IX
Decline and Abolition of the Holy Office in Valencia
On December 16, 1705, the city of Valencia was occupied by a small force of Allied soldiers under the command of Juan Bautista Basset y Ramos. Shortly after the Allies entered the city, most of the nobility and royal officials fled the kingdom for the safety of Bourbon-controlled Castile.[1] The most conspicuous exception to this mass exodus of Valencia's traditional governing classes was her two senior inquisitors, Juan de la Torre y Guerau and Isidro de Balmaseda. Remaining at their posts throughout the Allied occupation, the inquisitors not only succeeded in maintaining order within the city but were also able to keep Bourbon military and political leaders supplied with a steady stream of intelligence.[2]
When the disastrous battle of Almansa on April 25, 1707, led to the withdrawal of Allied forces, the city was once again left defenseless, and the arrival of a messenger from the advancing Bourbon army on May 6 led to an outbreak of rioting during which a mob stormed the city hall and arms were distributed to the people. At this critical moment, the tribunal, led by its indefatigable chief, Isidro de Balmaseda, stepped into the breach. After hiding the terrified jurats in the palace of the Inquisition where they would be safe from the mob, Balmaseda ordered the religious communities to organize processions to pray for the city's deliverance while sending his officials to make contact with the heads of the craft guilds and others with influence over the popular masses to quell the rioting. After a message from the Bourbon com-
mander assuring the city that it would not be put to the sack if it surrendered was received by the auxiliary bishop, Balmaseda felt free to allow the jurats to leave the palace so that they could officially welcome the royalist forces, while sending several officials of the Inquisition to convince the archduke's remaining supporters to lay down their arms. These delicate negotiations successfully concluded, the city surrendered without a struggle to the duc d'Orléans.[3]
In what may have been its finest hour, the tribunal had saved the city from all the horrors and cruelty of war to which a useless resistance would have exposed it.[4] Furthermore, during the long months of occupation, it had emerged as the leading element of the city's political elite, protecting and defending its weaker members against the popular masses. Its prestige had never stood higher, and in a marginal note scrawled on the tribunal's final report, Inquisitor-General Vidal Marin ordered the Suprema to write the tribunal to congratulate it for the exemplary manner in which it "had conducted itself during that critical period."[5]
After the city had surrendered, the inquisitors gave further proof of their unqualified loyalty to the Bourbons by prosecuting those who had collaborated with the Allied government or had shown any sympathy for the Allied cause. This prosecution was carried on in two ways: by virtue of the Suprema's edict of October 9, 1706, which ordered penitents who had been urged to disobey Philip V to denounce their confessors to the Holy Office, and by using the tribunal against any Allied loyalist who could be shown to have committed an offense that fell under inquisitorial jurisdiction.[6]
In summer 1707, Balmaseda pressed charges against the abbot and monks of the Cistercian monastery of Poblet and ordered the arrest of Fray Mario Andreu, the monastery's administrator for the villages of Quart and Aldaya who had been instrumental in keeping them loyal to Archduke Charles.[7] At the same time, the tribunal ordered the arrest of Fray Peregrin Gueralt of the Servite order who had carried intelligence to the archduke's forces.[8] As a member of the special tribunal that was established to punish those who had served the archduke, Inquisitor Balmaseda also came into conflict with the archbishop and his officials who had made no secret of their sympathy for the Allied cause even after the recovery of the city by the Bourbons. After a confrontation with the vicar-general
over his treasonous correspondence with Allied generals, Balmaseda was very nearly placed under ban of excommunication.[9]
The Valencia tribunal's outstanding record of loyalty to the Bourbon cause in an otherwise "rebel" province did not go unrewarded. Sometime in early June 1708, the crown granted the tribunal 3,400 lliures in revenues to be drawn from the village of Alaquás. Evidently, the inquisitors must have enjoyed excellent relations with Melchor de Macanaz, the chief Castilian minister in the conquered province, as he moved quickly to make the revenues available to them and earned their praise for his demonstration of "courtesy and affection" for the Holy Office.[10] Ironically, the same inquisitorial tribunal that Maeanaz had so willingly assisted in the days of his glory also benefited from his disgrace. After the publication of a papal decree condemning as heretical the strong memorial of royal perquisites that he had drawn up for the Council of Castile in December 1713, he was banished to France. Tried in absentia by the Holy Office, he was sentenced to perpetual exile and the loss of all of his propert.[11] Among the dividends that came to the Inquisition's treasury as a result of this ease were more than 9,300 lliures that the Valencia tribunal received between 1716 and 1723 from property that had been awarded to Macanaz by the crown during his sojourn in the kingdom.[12]
Buoyed by the firm support of Philip V (1701-1746), the Spanish Inquisition in general, including the Valencia tribunal, made a significant political and financial recovery during the first decades of the eighteenth century. In Valencia, overall activity increased dramatically to 1,323 eases between 1701 and 1750, as opposed to the 451 recorded between 1651 and 1700. This increase was especially impressive if we compare it to the activity recorded during the slack years of the majority of Charles II (from 1675), when the tribunal only logged 113 cases.
The tribunal's excellent relationship with the crown during this period is demonstrated by the employment of its inquisitors in a variety of special assignments. In 1746, for example, Inquisitor Francisco Antonio Espinosa was given the responsibility for carrying out a visitation to Corpus Christi seminary, of which King Philip V was founder and patron.[13] Several years later, Inquisitor Fernando de Urbino was selected by the crown to carry out a visitation to the troubled Cistercian monastery of Valldigna.[14]
The tribunal's financial condition, which had already deteriorated during the last years of the reign of Charles II, continued to worsen during the War of Succession as a result of the Allied occupation and the devastation caused by the Bourbon reconquest.[15] In February 1706, the tribunal wrote the Suprema to comment that it had been unable to collect most of its revenues for that year because of the "ruinous" condition of the local economy.[16]
As the 1706 letter clearly indicated, the tribunal's financial condition depended absolutely on the general condition of the economy and particularly on the agricultural sector. The restoration of peace and stability under the Bourbons led to a period of significant economic recovery beginning in about 1713. Between 1713 and 1787, the population of the kingdom virtually doubled to about 770,000, and, as a consequence of this increased population pressure, much new land was put under cultivation. Overall agricultural output increased significantly, while productivity was improved through a large number of private irrigation projects. Peasant incomes increased as a result of the spread of rice cultivation (in spite of official opposition) and the increasing use of rural labor by Valencian silk producers, and the production of raw silk more than doubled between 1740 and 1770.[17]
The impact of these trends on the rural rents—on which the fortunes of the Valencia tribunal depended—could not have been more positive, with 300 to 400 percent increases in the tithe in virtually all areas.[18] As a result, the tribunal's financial condition improved dramatically, with overall revenues almost tripling between 1727 and 1797. Increases were particularly dramatic in income sectors sensitive to improvement in agricultural rent, especially the tithe-driven income from canonries which increased more than fourfold, and rural mortgages in which the tribunal actually began making additional investments from the mid-1720s.[19] By the 1780s, the tribunal's obvious prosperity had emboldened several minor officials to petition the Suprema for an increase in their salaries.[20]
The Inquisition even expanded its jurisdiction after the publication of the bull In eminenti , which condemned Freemasonry in Spain on October 11, 1738.[21] In 1748, Masonry was added to an Edict of Faith for the first time and was included in edicts on a regular basis from 1755.[22] From 1738 to the outbreak of the French
Revolution, the Spanish Inquisition, with strong encouragement from the crown, kept up a desultory pursuit of masons, who were primarily foreigners or Spanish military officers who had been initiated into the Masonic order during sojourns in foreign countries. To the Valencia tribunal belongs the unique distinction of having received a denunciation for Masonry against Sor María de Santa Escolastica, a French Ursuline living in Sagunto and the only nun ever accused of that offense.[23]
In spite of the Valencia tribunal's fervent loyalty and a general recovery in the prestige of the Holy Office under the leadership of Inquisitor-General Juan de Camargo (1720-1733), however, the general trend of Bourbon policy was to emphasize royal perquisites (regalias) and reduce the power and independence of the Holy Office. Melchor de Macanaz's reform proposal, which was presented to the Council of Castile on November 3, 1714, went far beyond the Junta Magna report of 1696 in advocating the conversion of the Inquisition into a purely ecclesiastical tribunal and restricting its censorship function by preventing it from prohibiting any books without first submitting the case to the crown for a final decision.[24] While some of the more daring elements in this proposal were never put into effect (subordination of the Suprema to a royal secretary or direct royal nomination of calificadores), it did serve as the basis for royal policy toward the Holy Office during much of the eighteenth century.
