Organization — 55
was imposed; not only were the inquisitors required to send regular reports on
2. Organization
COMMUNICATIONS
One of the main features distinguishing the medieval Inquisition from the early
modern Inquisitions was the different structure of the communication flows on
which they depended. All our evidence for the medieval Inquisition points to
primarily horizontal communications, consisting of frequent exchanges of
letters between the inquisitors of one same province, who consulted each
other about procedural problems or about ways of dealing with specific cases.
To improve practice, they organized meetings to systematize their experience
and spontaneously compiled manuals which circulated in multiple copies suited
to the new circumstances. The fluid — but effective — nature of this communi-
cation flow was related to the nomadic nature of their activities and the relative
lack of organizational rules due to the sub-delegation of powers practised
among the inquisitors.' The tribunal was then a valuable tool in the papal
arsenal for assuring the Church’s monopoly of the means of salvation, but
also for strengthening its power vis-a-vis the bishops and the civil authorities.
This power, however, was exercised as a ‘concession’ by the Dominicans and
Franciscans, who shaped it by their own methods and practices.
Under the ancien régime the communication flows of the tribunals of faith
were transformed: the horizontal exchange of information almost disappeared,
the informal meetings of the inquisitors of a single province no longer served
any purpose and the circulation of manuals was controlled by the central bodies.
The delegation of powers lost the fluid and arbitrary character of the medieval
Inquisition, where it had been a way of redistributing privileges within the
mendicant orders. The changes were perhaps most marked in Italy, where a
degree of continuity with the structures of the medieval Inquisition is visible.
With the establishment of the Roman congregation, a vertical information flow
' Biscaro Girolamo, *Inquisitori ed heretici lombardi (1292-1318)’, Miscellanea di Storia ltaliana,
series 3, 19 (1922), 449,
54
the progress of trials,” but the congregation controlled the different types of
cases and all decision-making. Some horizontal communication between
inquisitors within a region or even a state persisted, of course, but it is very
rare to find any communication between the inquisitors of different states,
except in a few cases of members of the same order who shared common
strategic concerns,’ These horizontal flows were residual and had little impact
on decision-making. For the inquisitors operating in the Republic of Venice, an
informal hierarchical network was established round the inquisitor of Venice,
closer to the power base, and the nuncio, whose role in the affairs of the tribunal
was considerable. But these contacts were confined to personal problems or
questions of status* — intensifying at times of conflict with the civil authorities —
because the outcome of trials depended exclusively on the inquisitor concerned
and on the Roman congregation, though in Venice the civil authorities played a
significant role.
The importance of the communication networks is confirmed by the position
adopted by the Republic of Venice, which opposed the consultations the
inquisitors in its territory sought with the Roman congregation. As regards its
policy towards the Inquisition, the tradition of a certain jurisdictional autonomy
vis-d-vis the Roman curia was systematized by Paolo Sarpi at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. His main argument ran as follows: the tribunal of faith
had been set up by the Republic in the thirteenth century with lay magistrates;
and the inquisitors appointed by the pope had only been accepted by the
Republic in 1289 under pressure from Nicholas IV, Roman intervention being
tolerated only in the matter of appointments. We will return in Chapter 9 to the
historiographical constructions produced by Sarpi in support of the independent
strategy pursued by Venice over the centuries. Here, | need only emphasize the
consequences of these ideas for the control of the circulation of information,
regarded as crucial in this context. In the principal consultation given by Sarpi to
the government of the Republic, in which he proposed a list of very detailed
operating rules (they would subsequently be observed and cited like laws up to
ihe cighteenth century), he explicitly evoked the need to disregard decrees and
instructions coming from outside (rule 15). He denounced the methods of the
* Nicholas S. Davidson, ‘Rome and the Venetian Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of
Kclesiastical History, 39, 1 (1988), 25: in 1366 Pius V instructed all inquisitors to send a report to
tome on those suspected of heresy; in 1580 the Sacra Congregazione required all the tribunals to
send an annual list of sentences and abjurations; during the pontificate of Paul V the inquisitors
hu to make weekly reports on their activities.
ASV, SU, folder 152, fase. V: the inquisitor of Vicenza wrote a letter on 20 Mareh 1646 to his
volleague in Venice to ask him for information about a rumour which had reached Milan by the
post, to the effect that the pope intended to exclude the Dominicans from the Inquisition.
Ina letter of 3 September 1644, the inquisitor of Capo d'Istria sent six cheeses to his colleague in
Venice and asked for his help in obtaining a certain pension: ASV, SU, folder 152, fasc. V.
56 THE INQUISITION
inquisitors of other states, who were forever writing to Rome, and receiving
instructions from the congregation about the decisions to be taken, as if the trials
had been prepared there. He reiterated the opposition of the Republic to such
procedures, emphasizing that ‘in questo stato non hanno tentato un tal abuso
cosi frequente e totale’, in spite of the temptation for certain inquisitors who sent
letters to Rome ‘per acquistar grazia con la pronta obbedienza’ or asked Rome
to write to the bishops or the consultori (lay consultants of the Inquisition
nominated by the Republic).°
The correspondence between the local inquisitors and the Roman congrega-
tion is revealing with regard to the administrative and political centralization of
the organization. Grazia Biondi, in her study of the letters received from Rome
by the inquisitors of Modena between 1568 and 1784, emphasizes both the very
wide range of subjects dealt with in both circular and individual letters and the
frequency of the correspondence: during the period 1618-27, for example,
Rome despatched 327 letters, that is, one every eleven days.® And in the
diocesan archives of Udine, I have found a large volume of regular correspond-
ence (at least one a month) with the Roman congregation over a period of
twenty-five years (1588-1613). These letters reveal the high degree of control
exercised by the Sacra Congregazione: on the one hand, the cardinals were
given a detailed account of the activities of an inquisitor sent to a town of no
political importance; on the other, they issued instructions on the conduct of
trials, on the expenditure of the tribunal and on prohibited books and jurisdic-
tional disputes, while also keeping the inquisitor up to date with events in the
Roman curia. For example, the Roman letter of 15 September 1590 informs
the inquisitor of the election of Pope Urban VII (one of the cardinals of the
congregation of the Holy Office) and instructs him how he should write to the
pope to present his respects. Another volume of copies of letters sent monthly
by the inquisitors between 1677 and 1750 shows just how often they consulted
on minor matters such as the appointment of officials.’ Interestingly, these
letters are much more detailed than the replies of the Sacra Congregazione;
restraint and verbal economy were proportional to the importance of the office.
At the other end of the spectrum, dating from the early 1760s, when the
Inquisition was in decline, is the perhaps less typical case of the inquisitor of
Venice, Father Zaparella, appointed in 1753 by a brief of Benedict XIV after
seventeen years as a commissioner for the Holy Office; this was an appointment
obtained by the Republic in spite of the opposition of the nuncio and the Sacra
* Paolo Sarpi, ‘Sopra l’officio dell’Inquisizione (18 novembre 1618)’, Seritti Giurisdizionalistici,
ed. Giovanni Gambarini (Bari: Laterza, 1958), pp. 162, 164.
© Grazia Biondi, ‘La lettere della Sacra Congregazione romana del Santo Ufficio all Inquisizione di
Modena: note in margine a un regesto’, Schifanoia, 4 (1987), 94,
* AAU, SO, folders 59, 89,
Organization — 37
Congregazione. As inquisitor, Zaparella failed to inform the Roman congrega-
tion about his activities so that he would not receive orders ‘e per eseguire con
tutta l’esatezza e pontualita le publiche leggi come conveniene ad un suddito
fedele’ (this information is included in a Venetian opinion on the case). In
particular, he had banned the books of the Jesuit Berruyer at the instigation of
the Republic, without seeking advice from Rome. The Sacra Congregazione
decided, as a result, to transfer him to Rimini and replace him with the inquisitor
of Verona, also a Venetian, but a man who had learned his trade as inquisitor in
Bologna. The Venetian consu/tori expressed their opinion that the letters from the
Roman congregation could not override a brief from the pope and proposed that
the inquisitor should remain in post until the matter could be clarified by their
ambassador in Rome. I have been unable to discover what happened next, but
another inquisitor was in post in 1766." As we will see, the room for manoeuvre
of the Venetian inquisitors was in practice extremely limited: if they followed to
the letter the instructions from Rome, they risked provoking a dispute with the
civil authorities that might result in their expulsion from the territory; if they
obeyed the civil authorities and broke off their correspondence with the Roman
congregation, they risked being replaced. Further, not only was correspondence
with the Roman congregation sometimes forbidden by the civil authorities, but
appeals to Rome by prisoners were not always passed on. When, for example, the
correspondence of a Dominican with Rome had been intercepted, the rettori
proposed to the Council of Ten that the couriers should be punished.”
In Spain and in Portugal, communication within the Inquisition was vertical
from the beginning. There were no mediations as important as those in Italy,
although the position of the inquisitors in the outlying regions, in the territories
dependent on the crown of Aragon for example, but especially in America and
Asia, seems to have been weaker. Nevertheless, the Inquisition was established
in the Iberian world as an autonomous and hierarchical institution and its
communication flows reveal its full complexity. The internal regulations and
instructions stipulated that the central bodies must be informed of all the
activities of the local tribunals, and these stipulations were reinforced by
specific directives ftom the General Councils.'® The overriding objective was
to control the production of sentences, which was, in the last analysis, the
purpose of all inquisitorial activity. In effect, the Consejo de la Suprema in
Spain and the Conselho Geral in Portugal clearly became final courts of appeal
" ASV, SU, folder 154. ? ASV, SU, folder 163,
' See the references in the instructions published by Miguel Jiménez Monteserin, /ntroduccion a la
Inquisicién Espatiola. Documentos basicos para el estudio del Santo Oficio (Madrid: Editora
Nacional, 1980), esp. pp. 107-8 (request for copies of all trials to be sent for the Council,
instructions of 1484), 120 (obligation to consult in difficult cases, instructions of 1498), 168
(obligation regularly to inform the inguisitor general and his Council about all activities,
instructions of 1485).
58 THE INQUISITION
and they intervened at critical stages in the affairs of all the courts of first
instance. They gradually began to insist on reviewing all trials, which they did
by evaluating the trial summaries.'! In Spain, the practice of sending the
relaciones de causas to the Council was established by the early 1540s and it
continued until the eighteenth century. !2 This generated a huge amount of work,
carried out at least once a year by all the local tribunals, further strengthening
their ties with the central body. In addition to which, every decision to imprison
a person of note or a member of the clergy had to be submitted to the Council.'*
Lastly, their superiors must be kept informed about the more delicate trials so
that they could control decisions; in 1568 the Consejo de la Suprema insisted on
consultation in cases involving capital punishment, and in 1625 in those
involving the public punishments of whipping and the galleys.'* In Italy, the
Roman Inquisition decided in 1725 to exercise even stricter control in this
sphere, though admittedly in very different circumstances: any public or semi-
public abjuration must be explicitly authorized by the Sacra Congregazione; in
routine cases abjuration became private, ‘coll’intervento delle sole persone
necessarie alla validita dell’atto’.'*
Communication between local tribunals and central bodies was not confined
to consultations about procedure or the conclusion of trials, although these were
its most important business. The preparation of autos-da-fé, ways of resolving
potential disputes with the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, problems of eti-
quette when the inquisitors participated in local ceremonies, district visits and
the financial situation of the tribunals were all also the subject of regular
consultations and instructions.
1! AHN, Ing,, lib. 1231, fols. 124r-v (letters from the Council in 1561 and 1577 on the despatch of
relaciones de causas); ALIN, Inq. lib. 1229, fol, 146r (letters from the Council in 1568 and 1874
on the relaciones de causas published in the auto-da-fé),
Gustav Henningsen, ‘El “Banco de datos” del Santo Oficio: Jas relaciones de causas de li
nu
Inquisicién Espafiola (1550-1700), Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, 174 (1971),
547-70; Gustav Henningsen, ‘La Eloquencia de los nimeros: promesas de las “relaciones de
causas” inquisitoriales para la nueva historia social’, in Angel Alcala (ed.), dnguisician Espaiiola
y Mentalidad Inquisitorial (Barcelona; Ariel, 1984), pp. 207-25; Jaime Contreras and Gustiy
Henningsen, ‘Forty-Four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540-1700); Analysis of 0
Historical Data Bank’, in Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi (eds.), The Inquisition in Barly
Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Presi,
1986), pp. 100-29.
‘3 AHN, Inq., lib. 1231, fol, 42r (letters from the Council in 1534, 1535 and 1561; in the last, the
obligation to consult before detaining clerics is reduced to persons of importance); ATIN, Inq.
lib, 1229, fol. 134v (letter from the Council on the obligation to consult before detaining person”
of importance). In Portugal, the requirement was similar: see ‘Regimento do Conselho Geral’
(manuscript of 1570), published in Antonio Baido, 4 Inquisigdo em Portugal e no Brasil,
Subsidios Para a sua Historia (Lisbon: Arquivo Historico Portugués, 1921), supplement, p, 21
AHN, Ing,, lib. 1229, fol. 141v; lib. 1226, fol. 748r.
=
BAB, B-1891, p. 580 (letter from the Sacra Congregazione of 15 December 1725 for the
a
inquisitor of Bologna),
Organization 59
The correspondence is of interest in yet other ways; it contains, for example,
references to the everyday life of the tribunal and its members and to their
disputes over etiquette and their relations with other bodies. Although this
communication network became increasingly formal, there are also, especially
in the outlying regions, more personal letters in which the inquisitors reveal
their hopes and fears or seek promotion.
From this point of view, the correspondence of the Inquisition of Goa is
extremely revealing. The letters sent to the inquisitor general between 1569 and
1630 have been preserved. They are long, as if distance had the effect of
wmplifying written communication (those of the local tribunals of the Iberian
leninsula are much more circumspect). All the subjects mentioned above figure
in them, with the addition of others of great interest: the inquisitors make regular
(sessments of the political and religious situation of the territory, as if they had
heen invested with an additional moral authority in the physical absence of the
vontral bodies of the kingdom. They were, in a sense, the eyes and ears of the
|hquisitors general, who often combined their office with political responsibil-
lilos: regents of the kingdom of Portugal between 1563 and 1568 in the case of
Cardinal Henrique, who became king in 1578, or viceroys of Portugal in the
vise of Archduke Albert and Pedro de Castilho, during the period when the
Kingdom was annexed by the Crown of Spain. But the tone of the letters also
(upended on the personal ties between individual inquisitors and the inquisitor
yeneral, OF particular interest here is the correspondence between Bartolomeu
i) Fonseca and Cardinal Henrique in the 1570s: the inquisitor supports the
Wbitions of his protégés and openly complains about his situation, about the
Hiities provoked by his activities in the territory and about the delay before
i could return to the kingdom.'®
The subject matter of this written communication is of particular interest for a
sudy of the culture of the organization because it reveals the constraints and the
jimuibilities of the system. In a society in which the position of each individual
epended to a considerable extent on his origins, but also on his personal
feiiigze and the evaluation of his conduct on a sort of ‘stock exchange’
Hperating within the closed circle of the ruling strata, one can well imagine
ihe oricial role played by the letters. The establishment of a favourable version
fH) ovenis was the goal of a powerful symbolic conflict conducted by means of
yrilien or oral explanations and through the intermediary of third parties and the
MHilition of contrary arguments. It is easy to understand why this conflict was
Wy uivated in regions remote from the centre, as the delegated powers had more
Hii Lov Manoeuvre and respective positions might change over time. In short,
" Aline Nallio, 4 Anquisigdo de Goa. Correspondéncia dos Inquisidores da India (1569-1630),
+o) 1) (Colnbra, Imprensa da Universidade, 1930) (for the correspondence of Bartolomeu da
Peo, wee pp. 7-96).
60 THE INQUISITION
the approval or rejection of their actions was subject to delay, and a variety of
agencies might intervene at the successive levels of mediation to influence the
perception of the central bodies.
The constraints of the system can be measured by what was excluded:
horizontal communication between local inquisitors no longer served any
purpose, with the exception of requests for information about an accused person
from another region or in connection with purity of blood investigations, in
which case it was usual to seek information from the commissioners of the place
where the candidate had been born or where his ancestors had lived, The
extradition agreements between Portugal and Spain also limited the correspond-
ence to very specific cases: if the prisoner had caused a major scandal which
required punishment at the scene (in case of flight, for example), he had to be
transferred to the tribunal which had started the process; otherwise, the first
tribunal, which had some of the evidence, had to send it to whoever had
detained the accused person.'’ Control of the circulation of information went
much further, however: the inquisitors were formally forbidden to accept other
tasks or produce information, especially on purity of blood, even when
requested by other royal courts, members of the government or the king himself;
all such requests must be channelled through the inquisitor general and the
Council. Further, the local tribunals were forbidden to respond directly to or
obey royal letters, an explicit order to this effect being sent by the Spanish
Council to the tribunal of Cartagena de Indias (in modern Colombia).!*
REGULATIONS
The inquisitorial network was established and shaped through communication,
and the structure of its communication flows tells us about the characteristics
and levels of responsibility within the organization. For this network to operate,
however, there had to be internal rules and instructions designed not only to
contain and orient the flows of information, but also to feed the whole system,
These rules were outlined in the manuals of the medieval Inquisition, but the
nature of the early modern Inquisitions, in particular in the Hispanic world,
meant that much more detailed internal regulation was necessary, The manner in
which these rules were formulated and systematized is in itself significant. The
first Spanish ‘Instructions’ date from 1484, that is, from the very early days of
the Holy Office, immediately after the appointment of the first inquisitor gen-
eral, Tomas de Torquemada. On this occasion, he assembled in Seville the
inquisitors of that town and those of Cérdoba, Ciudad Real and Jaén, two
'7 AHN, Ing., lib. 1233, fol. 322r (where the extradition agreement is dated 1558); ANTT, CGSO,
liv. 92, fols, Srv (where the agreement is dated to 1542),
'S ALIN, Inq. lib, 1276, fol, 277r,
Organization 61
scholars and two members of the Royal Council. The Instructions began by
lixing the founding rites of the new local tribunals (presentation of the inquis-
itors, organization of the mass, publication of the edict of grace), then specified
how the inquisitors should deal with those who confessed during the time of
jtace (interrogations, penalties, forms of abjuration) and the procedure to be
followed in the case of those accused outside the time of grace, which included
regulation of the practice of torture and the observance of secrecy. Rules were
laid down for the publication of the edicts, for jurisdiction with regard to the
estates of the Grandes and knights of the kingdom, for the confiscation of
property and the freeing of slaves belonging to the condemned and, lastly, for
the professional and personal conduct of the officials.
lhe second Instructions were drawn up in Valladolid in 1488 in the presence
of all the inquisitors and consultores of the tribunals of Castile and Aragon and
dealt with the standardization of procedure; the despatch of cases by the local
iribunals to the inquisitor general for submission to the Council; the strengthen-
ing of secrecy at all levels (control of access to prisoners, organization of private
ivehives, supervision of the communications of the officials); the horizontal
circulation of information in the case of prisoners from other dioceses, with
denunciations and accusations in other places; implementation of the penalties
of perpetual imprisonment (in the house of the condemned); control of senten-
ces of exclusion from offices and professions on the descendants of the con-
demned; the demand for salaries by the receptores; and how the duties of
inquisitorial office should be performed (with a ban on getting oneself replaced
by another).
The third Instructions were drawn up in Avila in 1498, also by Torquemada,
this time without reference to the presence of other officials. They dealt with the
structure of the local tribunals (two inquisitors, a jurist and a theologian, or two
jurists); the professional code of the officials of the Inquisition; ways of decid-
ing on detentions and proceeding against deceased persons; the commutation of
penalties (exemption from the sambenito and the rehabilitation of the victims’
descendants were reserved to the inquisitor general); the punishment of false
Witnesses; the ban on employing relatives or servants; hours of work; and
consultations with the Council.
The Instructions of 1500, under the new inquisitor general, Diego de Deza,
imposed district visits on the inquisitors (it seems that after the initiatives in the
biz towns there had been a return to the ‘nomadic’ practices of the medieval
Inquisition) and provided several formularies for canonical abjuration and
purgation. There were also more specific injunctions regarding the mode of
operation of the officials of the Inquisition, with their duties and obligations, and
regarding the structure of the local tribunals and jurisdiction over the familiars
tind the confiscation of property; these instructions had largely been fixed in the
last two decades of the fifteenth century,
62 THE INQUISITION
The last Instructions of the period of consolidation of the Holy Office are
those of 1561, drawn up under the administration of the inquisitor general
Fernando de Valdés, with the express intention of standardizing procedure in
all the tribunals: the different documents and forms of procedure were defined in
minute detail and there is little of significance on other matters.'”
These Instructions, and also the revisions agreed by the Consejo de la
Suprema in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are largely based on the
manuals of the medieval Inquisition and the legal treatises on heresies published
from the end of the fifteenth century on.7” Procedure was reformed, together
with the structure of the tribunals, especially the rules of conduct for the
officials, whose spheres of activity and levels of responsibility were generally
greater than in the medieval Inquisition, But what is of interest here is the way in
which these Instructions were compiled, with the explicit presence of the
inquisitors of the local tribunals and even of members of other institutions, in
