CHARLES II. succeeded his father on the 17th of September, 1665, when he was only four years of age. The grand inquisitors, during his reign, were, Cardinal Don Pascual d’Aragon, archbishop of Toledo; Father John Everard de Nitardo, a German Jesuit; Don Diego de Sarmiento de Valladarés, bishop of Oviedo and Placentia; Don Juan Thomas Rocaberti, archbishop of Valencia; Cardinal Don Alphonso Fernandez de Cordova y Aguilar; and Don Balthazar de Mendoza-Sandoval, bishop of Segovia.
The infancy of Charles II., the ambition of his brother Don John of Austria, the imperious temper of the queen-mother, Maria Anne of Austria, and the machiavelism of the Jesuit Nitardo, gave occasion for a number of scandalous events during this reign. The weakness of the government was the principal cause of the insolent conduct of the inquisitors.
When Charles II. married Maria Louisa de Bourbon in 1680, the taste of the nation was so depraved, that a grand auto-da-fé, composed of a hundred and eighteen victims, was considered as a proper and flattering homage to the new queen; nineteen persons were burnt, with thirty-four effigies. None of the cases were remarkable, and may therefore be passed over in silence, together with another auto-da-fé which was celebrated in the church of the convent of the nuns of St. Dominic. Some manuscript notes indicate that some of the condemned avoided the fate which awaited them, by bribing the inferior officers of the tribunal; I am persuaded that this assertion is incorrect, because the subalterns had very little influence after the criminals were arrested.
The most celebrated trial of the Inquisition in this reign is that of Fray Froilan Diaz, bishop elect of Avila, and confessor to the king. The habitual weakness of Charles II., and the failure of an heir, created a suspicion that he was bewitched. The Cardinal Portocarrero and the inquisitor-general Rocaberti believed in sorcery, and after persuading the king that he was bewitched, they entreated him to suffer himself to be exorcised according to the formulary of the church. Charles consented, and was exorcised by his confessor. The novelty of this proceeding occasioned many remarks, and Froilan was informed that another monk was at that time exorcising a nun at Cangas de Tineo, in order to free her from the demons, which, she said, tormented her. Froilan and the inquisitor-general charged the exorcist of the demoniac to command the demon, by the formula of the ritual, to declare if Charles II. was bewitched or not, and if he replied in the affirmative, to make him reveal the nature of the sorcery; if it was permanent; if it was attached to anything that the king had eaten or drank, to images or other objects; in what place it might be found; and lastly, if there were any natural means of preventing its effects: the confessor added several other questions, and desired the exorcist to urge them with all the zeal which the interest of the king and the state required.
The monk at first refused to question the demon, because it is forbidden by the church; but on being assured by the inquisitor-general that it would not be sinful in the present circumstances, he faithfully performed all that had been requested of him. The demon declared by the mouth of the demoniac, that a spell had been put upon the king by a person who was named. According to the private notes of that time, the criminal was an agent of the Court of Vienna; but Cardinal Portocarrero and the confessor Diaz were the partisans of France for the succession of Spain.
Diaz was very much alarmed at this information, and redoubled his conjurations until he learned some method of destroying the enchantment. Before this operation was concluded, Rocaberti died, and was succeeded by Don Balthazar de Mendoza, who was of the Austrian party; he signified to the king that all that had taken place had arisen from the imprudent zeal of his confessor, and that he must be removed. The king followed his advice, and made Froilan Bishop of Avila; but the new inquisitor-general, not contented with preventing the expedition of the bulls, prosecuted him for having made use of demons to discover hidden things.
Mendoza directed this attack in concert with Torres Palmosa, the king’s confessor, who was as eager for the ruin of Froilan Diaz as himself; this man communicated to Mendoza the letters which Diaz had received from Cangas, which were found among his papers.
Mendoza examined witnesses, and after combining their declarations with the contents of the letters, he gave them to five qualifiers who were devoted to him, and made Don Juan Arcemendi, a counsellor of the Inquisition, and Don Dominic de la Cantolla, official of the secretaryship of the Supreme Council, their president and secretary. However, the five qualifiers declared that the trial offered no fact or proposition worthy of theological censure.
This decision was very displeasing to Mendoza; but relying on his influence in the council, he proposed that Diaz should be arrested: the councillors refused, because the measure was unjust, and contrary to the laws of the holy office, according to the decision of the five qualifiers. This resistance irritated the inquisitor-general, who caused the decree to be drawn up, signed it, and sent it to the council, with an order to register it with the ordinary forms. The councillors replied that they could not perform a ceremony which they considered illegal, because the resolution had not been adopted by a majority of votes.
