USA > Indiana > History of the Catholic church in Indiana, Volume I > Part 56
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treatise, so to speak, on this subject, we quote him, almost in full, in the following paragraphs:
The most important work in modern times regarding the Spanish Inquisition is the "Critical History of the Spanish Inqui- sition," in four volumes, by Juan Antonio Llorente. As his work is-so universally followed by a certain class of writers, it may be well to say something about the author and his work. Llorente was secretary of the Inquisition in Madrid from 1789 to 1791, and again connected with it for a short time in 1793. He tells us that from 1808 to 1811 the archives of the Inquisition were placed at his disposal; that he copied papers that had a historical value and then burned them. These documentary extracts give the work its real value; they are its best refutation. We know that the cases and documents communicated were selected by an acknowledged bitter enemy of the Catholic church and of the Inquisition. Aside from these documentary extracts Llorente's work is the greatest tissue of falsehood, conjecture, and contradiction that can be imagined. He was a man without principle; he tells us that as early as 1784 he had lost all faith, yet he continued for years his priestly functions; in 1795 a liberal, and arrested for plotting the overthrow of the church and the kingdom, we find him in 1805 in the pay of absolute tyranny, writing a book against the constitutional liberties (the fueros) of the Basque provinces; in 1808, a traitor to his king and nation, he becomes a servant of Joseph Bonaparte; although still pretending to be a priest, he is the Thomas Crom- well of Spain, and at the head of the commission for confiscating the churches, convents and property of religious orders; and he loses this place only when accused of stealing and embezzling 11, 000,000 reals.
After writing the History of the Inquisition we find him trans- . lating a .most obscene work, "Adventures of de Faublas," and giving vent to his bitter enmity against the Catholic church in his " Political Portraits of the Popes." His statements about Greg- ory the Great, Gregory VII, and the crusades are the ravings of a madman; no sane writer has dared to utter such nonsense, how- ever great his prejudice and bitter hatred. Llorente is an untruth- ful historian; in spite of the plain statement of Holy Scripture,
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he asserts that St. Paul the Apostle was a married man; according to him, St. Justin wrote before the time of St. Ignatius the Martyr; he considers the heathen Appollonius of Tyana to be a heretic; he believes in the exploded fable of Pope Joan; he asserts that the conflict of Gregory VII was with Henry III instead of Henry IV; in the history of his own country, at the very time the Inqui- sition was instituted, he betrays his ignorance by asserting that Philip the Fair still lived in 1516 and in 1517, although he died ten ten years before this; he does not know that the Count of Arcos and the Marquis-Duke of Cadiz, the greatest hero in the conquest of Granada, was the one and the same personage, Ponce de Leon- a mistake as great and inexcusable as if a writer on American history should assert that the President Washington and the Gen- eral George Washington were two different persons! According to this author, Bavaria and Russia are among the countries that became Protestant in the sixteenth century; Russia and the Greek church would still be united with Rome if Leo X had been more yielding and lenient! Verily, we would punish a school-boy if he should make such blunders; but this is the great historical oracle Llorente! Later on we shall see what reliance we can place on the number of victims given by him.
In the historians of Spain, especially Mariana, Ferreres, Zurita, Blancas, and the contemporaries Pulgar, Peter Martyr, Bernaldez, Marineo Siculo, and in the authentic public documents, we have abundant historical material to give us a correct idea of the Spanish Inquisition. Amongst modern writers, Hefele's "Car- dinal Ximenes " contains the best and most correct dissertation on the subject. A modern work of great importance and but little known was published towards the close of the last century in Ger- many by the non-Catholic historians Spitler and Reus, viz: "Reus' Collection of Instructions and Documents concerning the Spanish Inquisition."
Every church or denomination that has a creed, a discipline, and a church authority, has also a tribunal, an inquisition or trial, to preserve the purity of faith, to punish transgressions of disci- pline. Even amongst the different Protestant denominations we hear of trials not only for matters of discipline, but also for (654)
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heresy. The Catholic church has her well-defined creed, from which to swerve is heresy or error; her well-known laws of disci- pline, her regular rulers and judges, the Pope and the bishops of the church. These judges must take cognizance of any innova- tion in faith, especially when it is claimed to be no innovation; these judges must punish heresy, the known, public and contu- macious departure from the ancient faith, and apostasy, be it apostasy from faith or from an ecclesiastical religious dignity or duty. The punishments are the censures of the church, viz: excommunication, suspension and interdict.