particular the Royal Council. This presence ceased towards the end of the
fifteenth century, when the position of the inquisitor general was sufficiently
powerful for him to be able to formulate internal regulations without the need to
summon general assemblies. These more systematic Instructions were accom-
panied by many consultations and directives emanating from the Consejo de la
Suprema (the important cartas acordadas), which played a decisive role in the
strategy of the Inquisition and in standardizing the procedures of the local
tribunals,”!
We need to look beyond the printed Instructions, however, if we are to
observe the day-to-day operation of the tribunal. The role of the secretary of
the Council should be emphasized. It was usually he who systematized the
information provided by the local tribunals, he who sent out circulars asking for
'? All these instructions are published in Jiménez Monteserin, dnquisicion Espariola, pp. 83-240,
For the role of the inquisitor general Fernando de Valdés in the reorganization of the Spanish
Inquisition, in which the instructions of 1561 played a role, see José Luis Gonzdlez Novalin, £7
Inquisidor General Fernando de Valdés (1483-1558). Su vida y su obra, 2 vols. (Oviedo:
University of Oviedo, 1968-71),
*© Gundissalvum de Villadiego, Tractats contra Hereticam Pravitatem (Valencia, 1484); Alfonso
de Castro, De Justa Haereticorum Punitione (Salamanca: Ioannes Giunta, 1547); Diego de
Simancas, Jnstitutiones Catholicue Quibus Ordine ac Brevitate Discritur Quicquid ad
Praecavendas et Extirpandas Haereses Necessarium Est (Valladolid: Ex Officina Aegidij de
Colomies, 1552); Bernardo da Como, Lucerna Inquisitorwm Haereticae Pravitas (Venice:
Marcum Antonium Zalterium, 1596); Eliseo Masini, Sacro Arsenale Overo Pratica
dell Officio della S. Inquisitione Ampliata (Genoa: Giuseppe Pavoni, 1625); Cesare
Tractatus de Officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis et Modo Procedendi in Causis Fidei (Cremona;
Mare’Antonium Belpierum, 1641); Tommaso Del Bene, De Officio S. Inguisitionis Cirea
Haeresim (Lyon: loannis Antonii Huguetan, 1666); Giovanni Alberghini, Mannale
Oualificatorum Sanctae Inquisitionis (Zaragoza: Augustini Vergas, 1671).
See Gustav Henningsen, “La Legislacion secreta del Santo Oficio’, in José Antonio Escudero
(ed.), Perfiles juridicos de la Inquisicién espafiela (Madrid; Instituto de Historia de la
Inquisicion, 1989), pp. 163-72.
Organization — 63
detailed information on the edicts published, the list of officials and procedures,
and he who issued the formularies for interrogations, abjuration and sentences,
Nothing is known about the secretary who drew up the Instructions of 1498,
1500 and 1561, but we do have the volume compiled by Pablo Garcia, secretary
of the Consejo de la Suprema, which appeared in 1591 and was devoted to
procedure; we also have the dozens of volumes containing Instructions and the
cartas acordadas compiled by another secretary, Gaspar Isidro de Arguello,
around 1630, when he published for the last time a collection of Instructions
(this administrative practice then continued until the eighteenth century). The
work of José Rivera, secretary of the Council and of the Chamber of the
inquisitor general from the 1650s to the 1670s, who drew up the most important
manuscript list of inquisitorial legislation, has been described by Ldpez Vela.”*
In Portugal, there was a tradition of centralization from the beginning. The
tribunal clearly benefited from the experience of the Spanish Inquisition, which
had been founded some fifty years earlier, but there were original features to
both regulation and practice, The timing of the measures taken by the Spanish
and Portuguese Inquisitions differed, due to the different political and social
contexts; the creation of the local tribunals did not encounter the same problems
in Portugal and the administrative culture had specific features. The first
Instructions, issued in 1541, the year in which the local tribunals of Coimbra,
Lamego, Porto and Tomar were founded, were disseminated in numerous
letters; empowerment of the inquisitors, organization of the tribunals, local
visitations, presentation of the inquisitors and procedure, appointment of offi-
cials by the inquisitors, formularies for abjuration and oath. We should note the
lack of any reference to meetings of inquisitors to exchange experiences or
approve these Instructions; they were signed by the inquisitor general, the
Infante Henrique, with the usual involvement of his secretary, in this case
Jorge Coelho.” It is known that the king himself wrote letters to support the
creation of new tribunals and it seems likely that there was collaboration
between the small Council, which administered the tribunal, and the future
cardinal (in particular with Dom Joao de Melo, an inquisitor from the beginning,
who had managed the Inquisition with powers delegated first by Dom Diogo da
Silva and then by Dom Henrique). These Instructions reveal, in particular, the
” Pablo Garcia, Orden que Communmente se Guarda en el Santo Oficio dela Inquisicién Acerca
del Processar de las Causas (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1591); Gaspar Isidro de Arguello,
Carena, Instrucciones del Santo Oficia (Madrid, 1630). _
* Roberto Lopez Vela, *Estruturas administrativas del Santo Oficio’, in Joaquin Pérez, Villanueva
and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet (eds.), Historia de la Inquisicion en Espaiia y America, 3 vols.
(Madnd: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1984-2000), vol. I: Las Estruturas del Santo Oficio
(1993), p. 137,
The instructions of 1541 have been published by 1.-S, Révah, ‘L’Installation de I’ Inquisition 4
Coimbra en 1541 et le premier réghementdu Saint-Office portugais’ [1967], in Révah, Etudes
Portigaises (Paris: Fundagio Calouste Gulbenkian, 1975).
64 THE INQUISITION
restrictions in the bull of foundation, Cum ad nihil magis, which excluded
secrecy in inquisitorial procedure (an essential element, introduced only in
1547 by the bull Meditatio cordis and reinforced by a brief of Pius V in
1560):"° as soon as the investigation became judicial, the names of the wit-
nesses had to be passed on to the accused persons, who could then issue
contraditas (when the process was secret, the prisoners had to guess who had
denounced them and try to invalidate their testimony by an accusation of
enmity). There were other differences: the inquisitor general reserved all com-
mutations of penalties, appeals against sentences of torture and the conclusion
of trials when the votes were split between the inquisitors and the representative
of the diocese; those condemned with /eve suspeita need not abjure publicly but
only before the tribunal; the founding rite stipulated that the inquisitors must
assemble the secular justices to present the letter from the king and order
publication of the Inquisition in the principal church, with a ban on all other
preaching on that day, though there are no instructions regarding the etiquette to
be observed before the bishop or cathedral chapter. Lastly, the confiscation of
property was not instituted in Portugal until 1563, when the inquisitor general
became regent of the kingdom (the competent officials, in particular the
receivers, not being appointed, obviously, until after that date).
The Portuguese regimento of 1552 reveals a system that was already fairly
complex: a total of 141 chapters defined the structure of the tribunal, the district
visit, the publication of edicts, the attitude to be adopted towards the penitents
and the accused, forms of reconciliation, imprisonment, the preparation of trials,
appeals, the death sentence, the preparation of the auto-da-fé, the display of
sambenitos in churches, the decisions reserved to the inquisitor general and the
rules for performing more than one job.*° Two aspects deserve special mention;
the significant development of the ‘professional code’ of the officials; and the
regulation of every stage in the preparation of trials, with the (almost impercep-
tible) introduction of the practice of secrecy, clarified in the supplement of 1564,
The presentation of new inquisitors was more carefully regulated (and includes
reference to the prelate), cases of reconciliation and abjuration were specified in
minute detail (sign of the skilful manipulation of the publicity or secrecy of the
act) and punishment rituals were standardized, The regimento has a very
interesting short preamble in which Cardinal Henrique makes it known that
these Instructions had been approved by the king and that the archbishop of
Braga, Baltasar Limpo, Rui Gomes Pinheiro, bishop of Angra, member of the
2° Collectorio das Bullas e Breves Apostolicos, Cartas, Alvards e Provisées Reaes que Contem a
Instituigdo e Progresso do Sancto Officio em Portugal, Varios Indultos e Priuilegios que os
Summos Pontifices e Reys destes Reynos lhe Concederéo (Lisbon: Estaos-Lourengo Craesbeeck,
1634), fols. 69v—72r.
*© The regimento of 1552 is published in Baiiio, Inquisicdo em Portugal ¢ no Brasil, supplement,
pp. 31-57; the articles added in 1564 are on pp. 61-4.
Organization 65
(ieneral Council of the Inquisition and Governor of the Casa do Civel, Jodo de
Melo, bishop of the Algarve, an inquisitor from the beginning and a member of
ihe General Council, and the inquisitors Pedro Alvares de Paredes and Jodo
Alvares da Silveira had all played a role in their production, together with other
winamed delegates of the tribunal.
Ihe regimento of the General Council, drawn up in 1570 under the admin-
istration of Cardinal Henrique, has several new features: the structure of this
body is defined for the first time, together with its role in the investiture rite of
(he inquisitor general (who must present his letters of appointment to the
Council), in the supervision of the local tribunals (matters reserved for the
\hree-yearly inspections, local visitations, visits to bookshops and the updating
if the lists of prohibited books) and as a court of appeal (it claimed all the cases
foserved to the inquisitor general, oversight of trials and autos-da-fé, decisions
in the commutation of sentences, securities and appeals) and, lastly, its admin-
inlvative role (drawing up letters in the name of the king for the benefit of the
secular justices and supervision of confiscated property, a task entrusted by the
ny to the inquisitor general).?” The regimento of 1570 strengthened the power
of this central body and clarified its functions in relation to the inquisitor
jencral, keystone of the institution recognized by the pope.
These first Instructions, which circulated in manuscript form, reveal a high
(epree of centralization and a remarkable skill in codifying judicial and bureau-
orilic experience, This practice continued, In 1613, anew regimenio was drawn
lip by a committee of members of the General Council, inquisitors and deputies
whosen by the inquisitor general. Printed for the first time,”* it was intended for
inlernal use; a copy was given to each new member and it was to be read aloud
i (he local tribunals three times a year. The plan stays fairly close to that ofthe
feuimento of 1552, but the treatment is much more detailed. Among the most
(\ignificant differences were: the secrecy of the trial was spelt out in great detail;
the rules of conduct for the inquisitors and officials were expanded, probably as
fi result of visits of inspection; the structure of the local tribunals reflected the
jiwreasing complexity of the bureaucratic system, with more inquisitors, more
Ollicials and the appearance of the deputados, who acted as auxiliaries of the
\ijuisitors and were not found in Spain. The cases reserved to the General
(ouncil were treated with particular care: heresiarchs condemned to the stake,
lows, confessions made after a death sentence, sodomy, denial of the presence
of Christ in the host, women who implicated members of the clergy, fidalgos,
i)
(hie regdmento of the General Council of 1570 is published in ibid. pp. 9-14.
” Rewimento do Santo Officio da Inquisigam dos Reynos de Portugal. Recopilade per Mandade do
Mlusivissime e Reverendissine Sentor Dom Pedro de Castilho, Bispo Inquisidor Geral e Visorey
os Reynos de Portrgal (Lisbon: Pedro Craesbeck, 1613). (I have given the titles in full, here and
‘iin, 29 and 30, because the differences are then immediately visible.)
66 THE INQUISITION
gentlemen or rich merchants. Lastly, the role of the bishop’s representative was
fairly limited, especially as regards the decision to use torture, when a vote was
no longer obligatory.
The regimento of 1640, also prepared by a committee of tribunal members,
systematized the experience of the two previous decades, which had seen
publication of a long list of prohibited books (1624) and discussions about
Judaism and the reform of the tribunal. A juridical monument (it is five times
longer than its predecessor),”’ it included new rules and obligations for the
officials and an even more detailed description of procedure and it listed the
types of possible case and the penalties to be pronounced. The three most
striking points are the attention paid to the minutiae of administrative organ-
ization, the systematization of rites (investiture, the auto-da-fé, edicts, visita-
tions, abjuration) and internal etiquette (an essential feature, explicitly
addressed for the first time), the strengthening of secrecy and the elevation of
the social status of the officials (noble social origins were required for the
position of inquisitor). The powers of the General Council and the inquisitor
general were also strengthened and more matters were reserved to them.
Though this regimento reflects a specific conjuncture in the history of the
tribunal, it continued to perform its function of controlling and orienting
activities until the 1760s,
The final regimento was printed only in 1774, at the end of the government
of the marquis of Pombal.°° In a letter of 1771, he had initiated the process of
reforming the Inquisition, which was intended to affirm its status as a tribunal of
the Crown. Pombal’s policy was immediately implemented by the inquisitor
general and the Council of the Holy Office. In his preface to the regimento of
1774, Cardinal da Cunha strongly criticized all earlier inquisitors general, in
particular those who had published the regimentos without royal approval,
whom he accused of betraying the kingdom and of conspiring with the Jesuits
to make the Holy Office a purely ecclesiastical institution, This regimento
reflects the new political situation, but also shows sensitivity with regard to
the external image of the Inquisition and the main criticisms that had been
levelled against it for centuries, and which now dominated the new judicial
theories. The regimento introduced four major changes: first, the secrecy of
procedure was abolished, that is, denunciations had to be presented in full to the
prisoners, with names of witnesses and details of place and time; second, the
2° Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisigéo dos Reynos de Portugal. Ordenado por Mandado do
illustrissima e Reverendissimo Senhor Bispo Dom Francisco de Castro, Inquisider Geral do
Conselho de Estado de Sua Magestade (Lisbon: Manoel da Sylva, 1640).
3 Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisigdo dos Reinos de Portugal. Ordenado com o Real
Beneplacito e Regio Auxilio pelo Eminentissimo e Reverendissimo Senhor Cardeal da Cunha,
do Conselho de Estado e Gabinete de Sua Magestade e Inquisidor Geral nestes Reinos e em
Todos os Dominios (Lisbon: Manescal da Costa, 1774).
Organization 67
dcath sentence on the word ofa single witness was prohibited; third, torture was
rejected and denounced as a perverse practice which produced false confes-
sions, though it could still be used for dogmatic heresiarchs; and lastly, the
condemnation of those sentenced, and their descendants, to exclusion from
offices and professions was prohibited. There were other significant features:
the number and length of the articles was reduced and the innumerable details of
the regimento of 1640 were pared down to essentials; purity of blood was no
longer explicitly required of officials (the distinction between ‘Old’ and ‘New’
Christians had been revoked by Pombal himselfin 1773); and etiquette and rites
were no longer described in such detail, and even abolished in some cases (in
particular in the auto-da-fé). The regimento was followed by the publication of
the royal diploma of approval signed by Pombal.
The Instructions provide a good introduction to the study of the culture of the
Inquisition, but they should not be taken out of context. On the one hand, there
is available a mass of legislation, both external (bulls, briefs and royal diplomas)
and internal (orders of the inquisitor general, consultations of the Council,
cartas acordadas), which ranges more widely than the surviving collections;
on the other hand, practice was frequently ahead of or at odds with the law —
shifts in strategy, sometimes slight, are not reflected in the great juridical
collections but emerge in, for example, correspondence. Nevertheless, the
printed codifications reveal the efforts to centralize and standardize institutional
practice, especially in Portugal, where the regimentos were revised up to the
cightcenth century, which was not the case in Spain. Also available for Portugal
ive printed lists (especially of bulls, briefs and royal diplomas) dating from 1596
und 1634, specific regimentos (in particular of the college of faith, where the
penitents were instructed, and the Jizo das confiscagées) and collections of
the privileges of the officials and familiars of the Inquisition?! In Spain, the
manuscript codification of internal legislation was periodically revised with the
creation or suspension of the available lists. This administrative activity had a
parallel in Portugal in the compilation of the formulas for interrogations, the
classification of offences and penalties and the systematization of the orders of
ihe central bodies from the first decades of the seventeenth century on.*?
‘The inquisitorial administrative culture was based on classification and iden-
(ification. First came the classification of heresies, which followed the specific
'' Trasktdo Autentico de Todos os Privilegios Concedidos pelos Reys destes Reynos e Senhorios de
Portugal aos Officiaes e Familiares do Santo Officio da Inquisigado. impressos per Commissain e
Mandade dos Senhares do Supremo Concelho da Sabta e Geral Inquisigdo (Lisbon: Miguel
Maneseal, 1685); Regimente do Juizo das Confiscagdes pelo Crime de Heresia e Apostasia
(Lisbon: Miguel Manescal, 1695); Diogo Guerreiro Camacho de Aboim, Opuseulum de
Privilegiis Familiarum, Officialumque Sanctae Inquisitionis, 3rd edn (Lisbon; Bernardi
Antonii de Oliveira, 1759) (first edn 1699, second edn 1735).
" Some of these volumes are preserved in the BNL, Moreira collection.
68 THE INQUISITION
treatises published since the end of the fifteenth century, a genre which amplified
the references included in the manuals of the medieval Inquisition in accordance
with the belief that there were no new heresies, only new forms assumed by old
errors. The role of the Inquisition was to produce the means by which these
heresies could be recognized, from the point of view not only of dogma but also of
specific cultural practices (particularly those of the New Christians of Jewish
origin and the Moriscos, whose dietary and hygienic traditions could be seen as a
sign of deviance). It was also the Inquisition which defined the new heresies from
the doctrinal point of view, that is, the afwmbrados, the Molinists and the
Jansenists.*? The administrative culture was also structured round the task of
identification: lists of denunciations (often organized by type of crime), lists of
prisoners, lists of the condemned, registers of the sumbenitos hung in churches,
habilitation trials and registers of genealogies.**
The specific characteristics of the tribunal, which literally lived by organizing
the memory of deviant behaviour and beliefs, explain the production of the
mountains of documents which bring joy to the historian. It was inevitably a
manuscript culture, in which the files were secret and the information metic-
ulously managed for the purpose of initiating new trials, admitting new officials
and intervening in disputes in the political and religious spheres, we all know
how the accumulation of files on thousands of people can be used politically,
especially in a milieu as restricted as that of court society.
There are similarities between these features of the inquisitorial administrative
culture and some aspects of the judicial culture developed by the Holy Office. In
practical terms, the conduct of heresy trials was dependent on two fundamental
elements: control of the evidence and procuring a confession from the accused,
The credibility of the denunciations relied almost exclusively on verification of
the ‘quality’ of the witnesses, on their ‘prestige’ in the locality and on observation
of their conduct in court as they gave evidence. The denouncers and the witnesses
were always asked if they bore enmity towards the accused, but this was for
form’s sake. The ritual practice for receiving denunciations also stipulated the
presence of two witnesses (in Spain, usually clergy from the nearest parish), who
were asked to give their opinion as to the sincerity and honesty of the denouncers.
This opinion, even ritual, presupposes a conception of a search for truth based on
33 For example, the decree of the Sacra Congregazione of 3 September 1687, in which the
propositions of Miguel de Molinos were described in great detail, was disseminated as a
monitory of appeal and denunciation: BAB, B-1892, fol, 91r, Another document of 1705
summarizes the criticisms of the Jansenists:; AAU, SO, folder 72.
There is an excellent inventory of the manuscript sources of the Portuguese Inquisition (with a
reconstruction of the original organisation of the archives) compiled by Maria do Carmo Jasmins
Dias Farinha, Os Arquivos da Inquisigde (Lisbon: Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, 1990).
For the Spanish sources, see Pérez Villanueva and Escandell Bonet (eds), Historia de la
Inquisicidn, vol. |: El Conacimiento Cientifico y el Proceso Histérico de la institucian (1478—
1834) (1984), pp. 58-135,
Organization 69
external signs and on the observation of physiognomy, as the veracity of state-
ments could only be challenged by the contraditas, a ritual procedure allowing
the accused to demonstrate the enmity and bad faith of the witnesses. The
invalidation of statements depended exclusively on other statements produced
by the defendant, that is, the establishment and proofof the accusation was based
on reputation, which was linked to interpersonal relations.
The relationship between the inquisitors and the accused during the preparation
of the trial was similar: the denunciations and the confessions had to be compat-
ible, but this was not enough, because some weight was also put on external signs
of the repentance in those accused. Their demeanour ought to back up and
emphasize their confession, but the latter was essential: the whole trial was
organized so as to obtain it. It is the central role of confession that explains the
replacement of the ordeal by torture between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
in judicial trials, a practice abandoned by the Inquisition only in the eighteenth
century as a result of changes in the prevailing ideas in penal law.?>
The centralization of the tribunals in Spain and Portugal is visible in the
systematization of the experience of the local tribunals and the sustained labour
of collecting, analysing, standardizing and disseminating information. In Italy,
the situation was very different. In the first place, the structures were much
weaker, as the tribunal’s activities were limited by the existence of only a single
inquisitor and a small body of officials, who often also held other positions.
Added to which, the many different political contexts meant that the operating
rules could not be the same everywhere. In spite of the regular circulation of
information and a reasonable degree of centralization, there was no attempt at
codification comparable to that found in the Hispanic world. There was some
attempt to standardize practice, certainly, in particular with regard to procedure,
the publication of the edicts of faith and the censorship of books, but the
Instructions were sketchy, the formularies for interrogation and sentencing
were not regularly revised and the bureaucratic machine was kept supplied
only casually and intermittently. The manuals of the medieval Inquisition, in
particular that of Eymerich, were frequently reprinted in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and the subsequent commentaries emphasize the cle-
ments of continuity. The treatises on procedure, on the other hand, were
relatively more influential in Italy than in the Iberian Peninsula,*® which may
be explained by the central role of Italian juridical output. But the weakness of
'’ See Groupe de la Bussiére, Pratiques de la Confession (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1983); Alois
Hahn, ‘Contribution a la sociologie de la confession et autres formes institutionnalisées d’aveu:
autothématisation et processus de civilisation’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 62/63
(June, 1986), 54-68; John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in
the Ancien Régime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire
and Water; The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), :
" See the treatises of Eliseo Masini, Cesare Carena and Tommaso Del Bene cited in n, 20 above,
70 THE INQUISITION Organization 71

