted this sudden access of benevolence and, while approving the kindliness of the suggestion, he said that he was better acquainted than they with the people of Saragossa and less likely to be deceived, so they could send him the names of the parties, their properties and the number of their daughters, when he would determine what should be done.[989] It was evidently a question only of kindly impulses; there was no obligation, moral or legal and, as the wants of the Holy Office grew more urgent in the shrinkage of the stream of confiscations, inquisitors like Simancas argued that the service of God required the sacrifice of the innocents.

[Sidenote: _SYSTEMATIC ABSORPTION_]

In practice, everything on which the officials could lay their hands under any pretext was swept remorselessly into the fisc. Even the bedding and clothes of those led out to execution at the autos de fe were seized, as appears from occasional donations of them to officials.[990] When, in 1495, Charles VIII occupied Naples, it became a place of refuge for fugitives from Spain, but the pious skippers of the vessels carrying them not infrequently served God by stripping their defenceless passengers and carrying home the spoils. This was an invasion of the rights of the crown which vindicated itself by sending to Biscay and Guipúzcoa Anton Sánchez de Aguirre to search for the jewels and merchandise thus taken from heretics and sell them for the benefit of the fisc.[991] In 1513, when Jayme de Marrana, scrivener of the court of Segorbe, was condemned, all his subordinates were called upon to surrender the fees which they had received during his term of office.[992] A dying man could not make even a pious bequest if his natural heir was a heretic, for when, in 1514, Nicholas de Medina, a merchant of Seville returning from France, died at Bayonne in the Hôpital du Saint-Esprit and bequeathed to it a bill of exchange for a hundred and twenty-six ducats, the procurator of the hospital came to Seville to collect it. Villacis, the receiver there, promptly sequestrated it on the ground that Medina's heir, Rodrigo de Córdova, had been condemned for heresy and, although the Suprema finally released it, this was done as an act of charity to the hospital.[993] The same rule applied when there was heresy in the ascendants. Juan Francisco Vitalis, a native of Majorca, was settled in Rome as a merchant. He desired to trade with Spain but feared to do so, for his father and grandfather had been condemned for heresy and any merchandise or funds that he might send would be liable to confiscation as constructively derived from them. He therefore, in 1511, applied for a safe-conduct for his goods which Ferdinand issued, exempting them from seizure by the Inquisition; it was good however, only during the royal pleasure and for six months after its withdrawal should be notified to Vitalis or be publicly proclaimed in Valencia.[994]

Heresy shed around it an infection which contaminated everything with which it came in contact. Not only was a ship carrying heretics forfeited but also its cargo. In 1501, Vicencio de Landera, a merchant of Gaeta, shipped some cotton by a Biscayan vessel for Alicante. On her arrival the receiver seized the cargo because she carried two persons condemned by the Inquisition, but the Bishop of Gaeta, head chaplain to Ferdinand's sister the Queen of Naples, brought influence to bear, and the king ordered Landera to be paid the proceeds of his cotton.[995] Apparently the other owners of the cargo had no redress. Ferdinand was more obdurate, in 1511, when a ship and its cargo were condemned in Seville for carrying heretics. This included a quantity of pepper belonging to a Portuguese merchant named Juan Francisco. King Manoel interposed to protect his subject, when Ferdinand replied that he had ordered justice done but that the Inquisition had represented that Francisco had bought the pepper from King Manoel and had paid for it with bills of exchange drawn by heretics, and thus with heretic money, which was held to forfeit the pepper.[996]

[Sidenote: _ALIENATIONS INVALIDATED_]

This policy was not merely transient. In 1634 the Inquisition seized the goods and credits of Portuguese merchants, residents of Holland, Hamburg and France, trading with Spain. Agents had been sent abroad to secure evidence of their Judaism; they naturally sought to defend their property and presented certificates of their orthodoxy; the affair dragged on and, in 1636, Doctor Juan de Gosa presented an elaborate opinion in justification of this, proving that the property must be confiscated, although the owners were not Spaniards, nor domiciled in Spain, nor had committed heresy in Spain. His argument was based on the principle of the canon law that the heretic had no rights and that any Catholic could seize and despoil him; heresy is a crime all-pervading and not limited to the spot where it is committed for it is an injury to the whole Christian Republic. No evidence was required, for it was notorious that the Portuguese absented themselves in order to indulge their heretical proclivities and that they frequented the synagogues in Amsterdam and elsewhere. The Inquisition was to hold the property and, for greater justification, to summon by edict the owners to appear and defend it within a fixed term, or it could appoint defenders to act for them, but in no case was it to raise the sequestration or surrender the property.[997] It is superfluous to point out the effect of all this on Spanish commerce.

* * * * *

As regards property alienated subsequently to the commission of heresy, the only limitation on its confiscation is found in the provision prohibiting interference with transactions anterior to 1479.[998] All later ones were subject to forfeiture, without compensation to the purchaser, unless, indeed, he had made improvements, the value of which was reimbursed to him. The frequency of these cases and the hardship to which they exposed innocent third parties are amply illustrated by the numerous appeals to Ferdinand for relief, which, be it said to his credit, he often granted. The cloud thus thrown on the title to all property that had passed through the hands of New Christians, at any time subsequent to 1479, continued to hang over it, and the Inquisition grew stricter in the interpretation of its rights. A letter of May 6, 1539, from the Suprema to the inquisitor of Saragossa, says that he is reported to have decided that, when a person is condemned or reconciled with confiscation, and has alienated real property subsequently to the commission of heresy, if the purchaser is required to surrender it to the fisc, he is entitled to reimbursement of the purchase-money. The inquisitor is therefore summoned to state his authority for this decision, as law and custom are to the contrary and it is so practised.[999] This was peremptory and it is not likely that the question was raised again, although it took no count of the rule, which Simancas soon afterwards tells us was still in vigor, that if the purchase-money or what represents it is found in the confiscated estate, restitution should be made to the purchaser.[1000] The Spanish Inquisition preferred to both keep the money and take the property.

* * * * *

Ferdinand and Isabella manifested liberality in setting free the Christian slaves of confiscated estates, and this was extended by the Instructions of 1484, at the cost of those reconciled under Edicts of Grace, for, though they were not subject to confiscation, their Christian slaves were manumitted.[1001] It was, perhaps, a kindly care that kept these freedmen in a species of serfdom, for Instructions about 1500 direct the inquisitors to place them with proper persons under agreements as to wages and, if they are not reasonably treated, to transfer them to other masters.[1002] Embarrassing cases sometimes arose, such as that in which a slave was owned jointly by a good Catholic and a condemned heretic, but it would seem, from a decision in 1531, that the manumitted half carried with it into freedom the enslaved half, and the Catholic owner had no redress.[1003] The inquisitors did not always respond to the humane intentions of the Instructions; they seem to have sometimes kept slaves for themselves, in place of setting them free, for which, in 1516, they were rebuked and were also ordered that, during the trials of the owners, the slaves should be hired out and their wages be strictly accounted for--all of which points to current abuses. These did not cease for, in 1525, Dr. Mercader, in a visitation of Sicily, found similar ones flourishing.[1004]

While thus considerate of the slaves of culprits, confiscation seems sometimes to have extended to the persons of the culprits themselves. One of the few letters concerning the Inquisition, in which Isabella joins with Ferdinand, is of December 28, 1498, addressed to the Count of Cifuentes, Governor of Seville, ordering him, for the service of God and good execution of justice, to take all the Jews condemned for heresy, now held as prisoners by the Abbot of San Pedro, and sell them as slaves at such prices as he deems fit, the proceeds to be handed over to the receiver and be applied to the debts and necessities of the tribunal. An intimation of a similar kind is made, November 6, 1500, respecting Maestre Luis Carpano of Antequera and his wife, who are described as confiscated to the royal fisc, with all their property, real and personal.[1005]

[Sidenote: _ROUTINE OF BUSINESS_]

In the rigor of collection, debtors to the confiscated estates, who were unable to pay, were imprisoned without mercy. Thus, in 1490, the judge of confiscations at Segovia orders the alguazil to seize the lands and goods and money of Don Mosé de Cuellar, who was indebted in the sum of 393,000 maravedís to the late Gonzalo de Cuellar, regidor of Buitrago, burnt for heresy; if he cannot find property enough to satisfy the debt he is to seize the person of Don Mosé and confine him in the public prison of Segovia.[1006] It was the same with husbands who were liable for the dowries of their wives, as we have seen in the case of Don Pedro Gascon (p. 334). Forbearance, however, was sometimes found to be better policy. In 1509 Sancho Martínez of Hellin was sentenced to pay 50,000 maravedís for the dowry of his wife whose parents had been reconciled. He pleaded poverty to the Suprema, which ordered that, if his property was insufficient, he should not be imprisoned and that, at the auction of his effects he should be allowed to purchase to the amount of 10,000 or 12,000 maravedís on a year's credit. The event showed the wisdom of the arrangement. The auction realized 17,000; he was the purchaser and paid for it at the expiration of the year. He accumulated, as the years went by, 100,000 maravedís and the judge ordered execution on him for the 33,000 still due on the dowry. Again he appealed to the Suprema, some members of which doubted whether his subsequent acquisitions were liable and the matter was compromised, July 5, 1519, by ordering him to pay half the deficiency.[1007] These instances are not without interest as illustrations of the manner in which this gigantic spoliation was effected through more than a couple of centuries.

* * * * *

The elaborate system adopted is revealed to us in the records of the Valencia court of confiscations in 1530 and 1531. When an arrest was made with sequestration, the receiver opened an account in his _Libro de Manifestaciones_, in which the notary of sequestrations entered all the items of the inventory. Then followed the _audiencia de hacienda_ and the summons to debtors, to declare their obligations, which were likewise entered. If the prisoner was engaged in trade, his books were examined and all debts were duly placed in the same record. Information of all kinds was diligently sought and, no matter how vague and worthless, was similarly recorded. Much of this was obtained from prisoners, who testified to gossip heard from cell-companions in the dreary hours of prolonged confinement. Thus, July 9, 1527, Violante Salvador testified that Leonor Benin told her that Angela Parda, when arrested, had entrusted certain small coins to Leonor Manresa. Angela Parda and Leonor Bonin were both burnt and Violante Salvador was reconciled. Leonor Manresa, when summoned to account for the deposit, denied it under oath and, as there was no other witness, the claim for a few pennies was abandoned.[1008]

The persistence with which these shadowy claims were pursued is illustrated in the case of Rafael Moncada, arrested in 1524. A certain Sor Catalina testified that she had heard say, by some one whose name she could not recall, that Moncada had said that, during the revolt of the Germanía (1520-1522), he had hidden a large amount of goods. His wife, or widow, Violante, when summoned, declared that during the troubles he had hidden some silks in the dye-house; when peace was restored, he had taken them out and when, two years later, he was arrested, they were among the effects sequestrated. She was brought forward again and again, always adhering to the same story, and it was not until 1531 that she was discharged.[1009]

This persistence is explained by the fact that the receiver was responsible for every item entered by the notary of sequestrations unless he could show that it was not collectable, to the satisfaction of the judge, who would then relieve him by a _sentencia de diligencias_, signifying that he had made due exertion. The care thus induced in following up the minutest fragments of property is manifested in a petition presented by the receiver, March 4, 1531, to the effect that he had made every effort to recover fourteen sueldos, the dowry given by Pere Barbera and Grabiel Barbera to their sister Leonor Barbera on her marriage to Grabiel Mas. More than twenty years ago Pere Barbera was burnt in effigy, Mas went to the Canaries covered with debts and died there poor. Leonor died eighteen years ago, leaving her property to Pere's son Anrich and he, too, had been reconciled with confiscation. Anrich was called and duly interrogated and then the judge allowed the entry to be cancelled.[1010]

[Sidenote: _POWERS OF RECEIVERS_]

Besides the excommunication incurred by all who did not voluntarily reveal their indebtedness to a confiscated estate, the receiver was clothed with ample powers enabling him to perform his duties thoroughly. When the first appointments were made for Aragon, in 1484, all officials, secular and ecclesiastic, were required to assist him when called upon, under pain of the royal wrath and three thousand gold florins.[1011] Apparently this was found insufficient, for the formula in a commission issued, September 5, 1519, to Alonso de Gumiel, receiver of Ciudad Rodrigo, sets forth that, if any one refused or delayed to deliver up confiscated property, the receiver could impose penalties at discretion and these penalties were confirmed in advance, while every one, of whatever station, was required to obey his orders under the same discretional penalties.[1012] It is easy to imagine the wrong and oppression which an unprincipled official could inflict, under powers so vague and arbitrary, and the terror which the office shed around it is exemplified in a Valencia case, decided in 1532. September 2, 1528, Noffre Calatayut mustered courage to present to the court of confiscations a petition setting forth that, in 1507, as heir to his father, he became liable for a _violario_--a sort of annuity--of fifty sueldos a year, redeemable at fifteen libras, due to Luis Alcanys, which he paid sometimes to Jayme Alcanys and sometimes to a daughter of Joan Alcanys. Jayme was condemned and the receiver seized the violario. Through fear of the consequences, Noffre continued to pay it up to the present time, although it did not belong to Jayme and the parties on whose lives it was based, Guillem Rancon de Belvis and Johan Voluda, had been dead for twenty years. The case must have been bitterly contested for it was not until April 17, 1532, that a decision was rendered in his favor, to the effect that the violario had not belonged to Jayme Alcanys and that the lives had ended a quarter of a century before, wherefore the receiver was ordered to refund all the payments that he had received.[1013] It was fortunate that a court was sometimes found to check the lawless rapacity of the receivers.