At the consulta of February 28, 1769, the fiscales of the Council of Castile asserted that the crown had complete authority over the Inquisition, including the right to "direct it, limit it and even suppress it."[25] The royal cedula of February 5, 1770, significantly weakened the Inquisition's claim (never fully validated) to exclusive cognizance of bigamy cases by formally dividing such cases among royal courts, ecclesiastical tribunals, and the Holy Office.[26] At the same time, the Inquisition lost jurisdiction over blasphemy and sodomy, which went entirely to the ordinary courts. In 1784, moreover, the Holy Office was prohibited from arresting any royal official, titled noble, or military officer without first submitting the particulars of the case to the crown.[27]
Even more significant and far-reaching in reducing the independence and freedom of action of the Holy Office was the royal cedula of June 16, 1768, whose provisions were clearly inspired by the
Macanaz memorial of the early part of the century In the future, according to the cedula, the Holy Office was to see that "Catholic authors" were given a chance to defend their works before they could be condemned, while inquisitorial edicts of prohibition were not to be published before being presented to the king for approval through the appropriate secretaries of the Council of Justice or Council of State. Moreover, in a clause that would have gladdened the heart of the old fiscal had he been alive to read it, the Spanish Inquisition was prohibited from publishing any papal bull without first obtaining permission from the Council of State.[28]
Late in the century, the Valencia tribunal experienced for itself the Bourbon regime's willingness to intervene directly in inquisitorial trials even after they had been decided. In May 1790, Fray Agustín de Cabades, a 51-year-old Mercedarian who had made a distinguished career for himself as a professor at the university and also served as a calificador of the Holy Office, was convicted of solicitation. The accusation against Cabades was based on repeated offenses with both male and female penitents going back twenty years as well as on several spontaneous but incomplete and mendacious confessions. He had also blatantly abused his position with the Holy Office by assuring one of his victims that she had fully carried out her new confessor's requirement that she recount her experiences with him to the Holy Office by reporting it to him since he himself was "a part of the tribunal." Confronted by such overwhelming evidence, the tribunal sentenced Cabades to abjure in the chambers of the Holy Office before the twenty oldest monks of his monastery, suspended him from his office as calificador, and exiled him for eight years from the royal court and the city of Valencia, with the first four years to be spent in reclusion in the monastery of Játiva.
Even though the Valencia tribunal's sentence appears to have been fully justified, Cabades's intellectual attainments, especially his knowledge of foreign languages (English, French, Italian), made him an exceptional individual. As a result, instead of reclusion in Játiva, Cabades was permitted to travel to El Escorial on the express order of royal first secretary Floridabianca to consult with the government about its ambitious educational reform program. In September 1790, Cabades was given special permission to return to Valencia by Inquisitor-General Agustín Rubín de Cevallos and was permitted
to take up his chair of theology at the University of Valencia with his sentence of reclusion and exile entirely removed.[29]
The timidity and subservience with which the Suprema and successive inquisitors-general reacted in the face of pressure from the Council of Castile and its aggressive prosecuting attorneys were communicated to the provincial inquisitors through royal ordinances that had the effect of greatly inhibiting their response to denunciations. In 1746, Ferdinand VI replied to a request for financial assistance from the Suprema by rather contemptuously suggesting that costs could best be controlled by not making every "willful slander" an excuse for undertaking a formal investigation and that even when a denunciation was signed by a known individual, a judge did not have to be dispatched to investigate each case but that some less expensive way ought to be found.[30] On January 1 of the following year, another royal pronouncement was issued which declared that before inquisitorial tribunals undertook to follow up on charges contained in a denunciation, they would have to make a preliminary investigation to determine the veracity of the charges.[31]
That the crown's lukewarm support for the judicial activity of the Holy Office succeeded in inducing an attitude of extreme caution among Valencia's inquisitors and their agents can be seen from several cases involving perfectly ordinary citizens. In late spring 1746, for example, Dr. Diego Forner, the commissioner of Benicarló, received four separate denunciations against Patricio White for heretical propositions. In previous years, a commissioner would have immediately called in witnesses and carried out his own preliminary investigation. That this was expected is indicated by the sharp rebuke he received from Valencia's inquisitor, Dr. Manuel Xaramillo de Contreras, for his slowness in doing so. The letter from Xaramillo de Contreras was followed by another from the tribunal's prosecuting attorney ordering Forner to carry out an investigation so as to make sure the witnesses were not acting out of personal animosity toward White. Several months later, White, who had probably gotten wind of the investigation, came to see the commissioner, confessed, and was duly reconciled. There the case rested until the following year, when another denunciation for the same offense reached the tribunal. This time it took until July 11, 1766, for the tribunal to respond by ordering a new investigation. Finally, more than twenty-one years after the original denuncia-
tion, White was called to the tribunal not to be arrested and placed in the dreaded secret prison but simply for an audiencia de cargos, where the accused was presented with a summary of the charges against him and invited to reply instead of being subjected to the ignominy of arrest and trial. Four days after White presented himself in Valencia, he was notified of the evidence against him. In response, he promised to behave better in the future and was released.[32]
Another inevitable result of the atmosphere in which the tribunals were forced to operate during the eighteenth century was the suspension of cases even when the evidence against the accused was all but overwhelming. A good example of this was the case of Salvadora Cabrera, who was accused by more than 50 witnesses of a variety of offenses including blasphemy, irreverence toward holy images, and superstition. In spite of the conclusive evidence against her, the tribunal chose to suspend proceedings even after the Suprema had written to specifically approve any action it might have wished to take.[33]
Quite apart from the negative atmosphere created by royal legislation, the tribunal's wavering and unwillingness to follow through on denunciations and actually punish offenders is hardly surprising given the timorous attitude displayed by the Suprema in even the most ordinary cases. Salvadora Cabrera, a poor woman with few friends, would hardly seem like the sort of subject whose honor and reputation would stir very much concern within exalted government circles. In spite of this, the Suprema operated with an extreme, even absurd, degree of caution. After the initial suspension of her case in November 1773, the tribunal had set various of its minions to report on her activities. Since these reports indicated continual blasphemies as well as such superstitious practices as predicting the future and pretending to work miracles, the prosecuting attorney demanded her arrest. Given the by now overwhelming evidence, the fiscal won his point, and the tribunal ordered her detention subject to obtaining permission from the Suprema. After receiving a summary of the case from the tribunal, the Suprema decided, inexplicably, to submit the evidence to the calificadores of the Corte tribunal (Madrid) for their opinion. It was only after their judgment (which merely confirmed what had already been determined by the tribunal) had been received that the
Suprema dictated a sentence of a reprimand and two years of exile from Valencia city, Mislata, and Manranara.[34] The extreme punctiliousness displayed by the Suprema in the case of a poor and friendless individual—an ideal victim—is striking to the observer with some knowledge of the early history of the Spanish Inquisition. It is highly unlikely that the high conviction rates and harsh sentences of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have been achieved with such an attitude. Centralization, which had now progressed to the point that the Suprema was intervening in every phase of a provincial tribunal's proceedings, must have undermined the self-confidence of provincial inquisitors, making them extremely chary of displeasing their masters in Madrid by taking any action that was not approved in advance. For its part, the Suprema was well aware that unusual displays of activity by provincial tribunals would be poorly received at court and consequently was always on the side of caution. As a result, during the last half of the eighteenth century, the Valencia tribunal continued receiving denunciations, carrying out investigations, and initiating prosecutions but with few concrete results.