the administrative culture can only be understood in the light of the weaknesses
of the bureaucratic network and the intervention of the political functions of the
congregation of cardinals, which had to control the entire apparatus.

ENTRENCHMENT
The tribunals of the Holy Office became entrenched primarily as a result of their
territorial organization. The case of Castile is particularly significant because it
marked a break with the earlier tradition. The first inquisitors were appointed
without any indication of where they were to perform their duties; when they
embarked on the persecution of heretics in Seville, nothing in the royal provision
prevented them from then moving on to another diocese. Subsequently, however,
they were attached to a town or to a diocese or group of dioceses; this was the
beginning of territorial organization, first in the outlying regions close to Granada
(one can still speak of frontier regions in the 1480s), then in Aragon and in the
centre and north of the kingdom of Castile. In all, twenty-three local tribunals
were established between 1482 and 1493, covering practically the whole of the
territory of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, with the exception of Galicia.
From the beginning, their boundaries coincided with those of the dioceses or
lesser units of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Between 1495 and 1507, there was some
concentration of tribunals, as a result of financial difficulties, but also of the drying
up of the principal ‘source of supply’ of the new apparatus, the New Christians.
The period 1510-74 was one of reorganization during which new tribunals
were established (Cuenca in 1510, Navarre in 1512-13, Oran in 1516, Granada [a5
eee Cartagena.
in 1526, Galicia in 1574) and territory was redistributed between several others, htt