* * * * *

It would not be easy to exaggerate the confusion and the hardships caused by the enforcement of confiscation, especially in the early period. The New Christians had filled so many positions of public and private trust, and the trade of Spain was so largely in their hands, that the long procession of arrests, accompanied with sequestration and followed by confiscation, could not but be paralyzing and affect interests far wider than those of the victims and their kindred. Even after the first wild torrent of persecution, the industry of the tribunals was constantly involving men hitherto unsuspected, bringing ruin or inextricable perplexities on the innocent who had chanced to have dealings with them. The backward search, moreover, into the heresies of those long since dead, vitiated old transactions and invalidated titles to property that had long been held by innocent owners. During Ferdinand's life we hear of many of these cases brought before him on appeal, and for the most part not in vain, for, when the injustice of his receivers was clear, he was prompt to revoke their action, and when there was doubt he would often kindly waive a portion or the whole of his claim. A few typical instances will illustrate some of the various aspects of the troubles which pervaded the land and crippled the development of Spanish prosperity.

[Sidenote: _HARDSHIPS ON THE INNOCENT_]

Early in 1498, Ferdinand was startled to learn that the Barcelona tribunal had arrested Jaime de Casafranca and had sequestrated his property. Casafranca was deputy of the royal treasurer-general of Catalonia; he had served long and faithfully, without suspicion of his orthodoxy, and possessed the king's fullest confidence. In his hands were the moneys of the crown and also sums sent thither for the repairs of the castles of Roussillon, and the embargo laid on these funds threatened serious complications. Had private interests only been concerned, the embarrassment would have been irremediable, but Ferdinand set aside the established routine by ordering all the sequestrations to be placed in the hands of his advocate-fiscal, who was directed to employ the moneys as instructions should be sent to him and to furnish an inventory so that public and private property could be separated. Then a messenger to Italy had just been despatched in hot haste with orders to Casafranca to provide immediate passage for him to Genoa and, as delay would be most injurious, this must be seen to at once. Besides this there were two chests of silk, in the name of Gabriel Sánchez, but belonging to the king, and two chests of paper for the royal secretary and some horse-covers and tools, the property of the treasurer-general, and some books belonging to the heirs of González Ruiz, all of which had to be looked after. Moreover Ferdinand recommended Casafranca to the kindly consideration of the tribunal, as the accusation might be malicious, and he charged the conscience of the inquisitors to observe justice. Casafranca, however, in the end was convicted and Ferdinand consoled his children with some fragments of the confiscation.[1014]

The arbitrary comprehensiveness of inquisitorial procedure and the difficulties thrown in the way of the New Christians are exemplified in the case of Gilabert de Santa Cruz the younger. When his father, of the same name, was penanced, the son made a compromise with the receiver, under which he received a portion of his father's property in settlement of his mother's dowry and some other claims. Then he married María Cid and pledged this property in the nuptial contract. In 1500 the father was again arrested, when the property was at once sequestrated again; he was living with the son, under which pretext all the latter's household effects, even to the clothes and trinkets of the wife, were included in the inventory. Moreover, the son was a member of a firm who employed the father as a factor, on which account all their goods and books were sequestrated, threatening the ruin of their business. In this emergency the only recourse was to Ferdinand, who responded with instructions to the tribunal that his will was that injustice should be done to no one; it was to examine the papers and at once to act according to the facts, without oppressing or injuring the parties in interest and without awaiting the result of the father's trial.[1015]

The insecurity which overshadowed all transactions is illustrated by the case of Diego de Salinas of Avila, who had received as a marriage portion with the daughter of González Gómez, since deceased, a rent of forty-five fanegas of wheat, which the latter, in 1499, had bought for the purpose from Rodrigo del Barco for 30,000 maravedís. In 1501 it was found that Rodrigo had inherited this rent from his grandfather, Pedro Alvárez, whose fame and memory were condemned, and it was legally claimed by the fisc. Luckily for Diego, he had rendered services to the sovereigns, in consideration of which they granted him 25,000 maravedís of the rent; it was to be valued and he was to pay whatever it was worth over and above that sum.[1016]

Ferdinand's kindly interposition was sought by Pascual de Vellido, who had sold to Pedro de Santa Cruz a house for 1000 sueldos, reserving the right of redemption at the same price. Pedro was reconciled with confiscation and Pascual applied to the receiver to allow him to redeem the house but, as he had mislaid his _carta de gracia_, he was denied, and the house was sold for 1600 sueldos. In 1502 he found the document and claimed the excess of 600 sueldos which the receiver refused to pay, until Ferdinand ordered him to do so, because Pascual was poor and had a daughter to marry.[1017]

It was by no means the Conversos only who suffered in this way, for Old Christians were constantly finding themselves embarrassed by the cloud thrown on titles. In 1514, Don Pero Nuñez de Guzman, Clavero, or treasurer of the Order of Calatrava and majordomo of the Infante Ferdinand, represented to the king that his uncle, Luis Osorio, Bishop of Jaen, had a majordomo named Rodríguez Jabalin who fell in debt to him and settled with certain properties renting for 4500 maravedís. The bishop died in 1496 and Guzman, who inherited the properties, gave them to the dean and chapter of Jaen to found a perpetual mass for his uncle's soul. The chapter sold them and, in 1514, the Inquisition seized them because Jabalin had inherited them from an ancestor whose fame and memory were condemned. Guzman represented that, if the present possessors were ejected, the chapter would have to make it good; the mass thus would be discontinued and, at his prayer, Ferdinand ordered the seizure to be withdrawn.[1018]

[Sidenote: _REVIVAL OF OLD CLAIMS_]

As an insurance against such losses, sellers and purchasers sometimes sought to procure, from the king or the tribunals, licences to convey property, real and personal. This was probably rare, as I have met with but a single case, that of Johan Garriga, his wife and children who, in 1510, from Majorca, petitioned Ferdinand for licence to sell his property and faculties for others to purchase. Ferdinand referred the matter to the Mallorquin inquisitor, saying that he did not know whether the property was in any way liable to the fisc, but if the inquisitor thought the licence ought to be granted he was empowered to issue it with the royal confirmation.[1019] If Garriga obtained his licence he probably had to pay roundly for it, for the officials were often by no means nice in the abuse of their unlimited power. In this same year, 1510, Antonio Mingot of Alicante complained to Ferdinand that he had been sentenced to pay 294 libras as a debt due to Gonzalo Roiz, condemned for heresy. He had appealed to the inquisitor-general, who referred the matter back to the inquisitors but, before they had decided the case, the receiver put up at auction property of his worth more than 4000 ducats, and then, for a payment of 100 ducats, postponed the sale to St. John's day. Mingot sought to appeal to the king, but could not get copies of the necessary papers, delays being interposed to carry the matter over the postponement. Ferdinand warmly expressed his displeasure, in a letter of May 21st, ordering copies of all papers to be furnished and proceedings to be suspended for seventy days thereafter--but the peccant officials were not punished.[1020]

Old claims, long since satisfied, were constantly turning up and prosecuted, from which the only recourse would seem to be the king. A few months later than the last case, he had a petition from the people of the hamlets of Scaviella and La Mata stating that on November 3, 1487, they had paid off a censo of 400 sueldos to Leonart de Santangel and now, after nearly a quarter of a century, the receiver demands it of them on the ground that Santangel at the time was in prison and incapable of receiving the money. Ferdinand ordered the receiver not to trouble them, as they were ignorant peasants and the payment was made with the assent of their lord, the Bishop of Huesca. Similarly, in 1511, Domingo Just of Saragossa represented that, in 1484, he had given an obligation for 3000 sueldos, as security for the issue to him of a bill of exchange on Rome. On his return he had been unable to secure the surrender of the paper, in consequence of the flight of the holder, but it had turned up and was now demanded of him. Ferdinand ordered him to be relieved on his taking an oath guaranteed by excommunication.[1021]

Old and forgotten heresies were exploited with equal rigor. In 1510, Pedro de Espinosa of Baza represented to Ferdinand that, when Baza was recovered from the Moors (December 4, 1489) he married Aldonza Rodríguez, niece and adopted daughter of the esquire Lazaro de Avila and Catalina Ximenes and, on Lazaro's death, they went to live with Catalina. Now Catalina has been condemned for an act of heresy committed when a child in her father's house (probably a fast, or eating unleavened bread) and her property, worth some 18,000 ducats, has been confiscated. In view of his services in the war with Granada, Espinosa begged that the confiscation be remitted and Ferdinand liberally assented, to the amount of 18,000 ducats.[1022]

With the death of Ferdinand these frequent appeals to the crown become fewer and are met with less kindliness, though the call for relief from the rigor of the law was undiminished, as will be seen from the case of the monastery of Bonifaza. In 1452, Pedro Roy, priest of Tortosa, sold to Dalvido Tolosa of Salcet for 400 libras a rent of 20 libras per annum secured on certain property, and this property Roy subsequently sold to the monastery. In 1475, Dalvido died, leaving the rent to his son, Luis Tolosa, from whom the monastery redeemed it, March 1, 1488. Luis, or his memory, was condemned and, about 1519, the receiver demanded of the monastery the 400 libras and all arrearages of rent, claiming that the redemption had been in fraud of the fisc, as Luis's heresy antedated it. The case was clear and judgement against the monastery was rendered, June 7, 1519. Pleading poverty, it applied for relief to Charles V, who instructed the receiver that, if it would pay 100 libras during July and 50 more within a year, he should release the claim.[1023]

[Sidenote: _JURISDICTION EXCLUSIVE_]

The avidity of the Inquisition did not diminish with time, nor its disastrous influence on all exposed to its claims. In 1615, a German Protestant, known as Juan Cote, was condemned by the Toledo tribunal to perpetual prison and confiscation. He was then twenty-four years old and had been taken, in early youth, by his uncle Juan Aventrot, to the Canaries, where the uncle married María Vandala, a widow with four children, who died in 1609, leaving one-fifth of her estate to Cote. In 1613 Aventrot sent him to Spain with a letter to the Duke of Lerma, which led to the discovery of his heresy. Proceedings for the confiscation of his share in the widow's estate dragged on interminably. September 7, 1634, the Suprema ordered the Toledo tribunal to furnish papers in the case, including a certificate of the date of Cote's heresy, which, in view of his having been brought up as a Protestant, it fixed at the age of fourteen, when he could be considered responsible. In this the Inquisition overreached itself, for in 1635 the Canary tribunal reported that the heirs alleged Cote to have been incapable of inheritance, seeing that he was brought up as a Protestant and both he and his uncle had pretended to be Catholics, and they called for a copy of the sentence to demonstrate this. The unabashed Suprema then shifted its ground and procured, September 10, 1640, from the Toledo tribunal, a certificate that Cote had commenced his heretical acts in 1613, when he brought the letter to Lerma and delivered it to Philip III, in August, 1614. How the affair terminated and how much longer it was protracted we have no means of knowing, but the Inquisition had at least succeeded in tying up the estate for twenty-five years.[1024]