Every Catholic moral theology explains these censures, every Catholic work on canon law explains the cases when and how these ecclesiastical punishments ought to be inflicted, what public penance ought to be done by those who of their own choice desire to be reconciled with the church. The Catholic church as a church knows only these ecclesiastical punishments; any other corporal punishment was the outgrowth of time and the police regulation of the state. When the Roman emperors became Christians they could not divest themselves of the idea that in pagan times they had been high priests, "Pontifex Maximus;" they occasionally issued edicts on religious matters, mostly against idolatry, some against heretics, some, by the Arian and other heretical emperors, against the Catholics. When Priscillian, A. D., 385, appealed from his ecclesiastical judges, the council of Bordeaux, to the Emperor Maximus, and was condemned to death, St. Ambrose and St. Martin of Tours condemned the shedding of blood for heresy. On the other hand, the Catholics suffered bitter persecutions from the Arian emperors Constantius and Valens, from the Goths, and especially from the Arian Vandals in Africa.
Not only during the middle ages was heresy considered a crime against the state punishable with death; even after the Reforma- tion it was the law of many Protestant countries, yea, it is found on the statutes of some of our American colonies. We shall not expatiate on this unpleasant subject; none have suffered more from the intolerance of the times than Catholics. A remarkable fact is that the most liberal and cultured emperor of the middle ages, Frederick II, a man without faith, should have published the most
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stringent laws known, and ordered heretics to be burned. (Edict of Padua, 1239.) It may be pleaded in explanation of these stringent laws that nearly all heretics commenced with murder and rapine; they were in most cases really rebels and traitors by teaching that only they, the elect, had a right to rule or even to possess property ; they were mostly Manichæans who taught and- practiced the most horrible crimes. The war against the Albigenses and Raymond of Toulouse was more political than religious. France wanted the sovereignty over the Provence and Languedoc; Simon Montfort wanted the fiefs and possessions of the richest prince of that age; and Raymond of Toulouse, a thoroughly bad man, who had three wives living, provoked and commenced the war by spoliation and murder. Peter of Aragon, instead of foster- ing the Inquisition against the Albigenses, as Prescott would have us believe, fell in the battle of Muret, 1213, fighting in their favor. For many centuries the regular courts of the Catholic church exercised their jurisdiction, and sometimes inflicted ecclesiastical censures, when toward the end of the fifteenth century a new court was instituted in Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. After the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, 711, when the Gothic kingdom of Spain was overthrown, the wars of the little Christian remnant . against the Moors were nearly constantly waged; but they had been only feebly carried on for nearly two hundred years before the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. Christian Spain was divided into fac- tions, devastated by civil wars, sons of kings frequently fighting against their father, brothers against brother; kings were frequently incapable and immoral.
The two reigns in Castile and Leon before Isabella, John II and Henry VI, were called the reigns of minors. The only thing that prevented the entire overthrow of the Christian power in Spain, and preserved the Christian religion, was that the Moors were also divided and generally engaged in civil war. At length all Christian Spain, hitherto divided between many petty kings and princes, was united under the able rule of Ferdinand and Isabella. The nation rose to a new life. The wars against the enemies of their religion and nationality were resumed with the greatest enthusiasm; the domestic administration was thoroughly reformed,
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finances placed in better shape, the courts of justice entirely remodeled; a state of things such as could be found in no other country was the cause of the institution of that court called the Spanish Inquisition.