This resulted in a stabilization in the number of tribunals, which remained the

same (14) in the peninsula until their suppression, and in their competences,
which ranged in size from 26,634 to 48,151 square kilometres, with the
exception of the huge tribunal of Valladolid, which covered 83,873 square
kilometres.*’ Tribunals were also established in Majorca, the Canaries,
Sardinia and Sicily (the last two ‘lost’ by the Spanish Inquisition during the
eighteenth century). In America, the foundation of the tribunals of the
Inquisition was rather more complicated. In 1517 a structure which combined
the episcopal and the Spanish Inquisitions was created, with ‘bishop-
inquisitors’ appointed by the inquisitor general of Spain. The new tribunals of
Mexico and Lima were eventually established in 1569-70, with similar bureau-
cratic and jurisdictional features to the Hispanic tribunals. In their case, the
boundaries coincided with those of the vice-kingdoms, which theoretically
covered 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 square kilometres, but their activities were

Map 1, The foundation of tribunals in the Iberian world

*7 Jaime Contreras and Jean-Pierre Dedieu, ‘Geografia de la Inquisicién espafiola’: la formacién de
los distritos, 1470-1820", Hispania, 40, 144 (1980), 37-93.
72 THE INQUISITION Organization — 73
primarily focused on the communities of colonists who were concentrated in the
towns. In 1610 demographic expansion made it necessary to establish a new
tribunal at Cartagena de Indias, with responsibility for the Antilles, part of
Central America and the northeastern part of South America*®
The boundaries of the local tribunals followed those of ecclesiastical units, in
particular the dioceses, but the ways in which they were combined changed over
time, in an attempt to find the ‘ideal’ size: the territorial arrangements were
largely determined by the particular strategy of the institution, which was
primarily interested in those regions with large populations of New Christians
and Moriscos, in the towns and in the more politically sensitive areas.
The same quest to find a balance between the needs (and possibilities) of
inquisitorial activity, the characteristics of the market in the goods of salvation
and the geography of power can be seen in Portugal. In its early stages, between
1536 and 1539, the tribunal was primarily active in the diocese of Evora, seat of
the court. Its activities were soon extended to the diocese of Lisbon, chief town
of the kingdom, which became capital of the empire. In 1541, four new tribunals
were established in the north and centre of the country: at Porto, Lamego,
Coimbra and Tomar. A period of retrenchment followed, perhaps for financial
reasons, but more likely as a result of the difficulties of exercising bureaucratic
Map 2. The boundaries of district tribunals in the Iberian Peninsula
control over the network; in 1548 only two tribunals were functioning, that of
Lisbon, which had jurisdiction over the whole of the north and most of the
centre of the country, and that of Evora, which was responsible for the whole of The creation of local tribunals with a staff of officials installed in a central
the south and part of the centre, the diocese of Guarda. In 1560, the tribunal of location, usually the seat of an episcopate in a town of some importance, was not
Goa was created and given jurisdiction over the Portuguese territories in East enough in itself to ensure control of the territory. The Holy Office used two
Africa and Asia. In 1565, the tribunal of Coimbra was restored, with jurisdiction methods to achieve this aim: district visits and a network of unpaid officials and
over the whole of the north and much of the centre of the country; the diocese of ministers, constituted by the commissioners and the familiars. Visitations were
Guarda was put under the control of the tribunal of Lisbon, whose jurisdiction made obligatory in Spain by the Instructions of Torquemada in 1498 and Deza
still extended to the dioceses of Lisbon and Leiria as well as to the Atlantic in 1500. The two inquisitors appointed to each tribunal were required to spend
lands, that is, the islands, Brazil, and the fortresses and entrepéts of the west part of each year inspecting the region under their jurisdiction. In those tribunals
coast of Africa as far as the Cape of Good Hope. This pattern was maintained which have been studied, this obligation was respected: in Toledo, for example,
largely unchanged until the abolition of the Holy Office in 1821. If we annual visits were made regularly until 1580, after which they became less
compare the average size of the jurisdictions of the local tribunals in Portugal lrequent, ceasing altogether in 1630.*' The pattern in the other tribunals that
with those in Spain, we find some similarity: that of Coimbra covered just over have been studied is similar; the decline and then cessation can be attributed to
50,000 square kilometres, that of Evora about the same, but the jurisdiction of sedentarization, to the increasing cost of visits and the entrenchment of the
the tribunal of Lisbon in the continent was smaller because of its responsibility networks of familiars and commissioners and to the wars on the periphery of the
for the Atlantic colonies,” Spanish empire, especially between the 1630s and the 1660s.”