If fears of the Suprema's disapproval had a chilling effect on a provincial tribunal's operations against religious and moral offenders, the Suprema's lack of support in disputes with royal courts over its civil and criminal jurisdiction continued to have a negative impact on its ability to protect it from decay. Perhaps the most glaring example of the Suprema's lack of support for the Valencia tribunal's civil jurisdiction concerned the Colegio de Villena, which had been established in 1637 by a former physician to the Holy Office.[35] When he founded the college, Dr. Villena received permission from the Suprema to place it under the official protection of the inquisitors of the Valencia tribunal who would exercise full jurisdiction over the legal enforcement of all aspects of its constitution. In July 1739, a dispute arose over the awarding of a college scholarship, and the unsuccessful candidate appealed to the civil chamber of the Audiencia, which intervened to prevent the college rector from conferring the scholarship. The successful candidate, who happened to be a descendant of the founder, then appealed to the tribunal's civil chamber, and the battle was joined when the Audiencia subpoenaed the records in the case and demanded that the notary in charge of the Inquisition's civil court appear before it to testify, Of course,
Valencia's inquisitors refused to allow this on the grounds that the Audiencia had no jurisdiction in the ease since the Inquisition had always exercised control over all aspects of the college through its civil court. When the Suprema was notified about the tribunal's strong stand, however, it responded by urging the tribunal to drop the matter entirely. From the Suprema's point of view, even this humiliating form of self-effacement was preferable to challenging the Audiencia. In fact, the Suprema even suggested that if this matter could not be settled quietly, the tribunal should give up its patronage entirely so as to avoid possible censure.[36]
Even though Valencia's inquisitors were proud of their role as patrons of the Colegio de Villena, it was the maintenance of the tribunal's civil and criminal jurisdiction over the members of the "corporation" of officials and familiares that was vital to the tribunal's future as a political and social force in the kingdom. The changed atmosphere at court, however, made it almost impossible for the Suprema to effectively support the local tribunals in disputes over the fuero.
Early in the reign of Philip V, the Suprema made its position on these disputes perfectly clear in a carta acordada dispatched to the provincial tribunals. According to this letter, the widespread belief that the Inquisition was abusing its privileges stemmed entirely from the overhasty defense of officials by the provincial tribunals even in dubious cases. Instead of an aggressive defense of official privilege, tribunals were enjoined to settle disputes with the royal courts in a friendly manner, and unless there was a clear-cut case in favor of the Holy Office, local tribunals were advised to make no move without first consulting the Suprema.[37] In another carta acordada issued on December 22, 1747, Inquisitor-General Pérez de Prado further curtailed provincial tribunals' freedom of action in jurisdictional disputes with the royal courts and removed their most effective weapon by prohibiting the use of ecclesiastical censures in such cases.[38]
As we have already seen in the case of the Colegio de Villena, even when the Inquisition's jurisdiction was well established, local tribunals could not count on support from the Suprema, so that it is hardly surprising that the eighteenth century saw the gradual disappearance of official tax exemptions and personal privileges. Perhaps the most valuable of all the privileges enjoyed by officials of the
inquisitorial court was the freedom from paying royal taxes. As we have seen above, this privilege was violated during the crisis years of the reign of Philip IV, but it was later restored after the fall of the count duke of Olivares. During the eighteenth century, however, all the inquisitorial tribunals gradually lost this exemption, with the Valencia tribunal's turn coming in 1743.[39]
The same process of attrition affected exemptions from local taxation enjoyed by familiares in different parts of the district. In 1752, for example, the Valencia tribunal received a complaint from the familiares of Teruel to the effect that their long-standing exemption from local taxation had now been broken and that they paid taxes like any other members of the nonprivileged orders.[40] Similarly, a letter to the Suprema from the three secretaries of the tribunal in 1785 records their loss of exemptions from sales and property taxes levied by the city of Valencia.[41]
The Valencia tribunal found out for itself just how far the Suprema was prepared to go in enforcing the new prohibition on the use of ecclesiastical censures when it sought to employ them to defend the right of Gaspar Morate, a familiar of Játiva, to refuse to serve on the village council. Such exemptions from municipal service had been customarily granted to familiares in certain places including Játiva, but this time, the town fathers defied the tribunal and refused to allow Morate to withdraw his name. Frustrated in its effort to negotiate with the town authorities, the tribunal requested permission to employ ecclesiastical censures, but its request was denied. The tribunal's defeat on this occasion sounded the death knell of yet another privilege that had been enjoyed by Valencia's familiares.[42]
The privilege that appeared to have best stood the test of time was the exemption from quartering of royal troops and officials. Customarily, familiares were classed with caballeros and hidalgos in the matter of quartering so that troops would be lodged with them only as a last resort after the homes of the nonprivileged had all been filled. Along with this important privilege came the equally valuable one of exemption from the special (and frequently heavy) charges levied on towns along the route of a marching regiment to pay the costs of transporting its supplies and equipment. During the War of Succession, of course, the frequent passage of large bodies of soldiers through the impoverished kingdom made it im-
possible for the exemption to be observed, and a memorial to the tribunal from the association of familiares written just after the conclusion of the war tells of many violations by hard-pressed quartering officers.[43] In August 1729, the familiares' rights suffered another setback when the government of Philip V declared flatly that familiares were not to be exempt from quartering royal troops and contributing to their transportation expenses. In obedience to this order, the Suprema ordered the tribunal to suspend the legal proceedings it had initiated against Játiva, San Mateo, and several other towns for violating the familiares' exemption.[44]
The privilege seemed dead, but the relative calm of the reign of Charles III led to a revival. In 1760, we are informed that the ranks of the familiares of Játiva were always filled because they enjoyed an exemption from quartering and from the transportation levy.[45] In Castellón de la Plana, familiares had been placed in an intermediate category, ahead of ordinary pecheros but not quite in the same class as hidalgos or employees of the royal salt monopoly. In 1781, however, the captain-general himself intervened with the city council in support of the tribunal's contention that the familiares should be classed with the nobles and hidalgos of the town with regard to quartering his majesty's soldiers.