The hardship of the system on innocent third parties was intensified by the fact that in this, as in all else, the Inquisition claimed and exercised exclusive jurisdiction. There was no appeal to a disinterested tribunal but only from the judge of confiscations to the Suprema, which was as much interested as its subordinates in obtaining as large returns as possible from all sources. As these fell off, the liberality, so often displayed by Ferdinand, was no longer in place and it became inexorable. Confiscations were specially assigned to the payment of salaries and the judges were thus directly interested in their productiveness. The danger and the humiliation of this were fully recognized. In his futile plan of reform, in 1518, Charles V proposed to assign to the officials definite salaries and relieve them from dependence on the sentences which they pronounced.[1025] In 1523, he received from his privy council a memorial in which, among other matters, he was urged to see that proper appointments were made in the Inquisition and that they had fitting salaries from other sources, so that they should live neither by beggary nor on the blood of their victims, and that their labors should tend to instruction rather than to destruction and to rendering Christianity odious to the infidel.[1026] The Córtes of Castile remonstrated repeatedly to the same effect. Those of 1537 complained of the salaries being thus defrayed; those of 1548 asked Charles to provide fixed salaries so as to put an end to the notorious evil of the judges paying themselves by fining and confiscating, and again, in 1555, they pointed out that, besides the danger of judges deriving their pay from the condemnations which they decree, it diminished the respect due to the Holy Office. To this the answer was merely that the matter has been considered and will be fittingly decided.[1027] Spanish finances, however, were never in a position to assure the Inquisition that, if it paid over its receipts to the crown, it would get them back in appropriations for salaries and expenses. As we have seen, it kept them under its own control and it jealously repelled all intrusion, even by the crown, on its exclusive jurisdiction over confiscations.

[Sidenote: _JURISDICTION EXCLUSIVE_]

This position had not been won without a struggle. January 20, 1486, Ferdinand empowered the inquisitors of Saragossa to act as judges in the complicated litigation which was growing, and he commissioned them to decide all questions thence arising. On March 31 he reiterated the injunction; if the secular judges were allowed to intervene, everything would be lost; they were to be restrained by censures, as had already been done and, if royal letters or _exequutorias_ were required, they would be promptly furnished. There evidently was active resistance to this for, on May 5th he wrote that all questions must be settled by ecclesiastical law for, if the fueros were admitted, he would never get justice. The inquisitors must therefore act, the receiver and fiscal must try the cases before them alone, and they must be speedy.[1028] When persecution was active, this threw upon the inquisitors too heavy a burden and one, moreover, for which they were unprepared, for they were theologians and not canon lawyers. The assessors, it is true, assisted them, but a special tribunal evidently was a necessity and this was furnished by the erection of courts of confiscation, presided over by the _jueces de los bienes_. In Castile, where the _fueros_ were not an impediment, this had already been tried. As early as 1484, there is an allusion to such an official[1029] and a commission as such was issued, April 10, 1485, to the Bachiller Juan Antonio Serrano, of Córdova.[1030] For some time, however, such appointments continued to be unusual. In 1490, we hear of Juan Pérez de Nieva as juez de los bienes in Segovia,[1031] but for the most part the inquisitors and their assessors continued to perform the functions and, when a juez existed, his position was subordinate, as appears by a letter of Ferdinand, August 27, 1500, to an assessor, telling him that the juez was only to relieve him in ordinary cases and not to tie his hands in important ones.[1032] Inquisitors also continued to act for, in 1509, we hear of Niño de Villalobos as inquisitor and juez in Cartagena and a certain Dembredo as filling both positions in Seville, while as late as 1514 Toribio de Saldaña is spoken of as inquisitor and juez.[1033] With the gradual disappearance of the assessors, however, the necessity of a separate functionary became apparent, and the courts of confiscations grew to be an established feature of the tribunals, so long as confiscations continued to be numerous and profitable. Towards the end, when they had become infrequent, the senior inquisitor performed the duties of the juez.[1034]

Ferdinand, meanwhile, persisted in asserting the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition over all matters connected with confiscation, recognizing that his interests would suffer if the secular courts were allowed to intervene. The establishment of this as a rule of practice is attributable to the year 1508. The receiver of Jaen had sold a confiscated house to Diego García el rico for forty-two thousand maravedís on a year's credit. When the term expired, García, instead of paying, exhibited a grant made to him of the house by Philip of Austria. After Philip's brief career was over, his acts were not treated with much respect, and the juez de los bienes refused to recognize the grant, on the ground that it was not countersigned by the Suprema. García appealed to the chancellery of Granada which ordered the grant to be recognized, but Ferdinand interposed, January 18, 1508, commanding the judges to keep their hands off and not to interfere with the Inquisition, in any way, either in its civil or criminal jurisdiction.[1035] The chancellery did not take this kindly and invited, in 1510, another rebuke for meddling in suits concerning sequestrations and confiscations; if any cases of the kind were pending they must be forthwith remitted to the tribunals to which they belonged, and in future nothing of the kind was to be entertained.[1036]

It was impossible that this monstrous policy, of making it the judge in its own cases, should be submitted to without resistance, but it was stoutly maintained by the crown. The tribunal of Jaen invested some of its funds in a censo created by a cleric of Alcalá. He died in 1524, when his mother and brothers attacked the censo as being secured on a property in which they held undivided interests, and another party came forward with an incumbrance on the same property. The Inquisition seized it and also collected some debts due to the deceased, which reduced its claim to seven or eight thousand maravedís. The other parties appealed to the chancellery of Granada, which entertained the case, but the Inquisition invoked Charles V who, in letters of May 19 and July 7, 1525, repeated the commands of Ferdinand to abstain from all interference. The Inquisition was the sole judge and parties thinking themselves aggrieved must appeal to the Suprema.[1037] Still, those who smarted under injustice sought relief in the secular courts, which were nothing loath to aid them; complaints were loud on both sides and competencias were frequent until, as we have seen, they led to the settlement of 1553, in which Prince Philip emphatically forbade cognizance of such matters to all courts and ministers of justice, and confined appellate jurisdiction strictly to the Suprema.[1038]

As has been seen in other matters, the great high court of Granada was recalcitrant and persisted in asserting its jurisdiction. In 1571 and 1573 it entertained cases relating to confiscations, in both of which it was told by Philip II to hold its hand and not to meddle with such affairs. Despite this, in 1575, it intervened in a case which suggests the reasonable objection felt to rendering the Inquisition a judge in its own cause. The creditors of Don Diego de Castilla had embargoed his property and the court had placed it in the hands of an administrator for their benefit; but the tribunal of Murcia chanced to hold a censo of his for a thousand ducats; the juez de los bienes stepped in, seized the property, sold it and kept the money. The chancellery was seeking to obtain justice for the other creditors; it arrested the juez and threw him into prison, when Philip again intervened, ordering his liberation and the abandonment of the case.[1039]

[Sidenote: _COMPOSITIONS_]

It illustrates the independence of the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon that, when the tax-collectors of Valencia levied taxes and imposts on confiscated property and its sale, Charles V was obliged to appeal to the Holy See for its prevention. Clement VII obligingly granted a bull, July 7, 1525, forbidding this under pain of excommunication and a fine of a thousand ducats to the papal camera; the inquisitor-general was named as conservator and judge to enforce it by censures and interdict and invocation of the secular arm, which doubtless put an end to the practice.[1040]

* * * * *

As the operations of the Inquisition developed, an additional source of gain was found in speculating upon the terror pervading the New Christian communities. Whether the idea originated in their mercantile instincts, or in the desire of the sovereigns for prompt realization, cannot be determined, but it was in essence a kind of rude and imperfect insurance against certain contingencies of confiscation, for which those in danger were willing to pay a heavy premium. As early as September 6, 1482, in a letter of Ferdinand to Luis Cabanilles, Governor of Valencia, there occurs an allusion to an arrangement of this kind, made with the Conversos of that city, under which apparently they had agreed to pay a certain sum in lieu of the confiscations and had appointed assessors to apportion the share of each individual. Some of those thus assessed refused to pay, and Ferdinand ordered them to be coerced by imprisonment.[1041] What were the exact terms of this we have no means of knowing but, on June 6, 1488, he made another bargain with the Valencia Conversos, who were reconciled under an Edict of Grace, by which they paid him for exemption from confiscation--apparently rather a fresh impost, for this reconciliation substituted fines for confiscation. Then, April 6, 1491, he confirmed this and, for a further payment of five thousand ducats, he added exemption for heretical acts subsequently committed, if they did not amount to relapse, and for imperfect confessions made under the Edict of Grace--for, as we shall see hereafter, such confessions were frequently a source of danger arising from trifling omissions, construed by the inquisitors as rendering them fictitious and entailing relaxation. It is an indelible disgrace to Ferdinand that, in these compositions, he did not keep faith with those whose money he took. In 1499, the Suprema took exception to this arrangement, probably in consequence of complaints that it was violated by the seizure and sale of properties comprehended under it. Then Ferdinand declared that it had not been his intention to relieve from confiscation those whose confessions had been imperfect, whereupon the Suprema ordered the inquisitors and receiver to prosecute and confiscate the property of all such penitents in spite of the agreement. Even the hardened receiver Aliaga seems to have hesitated to obey these orders, for Ferdinand was obliged to write to him, September 27th, that they were to be executed notwithstanding the privilege and its confirmation.[1042]

The hardships inflicted on the innocent by this breach of faith are illustrated in a petition presented, in 1519, to Charles V by Juan and Beatriz Guimera, children of Bernat and Violante Guimera who, after the composition of 1488, had been condemned for imperfect confession and their property confiscated. Juan and Beatriz, with other children in the same position, appealed to Ferdinand who, under the provision of April 6, 1491, ordered the receiver to restore all such property. They received and enjoyed possession for twelve years, after which, under the orders of 1499 the inquisitors took it from them. From this they appealed, but were too poor to follow it up, and the Suprema declared the appeal abandoned. Now they prayed Charles for the restoration of their property and showed that, after the execution of their parents, they had paid all the instalments remaining of the composition. In view of this, Charles, as a special grace and in the exercise of the royal clemency, ordered--not that the property of which they had been robbed should be restored--but that the receiver should repay them what the inquisitors might find that they had paid of the composition after the death of their parents, without deducting therefrom the claim of the fisc for the income of the property during their twelve years' possession.[1043]

[Sidenote: _COMPOSITIONS_]

Even worse, if possible, was Ferdinand's course in a composition made, September 10, 1495, with the heirs and successors of all who in Aragon had died up to that time and whose memories had been or might in future be condemned. For the sum of five thousand ducats he abandoned, to those who contributed, all the confiscations of their inheritances and also the inheritances of those who refused to contribute, to be distributed among them in proportion to their contributions. Inferentially this was confirmed when, in 1499, in view of trouble with the receiver, at the prayer of the contributors, he appointed Vicent de Bordalva administrator of the property, to claim and hold it and distribute it to the owners. After seven years had passed, in 1502, he was seized with qualms of conscience at thus violating the canon law which incapacitated the children of heretics as inheritors. It is true that he might have assumed the property and then made a free gift of it, as was frequently done in special cases, but his scruples were too delicate for such a subterfuge. By letters of December 13, 1502, to the inquisitors and assessor, he ordered the seizure and confiscation of all the property thus devolved and the return to the contributors, in all cases where they were sufferers, of the moneys which they had paid--thus retaining the contributions of those who had not profited by the composition. This breach of faith made an immense sensation in Saragossa and even his son, the archbishop, ventured to remonstrate, when he replied sanctimoniously that he was acting by the advice of learned and God-fearing men, who had demonstrated to him that he could not, with a clear conscience and without peril to his soul, grant a privilege contrary to the canon law; the sufferers must have patience, for it was in accordance with the canons of holy Mother Church which were obligatory on him.[1044]

The inquisitors and receiver were not over-nice in utilizing their opportunity and complaints speedily came pouring in that, besides the inheritances, they seized all the property belonging to the heirs, including their acquisitions and the dowries of their wives, and that moreover they did not repay the contributions. Thus, before the month of December, 1502, was out, the brothers Buendia appealed to him; they had paid fifteen thousand sueldos to the composition and now the receiver had seized what they had inherited from their father; much of this they had sold; they had acquired other properties by their labor, they had inherited from their mother, who was an Old Christian, and had received dowries with their wives, all of which was included in the seizure. Ferdinand merely reported this to the inquisitor, with a vague order to do justice so as not to afford grounds for complaint. It is easy to conceive the confusion of titles, the multiplicity of suits and the amount of misery resulting from this arbitrary abrogation of a contract. Resistance was prolonged, but it was unavailing, for Ferdinand held good and repeated his peremptory orders, January 4 and March 8, 1503, July 8 and November 7, 1504 and October 7, 1508.[1045] It would appear, moreover, that many of the contributors who suffered never obtained a return of their money, for this formed the subject of one of the articles of the Aragonese Concordia of 1512, confirmed in the 1516 bull of Leo X, providing that whoever had joined in a composition for the property of the dead and had paid his money, if the deceased was subsequently convicted and the fisc seized his inheritance, he should recover from the estate what he had paid, provided the payment had not been made out of the effects of the deceased.[1046] It was thus admitted that the contracts were no bar to the Inquisition.