** See the articles by Alvaro Huerga and Escandell Bonet in Pérez Villanueva and Escandell Bonet
(eds), Historia de la Inquisicion, vol. 1, pp. 662-700, 713-30, 918-95.
» Francisco Bethencourt, ‘Inquisicdo e Controle Social’, Histéria Critica, 14 (1987), 5-18. “' Jean-Pierre Dedieu, ‘Les Inquisiteurs de Toléde et la visite de district. La sédentarisation d’un
“° The extent of the district of Coimbra has been calculated by Elvira Mea, 4 Inquisicdo de Coimbra tribunal (1550-1630), Mélanges de la Casa de Velazquez’, 13 (1977), 235-56.
no século XVI, A instituigdo, os homens e a sociedade (Porto: Fundagio Eng. Antanio de © Jaime Contreras, El Sante Oficio de la Inquisicion de Galicia, 1560-1700 (Poder, Sociedad y
Almeida, 1997). Cultura) (Madrid: Akal, 1982), pp. 470-511.
 74 THE INQUISITION
In Portugal, this sedentarization developed even earlier. The only visits
similar to those observed for Spain took place in 1540-2, that is, in the early
days of the Holy Office; they are recorded for the dioceses of Evora and Porto.
The strategy soon changed, when a series of actions was launched in the towns,
which had no need of visits. Those known for the period 1560-1630 were
decided centrally by the General Council and were never as regular as in Spain;
the only common feature was the timing of their cessation.”
In Spain, the network of ‘familiars’, that is, laymen who assisted the activities
of the tribunal, enjoying certain privileges (in particular bearing arms and
exemption from taxes) and serving a representative function, began to be
established quite early, in the first decades of the sixteenth century (Garcia
Carce] found 25 in Valencia in 1501).** The rapid increase in their numbers
during the first half of the sixteenth century (Bartolomé Bennassar found 78 in
the town of Cérdoba alone in 1544)** explains the complaints of the people
about the excessive number of this new type of privileged official. These
complaints led the king, in 1553, to publish the concordia which set limits
according to the size of town: a maximum of 50 in Seville, Toledo and Granada,
40 in Valladolid, Cuenca and Cérdoba, 30 in Murcia, 25 in Llerena and
Calahorra, 10 in all places with 3,000 inhabitants, 6 in those with 1,000
inhabitants, 4 in those with 500 and 2 in the other places where they might be
needed (a number which might rise to 4 in ports and frontier regions).** Henry
Kamen has calculated that the total number of familiars admitted in the district
of Toledo was 805, in Granada 554 and in Santiago de Compostela 1,009; a
similar concordia made for the kingdom of Aragon set the number for the
district of Barcelona at 905, and for Zaragoza at 1,215.*7 In 1597 the inquisitor
general and the Council regulated the distribution of familiars in the kingdom of
Sicily, listing 171 places with a total of 1,462 familiars, not including the town
of Palermo.** The number had risen rapidly in the 1560s and 1570s: the known
lists of Sicilian familiars, although incomplete, suggest only 251 in 1561, spread
8 Francisco Bethencourt, ‘Inquisigio e controle social’, Historia Critica, 14 (1987), 5-18. Two
other visits need to be noted, one to Gouveia, in 1564 (Mea, Inguisigdo de Coimbra, Chapter 3)
and the other to several towns in the South — Faro, Lagos, Portimao, Loulé and Beja, in 1585:
Joaquim Romero Magalhdes, ‘Em busca dos “Tempos” da Inquisigio’, Revista de Historia das
ideias, 9 (1987), p. 205.
4 su
Ricado Garcia Carcel, Origenes de la inquisicion Espaitola. El Tribunal de Valencia, 1478-1530
gE
(Barcelona: Peninsula, 1976), p. 138.
~ Bartolomé Bennassar, ‘Le Pouvoir Inquisitorial’, in Bartolomé Bennassar (cd.), L ‘Inquisition
é
Espagnole, XVe-XINXe Siécle (Paris: Hachette, 1979), p. 97.
4
See the discussion of the concordia in Contreras, El Santo Oficie de la Inquisicién de Galicia,
=
pp. 72-6.
4
Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (p. 148 of 1985 edition).
23
4
AHN, Ingq., lib. 1237, fols. 330r-36v.
Organization 75
over 90 localities, but as many as 1,512 in 1575, spread over 170 places.”
Vhese concordias and regulations helped to make the network slightly more
balanced and homogeneous, but appointment practices varied with the circum-
slunces. Up to the end of the sixteenth century, the limits were frequently not
observed; later, appointments were too few, except in a handful of cases, to fill
all the stipulated positions.
Some of the figures are impressive. In the district of Valencia, for example,
there were 1,638 familiars in 1567, 183 living in the capital, the others spread
between 406 places; according to the concordia of 1568, the total should have
been 1,500, 180 of them in the principal town. The ratio here was one familiar to
42 neighbours, perhaps the highest in Spain (it has been calculated by Garcia
Carcel on the basis of the figures for the towns, not the total population of the
district), The number then rapidly fell: in 1602 there was one familiar to 64
neighbours (calculated on the same basis);*° in 1651, there were only 389
familiars, including 111 in Valencia; in 1697, the total had dropped to 162, of
whom 29 were in the capital. There was a slight increase in the number of
lumiliars in the first half
of the eighteenth century: 217 in 1726 (46 in the town)
and 356 in 1748 (55 in the town). An irreversible decline then set in: in 1806,
there were only 167 familiars, 19 of them in the capital.*!
The distribution of the network of familiars was far from regular, and even in
the sixteenth century there was no correlation with the numbers of Moriscos: the
familiars were concentrated on the coast, a tendency which increased in the
seventeenth and, even more, the eighteenth century. The pattern was similar in
the district of Barcelona: 785 familiars in 1567, concentrated in 20 per cent of
settlements, with a ratio of one familiar to every 43 neighbours. But the pattern
of recruitment rates was different as, after the concordia of 1568, the number of
familiars increased rather than fell: Jaime Contreras has counted 832 in 1600,
with a better geographical distribution, that is, in 542 as opposed to 404 places,
with a sharp drop in the numbers in the towns, some penetration of the vast rural
zone and a better representation in the ports.°? The trend in the seventeenth
century is not yet clear, although the devastating effects of the Wars of
See the lists of familiars published by Carlo Alberto Garufi, Faiti e personaggi dell inquisizione
in Sicilia (1914-1921) (Palermo: Sellerio, 1978), pp. 308-11, and Francesco Giunta, Dossier
Inqguisizione in Sicilia, L'Organigrama del Sant'Uffizio a meta del Cinguecento (Palermo:
Sellerio, 1991), pp. 43-76.
Ricardo Garcia Carecl, Herejia v Sociedad en el Siglo XVI, La Inquisicion en Valéncia (1530—-
1609) (Barcelona: Peninsula, 1980), pp. 147-9.
*' José Martinez Millin, ‘Burocracia del Santo Oficio en Valencia durante el siglo XVIII’,
Miscelanea Comillas, 40, 77 (1982), 154-6; Stephen Haliczer, Inguisition and Society in the
Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 154-5.
*? Jaime Contreras, *La infraestructura social de la Inquisicién: comisarios y familiares’, in Angel
Alcala (ed.), dnquisicion Espatiola y Mentatidad Inquisitorial (Barcelona: Ariel, 1984), pp. 134,
141-3,
76 THE INQUISITION
Independence between 1640 and 1652 and the War of Spanish Succession at the
beginning of the eighteenth century are known: in 1748 there were only 140
familiars as opposed to the 1,163 stipulated in the concordia.”*
In Galicia, although the network of familiars had a different social composition
(see Chapter 4), the distribution was fairly similar to that in Valencia, that is, it was
concentrated in the coastal zones and the northern frontier with Portugal, with a
particularly strong presence in the large towns. The number of familiars was much
smaller, however, than stipulated in the concordia: at the end of the sixteenth
century there were only 388, 25 of them in Santiago de Compostela. It is true that
the tribunal had been established only in 1574, and that the depression of the
seventeenth century reached this area early; thus, the number of familiars grad-
ually fell until the general crisis of the 1630s and 1640s: 218 in 1641, even more
concentrated in the towns, 118 in 1663.** But the geographical distribution did
not always conform to the same model: in 1549, in the district of Calahorra, for
example, more than 100 familiars were widely spread throughout the region,**
The rate of appointments also fluctuated according to region. In Seville, they were
fewer than laid down in the concordia, at least from the end of the sixteenth
century: with an official maximum of 616 familiars, there were 370 in 1596, 199
in 1705 and 192 in 1748. The situation was similar in Granada, admittedly already
in crisis: with a possible maximum of 554, there were 313 familiars in 1641,
141 in 1706, 99 in 1727 and 84 in 1748. The slow decline of the first half
of the
seventeenth century was not, however, found in Cordoba: with a ceiling of 464
familiars, there were 524 in 1610 and 693 in 1641, though only 187 in 1748.°°
Cuenca was different again; according to Dedieu, there were only 60 familiars in
1540, a number which rapidly increased after the concerdia, peaking between
1361 and 1565 (an average of 67 candidates a year), then falling slightly until
1630 (30 a year) before collapsing (2 a year around 1685). Dedieu found a similar
pattern in Toledo, with a peak between 1554 and 1562 and only a very slight
decline in the first half ofthe seventeenth century (71 ‘supernumerary’ familiars in
1622). The collapse came with the crisis of 1640 (a little later than in Cuenca): in
the mid-eighteenth century there were only 99 familiars in the whole of the
district.*’ As in Cuenca, the familiars were initially geographically concentrated,
in contrast to the dispersion observed in Calahorra and even in Cordoba.
*} Martinez Millan, ‘La burocracia del Santo Oficio de Catalufia durante el siglo XVIII’, Archivo
Hispano-Americano, 44, 173-4 (1984), 156.
*4 Contreras, El Santo Oficio de la Inquisicién de Galicia, pp. 90-144,
% Tiiaki Reguera, La Inquisicin Espanola en el Pais Vasco. (El Tribunal de Calahorra, 1513-
1570)(Saint-Sebastien: Txertoa, 1984), pp. 52-4.
** Miguel Echeverria Goicoechea ef a/., ‘Distribucién y numero de los familiares del Santo Oficio
en Andalucia durante los siglos XVI-XVIII’, Hispania Sacra, 39, 79 (1987), 59-94.
5? Jean-Pierre Dedieu, L'Administration de la Foi. L ‘Inquisition de Tolede, XVle-XViHe Siécle
(Madrid: Casa de Velazquez, 1989), pp. 192-4.
Organization 77
The decline in appointments in the local tribunals of Castile and Aragon was
due in part to the rising cost to the candidates of the genealogical investigation,
but also to the drastic reduction in the associated privileges, in particular
exemptions from taxation and military service, in the wake of the crisis suffered
by the Spanish empire in the 1630s. In America, the policy was much more
restrictive. The Instructions of 1569 for the tribunal of Lima allowed a max-
imum of 12 familiars for the capital, 4 for each diocese and | for each settlement
inhabited by Spaniards, but these quotas were never filled: 38 familiars for the
whole of the district in 1623, 39 in 1634, a number which remained fairly stable
up to the abolition of the tribunal; between 1570 and 1635, Castafieda Delgado
and Hernandez Aparicio found 238 familiars.** The situation in Mexico was
similar: Solange Alberro found 314 between 1571 and 1646, more scattered
than in the province of Lima, as they were present in 64 towns and villages.*”
Clearly, there were several reasons for this restrictive policy: in colonial con-
ditions it was genuinely difficult to conform to the prescribed procedures,
especially as regards the genealogical investigation; in regions so remote from
the centre, where links were fragile and social control precarious, an over-
provision of familiars might contribute to an escalation in the number of
conflicts, which made the position of the Holy Office more unstable.
It is very difficult to estimate the total number of familiars in Spain and its
empire throughout the whole period of the Inquisition’s existence, given the
yreat variety of situations in time and space, It is reasonable to assume that, at
the peak of the tribunals’ power, there may have been more than 20,000
familiars in post at one time, and that the total number of familiars appointed
between 1481 and 1820 must have reached more than 100,000.
The network of familiars of the Portuguese Inquisition began to be put in
place only in the last decades of the sixteenth century, following a letter sent out
in 1570 by Cardinal Henrique, inquisitor general. In 1605, another letter from an
inquisitor general, this time Pedro de Castilho, emphasized the need to press
ahead with the appointment of familiars. The letters from the inquisitors to the
General Council confirm the absence of a proper network at the beginning of the
seventeenth century: in 1608 the tribunal of Evora noted that there were only 7
familiars in the town and asked for permission to appoint a further 20, while
reparding it as unnecessary to appoint any in the district because they ‘render the
Holy Office odious, waste our time and worry us with their demands’, The
General Council agreed to 12 for the town and insisted on 2 in every large
“’ Paulino Castaieda Delgado and Pilar Hernandez Aparicio, La Inqguisicién de Lima, 3 vols.
(Madrid: Deimos, 1989-98), vol. I, pp. 59-61.
”” Solange Alberro, /nquisicién y sociedad en Mexico, 1571-1700 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1988), p. 53.
78 THE INQUISITION Organization 79

village. In 1624, there were still only 40 in this district. In the district of luble 2.1 Number of familiars in Portugal
Coimbra, Elvira Mea found 31 familiars between 1581 and 1602 (an incomplete
but significant list). In the mid-seventeenth century, there would have been a 1571-1580 18 1701-1710 1,570
151-1590 47 1711-1720 935
total of 132 for the whole of continental Portugal. The limits fixed in 1693 for 1591-1600 92 1721-1730 1,108
the three districts show at least an attempt to correct this situation: 187 in the 1601-1610 219 1731-1740 1,658
district of Lisbon, 178 in that of Evora and 236 in that of Coimbra, figures which 1611-1620 326 1741-1750 1,639
1621-1630 579 1751-1760 2,023
reflect the principal urban units, since there was still an insistence on one or two 1631-1640 339 1761-1770 9,252
familiars in each large village.®' There is conflicting evidence with regard to this Lod 11650 468 1771-1780 1,218
apparent weakness in the network of familiars in Portugal during the larger part 1651-1660 421 1781-1790 705
161-1670 478 1791-1800 347
of the seventeenth century: in 1620 Philip III wrote a strange letter to the 171-1680 791 1801-1810 351
Portuguese inquisitor general in which he asked for an explanation to the 1681-1690 758 1811-1820 125
viceroy for the excess of supernumerary familiars.©? The figures for the island 1691-1700 1434 Total 19,901
of Madeira collected by Maria do Carmo Dias Farinha are interesting: out of a
total of 149 familiars, 128 were appointed in the eighteenth century, 92 of them Sonree: José Veiga Torres, “Da repressio religiosa para a
Jvomogdo social. A Inquisigdo como instancia legitimadora da
(62 per cent) between 1750 and 1777.°° The list of familiars published by promogio social da burguesia comercial’, Revista Critica de
Eduardo de Miranda and Arthur de Tavora, sadly stopping at the letter A Ciéneias Saciais, 40 (1994): 109-35,
(Alexandre), lists 217 appointments, of which 4 were in the sixteenth century,
80 in the seventeenth century and 131 in the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries. The list reconstructed by Pires de Lima on the basis of habilitations of the was 52 between 1570 and 1600, 272 between 1600 and 1620 and 456 between
Holy Office in the district of Aveiro (an anachronistic administrative unit) is 1620 and 1650. Between 1700 and 1750, the decennial average stood at 1,382,
even more significant, since what emerges is a total of 1,656 familiars appointed lising to 2,137 between 1750 and 1770, before beginning a rapid decline until
(born or resident in the region), 8 in the sixteenth century, 399 in the seventeenth only 125 familiars were appointed between 1811 and 1820.° In sum, there was
century (305 in the second half), 1,195 in the eighteenth century (72 per cent of in initial phase of very slow growth when the network was being organized,
the total) and 54 in the nineteenth century.°° aller which the rate of appointments speeded up from 1620 on, with a major
These trends are confirmed by the global figures presented by José Veiga lurning point around 1690 heralding a new phase of mass participation in the
Inquisition, which continued until 1770.
Torres (see table 2.1): of a total of 19,901 familiars, 702 were appointed
between 1570 and 1620, 2,285 between 1621 and 1670 and even more The situation in the territories of the Portuguese empire was largely similar. In
(5,488) between 1671 and 1720; the number peaked between 1721 and 1770, ii letter sent in 1618, the inquisitors of Goa stated that there were fewer than 20
when there were 8,680 appointments, then fell to 2,746 in the period between familiars in the provinee.®’ For Brazil, which came within the jurisdiction of the
1771 and 1820. Thus, the network of familiars of the Holy Office in Portugal tribunal of Lisbon, we are better informed, although the figures diverge. Sénia
grew with remarkable rapidity in the eighteenth century, unlike the situation in Siqueira, who has worked on the regions of Bahia and Pernambouc, notes the
Spain. A closer look at these figures reveals that the turning point came in the appointment of, respectively, 103 and 45 familiars during the seventeenth
1690s, when 1,434 familiars were appointed, as against an average of 774 century, 634 and 514 in the eighteenth century and 54 and 22 the nineteenth
during the preceding decades. The average number of appointments per decade century.”* Daniela Buono Calainho has made a more detailed study of the
‘Appointment of familiars in colonial Brazil, dividing the figures by region and

Gl
ANTT, CGSO, liv, 97, documents 75, 105,
é

6
Mea, Inquisicdo de Coimbra, vol. 1, pp. 362-4. °? ANTT, CGSO, liv. 88, document 115. "José Veiga Torres, ‘Da repressio religiosa para a promogao social. A Inquisic¢ao como instancia
Bs