The 1780s were a relatively tranquil period for Spain, but the outbreak of war with the French Republic in 1793 meant that large bodies of troops would be moving toward the Spanish border. The familiares' quartering exemption once again came under heavy pressure, and it is highly likely that an 1806 circular issued by the governor-general of Catalonia to the village of Ulldecona and other towns in the Catalan part of the inquisitorial district sounded the death knell of the familiares' last privilege. In this document, the captain-general declared categorically that familiares were no longer exempt from providing lodgings for soldiers passing through the territory or from contributing to their expenses. That the tribunal was now prepared to abandon the long struggle to maintain the exemption from quartering is shown by the fact that it immediately wrote to the familiares of the towns mentioned in the order telling them to obey it.[46]
It is to be expected that the gradual but inexorable loss of the privileges and exemptions formerly enjoyed by officials and familiares led to a decline in the number of persons applying for official
positions. This certainly happened in some tribunals, with the Inquisition of Barcelona complaining of difficulties in filling official posts as early as 1719.[47] That this gloomy picture was not the general rule can be seen from the case of the Valencia tribunal, in which, in spite of the loss of official privilege and the stagnation in official salaries, vacancies continued to attract numerous excellent candidates and in which the network of familiares diminished but remained viable and important throughout the century.
Certainly, the conservatism of Valencian society made family traditions of service to the Holy Office a powerful incentive for individuals to apply for official positions. The note of family tradition was sounded very strongly by all parties during the struggle to succeed Manuel Fernandez de Marmanillo as alguacil mayor in 1788. The candidates were Antonio Maria Adell y de Bie and Antonio Esplugues de Palavecino y Gamir. The former was a cavaller and the eldest son of the baron of Choza, whose family had held official positions with the tribunal since 1583 when his ancestor, Benito Sanguino, came from Castile to assume the post of receiver. Moreover, the family had been in continuous possession of the office of alguacil mayor from 1586 when Benito Sanguino assumed it until 1787 when Fernandez de Marmanillo took it over. In letters to the tribunal, both Antonio Maria and his father stressed the importance of family tradition with the baron, who had himself been a candidate for the position in previous years, assuring Inquisitor-General Rubin de Cevellos of the great honor it would be for his son to maintain the house of Sanguino's traditions of service to the Holy Office.[48]
The other candidate, Antonio Esplugues de Palavecino y Gamir, is an example of the way in which the Valencia tribunal could still attract new blood into official ranks during the eighteenth century. He came from an old family of Genoese nobles whose ancestor, Ambrosio Palavecino, had fled the Turkish invasion of one of the Genoese-held islands in the Mediterranean (where his father was governor) and settled in Valencia. The family's service to the tribunal began with Antonio's great-grandfather, José Palavecino y Esplugues, who became secretary in 1705. His son, Joaquín Palavecino, succeeded him in 1733 and in 1757 was appointed alguacil mayor to serve during the rather frequent absences and illnesses of the incumbent Marmanillo. In his memorial, Antonio
Esplugues de Palavecino also stressed his desire to carry on his family's traditions of service to the Holy Office as well as his own urge to "affirm still more his loyalty and reverence for this tribunal of our holy faith."[49]
For men like these, who were both independently wealthy, the inadequate salaries and bonuses that came with official rank were of little importance. Over the years, a close relationship to the Holy Office had helped both families achieve an enviable reputation for purity of blood and loyalty to the Catholic faith, and both continued to regard occupation of an official post as a valuable symbol of their position in Valencian society.
Recruitment to the familiatura is also a useful indication of the tribunal's ability to attract worthy candidates to apply for official status in the eighteenth century in spite of the declining importance of special privileges and exemptions. Given the increasing endogamy that characterized the Spanish ruling elite at all levels during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is to be expected that the majority of Valencia's eighteenth-century familiares would be drawn from the ranks of those with strong family traditions of service to the Holy Office. Such candidates included Joaquín Albuixech, a ciutadá of Almusafes with some 6,000 lliures annual income who was able to present a total of seven actos positivos and whose father and uncle were then serving as familiares of the village.[50]
At the same time as it could retain the interest of families long associated with the Holy Office, the tribunal also demonstrated an impressive capacity to attract new blood. More than 37 percent of my sample of those applying to enter the corps of familiares during the century were from families who had never held any sort of official rank. Included in this group of "new" families were solid labradores like Agustín Barrachina from Benimamet, who was described by one witness as possessing the best land in the village.[51] For families such as these, like their predecessors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, membership in the corps of familiares with its obvious connotations of purity of blood and fervent Catholicism was the first rung in the ladder of social advancement in a status-conscious society.