There were various forms of these compositions, insuring against the different risks and disabilities to which the property of the Conversos was exposed, but they all had this in common that the contributor threw his money into a pool from which his chance of deriving advantage was in the highest degree problematical. It is therefore a striking evidence of the desperation to which the New Christians were reduced that they were eager to grasp at these forlorn chances and to pour their money into the ever-gaping royal treasury, while Ferdinand, in spite of his conscientious scruples, was always ready to speculate on their despair. It is impossible now to say how many compositions were made, from first to last, but they probably covered nearly the whole of Spain, at one time or another. We have seen that there was one in Córdova, prior to 1500, which was highly profitable to the inquisitor who managed it and another of uncertain date in Andalusia (Vol. I, pp. 190, 220); there was one in Orihuela in 1492 and a second in Valencia in 1498 and, in 1515, there were others in the Biscayan provinces and in Cuenca. Occasionally, moreover, inquisitors were authorized to enter into such bargains with individuals, as in Majorca in 1498 and in Catalonia in 1512.[1047]

[Sidenote: _COMPOSITIONS_]

A specimen of these individual compositions is revealed to us in an investigation made in 1487, by Doctor Alfonso Ramírez, juez de los bienes of Toledo, into the accounts of Juan de Urría, the late receiver, who was reported to have defrauded the fisc of more than a million and a half maravedís. Pedro de Toledo had fled to Portugal, to escape trial, and his wife, Isabel Díaz, arranged with Urría for a royal letter of security and pardon for him, his property and his paternal inheritance, for which the price agreed upon was half a million maravedís, in addition to which Urría was promised a hundred florins for his services. Pedro returned and paid for the letter, when Isabel gave Urría thirteen gold cruzados and fourteen pieces of cloth, which he sold and claimed that he was five hundred maravedís short.[1048] This was productive but still more so was one, in 1514, by which Francisco Sánchez of Talavera ransomed the estate of his deceased father for a million maravedís.[1049]

These transactions justify the conclusion that persecution was largely a matter of finance as well as of faith. Such conviction is strengthened by the history of the greatest of the general compositions, a most prolonged and involved transaction, of which space will permit only the barest outline. It commenced with a composition, signed December 7, 1508, with Seville and Cádiz, by which, in consideration of twenty thousand ducats, there was made over to the penanced and condemned, or to their heirs, all confiscated property in suit, or that had not been discovered and seized, from the commencement of the Inquisition up to November 30th, except what was included in the auto de fe of October 29th. The property of those who did not join in the agreement and pay their assessments was liable to seizure and all amounts thus realized were to be deducted from the payment. There was also granted the valued privilege of going to and trading with the Indies, forbidden to all _reconciliados_. This was extended, October 10, 1509, in the name of Queen Juana, covering the archbishopric of Seville, the bishopric of Cádiz and the towns of Lepe, Ayamonte and la Redondilla, and providing for the payment of forty thousand ducats, for which the queen made to the contributors a donation of all real and personal property forfeit to her from persons reconciled and guilty of imperfect confessions or other offences prior to reconciliation; also all the property of those who had died reconciled or to be reconciled and forfeitable by reason of prior offences, together with all property confiscated on those who refused to contribute. All alienations made by contributors were confirmed to the purchasers and contributors were relieved from all penalties incurred for disregarding the disabilities inflicted on those reconciled and their descendants. On the other hand, it was expressly stated that the grant did not exempt the property of those who relapsed or committed offences subsequent to reconciliation, nor did it relieve them from prosecution in person or fame. After this, for some cause, the total payment was increased to eighty thousand ducats, of which sixty thousand were for the composition and twenty thousand for rehabilitation or removal of disabilities.

The first obstacle lay in the assembling of the enormous mass of papers relating to the old confiscations. The tribunal of Leon, which held some of them, refused to deliver them, and the same occurred with papers concerning Ecija, requiring repeated peremptory orders from Ferdinand to procure their deposit in the Castle of Triana for inspection. At last the unwieldy business was got under way. Assessors were appointed to make the assessments on contributors, but troubles arose and the whole affair was put in the hands of Pedro de Villacis, the experienced receiver of Seville, who had been instrumental in getting up the agreement of 1508. The work went on and large collections were made, although delays in payment incurred penalties which, by 1515, amounted to seven hundred and fifty thousand maravedís, to be paid to the tribunal of Seville--but it never got the money.[1050]

[Sidenote: _COMPOSITIONS_]

Encouraged by this initial success the scheme was extended over the kingdom of Granada, the bishoprics of Córdova, Jaen, Badajoz, Coria, and Plasencia and the province of Leon, the sum agreed upon for them being fifty-five thousand ducats. Complaints however arose about injustice in the assessments; payments were not forthcoming in time; difficulties apparently insuperable accumulated and Ferdinand, after consultation with Ximenes and the Suprema, revoked the composition. Then it was revived and Ferdinand, January 18, 1515, placed it in the hands of Villacis, whose instructions justify the assumption that, under the guise of an act of mercy, the whole scheme was merely the pretext for fresh exactions on the defenceless. He was ordered to proclaim the composition in all places within the districts concerned; to order all persons obligated to pay their contributions; those proposing to join were to appear before him by their procurators at a specified time and arrange the assessments to be paid by each place or person, such assessments being binding on the absent. As for those who refused to join, Villacis was empowered to levy on their property as being jointly liable and to sell it at auction, giving to the purchasers good and sufficient title, guaranteed by the crown, while all secular officials were required to give him whatever aid he required. Inquisitors were to do the same and were to commission as alguazils such persons as he might name. Letters were sent to the corregidors of the towns, telling them that some contributors refused to pay, and they were empowered to decide all such questions summarily and finally.[1051]

That the matter was really an unauthorized impost, enforced by the authority of the Inquisition, would appear not only from this admittance of secular jurisdiction but also from what we know as to the methods pursued in the original composition of Seville. Each town was assessed at a certain sum which it divided at discretion among the contributors. When Alcázar was assessed at a thousand ducats it remonstrated to Ferdinand, who kindly ordered execution suspended. Other places were not so fortunate and the pitiless exaction of the assessment provoked resistance. Thus in March, 1514, when, by order of the tribunal and as representative of Villacis, Fernando Royz went to San Lucar de Barrameda, he seized some slaves and other property and placed them in the prison for safe-keeping. The Duchess of Medina Sidonia ordered the alcalde to return them to their masters and would allow no further levies to be made. Ferdinand forthwith rebuked her, ordering her to assist the officials and never again to interfere in matters concerning the Inquisition. He also wrote to the inquisitors to inflict due punishment on the person and property of the alcalde and all connected with the affair; the levies and executions must proceed and the money be collected, for the last instalment of the composition was to be paid by the end of May.[1052]

This indicates that the Seville composition had been fairly productive, but the other had continued to drag. With the death of Ferdinand, in January, 1516, pressure was removed and resistance became general. A cédula issued in the name of Queen Juana, February 24th, states that those who were assessed were refusing to pay and were supported by nobles and magnates, wherefore the inquisitors of Seville, Córdova, Jaen and Leon were instructed to enforce the payments by levy and execution and to prosecute with all rigor those who impeded the collection, irrespective of their rank and dignity. This was ineffective. In Córdova, the Count of Cabra and the Marquis of Priego forced the agents of Villacis to abandon work among their vassals, and the latter compelled them to deposit sixty thousand maravedís which they had collected. It was in vain that the Governors of Castile ordered them to desist and when, in September, the Count of Cabra justified his persistence by stating that his people had paid their composition to Rodrigo of Madrid--who had organized the scheme--and he would not allow them to be coerced into duplicate payments, he and the marquis were told that Rodrigo had no authority and that his receipts were worthless, which suggests the impositions practised on the victims. In the lands of the Duke of Medina Sidonia the same opposition was offered and the high court of Granada took advantage of the opportunity by issuing mandates restraining the collection, nor is it likely that it respected a royal cédula of July 4th commanding it to abstain from interference.[1053]

[Sidenote: _COMPOSITIONS_]

This resistance was fully justified. Even before Ferdinand's death, the proceedings of Villacis and his underlings had aroused general indignation. At the Córtes of Burgos, in 1515, the procurators of Seville had called the attention of the nation to their extortions in a petition which set forth their misdeeds, doubtless with exaggeration, but which, coming from those not personally interested, must have had substantial foundation in fact. Villacis was accused of arbitrary assessments and of making up deficiencies by assessing again those who had already paid, of cruelty, extortion and fraud, of selling at auction property taken in execution, at unusual places and times, so that he and his friends could buy it in, of using the machinery of the composition to collect his private debts, of defrauding the fisc by false returns, of charging to the contributors the exorbitant fees and expenses of his collectors, although the agreement provided that the fisc should bear them, of rendering to the contributors only a partial account of his collections and refusing to complete it, and in this charging himself with only forty ducats as collected in the Canaries, when there was evidence that the amount was more than a thousand. In short, he was accused of abusing his arbitrary powers in almost every conceivable way to oppress the people and enrich himself, and numerous specific cases were cited in support of the allegations. The magistrates of Seville had endeavored to restrain him but he scorned their jurisdiction and therefore, in the name of the whole community, the king was supplicated to send to Seville some one empowered to investigate and punish and make restitution to those wrongfully despoiled.

It was impossible to ignore such an appeal made in the face of the nation, and the Licenciado Giron, one of the judges of the high court of Granada, was despatched to Seville, but only with power to investigate and report to the Suprema within sixty days. The time proved too short and, after exceeding it, he begged to be relieved on making a partial report. In December, 1516, the Licenciado Mateo Vázquez, a resident of Seville, was commissioned, with the same powers, to complete the investigation and also to enquire into many complaints coming from various places that, prior to the appointment of Villacis, Pedro del Alcázar and Francisco de Santa Cruz and their employees had made large collections, of which they had rendered no account; that they had retained more than a million of maravedís, while those who had paid them were subjected to levy and execution to enforce duplicate payments. Altogether the whole business would seem to have been a Saturnalia of spoliation and embezzlement. Vázquez undertook the task and, on September 17, 1517, he was ordered to furnish to Villacis a copy of the evidence to enable him to put in a defence, after which all the papers were to be submitted to the Suprema for its action.

If anything resulted from this it has left no trace in the documents. The influence of Villacis carried him through, for he was continued in office and went on with the work. August 13, 1518, Charles V ordered an audit of his accounts and payment of balances due, which he skilfully parried. A new assessment was ordered to make good any part of the eighty thousand ducats that might still be uncollected and this was given to him to enforce. The old methods were still pursued for, in March, 1519, Charles was obliged to write vigorously to the Count of Cabra, the Marquis of Priego and the alcalde mayor of the Marquis of Comares, who had again interfered with his collectors and stopped all proceedings in their lands.