6.
Maria do Carmo Jasmins Dias Farinha, A Madeira nos Arquivos da inguisigde, in Actas do
Coloquio Internacional de Histéria da Madeira (Funchal, 1986), pp. 39-42.
Eduardo de Miranda and Arthur de Tavora, Extractos dos processos para familiares do Santo
Oficio, vol. 1 (Vila Nova de Famalicdo, 1937).
©!
Jorge Hugo Pires de Lima, O Distrito de Aveiro nas Habilitagées do Santo Oficio, in Arquivo do
Distrito de Aveiro, 16 vols. (Aveira, 1960-76).
legitmadora da promogao social da burguesia mercantil’, Revista Critica de Ciéncias Sociais, 40
(1994), 109-35. 1 thank the author for permitting me to use these data, assembled after years of
research
"" Haillo, A Inquisigdo de Goa, vol. I, pp. 548-9.
" Sonia A. Siqueira, 4 fnquisigdo Portuguesa e a Sociedade Colonial (SA0 Paulo; Atica, 1978),
pp. 178-81,
80 THE INQUISITION
by period: a total of 101 familiars were appointed during the seventeenth
century (70 between 1681 and 1699, concentrated in the regions of Bahia and
Pernambouc), 1,546 in the eighteenth century (particularly in the same two
regions and in Rio and the Minas Gerais) and only 61 in the nineteenth
century. This total of 1,708 familiars appointed in colonial Brazil differs
from the figures of José Veiga Torres (see table 4.3), although the trend is
confirmed, Torres gives a total of 3,114 appointments in Brazil, only 4 of which
came between 1570 and 1620, 25 between 1621 and 1670, 526 between 1671
and 1720, 1,687 between 1721 and 1770 and 872 between 1671 and 1820.”
The development of the network seems to have been fairly similar everywhere.
This trend is at odds with the level of activity of the Portuguese Inquisition,
where the eighteenth century saw an irreversible decline in detentions, with a
dramatic fall in the number of prisoners after 1750; it also contrasts with the
situation in Spain, where there was a degree of correlation between the expan-
sion of the network of familiars and the activity of the institution (if we except
the initial period, when the possibilities for organizing the network were still
limited). This problem has never been explained and its solution is far from
obvious. On the one hand, we may point to the precocious entrenchment of the
Portuguese tribunals, due to the tradition of centralized power from the begin-
ning of the kingdom; there was no need, therefore, to invest in the network of
familiars to gain additional support at the social or institutional level. On the
other hand, the Portuguese tribunals were primarily concerned with the towns,
where the links with the civil and ecclesiastical justices were sufficient to keep
the wheels of the ‘machine’ tuming. Further, the Spanish experience, and the
many conflicts provoked by the familiars, must have discouraged the local
tribunals from proceeding with appointments prejudicial to their interests.
These hypotheses may explain the lack of significant investment during the
period of the construction of the network in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but they do not explain the startling inflation of the eighteenth
century. Two other hypotheses may be advanced: first, in a period of rapid
decline, the institution felt the need to expand its support and strengthen its
possibilities of representation (the ‘boom’ seems to have begun afier the
restoration of the tribunal in 1681, following the suspension imposed by the
pope in 1674); second, in a society experiencing rapid change, the tribunal was
used as a way of redistributing access to privileges (see Chapter 4).
© Daniela Buono Calainho, ‘Em nome do Santo Oficio. Familiares da Inquisigio Portuguesa no
Brasil Colonial’, MA dissertation (Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
1992), esp. pp. 65—73. The printed version corrected the original data: Agentes da Fé. Familiares
da Inquisigde Portuguesa no Brasil Colonial (Bauru, SP: EDUSC, 2006), esp. pp, 78-79, 176—
86.
™ ‘Torres, ‘Da repressao religiosa para a promogio social’.
Organization — 81
The network of commissioners was also a product of the policy of embedding
the tribunal locally, though later than the familiars, and it played a fundamental
role. The commissioners were effectively the delegates of the inquisitors in the
district and were entrusted with various investigations, for example in connection
with trials or the habilitation of candidates for a post; they also received denun-
ciations, supervised the arrival of books in the ports or on the frontiers and
supervised the conduct of the familiars. They were members of the clergy,
which made them more effective representatives, and their network was modelled
on that of ecclesiastical jurisdiction (partidos, arciprestazgos or vicarias),
although they were more evenly distributed: if the district was too extensive,
they could be appointed at intervals of four leagues. The case of Cuenca has
perhaps been most thoroughly studied over the long term. There was here a rapid
expansion in the number of commissioners between 1556 and 1565, and they
were found in 53 widely dispersed places; between 1636 and 1645, the network
became denser, extending to 71 localities; a period of crisis followed, and Sara
Nale found only 47 commissioners in 1655, There had been a sharp fall in the
population — 40 per cent — in the diocese of Cuenca between 1591 and 1654, but it
did not coincide with the reduction in the number of commissioners.”' The case of
Santiago is significant: a list of 1611 records 100 commissioners, fairly well
dispersed along the coastal zone and the frontier with Portugal, the interior was
relatively better provided with commissioners than with familiars. The network
seems to have remained stable during the seventeenth century, unlike that of
familiars, which declined. The cessation of inquisitorial visits in the region around
1630 strengthened the power of the commissioners, who alone guaranteed the
effective presence of the tribunal in the region.’”* The case of Toledo is fairly
similar: the network of commissioners was put in place only around 1560, but the
rate of appointments remained high throughout the seventeenth century, unlike
that of familiars. By the end of the century, however, the network had become
unbalanced, with a scarcity of commissioners in the north and west of the
province, and its effectiveness was also gradually reducing; it collapsed in the
cighteenth century.’* At Valencia a substantial network of commissioners was
already in existence by the 1560s, which was reduced by the concordia of 1567,
forcing the inquisitors to appoint notaries to improve coverage of the district.
Although the evidence is scanty (Martinez Millan found 52 notaries in 1732, 50 in
1742 and 11 in 1798), the tendency for a geographical distribution that closely
resembled that of the familiars and notaries is clear.”*
'! Sara T. Nale, ‘Inquisitors, Priests and People during the Catholic Reformation in Spain’, The
Sixteenth Century Journal, 18, 4 (1987), 557-87.
Contreras, ‘Infraestructura social de la Inquisicién’, 89-119,
"’ Dedieu, ‘Les Inquisiteurs de Toléde et la visite de district’, 203-8.
' Martinez Millan, ‘Burocracia del Santo Oficio en Valencia’, p. 153; Haliczer, /nguisition and
Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, pp. 203-7.
82 THE INQUISITION
The collapse in the eighteenth century, although less drastic than that of the
familiars, is confirmed by the figures available for the districts of Cordoba (only 8
commissioners and 4 notaries appointed between 1755 and 1800) and Barcelona
(2 commissioners and 1 notary for the whole district in 1705).”° In this case
political and military problems complicated the situation: by 1567 the lists sent by
the inquisitors to the Consejo de la Suprema recorded only 14 commissioners;”°
at Calahorra, in 1549, the network comprised 16 commissioners located in the
principal towns, geographically more concentrated than were the familiars.”’ In
Sicily, the local network of officials was denser: 56 commissioners, 56 notaries
and 38 officials in 1515, dispersed throughout the island.”*
In America, the use of commissioners was as important as in the Iberian
Peninsula, if not more so, in spite of the restrictions imposed by the Consejo de
fa Suprema from fear of jurisdictional disputes and given the difficulty of
finding suitably qualified clergy. In 1569, for example, for the tribunal of
Lima, the Suprema limited numbers to 1 commissioner and | notary for every
seat of a bishopric and seaport, but in 1623 there were 34 commissioners and 37
notaries (38 and 36 respectively in 1634). During the period studied by
Castefieda Delgado and Hernandez Aparicio (1570-1635), there were 104
commissioners and 80 notaries, mostly appointed in the seventeenth century
and unevenly distributed over the area.”” In Mexico, the distribution seems
rather more balanced, with 100 different locations covered between 1571 and
1699; Solange Alberro has been able to compile a list of 222 commissioners
appointed during this period.*°
In Portugal, the appointment of commissioners followed very much the same
pattern as that of familiars. It began at the end of the sixteenth century, as a result
of several letters on the subject from the inquisitor general. Maria do Carmo Dias
Farinha’s work on habilitations in the region of Madeira has produced a list of 41
commissioners and 36 notaries, the majority of whom (61) were appointed in the
eighteenth century, including 42 (54 per cent of the total) during the government
of Pombal. This network covered thirteen localities in the islands of Madeira and
Porto Santo, but its expansion dated only from the eighteenth century, the
seventeenth-century appointments being concentrated in the town of Funchal,*!
There were relatively few habilitations of commissioners in Brazil in the
* José Martinez Millan, *Burocracia inquisitorial del tribunal de Cérdoba durante el siglo XVIII’,
Boletin de la Real Academia de Cordoba, 60, 106 (1984), p. 366; Martinez Millan, ‘Burocracia
_ del Santo Oficio de Catalufia’, p. 155.
Contreras, ‘Infraestructura social de la Inquisicion’, p. 134.
Reguera, Inquisicion Espariola en el Pais Basco, pp. 52-3.
Garufi, Patti e Personageil dell 'Inquisizione in Sicilia.
Castatieda Delgado, Hernandez Aparicio and Millar Carvajo, /nguisicion de Lima.
Alberro, Inquisicion y Sociedad en Mexico, p. 50,
Farinha, A Madeira nos Arquivos da Inquisigéo, pp, 37-8.
Organization 83
seventeenth century, in contrast to those of familiars: of a total of 136, Sénia
Siqueira found only 6 and 2 respectively for the regions of Bahia and Pernambouc
{i the seventeenth century, 36 and 31 in the eighteenth century and 2 and 3 in the
jineteenth century. No notaries had as yet been appointed in the seventeenth
ventury, but in the same regions she found respectively 16 and 40 candidates
during the eighteenth century and 1 and 3 for the nineteenth century.*? Lastly, the
lint of habilitations for the region of Aveiro included 148 appointed commis-
wioners: | in the sixteenth century, 41 in the seventeenth century (36 of them in the
second half), 101 in the eighteenth century (that is, 68 per cent of the total, spread
fuirly evenly over the century) and 5 in the nineteenth century.** The overall
iivures presented by Veiga Torres confirm these trends: of a total of 2561
vommissioners appointed between 1580 and 1820, 132 were appointed between
1580 and 1620, 297 between 1621 and 1670, 637 between 1671 and 1720, 1,011
between 1721 and 1720 and 484 between 1771 and 1820.** The trend in the
{ppointment of commissioners is similar to that for familiars: the rates of appoint-
iment are not identical, but there was an increase in their number after the end of
(he seventeenth century, peaking between 1720 and 1770.
There is sufficient evidence to show that the Portuguese organizational model
differed from that of Spain, in that it was based on the precocious sedentarization
of the tribunals, the centralization of the administrative culture and more devel-
oped links with other powers, which are related to the weakness of the networks of
commissioners and, above all, familiars in the second half of the sixteenth and the
seventeenth century. The increase in the number of appointments of both familiars
sind commissioners in the eighteenth century, that is, in a period of decline for the
Portuguese Inquisition, has to do with their representational functions and with the
new role of the Holy Office in the redistribution of privileges.
Not enough is known about the local presence of the Roman Inquisition, but
there are a few isolated studies which make it possible to sketch a very provisional
picture of its organization. In the first place, we should note the existence of a
network which predated the creation of the Sacra Congregazione and which
persisted, becoming denser over time. The administrative units of the Inquisition
in Italy were based on ecclesiastical units, as in Spain and Portugal, but what is
different here is the absence of the practice of combining dioceses into larger
units, even though the Italian dioceses were generally much smaller then those of
the Iberian Peninsula. The case of Venice is typical: in the first halfofthe sixteenth
century tribunals had already been established in Brescia, Padua, Udine, Treviso,
Cyprus, Rovigo, Vicenza, Bergamo, Verona, Capodistria and, of course, Venice
itself. In the majority of these, the inquisitors managed affairs themselves, but
" Siqueira, A Inguisigdo Portuguesa, pp. 160-8.
"" Pires de Lima, © Distrito de Aveiro nas Habilitagdes do Santo Oficio.
"' ‘Torres, ‘Da repressio religiosa para a promogio social’.
 84 THE INQUISITION Organization — 85

there were also some vicars and episcopal representatives who assumed respon-
sibilities in the 1540s.°° The network then stabilized with the appointment of
inquisitors to all positions, but they had to share their judicial procedures with the
bishops (or their delegates, the vicari generali) and even with the papal nuncio in
Venice.** The structure of the districts was largely maintained during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, except for the loss of Cyprus and the creation of
new tribunals at Crema and Conegliano.*” Modena, in contrast, did not become
the seat ofa tribunal of the Roman Inquisition until 1599; the town and its territory
had until then been a vicaria under the jurisdiction of the inquisitors of Ferrara,
who were responsible for tutto /o Stato estense. In Bologna, the jurisdiction of the
tribunal, which had been extended around 1273 to the province of Lombardy and
the ‘Marchia januensi’, was reduced to Lombardy in 1305, then to lower
Lombardy, that is, Modena and Ferrara, later (1465) to the diocese of Bologna
and finally, in 1550, to the borders of this city; during this process inquisitors were
appointed in every significant town, which suggests a very dense network of
tribunals of the Holy Office in the papal states.** In Florence the Inquisition took
account of the traditional political divisions: there were tribunals in the state
capital, in Siena and in Pisa.
The work of Andrea Del Col on the territorial structures of the Roman
Inquisition has added to our knowledge of the local tribunals.®? It confirms
their very high density in Venice: Aquileia (1557), Belluno (1546), Bergamo,
Brescia, Capodistria, Ceneda (1561), Crema (1614), Padova, Rovigo (1546),
Treviso, Venezia, Verona, Vicenza and Zara (in Dalmatia, 1578), a total of 14
tribunals. This density might be attributed to the system of checks and double
checks developed by the Republic of Venice, with the presence of lay and
ecclesiastical judges alongside each inquisitor. However, a study of the distri-
bution of the tribunals in the whole of Italy shows a fairly similar situation in the

*° Andrea Del Col, ‘Organizzazione, composizione e giurisdizione dei tribunali dell’ Inquisizione
@ Dominican headquarters af the Inquisition 3K Episcopal headquarters of the Inquisition
romana nella repubblica di Venezia (1500-1550)’, Critica Storica, 25, 2 (1988), 244-94, esp. Franciscan headquarters af the Inquisition Headquarters of the congregation of the Holy Office
281-91, where the author emphasizes the superiority of the bishop’s representative over the
(21/1 Capital of etate (with Dominican oF Franciseun haadquartars of the Inquisition)
inquisitor at this period in the tribunals of the terrafirma, also the initiatives of the civil authorities.
Bi
Andrea Del Col convincingly emphasizes the importance of the bishops (or their delegates, the
a

Map 3. The tribunals of the Roman Inquisition

vicari generali) in the local tribunals of the Roman Inquisition, mainly in the sixteenth century:
Inquisizione net Patriarcato e Diocese di Aquilela, 1557-1559 (Trieste: Universita degli Studi di
Trieste, 1998), pp. CKLU-CXLIL
ASV, SU, folder 152, bundle V (correspondence of the 1640s between the inquisitors of the other northern states: Milan had 7 tribunals, in Alessandria, Como (1505),
3

terrafirma and the inquisitor of Venice); ASV, SU, folder 154 (a decree of 1767 notes the Cremona (1548), Milan, Novara (1580), Pavia (1509) and Tortona; the Duchy
circumscriptions with inquisitors).
Antonio Battistella, // Santo Officio e la Riforma Religiosa in Bologna (Bologna: Nicola of Savoy 5, in Asti (1579), Mondovi (1596), Saluzzo (1555), Torino and
Zanichelli, 1905), pp. 28-9, Vercelli; Genova only 1, in the capital of the state; Mantova 2, in Casale
Andrea Del Col, *Strutture e attivita dell’Inquisizione Romana’, in Agostino Borromeo (ed.),
ey
S