Even French merchants who in general were notorious for ignoring the censorship laws and had a reputation for holding advanced
ideas were not at all averse to seeking membership in the corps of familiares. Witnesses during the genealogical investigation of Pedro Juan Barber, who applied in 1732, included three familiares, all of whom were French merchants long resident in the kingdom. One of these men, Enrique Platet, a familiar in Sagunto who had immigrated from Lyon, was succeeded by his nephew, Juan Berchere, after his death in 1773.[52]
Interestingly, especially in light of the Spanish Inquisition's reputation as the enemy of all forms of enlightenment, the Valencia tribunal had litte trouble recruiting individuals who were closely connected with or openly allied to the most advanced intellectual circles of the period. Juan Bautista Esplugues de Palavecino, for example, who was secretary of the Valencian society of Amigos del Pais, which had been founded by the Count of Floridablanca in 1777, saw nothing amiss in encouraging his son Antonio to apply for the position of alguacil mayor in 1788.[53]
Even more indicative of the tribunal's ability to attract distinguished members of Valencia's intellectual elite were the candidates who presented themselves for the position of physician to the Holy Office in 1796. Among the candidates were two distinguished professors of medicine at the University of Valencia, Pedro Barracina and Joaquín Lambart. Dr. Barracina had been a leading participant in the reform of the medical curriculum at the university and could boast of holding the first chair of practical medicine in Spain.[54] Dr. Joaquín Lambart, who was eventually selected for the post, had an even more brilliant career and was one of the leaders of the upsurge in modern anatomical studies that made the University of Valencia into the leading Spanish medical school of the late eighteenth century. It was precisely because of his superior knowledge of modern anatomy that the three Valencian inquisitors unanimously favored him for the position.[55]
Finally, two of Valencia's most distinguished intellectual leaders were Holy Office officials. Francisco Javier Borrull, who was professor at the University of Valencia between 1774 and 1779, and Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva served as commissioner and calificador of the Valencia tribunal, respectively, and were both closely connected with the brilliant circle that surrounded Pérez Bayer, the future director of the royal library, and Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, scion of a family long associated with the Holy Office.[56] Both of
these men were elected as delegates to the Cortes of Cádiz where they took opposite positions on the question of abolishing the Holy Office. Borrull emerged as one of its strongest defenders and explicitly denied that the Cortes had the power to abolish it.[57] For his part, Villanueva, who had once defended the Inquisition in his famous reply to Bishop Gregoire, became one of its strongest opponents at the Cortes, where he insisted on the incompatibility of its procedures with the rights guaranteed under the new constitution and demanded that bishops be allowed to reassume their jurisdiction over crimes against religion.[58]
Regardless of the stand they later took on the abolition of the Holy Office, the fact that the Valencia tribunal could attract such outstanding members of what might be called the "modernizing" sector of the intellectual elite, such as Villanueva or Lambart, is an indication that it was not regarded as an implacable enemy of all intellectual change. In fact, the judges of Valencia's inquisitorial tribunal, like several eighteenth-century inquisitors-general and members of the Suprema, were ambivalent about the advent of liberalism.[59] On the one hand, the tribunal ordered the arrest of one Juan Gonzalez, a cavalry captain who had been overheard denouncing priests and monks for fattening themselves at the expense of the poor.[60] On the other, the tribunal took no action after Andrés Piquer, the famous anatomist and theoretician, publicly rejected the idea that angels could transport bodies through the air. It also tolerated the rather daring intellectual career of Gregorio Mayans y Síscar, whose private library contained many prohibited books including Cipriano de Valera's Castilian Bible and works by Voltaire and Puffendorf.[61] The fact that Mayans y Síscar could flout the censorship laws with impunity, take a strong public stance against the excessive privileges of the clergy, and even criticize the Holy Office itself without suffering anything more than the temporary loss of his license to read prohibited books must be attributed to the fact that many late-eighteenth-century inquisitors were tolerant of some limited forms of enlightenment.[62]
The young inquisitor, Andrés Ignacio Orbe, for example, was one of Mayans y Síscar's disciples and regularly corresponded with him during the period in which he strongly criticized the Inquisition for placing the works of Cardinal Henry Noris on the Spanish Index. Instead of denouncing him, the inquisitor made it clear that
he supported his position and criticized Inquisitor-General Pérez de Prado for his role in the Noris affair.[63] Certainly, Agustín de Argüelles, one of the leading liberals at the Cortes of Cádiz and a strong supporter of the move to abolish the Holy Office, had kind words for the inquisitors of his day, whom he described as "just, enlightened and beneficent."[64]
That eighteenth-century intellectual life in Valencia developed within the context of a quasi-tolerant Holy Office was demonstrated by the fact that the leading figures of the Valencian cultural scene were never bothered by the Inquisition and also by the fact that the university library was given an inquisitorial license to purchase all manner of prohibited books. The Inquisition's complaisance in this area went so far that Francisco Pérez Bayer was given specific permission from the inquisitor-general to present his entire collection of prohibited books to the university library where it was to be made available to those holding licenses.[65] When the climate for intellectual expression began to darken after the French Revolution, the reaction was spearheaded not by the tribunal but by Valencia's Archbishop Francisco Fabian y Fuero, who, on May 6, 1792, ordered the university library's entire collection of prohibited books to be moved to a special bookcase where they were placed behind iron bars and concealed with a sheet of linen. Naturally, since the library operated under the protection of licenses issued by the Holy Office, the rector and librarians of the university appealed to the tribunal and Inquisitor-General Agustín Rubin de Cevallos, a known liberal, for protection against the overzealous prelate. The tribunal promptly sent one of its secretaries to investigate the matter and dispatched a report to Madrid, but the weakened political condition of the Holy Office did not permit it to take decisive action, and on October 23, 1793, we find the rector writing to the inquisitor-general to complain that the books remained exactly where they had been seventeen months earlier.[66] Archbishop Fabián y Fuero's victory over the university and Holy Office was destined to be short-lived, however, since just a few months after rector Blasco's despairing letter to the Inquisitor-General, the archbishop was forced to flee the city disguised as a simple priest after an acrimonious conflict with the captain-general.[67]
This incident, perhaps more than any other, illustrates the nature of the crisis that the Spanish Inquisition found itself confront-
ing by the end of the eighteenth century. Quasi-tolerance of the intellectual tendencies of the enlightenment through a policy of issuing licenses to read prohibited books to a select and presumably trustworthy educated elite exasperated reactionaries like Archbishop Fabián y Fuero while displeasing liberals who demanded even greater freedom of expression. At the same time, the Inquisition's manifest and growing political weakness made it incapable of defending even the limited freedom of expression that could be secured through the system of licenses. Meanwhile, late in the century, when the French Revolution had produced a grave crisis for Spain's moderate reformism, the Holy Office was so weakened and demoralized that it was incapable of placing effective controls on the influx of potentially dangerous works even when called on to do so by the crown.[68] This, in turn, opened it to charges that it was an ineffective and anachronistic institution whose calificadores were described by Jovellanos in a famous phrase as "a bunch of ignorant monks who only took the job to escape from choir duty and secure their ration of stew."[69]
Nevertheless, in spite of growing frustration with the Inquisition by both liberals and conservatives and in spite of the fact that it was becoming the whipping boy of the European press, the Holy Office would probably never have been abolished if it had not been for the grave economic and fiscal crisis brought about by the Franco-Spanish conflict of 1793-1795 and the Anglo-Spanish wars of 1796-1802 and 1804-1808.
The Spanish monarchy attempted to meet the costs of war through a variety of expedients including a forced loan of 4 percent of all official salaries and the creation of the vales, interest-bearing government notes circulating as legal tender. These notes, which were to be redeemed through a special sinking fund established by the government, began to depreciate rapidly, especially after the British blockade of Cádiz in 1797 had cut off the flow of American silver.