Even if we do not believe in legendary reports, attested by memorial stones of doubtful authenticity, that the Jews had settled in Spain during the time of King Solomon, there can be no doubt that from the time of the Ptolemies, or at least from the first cen- turies of the Christian era, many Jews lived in Spain. Public documents, such as public laws and the decrees of councils, prove to us not only their great numbers, but also the perhaps unique fact that here they practiced proselytism to a very great extent. The council of Elvira, 303-313, canon 16, forbids the frequent intermarriages with Jews, and also to call on them to bless the fields. The Third council of Toledo, 589, not only renews the prohibition of intermarriages, but also attests that the Jews were largely engaged in the slave-trade and circumcised their slaves by force. The Fourth council of Toledo, 633, forbids that Jews be forced to become Christians. Canon 57 and canon 59 say that many outwardly Christians were secretly Jews. At the end of the seventh century, when northern Africa was already conquered by the Saracens, the Jews of Spain entered with them into a con- spiracy to overthrow the Gothic kingdom. This was discovered by King Egica, the Saracens were driven back this time, and not all the Jews, as Prescott tells us, but only those who were found actually guilty of treason and rebellion, were sentenced to slavery, as we learn from the Eighth canon of the Seventeenth council of Toledo.
During the reign of the Saracens, the Jews in Spain acquired wealth, power, influence, and office; they had flourishing schools and colleges in Granada, Cordova, Toledo and Barcelona. Espe- cially in natural sciences, they had men of universal fame; in fact, in Spain the Jews acquired a culture and possessed an influence which they reached in no other part of the world. Although the religious wars against the Moors frequently brought the Jews in danger, as many saw in them foes more dangerous than the Saracens, yet, protected by such Popes as Alexander II and
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Gregory VII, they acquired even in christian Spain, especially from the time of Alphonsus X, the astrologer, an influence, a power, that was quite exceptional. Medicine and pharmacy were almost entirely in their hands. We meet them as ministers of finance and favorites of kings; they had their own judges, and were judged by their own laws; like grandees and noblemen, they could be arrested and imprisoned only by the express mandate of the king; they were, as the liberal cortes of 1812 declared, a nation within a nation.
From a public address of Peter the Venerable of Clugny, we learn that for a time at least a law existed that stolen goods, even sacred vessels of the churches, if found in the hands of Jews could not be recovered, nor could they be forced to reveal the thief. When we remember that during the national wars the Jews nearly always sided with the Moors; that in Castile, during the war between Peter the Cruel and Henry II, they sided with the former; that the able and good King Henry III was poisoned by his Jewish physician; that in 1473 the Jews entered into a con- spiracy to gain possession of Gibraltar-we can understand that occasional reaction set in, local riots and massacres took place, especially in Navarre.
There existed also in Spain a large number of persons, out- wardly and professedly Christians, who secretly were Jews or inclined to Judaism. These Maranos, or Christian .. Jews, ? were exceedingly numerous; we are told that when the Inquisition was established in Seville, and proclamation was made that'all who were guilty should come forward, acknowledge their faults, and if penitent be absolved and escape punishment, 17,000"came for -. ward and were absolved. In the same manner 5,000, when the court of Inquisition was held in Toledo. These Maranos insinu- ated themselves into the highest offices, not only in the state, but even in the church. Thus we have the example of Peter Aranda, Catholic bishop of Calahorra at the time the Inquisition was insti- tuted, who by 101 witnesses, called by him for his) defense to Rome, was unanimously proven to be secretly a Jew. They intermarried with the first families of the land, and actually used their whole wealth and influence to make all Spain a Jewish king-
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dom. That a most intense Jewish propaganda was carried on at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella is a fact admitted by all his- torians, even by Llorente in a former work, and also their connec- tion with the Moors when Mahometan power was anything but dead. It was especially against these Maranos that the inquisition was instituted. The general opinion is that Ferdinand and Isa- bella obtained the consent of Pope Sixtus IV for the erection of this religious and political court, November 1, 1478. Bernaldez and Zuniga, contemporary historians, mention the year 1480. Pulgar also seems to indicate this. Certain it is that the first court of the Inquisition at Seville was only organized January 2, 1481; and if determined upon in 1478, milder means, viz., instruction and preaching, were used for the space of two years to bring back the apostates. Llorente's assertion that the Papal Nuncio Nicolo Franco favored the institution of the Inquisition, may be doubted. From the diplomatic documents on the Inqui- sition published by Reus and Spitler, it is evident that Sixtus IV was so opposed to this peculiar court, that he reluctantly con- sented only when a total rupture of diplomatic intercourse was threatened. Prescott refers this difficulty to the appointment of a bishop; the documents show that the Inquisition was the main cause. It is not probable that the papal legate would favor what the Pope so bitterly opposed. Prescott's assertion that Queen Isabella was at first reluctant is certainly false, because all the Papal briefs regarding the institution of the Inquisition are answers to the queen's letter; it was instituted in her kingdom; all the judges of the first court at Seville, as well as Torquemada, were her subjects; and we know how jealously she guarded her right of governing her kingdom, especially in matters relating to religion.