Monferrato (1545) and Mantova (1521); Parma 2, in Piacenza and Parma

L'Inquisizione, Atti del Simposio Internazionale, Citta del Vaticano, 29-31 ottobre 1998 (Cit
del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2003), pp. 345-80; Andrea Del Col, L ‘Inquisizione (1588); and Modena 2, in Modena (1599) and Reggio Emilia (1599).
in Halia dal XH al XX1 Secolo (Milan; Oscar Mondadori, 2006), p. 743, Curiously, the tribunals of the Roman Inquisition become increasingly rare as
86 THE INQUISITION
one moves further south. The Pontifical States had 10: Ancona (1553), Bologna,
Faenza (1547), Fermo (1631), Ferrara, Gubbio (1632), Perugia (1550), Rimini
(1550), Rome and Spoleto (1685), plus Avignon in France (1538). The Duchy
of Tuscany had only 3 tribunals: Florence, Pisa (1575) and Siena (1572). The
Roman Inquisition still had tribunals outside Italy, in Besancon, Carcassone,
Toulouse, Cologne and Malta (1547). The Republic of Lucca only had 1
ecclesiastical tribunal dependent on the bishop. Since 1553 the kingdom of
Naples had 1 minister (not inquisitor) of the Roman Inquisition, dependent on
the archbishop — it cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a tribunal of the
Roman Inquisition, although there was some kind of association.
published by Del Col deserves careful study, since it reveals a clear sense of
being under siege from the ‘threat’ from the north: out of a total of 47 tribunals
established in the Italian peninsula, 37 (79 per cent) were located north of
Florence. It is true that this map has to be related to two different ecclesiastical
structures in Italy, the medium-size dioceses in the centre-north and the micro-
dioceses in part of the Pontifical States and the Vice-Royalty of Naples,” but
this is not enough to explain the marked difference. The dates of creation of the
tribunals are also worthy of note: they show that a significant number (24), that
is, more than half, were established after the reorganization of the Roman
Inquisition, which reveals the institutional impact of the centralized Council,
coupled with the religious alignment with Rome of regional and local powers.
But this fairly dense web was still based on a network of vicars, which
gradually expanded after the reorganization of the bishoprics and carve-up of
the ecclesiastical units, with the creation of new vicari forane?. Their role was
similar to that of the commissioners of the Iberian Inquisitions, although the
vicar enjoyed greater autonomy and initiative. They also came from different
backgrounds: whereas in the Iberian world the commissioners were selected
from among the diocesan clergy, in particular the vicars of ecclesiastical justice,
in Italy the vicari usually belonged to the regular clergy.”’ The ‘micro-structure’
of the Inquisition in the territory of Modena has been studied by Albano Biondi,
who found a list of the patentati of the Holy Office for 1622: for the seat of the
tribunal, it records 1 inquisitor, 1 vicar-general, 14 consu/tori (in theology,
canon law and civil law), 31 officials and ministers and 14 familiars. In the
five dioceses under the jurisdiction of the tribunal, there were 43
foranei, with 136 officials (vicars, notaries and others). Biondi also noted the
surprising stability of the network: in a list of 1763, the number of vicariati (43)
°” Gaetano Greco, La chiesa in Halia nell'Eta Moderna (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999),
°! Biondi, ‘La Lettere della Sacra Congregazione romana’, p, 100. In the territories of the Spanish
empire, the commissioners were also members of the regular clergy: Roberto Lopez Vela,
‘Sociologia de los quadros inquisitoriales’, in Pérez Villanueva and Escandell
Historia de la Inquisicion, vol, Il, pp. 832-3.
Organization 87
was unchanged, and the number of officials had fallen only for the seat of the
iribunal; elsewhere it was exactly what it had been a century earlier.°? Another
list of the officials of the Holy Office within the jurisdiction of the tibunal of
llorence, of 1657, published by Adriano Prosperi, records 66 places where
ihere were vicars, notaries and consultori, a total of 159 persons in all.??
In Bologna, a register of the patentati in office in 1682 lists 13 consultori,
5 prosecutors, | advocate, | procurator and | chancellor, 4 censors of books,
9 officials, 5 proxies, 48 familiars, 15 vicars, 15 notaries and 15 proxies making
up a network of 15 vicariati foranei. A register of 1688 records a similar
The map structure, with 50 familiars and 16 vicari foranei; in 1710 the number of
vicariati was the same. In 1766 in Venice there were still 94 vicarie and 50
vicariati foranei.*
For the other regions, the information is meagre. In Ferrara, for example, the
umber of familiars had been frozen at 24 since the middle of the seventeenth
century.” Even in Venice, where the government was hostile to the appointment
of vicari foranei by the inquisitors, the collection of patent (documents of
appointment) ordered in 1766 mentions 183 persons (mostly vicars, but also
consultori and other ministers), widely distributed between the tribunals of the
province: 6 in Padua, 11 in Rovigo, 11 in Treviso, 12 in Bergamo,47 in Verona,
2! in Vicenza, 25 in Capodistria, 11 in Udine, 5 in Conegliano and 24 in
Brescia.”” The information is very inadequate, particularly because we have
no real basis on which to construct an overall picture of the development of the
inquisitorial network at ground level. For example, the familiars, known as
crocesignati, have.not been studied, and the rare references to them show them
to be concentrated in the large towns to fulfil the representational needs of the
tribunal; by the first half
of the seventeenth century they were usually nobles or
urban notables. However, the network of vicars seems to have been in place
very early, which explains why there were no inquisitorial visits like those
organized in Spain or, on a much more modest scale, in Portugal up to 1630.
In fact, the power of the vicars was much greater in Italy. Not only were they
entrusted with a wider range of investigations and with the summonsing and
interrogation of witnesses, but they also made decisions about detentions and
prepared the trials that were later passed to the tribunal to be concluded. They
vicariati
A !bano Biondi, *Lunga durata e microarticulazione nel territorio di un ufficio dell’ Inquisizione: il
“Sacro Tribunale” a Modena (1292-1785), Annali dell Istituto Sterico Italtana-Germanica in
Trento, 8 (1982), 73-90, esp, 88-9.
°’’ Adriano Prosperi, ‘Vicari dell’Inquisizione fiorentina alla meta del Scicento. Note d’archivo’,
Annali dell'Istituto Storica Haliano-Germanico in Trento, 8 (1982), 298-302.
” BAB, B-1891, pp. 208-11, 220-63; B-1892, fol. 306r. There are other registers for 1679 and
1699 containing similar information: BAB, B-36, fols. 168r—171r. For Venice, see Andrea Del
Bonet (eds), Col, LInquisizione in Malia, p. 705.
os
BAB, B-1941, document 3. 7° ASV, SU, folder 153, bundle II,
88 THE INQUISITION
were true delegates of the inquisitor, their eyes and their right arms; they had
much greater initiative than their Iberian equivalents, the commissioners, who
were not able to order a detention, even less prepare a trial. In sum, the Roman
Inquisition had a powerful network, especially at the base, consisting of small
units enjoying delegated powers which functioned almost like true tribunals,
except for the final decision of the trial, that is, the sentence. On top of this, the
network of familiars (crocesignati) had a significant presence in Italy: according
to Elena Brambilla, the tribunals of the Pontifical States had 2,814 patentati in
1743, the vast majority of whom were familiars. The problem it is that even
outside the jurisdiction of the Roman Inquisition, we find the diffuse phenom-
enon of the familiars; Brambilla notes that in 1741 the 133 dioceses of the Vice-
Royalty of Naples had 845 familiars to help ecclesiastical justice.” If we bring
together all the dispersed data concerning the Roman inquisition, it is a reason-
able guess that, at its peak, the network consisted of between 2,000 and 3,000
familiars. The total number of familiars from the middle of the sixteenth century
to the end of the eighteenth century may have been between 15,000 and 20,000,
In conclusion, we need to emphasize the active presence of the bishops (or
their delegates) in the tribunals of the Roman Inquisition during the sixteenth
century.”* In many local tribunals they actively intervened in the main decisions
of the inquisitorial trials; they also launched trials against heresy in the eccle-
siastical courts, mainly in the kingdom of Naples. This marks a striking differ-
ence as compared with the Iberian Inquisitions, where the tribunals had a formal
delegacy from the bishop, who never seriously intervened in the trials; the
Inquisition enjoyed a total monopoly of the persecution of religious dissent.
The involvement of the bishops in Italy in the first (and decisive) period of the
persecution of Protestantism reveals the need felt by the intransigent (and
dominant) faction of the Roman college of cardinals to mobilize all the available
resources of the Church. The other main feature of the Roman Inquisition is the
creation of the majority of local tribunals after the establishment of the con-
gregation of the Holy Office in 1542; while concentrated in the second half
of the sixteenth century, this activity extended from the 1540s until the 1680s,
an organizational period much longer than the corresponding periods in the
*” The importance of the vicars is emphasized by the publication of a short treatise devoted to their
functions, drawn up by the Bologna inquisitor, Brother Pietro Martire Fiesta: Breve Informatione
del Modo di Tratare le Cause del Santo Officio per li Molto Rr. Vicarij della 8. Inquisitione,
Instituiti nella Diocesi di Bologna (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1604). For the familiars, see Elena
Brambilla, La giustizia intolerante, Inquisizione e tribunali confessionali in Europa (secoli IV—
XVIt) (Rome: Carocci, 2006), pp. 112-15,
of
Agostino Borromeo, ‘Contributo allo studio dell’ Inquisizione ¢ dei sui rapporti com il potere
&
episcopale nell’ Italia spagnola del Cinquecento’, Annucrio dell ‘Istituto Storico Italiano per l'Eta
Moderna e Contemporanea 29-30 (1977-8), 219-76; Agostino Borromeo, *] vescovi italiani ¢
lapplicazione del Concilio di Trento’, in C. Mozzarelli and D, Zardin (eds,), f Tempi del Concilio,
Religione, Cultura e Societa neil’Europa Tridentina (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), pp. 27-105,
Organization 89
Spanish Inquisition (concentrated between 1482 and 1493, with a minority of
tribunals founded between 1510 and 1574) or the Portuguese Inquisition (con-
centrated between 1536 and 1565). It is linked to the political reorganization of
the Italian states, but also to the religious and political strategy of the Roman
congregation, revealing the importance of the local tribunals of the Inquisition
in reinforcing the position of the Catholic Church in Italy. The third significant
feature is the concentration of the tribunals of the Roman Inquisition in
Northern Italy, as if the pope (and the regional powers) wanted to establish a
barrier against the ‘heterodox’ ideas emanating from Central and Western
Europe. Again we have to contrast geographical concentration in Italy with
the more balanced distribution in the Iberian Peninsula; in the former, the
Inquisition was targeting the ‘external enemy’ (Protestantism), in the latter,
the target was the ‘internal enemy’ (Judaism and Islamism). In any case, 47
tribunals of the Inquisition in Italy is a remarkably high number, compared with
the 17 tribunals in Iberia, even if in the latter case, as we will see, the tribunals
had more resources and a greater capacity to generate trials.
BUREAUCRACIES
We are rather better informed about the intermediate and higher levels of the
inquisitorial bureaucracies, in particular in the Iberian countries, though there is
less evidence for the conditions in which they operated. For Italy, we know very
little about the Secra Congregazione, the body which controlled the Roman
Inquisition. However, the context of the administrative reform of the Roman
curia which led to the creation of the Holy Office with power to supervise all
inquisitorial activity has been fairly extensively studied, though we lack
detailed information about the internal organization of the work of the con-
uregation, the administrative structure it put in place or how the information
collected by the network was processed.
The congregation was instituted with 6 cardinals, although the number
changed over time.” During the pontificate of Paul IV (the instigator of the
congregation and one of the first cardinals to be made responsible for the network,
even before the bull Licet ab initio) the number
of cardinals appointed reached the
very high number of 17; it was as if the primacy of the Sacra Congregazione in
the Roman council system at that time had been underlined by the direct involve-
nent ofa large part of the college of cardinals. During the pontificate of Pius IV
the congregation experienced great changes: it was first radically reduced, then
’ Apostino Borromeo, ‘La congregazione cardinalizia dell Inquisizione’, in Agostino Borromeo
(ed), LInguisizione. This is the best approach available on the Congregation, but much work
remains to be done, now that the archives of the congregation are open to the public. I follow this
article for most of the data given here.
90 THE INQUISITION
enlarged to 23 cardinals and finally stabilized at 9 around 1565. In 1646 a
sentence sent to the inquisitor of Bologna was signed by 11 cardinals.'®’ The
number increased to 15 during the pontificate of Clement X, pope from 1670 to
1676. But the data are fragmentary; more research is needed in order to under-
stand the evolution of the congregation and its underlying logic. The importance
of the congregation was emphasized by the fact that the pope presided at its
weekly meetings, a practice defined by Paul I'V and reinstated by Pius V (another
former inquisitor and member of the congregation) before becoming a rule
explicitly defined by the constitution of 1588.
From the 1540s, the congregation appointed one prosecutor, the master of the
Sacro Pallazo, and several ministers to handle administrative work. In 1551 they
nominated two commissioners, a principal and a subordinate, who were respon-
sible for receiving denunciations, ordering detentions, preparing trials and admin-
istering the premises of the Holy Office; these duties corresponded to those of the
delegated inquisitor and were more important than those of the secretary, since the
chief commissioner had executive power to make certain decisions and imple-
ment them. The commissioners were always Dominicans with previous experi-
ence as inquisitors, and their position in the Sacra Congregazione was a
promotion,'*! In 1553 the cardinals created another job, that of assessor, depend-
ent on the commissioner. In this case the appointee was a graduate in canon law or
in utroque iure who would reinforce the legal work of the congregation. The
evolution of the relationship between the commissioner and the assessor is
unclear, since in 1656 the latter was given formal supervision of the work of
the personnel of the congregation and in 1670 the competence to assess the
appeals on sentences of first instance. At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
the hierarchy of the congregation included one commissioner and one assessor
(who had two assistants), one prosecutor, one reporter (with his assistant), one
notary responsible for the chancery with his assistant and four substitutes, one
archivist, one accountant, one porter and three jailers. We need to remember the
function of control performed by the cardinal secretary, assisted by his secretary,
Beneath this structure there was a very large number of unpaid consultants,
generally theologians from religious orders, who were asked to comment on
suspicious texts, denunciations or declarations of prisoners.!®? This is a very
similar structure to that of the Iberian tribunals of the Inquisition.
In this way, the cardinals freed themselves from administrative tasks and the
preliminary labour on trials, but kept control of decision-making, in particular in
'00 The number of cardinals of the Congregation increased over time; for example a sentence of
1646 sent to the Bologna inquisitor is signed by eleven cardinals: BAB, B-1892, fols 61r—v,
'r Innocentius Taurisano, O. P., ‘Series chronologica commissariorum $, Romanae Inquisitionis ab
anno 1542 ad annum 1916", Hierarchia Ordinis Praedicatorum, Rome: Unione Typographica
Manuzio, 1916).
‘2 Borromeo, ‘La congregazione cardinalizia dell’ Inquisizione’, p. 340.
Organization 91
ihe case of appointments, financial matters, jurisdictional disputes, relations with
ihe civil authorities and the conclusion of trials. Strategic issues (definition of new
heresies, production of edicts of faith, orders for the persecution of a specific
ollence) were reserved to them, as was the overall management of the network
(appointment and movement of inquisitors, circulation of the lists of prohibited
hooks drawn up by the Congregations of the Index, control of local decisions),
Lustly, the Sacra Congregazione kept a centralized database on the movement of
heretics, gave instructions about their detention, sometimes requested the govern-
inents of other states to arrange the extradition of particular prisoners and
vireulated the formularies for interrogation throughout the network.'°*
The weak point in all this machinery was the apparent absence of visits of
inspection to the local tribunals. However the cardinals of the congregation
would use other Church networks to monitor the activities of their subordinates,
ti task that was frequently entrusted to the nuncios. In any case, the transfer of
(he inquisitors from one tribunal to another was an additional control mecha-
ism. On taking up new positions, inquisitors had to report to the congregation
on the state of trials, the various registers and the financial situation.'"* In my
view, the real weakness of the Roman Inquisition lay at the intermediate level:
there was only one inquisitor per tribunal, and he was responsible for managing
the networks of vicars and familiars, for preparing trials and sometimes jour-
eying upcountry to conduct investigations, for arranging meetings with the
consultori appointed to classify the propositions and assess the cases and for
concluding trials with the participation of the bishop’s representative; he was
also required to make regular reports to the Roman Congregation. Furthermore,
their occupation of their premises was always precarious. The inquisitor lodged
in the convent of his order, where routine business such as interrogations and
incetings was conducted, Any available money was used to enlarge these
establishments, building cells for the prisoners and rooms for the archives, for
the staff and for meetings.'°> The weakness of the local tribunals explains why
the congregation was prepared to accept the institution of trials for heresy by the
bishops, They were required to report their sentences on matters of heresy to the
congregation on a yearly basis. !°° a
The administrative culture of the Roman Inquisition reflected this situation:
there is a huge difference between these archives, kept locally, and those of the
The correspondence of the Sacra Cangregazione preserved in the local archives is informative
about all these administrative matters, In addition to the examples already cited, see BAB,
B-1900, B-1902, B-1904, B-1905.
tia
Biondi, *La Lettere della Sacra Congregazione romana’, p. 100.
os
BAB, B-1891, p. 859 and B-1892, fol. 457r (plans of the Inquisition’s facilities in Bologna, in
the Dominican convent, ¢, 1724); ASM, FI, folder 303 (plan of the Inquisition’s facilities in
Modena and a project for their alteration, ¢. 1762).
ie
Borromeo, “La congregazione cardinalizia dell"Inquisizione’, p, 332.
92 THE INQUISITION
tribunals of the Iberian districts. In the Italian case, where it has been studied, the
organization of the trials was often confused, the enquiries are mixed up with
the denunciations and there are no specific registers by type of crime or docu-
ment, as there are in Spain and Portugal. The bureaucratic structure seems to
have been laxer in the seats of the Roman tribunals, but the education of the
inquisitors was also a factor: in Italy they were usually theologians, whereas in
the Iberian world they were mostly lawyers.
In Venice the situation at this intermediate level was even more complicated.
In the capital of the Republic, the tribunal consisted of three judges: the nuncio,
the archbishop and the inquisitor; Andrea Del Col believes that it was in the
1560s that the nuncio first effectively intervened in decisions. Further, the
Venetian authorities had in 1547 appointed three lay deputies, the tre savii
sopra leresia, who were responsible to the Council of Ten for the supervision
of all inquisitorial activity; detentions, for example, could not be implemented
without their approval. This intervention gave the tribunal a mixed status, as it
was responsible to two superior bodies, the Holy See and the Council of Ten. At
meetings, the inquisitor came after the nuncio and the archbishop in order of
precedence, but before the auditor general of the nuncio and the vicar of the
diocese. The lay deputies attended sessions so as to grant (or withhold) secular
support for the decisions taken,'”’ On the mainland, the inquisitorial units
followed the same pattern. The inquisitors had to be accompanied by the
representatives of the bishops and of the civil authorities, usually the rettor?,
sometimes even the capitani if there were doubts about the loyalty of the rettori
to the government and laws of the Republic.'®* The choice of meeting place for
the tribunal was also the subject of disputes between the relevant authorities. In
a report written around 1580, the nuncio Alberto Bolognetti says that in the
other towns in the state the meetings were held in the episcopal palaces, but that
in Venice they were held in a small church near St Mark’s in summer, and in a
room in the canonica in winter; this was because the episcopal palace was
remote and, most of all, because it would have been undignified for the nuncio
to make a journey to meet the archbishop in his palace.'”” It emerges from a late
seventeenth-century consultation in the Republic that the civil authorities had
wanted the meetings to be held in lay palaces, at least in certain specific cases
(the consultore cites ducal letters of 1525, 1641 and 1654 indicating, in Brescia,
7 “Relazione del minzio Alberto Bolognetti’, in Aldo Stella, Chiesa e Stato nelle Relazioni del
Nunzi Pontificia Venezia, Ricerche sul Giurisdizionalisma Veneziano dal XVI al XVI Secolo
{Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964), pp. 290-3.
10
ca
ASV, SU, folder 153, bundle I. This report, written in the late seventeenth century, refers to a law
of 10 July 1574 by which the rettori could not be present if they followed Roman recommen-
dations. The report is specific: “di questa [lege] é stabilito che doue sono due rettori, e che uno sij
papalista, cioé il podesta, subentri in luoco suo il capitano’.
109
‘Relazione del nunzio Alberto Bolognetti’, 293-4.
Organization 93
ihe Palazzo Prettorio), but had finally agreed to the episcopal palace (letters of
1679 to the retrori of Vicenza, and of 1689 to the rettori of Padua).! '0 This was
probably a compromise, because the Venetian authorities still refused to meet in
the rooms occupied by the inquisitors within monasteries,
Etiquette was also a source of disputes. The consultation already referred to
attempted to settle the seating plan for tribunal meetings: the three members
were to sit on the same side of the table, in identical chairs; if the bishop was
present, he was to preside, with the retfore on his right and the inquisitor on his
lef; the inquisitor would preside only in the presence of representatives of the
bishop and the re¢tore.''' This arrangement, which was presumably imple-
mented since it is cited in a letter from the retiori, was very different from
those adopted by the Iberian Inquisitions, as we will see. Nevertheless, the
weakness of the intermediate level of the structures of the Roman Inquisition,
which had to operate in very varied circumstances — the conditions imposed. by
the Venetian Republic being an extreme case — was made up for by the greater
density of its districts and the capacity of initiative granted to the vicars.
In Spain, the hierarchical structure was rather more complicated as a result of
the direct intervention of the monarchy in appointments at the higher levels,
while the intermediate level was much more solid, supported by a bureaucratic
machine which enabled it to maintain a steady stream of trials and sentences. It
is more difficult to establish the relationship between the inquisitor general and
the Consejo de la Suprema, a body established in 1488 with consultative
functions, but which gradually began to take initiatives and acquire competen-
ces, and which eventually asserted itself as the body with ultimate authority and
administrative control.!'? The Consejo had six members — five councillors
chosen by the king on the recommendation of the inquisitor general and a
prosecutor!'? — who operated with a staff of secretaries and judicial officials
which grew in size during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It also had a
secretary, appointed by the king, who was responsible for administrative rela-
lions with the Crown, and it regularly maintained an agent in Rome to support
its positions before the pope. Also, right from the beginning, the king adopted
the practice of appointing two lay members of the Council of Castile to monitor
"ASV, SU, folder 153, bundle. |"! {id
'? WJenry Charles Lea, distory
of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1906-7),
vol. IL, pp. 161-203; José Ramon Rodriguez Besné, ‘Notas sobre la estructura y funcionamento
ejo de la Santa, General y Suprema Inquisicion’, in Joaquin Pérez Villanueva (ed.), La
Inquisicién Espaiiola, Nueva Visién, Nuevos Horizontes (Madrid: Siglo XX1, 1980), pp. 61-5;
José Antonio Escudero, ‘Los origenes del “Consejo de la Suprema Inquisicién”’, in Alcala,
Inquisicién Espafiola, pp. 82-122; José Martinez Millan and Teresa Sanchez Rivilla, ‘El
Consejo de Inquisicién (1483-1700)’, Hispania Sacra, 36, 73 (1984), 71-193; Pilar Huerga
Criado, ‘La etapa inicial del Consejo de Inquisicion (1483-1498)", Hispania Sacra, 37, 76
(1985), 451-63.
Lopez Vela, ‘Estruturas administrativas del Santo Oficio’, p. 86.
 Od THE INQUISITION Organization — 95