During these transactions, Diaz made his escape to Rome: Mendoza, who could depend upon the king’s confessor, induced him to persuade the king that this was an offence against the rights of the crown, and obtained a letter from him to the Duke de Uzeda, his ambassador at Rome, commanding him to seize the person of Diaz, and send him under an escort to Carthagena.
The anonymous author of Anecdotes of the Court of Rome says, that Diaz went thither to show to the Pope the will of Charles II., by which Philip de Bourbon was called to the throne of Spain; and that his return as a prisoner was occasioned by a court intrigue; but there is no evidence to prove this assertion. The inquisitor-general sent Froilan Diaz to the prison of the Inquisition of Murcia, and commanded the inquisitors to begin his trial. They appointed as qualifiers nine of the most learned theologians of the diocese, who unanimously gave the same answer as those of the Supreme Council: the inquisitors consequently declared that there was no cause for the arrest. The inquisitor-general then caused Diaz to be transferred to Madrid. Mendoza afterwards charged the fiscal of the Inquisition to accuse him as a dogmatizing arch-heretic, for having said that an intercourse with the demon might be permitted, in order to learn the art of curing the sick.
Charles II. died about this time, and Philip was at first too much engaged with the war against the Archduke Charles of Austria, to discover the intrigues and artifices of Mendoza. He at last submitted the affair to the Council of Castile, on the 24th of December, 1703, which decided that the arrest of Diaz was contrary to the common laws, and those of the holy office. The Supreme Council then decreed that Diaz should be set at liberty and acquitted.
It must be observed, that the demon affirmed that God had permitted a spell to be put upon the king, and that it could not be taken off, because the holy sacrament was in the church without lamps or wax candles, the communities of monks dying of hunger, and other reasons of the same nature. Two other demons who were interrogated, only agreed in declaring the necessity of favouring the churches, convents, and communities of Dominican monks; perhaps because the inquisitor-generals Rocaberti and Diaz were of that order.
This prince convoked the grand junta, composed of two councillors of state, two members of each of the Councils of Castile, Aragon, Italy, the Indies, the military orders and the finances, and one of the king’s secretaries. The royal secretary informed the junta that the disputes between the inquisitors and the civil judges had caused so much disturbance, that the king had resolved to commission the assembly to propose a plain and fixed rule, to secure to the Inquisition the respect due to it, and to prevent the inquisitors from undertaking trials foreign to the jurisdiction of the holy office. The king commanded the six councils to remit to the junta all the papers necessary for the examination of the affair.
On the 21st of May, 1696, the grand junta made a report, stating that it appeared from the papers which had been examined, that the greatest disorder had long existed in the different jurisdictions, because the inquisitors had arbitrarily extended their power, so that the common tribunals had scarcely anything to do; that they punished the slightest offence against themselves or their domestics with the greatest severity, as if it was a crime against religion; that not content with exempting their officers from taxes, they gave their houses the privileges of an asylum, so that a criminal could not be taken from them, even by a judicial order; and if the public authorities exercised their powers, they dared to complain of it as a sacrilegious violation of the church; that in their official letters, and in the conduct of their affairs, they showed an intention of weakening the respect of the people towards the royal judges, and even to make the authority of superior magistrates contemptible; and that they affected a certain independent manner of thinking on the subjects of administration and public economy, which made them forgetful of the rights of the crown.
The junta then stated that these abuses had caused complaints from the subjects, division among the ministers, discouragement to the tribunals, and much trouble to his majesty in settling their differences. That this conduct had appeared so intolerable, even in the beginning, that the powers of the Inquisition had been suspended for ten years by Charles V., until it was restored by Philip II., in the absence of his father, with some restrictions, which had not been well observed; that the extreme moderation with which the inquisitors had been treated was the cause of their boldness.
The junta proposed for the reformation of the holy office; 1st. That the Inquisition should not make use of censures in civil affairs. 2nd. That in case they employed them, the royal tribunals should be charged to oppose them by the means in their power. 3rd. That the privileges of the inquisitorial jurisdiction should be limited, in respect to the ministers and familiars of the Inquisition, and the relations of the inquisitors. 4th. That measures should be adopted to ensure the immediate settlement of affairs relating to competence and mutual pretensions.
The Count de Frigiliana, councillor of state, added that the inquisitors ought to be compelled to give an account of the revenues of the holy office. These observations, and the propositions of the junta, had no effect; for the inquisitor-general Rocaberti, and Froilan Diaz, succeeded in changing the favourable inclinations of the king.