For a long time prior to the institution of the Inquisition, nearly every cortes of Castile and Leon had demanded that some steps should be taken to guard the state against the Maranos; the most outspoken, the most emphatic, in this demand was the cortes of Toledo in 1480, and we shall not be mistaken if we take the institution of the Inquisition in 1481 as an answer to this demand. Ferdinand and Isabella appointed as the first judges of the Inquisi-
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tion Michael Murillo and Juan Martin, Dominicans, with two secular priests, Juan Ruiz and Juan Lopez del Barca; its full and complete organization it acquired two years later, when Thomas Torquemada was appointed grand inquisitor of Spain, and published a full ·code of laws, instructions and mode of procedure-the so-called statute of Valladolid.
The first inquisitors of Seville commenced their official career January 2, 1481, by publishing two decrees or edicts; in the first they enumerated several signs by which the apostasy of a pretended Christian to Judaism could be known; in the second they appointed a period of grace, calling on all who knew themselves guilty of apostasy to present themselves and do penance, when they would be absolved and escape all severe punishment. In regard to the first decree, Llorente indignantly remarks that the twenty-two signs enumerated would at present not be considered valid grounds for suspicion. Prescott copies Llorente. Fortunately Llorente gives us the edict in full (Vol. I, pages 154-158), and refutes himself most conclusively. Even one born of christian ancestry, and much more one of Jewish descent, would be justly suspected of apostasy to Judaism if he showed the signs and observed the Jewish ritual in the manner indicated. Prescott, omitting the more weighty signs, is guilty of very nonsensical twaddle, noting as one of the signs the Hebrew names given to the children, stating that by a law of Henry II they were forbidden to give their children christian names. The Spanish laws were never guilty of such silly contra- diction; one law applies to the Christians, the other to the Jews. In fact Prescott and a large class of writers cannot make the distinction between Jews and those who were baptized and professed to be Christians and apostatized secretly to Judaism. No Jew, and afterward no Mahometan, was amenable to the Spanish Inquisition for being a Jew or a Mahometan; only apostasy from the embraced or professed Christian religion was punishable. Pres- cott calls the edict announcing a period of grace and calling upon the penitent to confess and be absolved as delusive, and speaks of the fines, confiscations of property, and perpetual imprisonment of those who so confessed. This is downright falsehood-an asser- tion contrary to all proof and reason.
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Llorente tells us in one place that the court of Inquisition of Seville for that city and Andalusia the first year condemned two thousand persons to death, quoting the celebrated Spanish histo- rian, Mariana. Both Mariana and Pulgar state that till the end of Torquemada's administration (1498) about two thousand were condemned to death. In another place Llorente gives 298 as the victims of Seville (1481), and to carry on the lie attributes the other 1702 to Cadiz; but he forgets that he himself admits that up to 1483 only one court, viz, that of Seville, existed. We know also from public documents, such as the bull of Sixtus IV, that the court of Seville was instituted for the whole kingdom of Castile and Leon.
Thomas Torquemada, prior of the Dominican convent of Segovia, was made grand inquisitor in 1483, first of Castile and Leon, and in October of the same year also for Aragon. Tribunals were elected this year in Seville, Cordova. Jaen, and Villa Real, soon afterward transferred to Toledo. Shortly afterward there were twelve tribunals of the Inquisition in Spain-seven in the former kingdom of Castile and Leon, and five in Aragon.