[Sidenote: _DILAPIDATION_]

Charles's Flemish favorites were growing impatient to share in the elusive spoils. He had granted to his chamberlain, M. de Beaurains, the rest of the composition, but it was not forthcoming, nor were the accounts of Villacis. In January, 1519, he wrote to Torquemada, one of the Seville inquisitors, to enforce on Villacis, with the utmost rigor of the law, the payment to Beaurains of any amounts collected and not paid over, while, if there was a balance uncollected, Villacis was to assess it afresh and account for it to Beaurains. This produced nothing and, on March 24th Charles emphatically repeated the order, granting full power to enforce it with penalties at discretion. Villacis, however, had experience in eluding such demands and Ferdinand had not left much to glean. In 1515 he had divided up the Córdova composition, giving twenty thousand to the Inquisition and reserving thirty thousand for himself. Of this he had received twenty thousand and the remaining ten he granted to the Marquis of Denia, but when the latter presented this order to Villacis, he was told that eight thousand was covered by previous grants and he could only have two thousand. Denia complained to Ferdinand, by that time mortally sick, who, on December 4th, assented to the transfer to him of the previous grants, but Ximenes, in transmitting this order to Villacis, made a condition that the twenty thousand for the Inquisition must first be paid and he subsequently suspended Denia's grant altogether. The marquis complained of this to Charles, who from Ghent, May 22, 1517, ordered Ximenes to lift the suspension, but again Ximenes insisted with Villacis that the Inquisition must first be paid. The funds seemed to evaporate and vanish into thin air. It is probable that Denia got little or nothing and that Beaurains fared no better, for Charles's prime favorite, Adrien de Croy, received as his share of the spoils only the seven hundred and fifty thousand maravedís, the penalties for delay, which had been assigned to the tribunal of Seville. The insatiable Calcena and Aguirre, however, secured a thousand ducats which, in 1515, Ferdinand granted them in recompense for their labors on the composition.[1054] Thus for ten years the New Christians of a large part of Spain had been harried and impoverished under delusive promises of exemption and, of the moneys thus extorted, but little reached either the crown or the Inquisition. The tribunal of Seville, indeed, can have received virtually nothing for, as we have seen, in 1556, its Archbishop Valdés asserted that, since the beginning of the century, it was so impoverished that it could support but a single inquisitor and pay only one-third of the ordinary salaries.[1055]

* * * * *

It would be impossible now to conjecture what was the amount of which the industrious and producing classes of Spain were thus despoiled, or what was the sum of misery thus inflicted, although we may estimate the retribution which followed in the disorganization of Spanish industries and the retardation of economic development. What reached the royal treasury and the money-chests of the Inquisition was but a portion of the values of which the owners were deprived. The assets taken melted in the hands of the spoilers. The expenses of the trials, which became inordinately prolonged, and the maintenance of the prisoners consumed a considerable part. Dilapidation and peculation, which even Ferdinand's incessant vigilance could not prevent, were the source of constant loss. Even without these, the necessity for immediate realization, to supply the peremptory demands of the treasury and the tribunals, threw an enormous amount of property and goods of all kinds on the market, in forced sales which were inevitably sacrifices. It was the established rule, perpetually enunciated, that every thing, except money and securities, was to be sold at auction, the real estate on the thirtieth day after condemnation, in presence of the receiver and notary of sequestrations.[1056] Notwithstanding all precautions, collusion and fraud were perpetual. It was doubtless as an effort to check them that Valdés, in 1547, ordered that real estate or censos, or government securities should not be sold without consulting the Suprema, together with an attested statement of past income and probable proceeds, and this was followed, in 1553, with an order that property in litigation was not to be sold.[1057] Precautions however were unavailing. The memorial of 1623 to the Suprema remarks that there are many opportunities for human wickedness in the sequestration, valuation and sale of sequestrated property; the valuations are habitually too low and the sales are made at the lowest prices. Whenever possible, property should be brought to the city of the tribunal, be properly valued and the receiver be forbidden to sell it for less. When sales have to be made at the place of arrest, they should be by public auction, in the presence of the commissioner and of a familiar, to see that just prices are obtained.[1058] The Suprema seems to have mooned over this until 1635, when it called for reports as to the manner in which the auctions were held and whether just prices were obtained; if the property was in some small place it must be brought to a larger town to prevent fraud.[1059]

During the period of active confiscation, moreover, when the moneyed classes were either ruined or anticipating ruin, it was sometimes impossible to effect sales and, in the pressure and confusion, property was allowed to go to waste. A letter of March 20, 1512, to the receiver of Huesca and Lérida, speaks of the uninhabited houses and lands which had not been sold, because fair prices could not be had, and which were perishing in consequence, and he was told to see whether he could not sell them on ground-rent, redeemable or irredeemable.[1060] It is impossible not to see in this the commencement of the _despoblados_ which were the despair of Spanish statesmen for more than two centuries. So, in 1531, the dwelling in Játiva of Juan Sanz, on whom it was confiscated, was allowed to fall into such disrepair that no one would take it subject to the incumbrances, and the rentals did not meet the ground-rents, so it was abandoned to the incumbrancers.[1061]

[Sidenote: _DILAPIDATION_]

The manner in which property melted away is seen in the settlement, made in 1519, of the estate of Mayor de Monzon, burnt for heresy. It was appraised at 110,197 maravedís, but against this were the expenses of the woman and her children while in prison, amounting to 41,100, and the widower, Diego de Adrade, finally agreed to take the estate for 17,000 maravedís, subject to whatever claims there might be against it.[1062] Everybody concerned grasped at what he could. In 1532, the Valencia tribunal sent Rafael Diego to Majorca to arrest and fetch Leonor Juan, wife of Ramon Martin who was blind. She was reconciled with confiscation and Charles V made a grant to the husband of a hundred libras from the estate, but when the account was made up the expenses did not leave enough to pay him. One item against which he protested was twenty-five ducats to Diego for twenty days' work, when his salary was only eighty ducats a year; the Suprema consequently suspended the item but, in 1545, Inquisitor-general Tavera ordered it to be paid.[1063]

* * * * *

It is perhaps superfluous to insist upon what was inevitable in an age when integrity was exceptional in public affairs, and in a business affording peculiar temptations to malversation, through the fluctuating uncertainty of receipts and the difficulty of effecting competent supervision. Ferdinand did his best to establish accountability, and his incessant activity exhibits itself in his minute criticisms on his auditor's reports of the accounts of receivers, but even his vigilance could not prevent frauds and peculation, nor was it possible for him to penetrate the mysteries lurking behind statements of receipts and expenditures, when the receivers were apt to use the funds as their own. When Juan Denbin, the receiver of Saragossa, died and his accounts were balanced, after all possible allowances were made, he was found, in 1500, to owe 9367 sueldos, which Ferdinand vainly endeavored to collect from his heir, the Abbot of Veruela. Denbin's deputy at Calatayud improved on his example and was found, in 1499, to be short 24,000 sueldos, of which he paid 8000 and promised the rest at the rate of 4000 a year; the installment of 1500 was obtained after some delay and, when we last hear of him, Ferdinand was endeavoring to secure that of 1501.[1064]

It is easy to understand the chronic reluctance of such officials to render statements, and Ferdinand's correspondence shows how difficult it was to force them to do so. There is much suggestiveness in a letter of October 15, 1498, to the Maestre Racional or Auditor-general of Catalonia, telling him that, as Jayme de la Ram, the former receiver, and Pedro de Badia, the present one, refuse under various pretexts to hand over their books so that their accounts can be settled, he is to take legal steps to compel it; they can have until March 1, 1499, to obey and, if they still refuse, their salaries are to be stopped. When the books are obtained no time is to be lost in striking a balance, and especial care is to be taken that they do not give themselves fraudulent credits. Juan de Montaña, receiver of Huesca and Lérida was another whose accounts were chronically in arrear.[1065] This continued to the end of Ferdinand's reign. In 1515 we find him writing to a receiver, who had flatly refused to obey an order of Ximenes to go to Valencia with his books and papers and render an account of his collections, for persistence in which the king threatened him with prosecution.[1066] After his death Ximenes labored energetically to evoke order out of disorder. He appointed a receiver-general, with power to collect by levy, execution and sale, all moneys due by the receivers, and all fines, penances, commutations and rehabilitations; moreover, to a new auditor-general Hernando de Villa, he addressed a cédula, February 21, 1517, reciting that the receivers had collected from the confiscations and other sources large sums of which for a long time they had rendered no account, wherefore he was instructed to visit every tribunal, to demand an accounting from the receiver, to examine all papers and vouchers and ascertain the balances due, while all notaries were instructed to furnish whatever documents he might call for, and he was empowered to enforce his orders with punishment at discretion.[1067]

[Sidenote: _PRODUCTIVENESS_]

Possibly this may have produced improvement, but if so it was but temporary. We have just seen how recalcitrant about his accounts was Pedro de Badia, the receiver of Barcelona; he did not improve and when he died, in 1513, he left his office in bad condition. He was replaced by Martin de Marrano, transferred from Majorca, who proved to be no better. In 1520 Cardinal Adrian, to punish him, reduced his salary to 2880 sueldos and then, April 16, 1521, wrote a long and indignant letter to the inquisitors, principally devoted to Marrano's misdeeds, among which was refusal to settle his accounts and alleging claims for which he had no vouchers. Yet, to all appearances, with the inexplicable tenderness shown to official culprits, he was retained in office.[1068] The tribunal of Sicily, where the confiscations were large, was in even worse hands. Diego de Obregon, who served as receiver from 1500 to 1514, left its affairs in lamentable confusion. He was succeeded by Garcí Cid, who was sent to reduce it to order. How he accomplished this is seen in a report of Benito Mercader, sent as inspector, describing the financial management as characterized by every vice, while peculation was rife among all the officials. Garcí Cid returned to Spain in 1520 and it was not until 1542 that the Suprema ordered him to pay the 1420 ducats, which he was found to owe, as well as what he had collected of 9300 more which were charged against him.[1069] Things did not mend for, as we have seen, Zurita, who became Auditor-general for Aragon in 1548, describes his untangling of the Sicilian accounts, which had not been received for twenty years and were in the utmost disorder.[1070]

* * * * *

It is evident that the receipts of the royal treasury formed but a portion of the amount wrung from the victims. What those receipts were, we have no means of knowing but, in 1524, the Licenciado Tristan de Leon, in an elaborate memorial addressed to Charles V, asserted that Ferdinand and Isabella obtained from this source the enormous amount of 10,000,000 ducats, which greatly assisted them in their war with the Moors.[1071] Occasionally we have scattering indications of the productiveness of inquisitorial labors. Thus in the little temporary Geronimite Inquisition of Guadalupe, in 1485, the sovereigns appropriated the proceeds to the erection of a royal residence for their frequent devotional visits to the shrine. It was a magnificent palace, the cost of which, 2,732,333 maravedís, was almost wholly defrayed from this source.[1072] In 1486, the Valencia tribunal must have been productive, for Ferdinand wrote from Galicia to the receiver Joan Ram, to supply all that was needful for a fleet, as he had not the money in hand at the court.[1073] The impression produced on contemporaries is conveyed in Hernando de Pulgar's grim remark, when, describing the violent expulsion from Toledo of the Count of Fuensalida, he adds that the populace, like rigid inquisitors of the faith, found heresies in the properties of the count's peasants, which they plundered and burnt.[1074]

The large sums which were raised in the various compositions, in return for the very slender exemptions offered, are an index of the magnitude of the confiscations and so is a proposition, made to Ferdinand and declined, of a loan of 600,000 ducats if he would transfer the adjudication of such matters to the secular courts.[1075] Although receipts were perhaps diminished, with the weeding out of the Judaizing New Christians, we have seen (Vol. I, p. 220) the offer made, in 1519, to Charles V, to provide an endowment which would meet all the salaries and expenses of the Inquisition and, in addition, to pay him 400,000 ducats in compensation for the abandonment of the confiscations. Soon after this another offer was made of 700,000 ducats, which seems to have been held under consideration for a year or two.[1076]

[Sidenote: _PRODUCTIVENESS_]