It was to cope with this situation that the government adopted a policy of selling off the entailed property belonging to a number of public institutions including hospitals, poor houses, Colegios May-ores, and the Inquisition. [ 70] The royal order authorizing the sale at public auction of the real property in the possession of the tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition was issued on February 27, 1799, and
had been preceded by a series of emergency measures such as forcing public institutions to invest their funds in censos to help pay for the war effort.[71] The Suprema moved quickly to put this new policy into effect, and on March 12, 1799, it sent orders to all provincial tribunals telling them to inventory their real property, have it appraised, and auction it off at a price no less than two-thirds of the appraised value. The proceeds of this auction were then to be turned over to the provincial commissioner of the Real Caja de Amortización. [72]
During the rest of 1799 and throughout the following year, the Valencia tribunal liquidated some of its most valuable rural properties to a variety of bidders, including Cristóbal Francisco de Valdés, Marquis of Valparaiso, who purchased a large farm in the huerta zone near Valencia for the sum of 8,560 lliures.[73] By February 23, 1802, the tribunal had realized some 62,584 lliures from the sale of the agricultural property.[74]
In a very real sense, the application of desamortización to the tribunal was the beginning of the process that would lead inevitably to abolition. With the sale of its real property, the tribunal was losing irretrievably an essential part of the fiscal independence that it had so painfully acquired in the sixteenth century.
In August 1805, moreover, the tribunal began to lose its actual physical possessions when the Suprema demanded an inventory of all the paintings that could be found on the premises. This inventory was carried out at the behest of Manuel Godoy, the royal favorite, who was building up a collection of fine paintings. [75] Undoubtedly aware of what was to come, the tribunal tried to stall by ignoring the Suprema's request for a complete inventory and sending a letter that described its holdings only in general terms, but it was eventually forced to comply.[76] Godoy chose the six most valuable of the tribunal's paintings for his collection, including four by Jacinto Espinosa, and a doleful letter to the Suprema dated November 5, 1808, records that the walls of the inquisitor's own rooms had to be partially demolished so that they could be removed and that far from compensating the tribunal for its loss, Godoy had insisted that the tribunal pay the cost of building special packing eases for the paintings out of its own funds. In 1808, after Godoy's fall from power, his property was confiscated and ordered sold at public auction by the new regime of Ferdinand VII. On the assumption
that its paintings would be among the items in Godoy's possession, the tribunal wrote the Suprema to demand their return. In its reply, the Suprema promised merely to find an "opportune moment" to reclaim the pictures, and since those described did not form part of the general inventory that was drawn up just after the abolition of 1820, we may be sure that on this occasion, as on so many others, the Suprema was unable to offer effective assistance.[77] In the end, this despoilment turned out to be an evil portent of the eventual fate of the tribunal's furnishings and physical possessions compared to which the loss of a few paintings would seem relatively minor.
The year 1808 proved as fateful for the Spanish Inquisition as it was to be for the Spanish nation as a whole. After Charles IV abdicated in favor of his son Ferdinand on March 19, 1808, and then protested to Napoleon that his abdication had been coerced, both he and Ferdinand were brought to Bayonne and induced to renounce the Spanish crown to Napoleon. On May 2, 1808, there occurred the famous "dos de Mayo" in which the population of Madrid rose against the French occupation force under the command of Field Marshal Murat. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon summoned his brother Joseph from Naples and awarded him the Spanish throne, but although acknowledged by an assembly of leading Spaniards called at Bayonne, he was rejected by the overwhelming majority of the population. This was the beginning of that great and heroic but also quixotic resistance against the French that eventually resulted in their withdrawal, leaving Spain in ruins.
Throughout this early phase of the Spanish catastrophe, the attitude of the Suprema was resolutely pro-French. Several members, including its dean, were members of the Bayonne assembly, which later constituted itself a Cortes and adopted Spain's first constitution. In it, nothing was said about abolishing the Inquisition, but it declared that Catholicism should be the only religion in Spain and her empire.[78]
After the suppression of the May 2 rising, the Suprema made haste to write to the provincial tribunals condemning them as an example of insubordination and disrespect for authority and enjoining them to enlist the aid of the commissioners and familiares of their respective districts in promoting public tranquility.[79] This attitude was not shared by all of the provincial tribunals, however,
and on August 26, 1808, the inquisitors of the Llerena tribunal issued a manifesto condemning the Suprema's collaboration with the French.[80]
Influenced by this pressure and also by the increasing constraints being placed on its activities by the French occupation authorities in Madrid, the Suprema began switching sides during the following month, and on September 28, it ordered that all provincial tribunals pledge their support to the Junta Central, which was attempting to coordinate national resistance to the French.[81] By the middle of the following month, both the Suprema and the Valencia tribunal were acting in concert with the Junta. On November 11, for example, it relayed the Junta's order to impede the introduction of Masonic propaganda to all provincial tribunals, and the Valencia tribunal responded by immediately alerting all port commissioners and notaries.[82] The increasing tensions between the French occupation authorities in Madrid and the Suprema and the growing disloyalty of that body to Joseph's regime may well have influenced Napoleon to issue a decree suppressing the Inquisition on December 4, 1808.[83] Inquisitor-General Arce y Reynoso immediately resigned, while the Junta Central, which appointed Pedro de Oviedo y Quintano, the Bishop of Orense, to replace him, could not obtain papal approval because communication with Pius VII had become impossible. In August 1810, the Council of Regency ordered the Suprema to resume its functions, and by the end of March 1811, the government was considering the appointment of individuals to fill the posts of prosecuting attorney and secretary.[84] With the Inquisition in this anomalous but hopeful situation, the Junta now decided to convene a national Cortes at Cádiz where it had taken refuge after Spanish forces had been defeated in a series of engagements at the hands of the Grande Armée.
The Cortes opened on September 24, 1810, and the issue of whether or not to reestablish the Inquisition immediately became the subject of acrimonious controversy in the press, giving rise to a considerable pamphlet literature, including The Inquisition Unmasked , which was reprinted in an English translation by William Walton in 1816. The issue was eventually referred to the Committee on the Constitution, which concluded that the Inquisition was incompatible with the new constitution, and on January 22, 1812, after lengthy debate, the Cortes approved this proposition by a
vote of 90 to 60.[85] In effect, the Inquisition was not actually suppressed but superseded by the reestablishment on January 26, 1813, of the Law of the Partidas that gave bishops and their vicars full authority over matters of heresy.[86] In Valencia, of course, the tribunal had already ceased functioning after the seizure of Valencia city by Marshal Suchet on January 8, 1812. On February 22, the Cortes published a long decree, designed to be read out in the pulpits of all parish churches, that justified the actions it had taken with regard to the Holy Office. In this document, which accurately reflected the point of view taken in The Inquisition Unmasked , the decline of Spain and the decadence of the Catholic faith were blamed on the abuses of the Holy Office, while reestablishment of the bishop's traditional jurisdiction was presented as a way of better protecting Catholicism and public morality.[87]
The growth of opposition to the proceedings of the Cortes of Cádiz was not slow to manifest itself, however, and when Ferdinand VII returned to Spain he lost no time in pronouncing all its acts null and void on May 4, 1814. Several months later, by the decree of July 21, 1814, Ferdinand restored the Holy Office.[88] This was followed by the decrees of August 18 and September 3 which restored to the various tribunals the real estate and revenues from mortgages and prebends that had been absorbed by the treasury or had passed into the hands of the Caja de Consolidación, with the account to be paid from the date of the Inquisition's reestablishment.[89]
With the Inquisition's financial problems seemingly about to be resolved, the new inquisitor-general, Francisco Xavier de Meir y Campillo, and the provincial inquisitors immediately set about putting into motion the machinery of the Holy Office. Provincial tribunals began recruiting new calificadores and familiares, and even though certain tribunals appear to have had difficulties in finding the requisite candidates, the Valencia tribunal encountered few problems. These candidates paid substantial fees for their genealogical investigations as well as a special contribution to relieve the penury of the Suprema.[90]
During Lent 1815, moreover, a ferocious Edict of Faith was published in Madrid which not only invited the faithful to denounce all the traditional heresies but added to that list of forms of modern rationalist philosophy.[91] In the same month, the Suprema set forth a series of regulations that once again enlisted confessors
in the war against heresy. Confessors were ordered to refuse absolution to their penitents unless they presented a declaration of any doctrinal errors that they might have committed. Written declarations presented by such individuals would then be sent to the Holy Office, which would have to grant permission for absolution.[92]
In spite of this feverish display of activity, however, the Valencia tribunal that was reestablished after July 1814 was a shadow of what it had been even during the late eighteenth century. Although luckier than some tribunals in the sense that it could move back to its old quarters in the palace of the Inquisition, that building was in a sad state of disrepair, and the tribunal only logged sixteen eases for the balance of the year. On October 26, 1814, the tribunal wrote the Suprema to the effect that a great deal of its furniture had been removed from the palace and that it had lost all the religious ornaments from the oratory, making the celebration of mass impossible. The tribunal had issued an edict calling on all those with knowledge of the location of any of its property to come forward to aid in its recovery and requested permission to purchase whatever it needed to resume functioning. This the Suprema reluctantly granted but reminded the tribunal to purchase only what was "absolutely necessary," given the extreme financial penury of the Holy Office.