Modern historians of any note, like Ranke, Leo, Guizot, Le- normant, yea, even Llorente, admit that the Spanish Inquisition was a political and state institution, not a religious institution of the Catholic church. The judges were not the ordinary judges of the Catholic church; they were appointed, suspended, and removed by the king, as the liberal cortes of 1812 tell us; all the laws and statutes were published in the name of the king; all the fines and confiscations went to the royal exchequer. When Cardinal Xim- enes objected to one of the lay judges, King Ferdinand the Catholic curtly remarked: " It is the king from whom he has his jurisdic- tion and authority." Llorente's attempted prosecution of Charles V and Philip II by the Inquisition is a myth. The question was raised in Rome whether Charles V, then at war with Paul IV, was not favoring the heretics in Germany. Rome later on expressed the opinion that the royal theologian, Melchior Canus, not Philip, should be prosecuted; but the king forbade it.
The fact that quite a number of these judges were ecclesiastics does not prove that the Inquisition was a religious court. We
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know that Sir Thomas More was the first layman who held the office of grand chancelor of England. Up to that time England's supreme judge was always an ecclesiastic; it was the rule of the middle ages, for evident reasons, to select the judges from the ecclesiastical state. The Spanish Inquisition, instead of being a monument of the religious despotism of the Roman pontiffs, was, . according to Ranke, always opposed by the Popes whenever they could do so. The Inquisition was instituted hardly one year when Sixtus IV, January 29, 1482, declared that his consent was obtained by false representations; that only the general plan had been exposed to him; that the Inquisitions of Seville had acted cruelly and unjustly, and that he now refrained from punishing them with ecclesiastical censures on account of Ferdinand and Isabella. Prescott's statement that the compunction of the Pope was but transient, that he shortly afterwards quieted the scruples of the Queen respecting the appropriation of confiscated property, that he urged the sovereigns to proceed, etc., is not historic truth. Llorente gives us the Papal briefs spoken of, namely, 29th Jan- uary, 23d February, and 2d August, 1483. In the brief of January 29, he declares that he believes the assertion of the Queen that she persecutes heresy, or rather apostasy, not on account of financial gain; he praises the ecclesiastical Inquisition of Sicily, and not the state Inquisition of Spain; he refuses his approbation to the exten- sion of the Inquisition as asked by the Queen, stating that the old ecclesiastical episcopal courts were sufficient.
February 23, the Pope appointed Don Inigo Manrique, arch- bishop of Seville, to receive appeals from the sentence of the Inquisitors in matters of heresy; and as all this was not sufficient, in the brief of August 2, he complains that as appeals to said arch- bishop were often hindered, he would himself hear appeals. He warns most earnestly against too great severity; he receives under his protection those that are penitent; he demands their pardon, even if they had allowed the period of grace to transpire; he demands from the sovereigns that the property of the penitent should not be confiscated. If a temporal prince or government had published such a humane, mild edict, Llorente would not have found enough words of praise. From this time on the Pope fre-
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quently received appeals, and often directly absolved or ordered the secret absolution of penitent apostates in order to preserve their honor and property; thus even Llorente mentions five Papal decrees of absolution in the year 1486; each of the four first ordered the absolution of fifty penitents. We know not how many in vir- tue of the fifth decree, but we do know that the Pope at one time absolved two hundred and fifty victims of the Spanish state Inqui- sition in Rome, and all the terrible penance they had to do was to visit some churches and say some prayers. Llorente mentions a large number of cases in which Julius II and Leo X received appeals, granted special judges, restrained the severity of the Inqui- sition, granted pardons, etc .; and certainly Llorente, who hates the Pope as the devil does the cross, does not present the thing in too favorable a light.
From the foregoing it will be readily preceived that the Pope received appeals because heresy and apostasy were religious mat- ters, pertaining to him; Ferdinand and Isabella demanded that every appeal should be to the state courts. So pronounced was the opposition of the Pope to the Spanish Inquisition, that as early as 1498 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed banishment and confisca- tion of property against any one who should appeal to Rome; in I 509 Ferdinand decreed even death against any one who should procure a brief or bull against the Inquisition. Leo'X excom- municated all the members of the tribunal of Toledo for their severity (1519); he demanded that false witnesses should be pun- ished, and, in some cases, even be put to death; he declared the Inquisition to be a great evil. Gregory XIII was the greatest pro- tector of the Moriscos. Paul III protected those who opposed its introduction in the kingdom of Naples. Pius IV and his great- nephew, St. Charles Borromeo, resisted its introduction in Milan- then subject to Spain.
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