During the remainder of the sixteenth century, the constant drafts by the Suprema on the several tribunals shows that they were, as a rule, supporting themselves, with a surplus for the central organization, although occasionally a tribunal in bad luck had to be helped by some more fortunate brother. The grant, in 1559, of a prebend in each cathedral and collegiate church, supplied the growing deficiency of confiscations, but the latter received a notable augmentation after the annexation of Portugal, in 1580. This was followed by a large influx of New Christians from the poorer to the richer kingdom, where their business ability speedily led to the acquisition of wealth, while their attachment to the ancient faith gave to the Inquisition a new and lucrative field of operations. We shall see hereafter the curious transaction by which, in 1604, they purchased a brief immunity, and this led soon afterwards to an offer, by the New Christians of Seville and the western provinces, of 1,600,000 ducats for a forty years' suspension of confiscation, coupled with the release of descendants from disabilities and infamy, the rating of testimony at its true worth, and papal intervention with the king in the rendering of sentences. The offer was seriously considered, but an investigation of the treasury accounts showed that, in its financial aspect, it would be a losing bargain for the crown, which would have to support the Inquisition, and it was rejected.[1077]

The persecutions in Peru and Mexico furnished evidence against wealthy merchants at home which was profitably utilized. In 1635, the Pereiras, who were large contractors in Madrid, were implicated and also "the Pasariños and all the rich merchants of Seville." Then too, Francisco Illan of Madrid, rated at 300,000 ducats, was accused and we hear of the arrest of Juan Rodríguez Musa, described as a wealthy merchant of Seville.[1078] It is true that when, in 1633, Juan Nuñez Sarabia was arrested, and his books showed a fortune of 600,000 ducats, hope was dashed by Gabriel Ortiz de Sotomayor, a member of the Suprema, who claimed the major part of it as a deposit by him as curador of Doña María Ortiz and as executor of Don Bernabé de Vivanco.[1079] Still, a class of culprits such as these, composed of rich bankers and merchants, gave ample opportunity of swelling the assets of the Holy Office. In 1654, in an auto de fe at Cuenca, there were fifty-five Judaizers, many of them evidently in easy circumstances, one of whom said, on the way to the brasero, that his chances of heaven were costing him 200,000 ducats.[1080] Yet these were uncertain resources and we have seen that the Suprema, in its budget for 1657, only reckoned on receiving from the tribunals 755,520 maravedís, or about 2000 ducats, but, on the other hand, in a consulta of May 11, 1676, it boasted that, within a few years, it had contributed to the royal treasury confiscations amounting to 772,748 ducats vellon and 884,979 pesos in silver.[1081] In addition to this the confiscations were not only defraying any deficiencies in its income, but it was gradually becoming richer, for, in the years 1661-1668, the surplus of the Suprema and tribunals invested in government securities amounted to 21,064 ducats.[1082]

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the persecution of the Judaizing New Christians became sharper and we have seen the large results obtained, in 1679, by the Majorca tribunal from its wholesale prosecution of the Conversos of Palma. This persecution lasted till near the middle of the eighteenth century, with a large number of victims and, as they belonged in great part to the commercial class, the receipts must have been substantial. In sixty-six autos de fe, celebrated between 1721 and 1727, there were 776 sentences of confiscation. Many of these were unproductive, for confiscation was included in the sentence, whether the culprit had property or not, and the formula "confiscacion de los bienes que no tiene"--of the property which he has not got--is one of frequent occurrence, but there were doubtless enough possessed of wealth to make a fair average.[1083] Then there were occasional windfalls from others than Judaizers, as in the case of Melchor Macanaz, in 1716. The financial management seems not to have improved since the days of Ferdinand. No account of the estate was rendered until December 31, 1723. This shows that his real estate brought in a revenue of 1269 libras, indicating a value of about 25,000 libras. There had been collected 9320ll. 7s. 10d. and expended 5838ll. 1s., leaving a balance of 3482ll. 6s. 10d. If the results were not greater it was not owing to any scruples. Melchor's brother Luis had an interest of 770 doubloons on the books of the glass-factory of Tortosa. It was guessed that he had not sufficient capital to justify such an investment, so the Madrid tribunal, October 21, 1716, ordered Valencia to sequestrate it.[1084] Another piece of good fortune was the discovery, in 1727, of an organization of Moriscos, who had preserved their faith and whose confiscations were so profitable that the principal informer, Diego Díaz, received as reward a perpetual pension of 100 ducats a year.[1085]

[Sidenote: _USE MADE OF RECEIPTS_]

As the eighteenth century advanced, confiscation gradually grew obsolete. Heresy had been so successfully extirpated that relaxation and reconciliation grew rarer and rarer. In the records of the Toledo tribunal, extending to 1794, there is no sentence of confiscation later than 1738.[1086] In the census of all the tribunals, about the year 1745, there is but a single _juez de los bienes_, though occasionally we find that office tacked on to an inquisitorship, as in Valencia in 1795, where an addition of 52ll. 10s. is made to the salary in consequence, but that it was a sinecure is apparent from the fact that, in a record of the sentences of that tribunal from 1780 to 1820, there is not a case of confiscation.[1087]

* * * * *

It is not without interest to examine what was the use made of the large receipts during the early period, when they were controlled by Ferdinand and Charles V, and before the Suprema monopolized them for the support of the tribunals, save an occasional concession extorted by the crown. Pulgar and Zurita loyally assure us that, large as they were, the sovereigns employed them solely for the advancement of the faith--the war with Granada, the maintenance of the Inquisition and other pious uses.[1088] Supported by these authorities, modern writers assume that no covetousness can be attributed to the sovereigns in the employment of these means for the public weal.[1089]

Unfortunately, the records do not bear out these flattering assurances. The Inquisition, of course, had the first claim on the product of its labors and its expenses were defrayed from this source. I have met with but two cases, one in 1500 and one in 1501, where a salary was paid from the royal treasury and in both of these the recipient was Diego López, member of the Suprema and royal secretary--a duplicate position which might justify calling upon either source of supply.[1090] During the war with Granada, ending with 1491, undoubtedly the funds derived from the industry of the Holy Office were largely employed in its prosecution which, according to the standards of the age, was not only a patriotic but an eminently pious use. While this drain continued it is not likely that much of the confiscations was otherwise employed, and I have met with but one or two pious gifts--in 1486 a thousand sueldos to aid in the construction of an infirmary for the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria de Jesus and, in 1491 a rent of five hundred sueldos a year to the church of San Juan of Calatayud.[1091] After the conquest of Granada we find occasional grants to convents and churches, but they are not frequent and, as a rule, are meagre in comparison with the profusion lavished on courtiers and servants. The only large recipient of bounty seems to have been Ferdinand's favorite Geronimite convent of Santa Engracia of Saragossa to which, in 1495, he gave thirteen thousand sueldos for the purchase of certain lands and gardens and, in 1498, ten thousand more. There was, in addition, a yearly allowance of six thousand sueldos for the maintenance of the frailes; the payment of this was suspended, in 1498, on account of lack of funds, but Ferdinand, after some hesitation, made this good by transferring to the convent certain censos that had been appropriated to the Inquisition.[1092] In his correspondence of this period, up to 1515, there occur a few more pious expenditures, but all are of moderate amount and in no way justify the assertion that the confiscations were largely expended in this manner.

[Sidenote: _GRANTS TO FAVORITES_]

The acquisitive secretary Calcena was a much more frequent beneficiary. His position gave him exceptional facilities for watching the confiscations and of profiting by his knowledge. His name continually recurs as the recipient of gifts of censos, houses and money, and he had indirect means of participating, as we have seen when he shared in the ruin of the Archdeacon of Castro. Some light is thrown on the methods in vogue when, in 1500, the estate of Francisco López of Calatayud was confiscated. In this certain houses, valued at ten thousand sueldos, were included, which the son of López hoped to save, as belonging to his mother's dowry, but the father's papers had been seized and the marriage settlement was inaccessible. The son thereupon promised Calcena a third of the valuation for a copy of the document; the effort failed, the houses were confiscated and Ferdinand, compassionating Calcena's loss, not only gave him the promised third but pledged himself to defend the title in case it should be attacked.[1093] This suggests a possible source of profit in favoring the sufferers by confiscation. Many instances have been cited above of Ferdinand's kindly consideration in mitigating exceptional cases of hardship, and we shall have occasion to refer to others; it would be pleasant to attribute them wholly to a side of his character that has not hitherto revealed itself in history, but one cannot escape an uneasy suspicion that, as Calcena was the channel through which these bounties flowed, in some cases, at least, the successful petitioners were those who had made it worth his while to aid them.

The abuse of making to favorites grants out of confiscations antedated the establishment of the Inquisition. The Córtes of 1447 petitioned against it and Juan II assented in a fashion too equivocal to hold out much prospect of improvement.[1094] It continued and, when the property of the New Christians came pouring in, Ferdinand yielded to the greed of his courtiers and nobles with a profuseness which explains where much of the products of confiscation disappeared. His recklessness in this matter is illustrated by a complaint, in 1500, of the Admiral of Castile, representing that he had been given a censo on his vizcondado of Cabrera, confiscated in the estate of Juan Beltran, but that certain parties to whom it had also been granted were suing him for it. Ferdinand evidently kept no record of these heedless gifts, for he could remember nothing as to this duplication, and he applied to the tribunal for a list of the provisions respecting the estate so that he could decide between the claimants.[1095]

His only serious collision with the Inquisition arose from this source and he found its censures more effective than his own. His lavishness kept the tribunals drained to the point that frequently there was no money to pay the salaries. As early as 1488 the inquisitors assembled at Valladolid complained of this and supplicated the sovereigns to order receivers to provide for salaries before honoring royal drafts; if they failed to keep sufficient funds on hand for salaries they should be subject to removal by inquisitors.[1096] This was ineffective; the royal treasury was chronically bankrupt, endurance ceased to be a virtue and the question came to a head at the close of 1497. On November 15th, Ferdinand wrote to receiver Juan Royz of Saragossa to pay some small amounts, less than a hundred ducats in all, chiefly needed for an inspection and reform of Franciscan convents then on foot. He knew, he said, that the Saragossa tribunal was in great straits, but he could not furnish the money himself and means must be found to raise it, without compelling him to write again. Royz however refused to make the payments, stating that the inquisitors-general had placed him under excommunication if he should pay any royal grants. Ferdinand shifted the order to the receiver of fines and penances, but the inquisitors-general had been beforehand with him by removing that official. Thus baffled, he wrote to them, January 28, 1498, telling them that these payments were absolutely necessary and he had nothing wherewith to meet them; besides, there were other pressing demands. The Córtes were about to meet at Saragossa and he had ordered certain alterations in the Aljafería to accommodate him during his residence, the cost of which Royz refused to pay and the work was stopped. There was also the tomb of his father and mother, with alabaster statues, which he was building at the abbey of Poblet (the burial-place of the kings of Aragon) at a cost of fifteen hundred ducats; five thousand sueldos were due to the architect, Maestre Gil Morlan, and when Royz refused to pay this from the confiscations, Ferdinand ordered the amount to be collected from the ground-rent of Parascuellos, but it chanced that Royz himself owed that ground-rent and was in no haste to pay it. Meanwhile the salaries were paid, but the excommunication still hung over Royz and he refused obstinately to furnish money for these needs and for some more that were crowding in. February 28th, Ferdinand vainly endeavored to induce the inquisitor to make Royz yield by excommunicating him, and he then appealed to Suárez de Fuentelsaz, one of the inquisitors-general, but equally without success. Finally, on March 30th, he wrote to Torquemada by a special messenger, with orders to bring an answer, telling him that, as the salaries were paid, the excommunication must be lifted, for he would not permit it. This was successful and, on April 10th, he wrote again, promising that in future he would not make grants from the confiscations and penances. On April 20th he communicated to Royz the removal of the excommunication and urged the speedy completion of the alterations of the Aljafería and the payment to Santa Engracia of what was due.[1097] Thus ended this episode, which sheds a curious light on the relations of Ferdinand with the Inquisition and on the precarious nature of public finance at the time.