Evidently, the Inquisition's palace had been despoiled not only by common vandals but also by distinguished members of Valencia's ecclesiastical hierarchy. In September 1814, the tribunal reported that it had given up its efforts to recover the window glass that had been taken from the palace by officials of the archdiocese because the glass had been cut down to size in order to be used for the vicar-general's apartments.[93]
To make matters worse, the serious economic depression that followed the end of hostilities made the crown's promises with regard to restoration of the Inquisition's financial position largely illusory.[94] The financial penury of the Suprema itself during those years was so great that it was forced to turn to the provincial tribunals for assistance. In November 1814, it set at 130,896 reales the annual contribution required from the Valencia tribunal and denied it permission to pay out anything for salaries without specific permission.[95] The tribunal must have found it impossible to meet this demand as the Suprema reduced it to 96,000 reales annually in the following year. [96]
In 1817 and 1818, the tribunal's financial condition continued to deteriorate. As a result of the economic crisis of the postwar period and the sharp decline in agricultural prices from 1812-13, the tribunal found it impossible to collect on many of its censos.[97] In 1818, the tribunal reported that it had been unable to pay salaries for the last four months and did not have enough funds to maintain its prisoners.[98]
Quite apart from the physical and financial difficulties experienced by the reestablished tribunal, sporadic demonstrations of royal favor were not enough to prevent royal courts and officials from continuing their guerrilla war against its jurisdiction as they had in the eighteenth century. In April 1815, a special censorship tribunal was established under the direction of the regent of the Audiencia. Local customs officials immediately recognized the authority of the new tribunal and refused to allow books to leave customs even with the permission of the Inquisition's port commissioner unless they had also been released by the officials of the censorship tribunal.[99] Shortly thereafter, the censorship tribunal expanded its jurisdiction still further by claiming the right to clear books exported from the kingdom. The Suprema meekly responded to this demand, which further reduced the authority of the Holy Office, by cautioning the tribunal to maintain its accustomed supervision over books entering or leaving the kingdom but without in any way opposing the new censorship tribunal.[100]
In 1816, there occurred an even more flagrant violation of the inquisitorial fuero when the Audiencia insisted on taking cognizance of a civil suit brought by the tribunal's secretary, Francisco Cachuno, against his nephew, José Soriano. In defense of the well-recognized rights of officials to bring suit in the tribunal's civil court, it formulated a jurisdictional brief against the Audiencia and then wrote the Suprema for permission to pursue the matter. The Suprema, true to its usual attitude in such cases, refused permission in light of a recent decision taken by Ferdinand VII in a dispute involving the Seville tribunal and the Asistente of Utrera.[101] The renewed offensive of the royal courts against the Inquisition and the Suprema's seeming inability to offer effective support simply confirmed trends already well under way before the abolition of 1813.
At the same time, the Valencia tribunal had abandoned its
former quasi-tolerance of liberal thought and thrown itself wholeheartedly into the campaign against Masonry and liberalism that was being mounted under Ferdinand VII's reactionary government. This strong identification with the radical right wing left the tribunal isolated and vulnerable when the political balance of power shifted and liberalism made a comeback after 1820.
In spite of the appointment of the reactionary Francisco Javier Elío as captain-general of Valencia in 1814, there was virtually no serious persecution of the leading Valencian liberals until the beginning of 1817. On January 17 of that year, liberals and Masons failed in an attempt to assassinate the captain-general and return the kingdom to a constitutional regime. Several of the leaders of this conspiracy were executed and others were forced to flee. For its part, a resurgent Valencia tribunal participated in the repression by detaining Dr. Nicolás María Garelli, a leading liberal and professor of civil law at the university. Garelli, who led a "tertulia" at which advanced liberal and constitutional ideas were freely discussed, had played a key role in drawing up the manifesto by which the university congratulated the Cortes of Cádiz for its suppression of the Inquisition.[102] Obviously, there was no love lost between Garelli and the tribunal, and on June 20, 1817, three days after the failure of the plot, he was summoned to explain a provocative lecture he had given on the subject of the defunct constitution of Cádiz.[103]
The mob that supported the January 17 plot had shouted its support for the 1814 constitution and denounced the Inquisition, which was clearly becoming identified in the public mind with extreme antiliberalism. The Valencia tribunal, however, failed to heed this warning and continued to closely collaborate with the reactionary regime of Captain-General Elío. After the failure of the Vidal conspiracy of January l-2, 1819, repression of liberals and Masons was further intensified. Captain-General Elío, who had been personally involved in thwarting the plot, ordered the execution of thirteen of its leaders, while the Valencia tribunal arrested twenty-four others who were suspected of complicity on the grounds that they were members of Valencia's outlawed Masonic lodge. Those arrested were some of the most important and influential liberals in the kingdom, including Ildefonso Diaz de Ribera, Count of Almodóvar, Bernardo Falcó, Valencian delegate to the
ordinary Cortes of 1813-14, and Mariano Beltrán de Lis, a member of Valencia's leading family of liberals.[104]
All of these men still languished in the prisons of the Holy Office when on March 10, 1820, the news reached Valencia that Ferdinand VII had been forced to reinstate the 1813 constitution, simultaneously abolishing the Holy Office on the grounds that it was incompatible with its provisions. On the same day, a mob invaded the precincts of the tribunal and liberated its prisoners, including the Count of Almodóvar, who was immediately made captain-general by popular acclamation. On the following day, the Inquisition's palace was again assaulted by a mob, which carried off a large quantity of books and papers. On March 17, the new captain-general responded to growing popular pressure and ordered the arrest of those most heavily compromised by their involvement with the Elío regime. This group included Francisco Javier Borrull, the calificador who had defended the Inquisition so strongly at the Cortes of Cádiz, and the four serving Valencian inquisitors, Encina, Toranzo, Montemayor, and Royo. [105]
The March 9 decree had seemingly dealt a fatal blow to the Holy Office, and to make matters worse, it was followed on March 20 by a royal order for inventories to be drawn up of all its remaining property. The Bureau of Public Credit was authorized to take over the administration of this property until its ultimate disposition should be determined by the Cortes, which was shortly to be convened. Soon thereafter, on August 9, 1820, the Cortes issued a decree that declared that confiscated property was to be auctioned off by the bureau. [106]
In Valencia, the royal order of March 20 was reflected in the activity of a small committee composed of Benito Artalejo, representing the intendant and the national treasury, and José Torres y Machi and Teodoro Royo, principal commissioner and treasurer of the local branch of the Bureau of Public Credit, respectively. On May 13, this committee proceeded to the inquisitorial palace where Artalejo formally took possession of it and immediately turned it over to the representatives of the Bureau of Public Credit.[107] On May 16, the committee decided to inventory the palace's furnishings and other property. And on June 4, obviously anticipating the Cortes' decision, it resolved to sell that property at a series of auctions beginning on June 21, 1820.[108] While these
auctions were continuing, the committee took a brief trip outside the city, where on October 4 one of the tribunal's remaining farms was formally turned over to the representatives of the bureau. [109]
It would be superfluous to recount here the well-known story of the disastrous three years of liberal rule that culminated in the invasion of Spain by a French army led by the duke of Angoulême in April 1823. Unlike the French invaders of the Napoleonic period, this army was received warmly and soon had taken possession of the entire country. After the collapse of the liberals, Ferdinand VII was restored to his absolute power and signed a decree annul-ling all acts since March 7, 1820.[110]
This decree would seem to have automatically restored the Holy Office. Indeed, the Valencia tribunal appears to have shown some glimmerings of life, recording a few eases up to the beginning of July 1824.[111] Nevertheless, whatever his initial inclinations, Ferdinand became more and more fearful of formally reinstating the Inquisition as he had done in 1814.
For one thing, there was considerable foreign pressure on him not to reestablish the Holy Office, pressure that he was in no position to resist because of his financial and military dependence on the French. Even more important in the mind of an autocrat like Ferdinand was the fact that formal reestablishment had become part of the political program of the extreme right, a group that tended to view Ferdinand himself with grave misgivings. No matter how reactionary he was, even Ferdinand was not willing to give in to demands voiced in the right-wing press for the extermination of liberals to the fourth generation.[112] Ferdinand's relative moderation, in turn, led to increasing hostility between his government and the extreme right. In the first few years of his restoration to absolute power, there were several serious right-wing conspiracies against him which derived their strength from the paramilitary Guardias Realistas and secret societies, like the Angel Exterminador, who openly favored Ferdinand's brother Carlos. In the face of all this agitation, Ferdinand preferred to rely on his newly created police force whose superintendent-general, Juan José Rechacho, warned that the extreme right was planning to use a restored Inquisition as a weapon to exterminate all the king's loyal supporters. [113]
Ferdinand's growing fears of a revived Inquisition were reinforced by the activities of the Juntas de fé that were established in
certain dioceses. In Valencia, the Junta was headed by Dr. Miguel Toranzo, one of the last inquisitors of the Valencia tribunal who had been imprisoned by the liberals. It was Toranzo who handed down the last death sentence for heresy in Spain. This ease involved Cayetano Ripoll, a schoolmaster from Busafa just outside Valencia city who had become a deist while a prisoner in France during the Peninsular War. He was arrested on September 29, 1824, and during the two years that his trial lasted, he repelled the repeated attempts by theologians to convert him and maintained his convictions to the end. After sentencing, he was turned over to the criminal chamber of the Audiencia and executed on July 26, 1826.[114] On August 6, Valencia's fanatical right-wing archbishop, Simón López, wrote to Toranzo to congratulate him on his conduct of this ease and express the pious hope that it would "serve as a warning to some while increasing the devotion of others."[115]
The Ripoll ease and the activities of the Juntas de fé thoroughly alarmed Ferdinand, and he notified the Audiencia that these tribunals had no official standing whatsoever. In spite of this evidence of royal disfavor, they continued a shadowy existence for at least one more year, although under increasingly difficult circumstances. Their extinction could not be long delayed, however, and on March 16, 1827, we find Inquisitor Toranzo writing to Archbishop López to tell him that he feared that the Junta's many enemies were just waiting for an opportunity to destroy it.[116]
Toranzo's fears were justified as Ferdinand's government became more and more fearful of a revived Inquisition, which his chief of police warned would be tantamount to a rightist putsch. [117] The fatal blow came from a rather unexpected source, however, as the government was able to enlist the aid of the new papal nuncio, Monsignor Tiberi. The papacy was not at all reluctant to collaborate in the destruction of inquisitorial jurisdiction in Spain, and in a papal brief of October 5, 1829, Plus VIII granted the nunciatura's tribunal of the Bota appellate jurisdiction over cases involving religious heresy.[118] This flagrant example of papal interference in Spanish affairs, which would have been bitterly resented only a few decades earlier, perfectly accorded with Ferdinand's wishes, and he confirmed the papal brief on February 6, 1830.[119]
In the meantime, the property of the Holy Office had been transferred to the collector-general of the Bureau of Espolios y
Vacantes to be administered by the general-superintendent of the property of the Inquisition.[120] In 1830, this post was held by Valentín Zorilla, an old inquisitor. In Valencia, the administrator of the tribunal's remaining property was Vicente Mora, who had been receiver in 1815-16. Mora resided in a room in the palace of the defunct tribunal, other parts of which had been rented out to a variety of individuals, including a master carpenter and an architect.[121] Mora continued to collect income owed the tribunal from its remaining urban and rural mortgages and rent as well as the income from prebends and sent 28,000 reales to the office of the collector-general of Espolios in 1834.[122] In the same year, Mora paid out more than 30,000 reales in salaries to former officials of the tribunal and their heirs.
By the early 1830s, therefore, the Spanish Inquisition had become little more than a minor subcommittee of the treasury, administering the dwindling property of a defunct institution. It still had power as a symbol, especially for the Carlist right, which was now engaged in a civil war against Isabella II's regency government. Perhaps for this reason alone, the regency decided to issue a formal decree of abolition. This document, which was careful to point out that Ferdinand himself had vested authority over matters of faith in the bishops, abolished the Inquisition and confiscated its remaining property. The final extinction of this institution, which had played such an important role in Spanish history for hundreds of years, took place against a background of an acrimonious debate about its real impact on Spanish life and thought, a debate that continues undiminished to the present day.