[Sidenote: _GRANTS TO FAVORITES_]

The excommunication had not been confined to Saragossa, nor was it removed elsewhere when Saragossa paid its salaries. In July, 1500, we find Ferdinand arguing with the obdurate Juan de Montaña, receiver of Huesca and Lérida, that it did not apply to the completion of an old donation to the church of Lérida, which had never been fully paid. We hear nothing subsequently of the censure, though complaints continued of salaries in arrears, and the Archdeacon of Almazan, who was inquisitor at Calatayud, was consequently unable to pay his debts when, in 1500, he was transferred to Barcelona. The tribunal of Valencia was hopelessly bankrupt when, in 1501, there came a lucky composition with the heirs of Juan Macip, for sixty thousand sueldos, which Ferdinand ordered to be applied to its liabilities so that, for once, it might be out of debt.[1098] It is scarce necessary to add that Ferdinand's promise to make no more grants was violated almost as soon as made.

In the profusion which kept the tribunals exhausted it by no means followed that those who had no influence profited by the royal favor. In 1493, Ferdinand granted to Leonor Hernández two thousand sueldos as a marriage-portion. Under various pretexts, payment was evaded. Leonor married and died, leaving the claim to her husband and brother who, in 1502, procured from Ferdinand an order for its immediate settlement, but whether this was honored is problematical.[1099] Even more delayed was a concession, in 1491, to Martin Marin of Calatayud, of three thousand sueldos on the confiscations of his father and mother-in-law; in 1512 Marin represented that he had never been able to obtain it and Ferdinand ordered its payment forthwith. These postponements were not always due to poverty. In 1491, a grant was made to Anton del Mur, royal alguazil, of a vineyard, forming part of the confiscated estate of Pascual de Santa Cruz. Receiver Royz of Saragossa made answer that the vineyard had been sold, but when the king ordered him to make over the proceeds to del Mur, the latter got nothing and Royz managed fraudulently to keep the vineyard in the hands of a third party. After nineteen years, del Mur, in 1510, revived the matter, when Ferdinand ordered the inquisitor and receiver to find out who held the vineyard and by what title and, if it was not found that Royz had sold it for a just price, del Mur was to be placed in possession.[1100]

The eagerness for these spoils was such that claims for them were put in without waiting for confiscation to be decreed, and it is evident that, when a man of wealth was arrested, there were agencies to convey the news to the expectants and the prey was divided before the quarry was killed. After Isabella's death, in 1504 these grants were an economical way to secure the fluctuating allegiance of the Castilian nobles, which Philip of Austria was ready to exploit and the nobles eager to profit by. When the Licenciado de Medina, of Valladolid, was arrested, the Admiral of Castile, Fadrique Enríquez, petitioned him at once for the confiscation and Philip from Brussels, May 5, 1505, granted the request, repeating it six months later. While awaiting Juana's confinement, before sailing for Spain, the two spouses, on September 12th, sent orders to all the cities, the nobles and officials not to obey Ferdinand or to pay taxes to him, and the receivers of the tribunals were specially told to withhold from him the confiscations.[1101] Philip's orders from Flanders, however, received scant respect and his reign in Castile was too transitory for him to exercise any notable influence on the disposition of the confiscations.

[Sidenote: _GRANTS TO FAVORITES_]

As for Ferdinand, what he granted with one hand he withheld with the other. February 23, 1510, he issued a cédula to all receivers saying that, in consequence of the falling off in confiscations, if all the grants which he had made and was making were paid, the officials would not receive their salaries and would abandon the work, to the great disservice of God, wherefore in future, no matter what orders he or the inquisitor-general might issue, no grants were to be paid until all officials had received their salaries and ayudas de costa and, when such grants were presented, he or the inquisitor-general was to be consulted. The rule was to be that debts must be paid first, then salaries and grants not until the last.[1102] Yet, on the day previous, he had given to Fernando de Mazueco, a member of the Suprema, certain olive orchards and censos confiscated on Gonzalo Ximenes of Seville; the same day he ordered the receiver of Jaen to deduct twenty thousand maravedís from the appraised value of some confiscated houses wanted by Dr. Juan de Santoyo, former judge of confiscations of Jaen, and he continued making gifts with reckless prodigality as though the royal treasury were overflowing and the Inquisition were richly endowed. In January, the Admiral of Castile had had a grant of houses valued at eight or nine thousand sueldos and, on April 2nd, he ordered the receivers of Toledo, Seville, Córdova and Jaen each to pay 375,000 maravedís, or 1,500,000 in all to his servant Juan Rodríguez de Portocarrero.[1103] Apparently it was exceptional for the Inquisition to enjoy the product of its exertions for, in May, we find him assuring the Suprema that no one had asked him for a confiscation of 100,000 maravedís just made in Valladolid, and that he will reserve it for the known necessities of that tribunal and, in July, that, although he has been much importuned for another confiscation, he will make no grant of it, so that the officials shall not suffer want.[1104] It is needless to point out what a stimulus this state of things gave to the condemnation of those whose estates promised relief.

Ferdinand went on precisely as before and it would be superfluous to multiply instances of his reckless profusion, save that we may mention a gift to his wife Queen Germaine, in 1515, of 10,000 florins from the confiscations of Sicily and we may recall his attempted grant of 10,000 ducats to the Marquis of Denia from the composition of Córdova.[1105] In this general scramble for fragments of the spoils, there is one point that may be noted--the demand for attractive slave-girls. How their existence came to be known to those who asked for them we can only guess, and it would be indiscreet to enquire why reverend members of the Suprema seem to be especially desirous of such acquisitions. April 7, 1510, Ferdinand writes to the receiver of Cartagena that he is told that, in the confiscated property of Ramado Martin de Santa Cruz, there is a Moorish female slave named Alia; if this is so she is to be delivered to Doctor Pérez Gonzalo Manso, of the Suprema, to be his property as a gift. March 18, 1514, the Licenciado Ferrando de Mazuecos, of the Suprema, petitions for a Moorish slave-girl, confiscated among the property of Juan de Tena of Ciudad Real, and Ferdinand orders her to be given to him, to do what he pleases with her. There was some contest over Fatima, a white Moorish slave-girl confiscated in the estate of Alonso Sánchez del Castillo. The Marquis of Villena asked for her and Ferdinand granted his request, June 15, 1514, but when the order was sent to Toledo, the deputy receiver refused to obey it, alleging that it was obtained by false representations, as the Suprema had already given her to the fiscal, Martin Ximenes. This was promptly answered, in a letter signed not only by Calcena but by the members of the Suprema, reiterating the grant to Villena and ordering the receiver to compensate Ximenes for her value.[1106] It is suggestive that no such eagerness is shown to obtain male slaves.

Ferdinand himself was not above appropriating articles found among the spoils of his subjects. In 1502 we find him taking fifty-five pearls from Sardinia, a part of the confiscation of Micer Rejadel, burnt for heresy. Sometimes he did not even wait for the conviction of the owner, as in the case of a horse which, in 1501, he gave to the inquisitor of Córdova, and then, on learning that the animal would be serviceable to him in the chase, he had it sent to him and ordered four thousand maravedís to be paid to the inquisitor wherewith to buy a horse or mule.[1107] He was even more unscrupulous, in 1501, when in Granada, on hearing of the death of Bernaldalla, a prisoner not yet convicted, he ordered that the garden belonging to him in the Rambla should be seized and given to the Princess Juana for her pastime, although he did not know whether it had been sequestrated.[1108] It manifests the abiding confidence felt in the conviction of all who fell into the hands of the Inquisition.

[Sidenote: _GRANTS TO FAVORITES_]

Yet it would be unjust to Ferdinand not to allude again to the numerous cases in which he softened the hardships of confiscation by concessions to the sufferers or their representatives--and this when, as we have seen, his own treasury was empty. No doubt in many instances the influence of Calcena was purchased but, as a whole, they are too numerous not to find their origin in a kindliness which has been deemed foreign to the stern consolidator of the Spanish monarchy, nor could Calcena have ventured to presume too far, during a long series of years, in making his master an unconscious almoner. Two or three examples of this must suffice to show the spirit actuating him. In 1509, Juan de Peralta of Segovia betrothed himself to Francisca Nuñez, daughter of Lope de Molina and his wife, who were prisoners of the tribunal of Jaen. They were condemned and burnt, their estate was confiscated and Peralta petitioned the king, saying that he could not marry without a dowry and begging an allowance out of the estate, whereupon Ferdinand ordered the receiver to give them two hundred thousand maravedís. The Inquisition was not to be balked; Francisca in turn was tried and reconciled with confiscation. Peralta made another appeal and this time Ferdinand granted twenty thousand maravedís.[1109] October 21, 1500, he writes to the receiver of Leon to release to Leonor González, reconciled, a vineyard confiscated on her, of the value of two thousand maravedís, because she is poor and has a daughter to marry.[1110] In 1510, he instructs receiver Badia of Barcelona to collect from the Bishop of Urgel ninety libras due to the confiscated estate of Guillen Dala, and, in view of the poverty and misery of Beatriz, Violante, Isabel and Aldonza his daughters, the money is to be paid to them. There was also an old debt due to Dala by Ferdinand's father, Juan II; this he orders to be collected from the rents of property set aside for the benefit of Juan's soul and to be also paid to the daughters.[1111] These are only examples of numerous similar acts, which afford a welcome sense of relief as mitigations in some small degree of the miseries inflicted on thousands of the helpless through the pitiless enforcement of the cruel laws of the Church.

It would be wrong not to bear testimony also to the spirit of justice which is apparent in many of Ferdinand's decisions of questions brought before him. Thus on January 8, 1502, in instructing a receiver about a censo in dispute with Galceran de Santangel, he concludes by telling him to act without legal delays, so that justice may be administered with rectitude and promptitude, and that nothing may be taken but what belongs to the fisc, without wronging any one. September 12, 1502, he wrote that Garcí Corts complains that he had granted him certain censos and then, by a second letter, had stopped the transfer, whereupon he now orders the matter to be settled according to justice, without reference to what he may have written to the contrary, for it is not his will to inflict wrong on any one.[1112] It would be easy to multiply these examples, from his confidential correspondence with officials, when there could have been no possible object in a hypocritical affectation of fairness. If he not infrequently rebuked inquisitors and receivers for negligence in gathering in confiscations, it may be truly said that he more often scolded them for undue harshness and delay in settling honest claims.

The pressure on Ferdinand for grants from the confiscations continued to the last and was yielded to more often than prudence would dictate. The courtiers maintained intelligence with the tribunals to obtain advices in advance of the arrest or condemnation of wealthy Conversos, in order to make early application, and occasional letters from the king to receivers asking information as to such estates and forbidding their sale without further orders, indicate a growing sense on his part of the necessity of caution. One of his latest utterances, as mortal sickness was stealing over him, is a letter of September 23, 1515, to the receiver of Toledo, in reply apparently to a statement thus furnished. He had received, he says, the information as to the confiscated property of Pero Díaz and his wife, and also the representation as to the pressing needs of the tribunal, in consideration of which he will change his mind and make no grants from it except of a hundred thousand maravedís to his treasurer Vargas to reimburse him for certain outlays.[1113] Thus to the end was maintained the struggle between those who labored for the harvest and those who sought to reap its fruits.

[Sidenote: _RESISTANCE OF RECEIVERS_]

When, after his death, Ximenes sought to bring order into the finances of the Inquisition, he seems to have felt that his conjoined power as inquisitor-general and governor was insufficient to remedy these abuses, and he procured from the young King Charles a pragmática dated at Ghent, June 14, 1517, which was assuredly drafted by him. This recites that the salaries and ordinary expenses of the Inquisition are defrayed by the confiscations, but experience shows that often they cannot be paid, in consequence of the grants made by the crown; this must be remedied, or the Inquisition cannot be sustained, to the great damage of the royal conscience, and therefore, during the good pleasure of the king and until the salaries and ordinary expenses are provided for, no graces, donations or reliefs are to be complied with, under pain of a thousand gold ducats. Copies of this are to be sent to every tribunal and all officials are exhorted to see to its enforcement.[1114] The gloss put on this by Cardinal Adrian, when sending it to the tribunal of Sicily, shows that there was no scruple in construing its provisions most liberally. He says that he has heard that many are obtaining grants on the Sicilian confiscations; what was collected under Ferdinand must be used as he had ordered, which was to buy rents for the support of the tribunal. The new pragmática postpones all grants to the salaries and charges of the Inquisition and, as Sicily must provide for the support of the Suprema and of some of the home tribunals, it can be alleged in refusing to pay all grants that are presented, wherefore none must be paid without consulting him.[1115]

Having issued this pragmática, Charles proceeded to nullify it with all convenient speed, but it served as a justification to the receivers in withstanding him. Three months later, on September 19th, he landed in Spain, surrounded by a crowd of hungry and greedy Flemish favorites, eager to enrich themselves at the expense of their master and his subjects. This reinforcement of the importunate native beggars made the profusion of Ferdinand seem niggardly by comparison. Peter Martyr tells us that the Flemings, in less than ten months after their arrival, had already sent home eleven hundred thousand ducats, drawn partly from the indulgence of the Santa Cruzada and partly from the Inquisition, for they obtained grants not only of estates confiscated but also of those of prisoners still under trial--showing how promptly they established relations which gave them secret information of the operations of the tribunals, and how little chance of escape had the unlucky prisoners whose estates would have to be refunded if they were not convicted. This was one of the abuses of which the cure was sought in the project of reform in 1518, which failed through the death of Jean le Sauvage.[1116]

The booty thus secured by the Flemings shows how the confiscations had increased under this pressure, especially as the Spaniards were no less eager, if not quite so fortunate. This thoughtless prodigality of Charles is emphasized by the fact that he was impoverished in the midst of his profuseness. July 5, 1519, we find him ordering the receiver of Cartagena to pay the paltry sum of thirty ducats to Fernando de Salmeron, receiver-general of the Suprema, to reimburse him for a loan of that amount.[1117] The receivers did all that they could to check these extravagant liberalities for, large as were the receipts, the tribunals were threatened with bankruptcy. Saragossa, in reporting, March 18, 1519, to the Suprema, some impending convictions, endeavored to avert the dissipation of the results by representing its poverty; the salaries of most of the officials were more than a year in arrears and, if the king did not exercise more restraint, the tribunal could no longer be maintained.[1118]

One or two instances of the struggles between the receivers and the recipients of the royal bounty will illustrate the existing conditions, and incidentally show how Adrian and the Suprema were forced to bow to the tempest and to connive at the pillage of the resources of the Holy Office. A letter of Charles, January 19, 1519, to Juan del Pozo, receiver of Toledo, relates how he had granted to M. de Cetebrun, of his body-guard, the confiscation of Alonso de Baena and had ordered Pozo to convert it into money and pay it to him; how Pozo had subsequently been notified that Cetebrun had sold it to Iñigo de Baena, son of Alonso, and had been ordered to deliver it to the latter; how neither of them had been able to make him surrender it; how another royal order had been served on him and then one from Adrian and the Suprema, with no result save an assertion that he had no funds; how Baena had made four journeys to Madrid, to his great loss and expense, the whole winding up with a peremptory command to obey the repeated mandates without further delay or excuse. It is probable that still more energetic measures were requisite to get the property, for Pozo was an obstinate man. A letter from Charles to him, September 5, 1519, refers to an order on him for six hundred ducats, in favor of M. Baudré which remained unpaid, in spite of repeated commands from the king and Cardinal Adrian, whereat Baudré is much aggrieved, especially as he has been keeping a man in Toledo, at his expense, to collect it. Charles now orders it to be paid within sixty days, in default of which Pozo must, within twenty days thereafter, present himself at the court, wherever it may chance to be, with all his books and papers for examination. This was a most formidable threat and perhaps brought Pozo to terms for, on December 2nd we find him ordered to pay on sight four hundred ducats to La Chaulx, as procurator of the Toison d'Or and, the next day, five hundred more to Jean Vignacourt, a gentleman of the royal chamber.[1119]

[Sidenote: _RESISTANCE OF RECEIVERS_]

Cristóval de Prado, receiver of Cuenca, was another troublesome subject. Charles granted to Cortavila and Armastorff, two of his chamberlains, the confiscated estate of Francisco Martínez and his wife. It must have been a large one, for a suggestion was made of giving the courtiers four thousand ducats and reserving two thousand to pay the salaries, but they demanded the whole and Charles, April 10, 1518, ordered it to be turned over to them and, if any part had been converted to the use of the Inquisition, it was to be made good out of other confiscations. Prado staved it off for nearly eighteen months, pretending to hesitate about including the dowries and marriage portions of the children, until Charles, September 5, 1519, ordered all these to be swept into the grant. Soon after this, on November 9th, there was another crop of confiscations at an auto de fe at Cuenca when, in preparation for fresh bounties, Salmeron, the receiver-general, was ordered to report as to their value and also as to the condition of the salaries and other indebtedness. This probably deprived Prado of excuses for awhile, and we hear of no more refusals to pay until April 16, 1520. The Duke of Escalona had asked for the confiscations of three of his vassals at Alarcon, amounting to three hundred and fifty ducats, but Prado alleged that only two of the parties named had been condemned and that the order therefore must be surreptitious. He wrote in this sense to Charles and to the Suprema but, on September 7th he was commanded to pay it, and the letter was signed by Doctor Manso of the Suprema and countersigned by Cardinal Adrian. Cuenca, at this time, must have been a mine of wealth. Just before sailing from Coruña, Charles, on May 8, 1520, ordered Prado to pay a thousand ducats to Antoine de Croy, two hundred to Henri d'Espinel, four hundred to Simon Fisnal, mayordomo to Charles de Croy, Prince of Chimay, and five hundred to Adolf Duke of Cleves. On October 23rd Charles writes that his secretary Gui Morillon, who had been charged with these collections, reported that Prado refused to pay them, but he adds that, as there are now funds sufficient, after paying salaries and expenses, and the thousand ducats to Cardinal Adrian, they must be paid in preference to subsequent grants. As Adrian had been given an interest in this heavy raid on Cuenca, it is probable that Prado was coerced into obedience.[1120]

Our old friend Villacis of Seville was wary and experienced and accustomed to hard blows. He gave the courtiers infinite trouble, but the cases in which he was involved were too numerous to be detailed here and space can only be found for one of five hundred ducats to Francisco Guzman and Antonio Tovar, gentlemen of the king's chamber. This had originally been drawn on Cuenca, but Prado had been found too impervious and it was transferred to Seville. Villacis evaded it until Charles, on May 6, 1519 threatened him with _merced_--being placed at the king's mercy--if it was not paid at once. This was serious, but Villacis was unmoved and merely replied that he had no money to pay the overdue salaries, besides large sums owing for services and for judgements rendered against the confiscations. The affair dragged on until, on August 23, 1520, Adrian and the Suprema ordered immediate settlement, in default of which an agent would be sent, at his expense, to do it personally. This was probably effective, as we hear no more of it.[1121]

[Sidenote: _DANGER OF WEALTH_]

Aliaga of Valencia was one of Ferdinand's oldest and most trusted receivers and had given evidence of similar powers of resistance, if we may judge from the anticipatory measures taken when the interests of the powerful favorite, the Prince of Chimay, were involved. When news was brought to the court of the reconciliation and confiscation of the wealthy Alonso de Abella of Valencia, a speedy partition was made among the vultures. Eight hundred ducats were assigned to Jean de Baudré and Philibert de la Baulme, gentlemen of the chamber, three hundred to another gentleman, Jayme de la Trullera, and the rest of the estate to the Prince of Chimay, after paying salaries, if they could not be met out of other confiscations. Orders to this effect were despatched to Aliaga, July 5, 1519, with a pressing letter from Charles to the inquisitors. Apparently the beneficiaries felt that more active measures were necessary; Simon Tisnot, the prince's majordomo, was empowered to receive the property and, as his agent, Gui Morillon was sent to Valencia, July 9th, with letters to the inquisitors, to the Governor of Valencia and to Aliaga. The inquisitors were told that, as the clause concerning salaries might be so construed as to consume the whole, they must order Aliaga, under pain of excommunication, to deliver to Chimay's agent, within three days, all the property, goods, debts and money of the confiscation, except the eleven hundred ducats to the other courtiers; if the necessities of the tribunal required any portion, it must be very moderate so that Chimay, if possible, might get the whole. The governor was ordered to help Tisnot and to urge the inquisitors to compel Aliaga to obey. Aliaga was told that, under pain of deprivation of office, he must deliver the estate to Morillon within three days and must strain every nerve to meet the needs of the tribunal from other sources, so that Chimay may suffer no deduction. If the salvation of the monarchy had depended on the realization of the grants, the letters could scarce have been more vehement. Yet it was all in vain; Aliaga was imperturbable and, on December 8th, Charles expressed his displeasure that the eleven hundred ducats had not yet been paid though he had postponed to them the grant to Chimay, but it is not likely that his vague threats, in case of further delay, proved effective.[1122]

In this carnival of plunder, there is small risk in assuming that the pressure on the tribunals gave a stimulus to the prosecution of the richer class of the Conversos and that wealth became more than ever a source of danger. In fact, the number of large estates referred to in these transactions would seem to indicate that few escaped whose sacrifice would supply needful funds to the Inquisition, while ministering to the greed of the courtiers. It need occasion no surprise, therefore, if the threatened New Christians, in their despair, appealed to Leo X and rendered it worth his while to remonstrate with Charles. Yet the latter, while scattering ducats by the thousand among his sycophants, had the effrontery to instruct his envoy, Lope Hurtado de Mendoza, September 24, 1519, to disabuse the pope as to the accusation that the Inquisition was prosecuting the rich for the confiscations, the truth being that all, or nearly all, of those prosecuted were poor, and that the fisc had to support them while in prison and to pay their advocates and procurators.[1123]

After Charles's departure, in May, 1520, to assume the imperial dignity, we hear of few new grants. He was rapidly ripening under the weight of the tremendous responsibilities accumulated upon him and was recognizing that his position implied other duties than the gratification of his courtiers' greed. It would seem that he willingly shifted upon the inquisitor-general and Suprema the burden of such trivial matters, and left it to them to assent to or dissent from such graces as he might bestow. A grant from a confiscation at Saragossa, dated at Brussels, October 1, 1520, bears the formula that it is with the assent and advice of the inquisitor-general and Council of Aragon, and, though it is signed by Ugo de Urries by order of the emperor, it has the _vidimus_ of Cardinal Adrian.[1124] Practically thus the control was lodged with the Suprema, whose needs, as we have seen, prevented any accumulations in the tribunals and we hear little or nothing subsequently of this dissipation of the confiscations.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _RESULTS_]

If I have entered thus minutely into the details of this branch of inquisitorial activity, it is because its importance has scarce been recognized by those who have treated of the Inquisition. It not only supplied the means of support to the institution during its period of greatest activity, but it was recognized by the inquisitors themselves as their most potent weapon and the one most dreaded by the industrious classes which formed their chief field of labor. Its potency is the measure of the misery which it inflicted, through long generations, on the innocent and helpless, far transcending the agonies of those who perished at the stake. To it was largely owing the ultimate extinction of Judaism in Spain, for the exalted heroism which might dare the horrors of the _brasero_ might well give way before the prospect of poverty to be endured by disinherited offspring. To it also is greatly attributable the stagnation of Spanish commerce and industry, for trade could not flourish when credit was impaired, and confidence could not exist when merchants and manufacturers of the highest standing might, at any moment, fall into the hands of the tribunal and all their assets be impounded. Even the liberality of the Spanish Inquisition, in not confiscating the debts due by the heretic, was but a slender mitigation of this, for the creditor was liable to ruin through the difficulties and delays interposed on the realization of his credits, and past transactions were not secure until protected by a proscription of forty years. The Inquisition came at a time when geographical discovery was revolutionizing the world's commerce, when the era of industrialism was dawning, and the future belonged to the nations which should have fewest trammels in adapting themselves to the new developments. The position of Spain was such as to give it control of the illimitable possibilities of the future, but it blindly threw away all its advantages into the laps of heretic Holland and England. Many causes, too intricate to be discussed here, contributed to this, but not the least among them was the bleeding to anæmia, through centuries, of the productive classes and the insecurity which the enforcement of confiscation cast over all the operations of commerce and industry.