‘The king’s interference in the composition of the Consejo de la Suprema was

extended in 1614 with the decision to create a permanent post for a Dominican —
in practice, his confessor — who was to occupy the second seat after the most
acnior councillor, an innovation against which the Consejo protested in vain.''9
Ii) future, the Consejo operated with a total of nine members.''* In any case, the
power of the Council of the Inquisition derived from the systematic support
provided by the king: its status was comparable to that of a royal tribunal and it
was placed after the Royal Council and the Council of Aragon in state cere-
monial.!!? Further, the king favoured the Council of the Inquisition in his letters
\ the civil and ecclesiastical authorities: a cédula real of 1611, for example,
vent to every prelate in the kingdom, asked them to instruct all officials in
dispute with the inquisitors to appeal to the Consejo de Inquisicién and not to
itome.!'® On the other hand, papal bulls and briefs concerning the Spanish
Inquisition were always addressed to the inquisitor general, to whom power had
been delegated by the pope. For the pope, the legitimacy of the Council of the
Inquisition derived exclusively from the powers delegated to it by the inquisilor
yeneral, and the institution could never substitute for its superior. Looked at
fiom the king’s point of view, the situation was rather less clear-cut: the Council
of the Inquisition was regarded as an organ of the monarchy, in regular session,
which could act instead and in place of the inquisitor general in case of absence,
resignation or death; it was also frequently the body he preferred to consult
about decisions. The latent conflict between the king and the pope with regard to
the Inquisition — originally over recognition of its autonomy, the extension of its
jurisdiction and the exclusion of appeals to Rome, subsequently over the
maintenance of the independence it had acquired and the imposition of changes
iron

Plate
Seg6, Planan ofof th the headquarters of the 2 tribunal
tri ibli
of Bologna. Biblioteca dell : Archiginnasi
i o di Bologna of inquisitor general at the behest of the Crown — was strikingly illustrated at the
beginning of the eighteenth century: the inquisitor general Baltasar Mendoza
was expelled from the court by the new king, Philip V, who was taking
the activities of the Consejo de la Suprema; this practice was sanctioned by advantage of a bitter dispute between Mendoza and the Council of the
the
cédula real of 1567, which led to protests from the other members Inquisition to get rid of a distinguished member of the “Austrian party’.!!?
of the
Consejo, which were repeated over the centuries. Their reasoning was ‘The details of this political intrigue are well enough known; what is of relevance
predictable: the presence of laymen should be prohibited when dealing with here is the support given by the king to the Consejo (and vice-versa), the
questions of heresy, which were the exclusive preserve of ecclesiastics specif- intervention of the Council of Castile on the side of the Council of the
ically delegated by the pope. The practice continued, in spite of their protests, so Inquisition (it should be noted that the inquisitor general had arrested three
the councillors decided to arrange three morning sessions a week reserved members of the Council in connection with a trial he wished to conduct against
to
ecclesiastics, when matters specifically concerning heresy were discussed,
and
two afternoon sessions open to the two members of the Council "ALIN, Ing., lib, 1280, fol. 16r,
of Castile,
which dealt with all other judicial and administrative matters. ' Lopez Vela, ‘Estruturas administrativas del Santo Oficio’, 128-32,
'!) Javier Varela, La Muerte del Rey. El Cerimanial Funerario de la Monarquia Espanola (1500-
1885) (Madrid: Turner, 1900), Plate 16 (reproduction of a plan of the church for the funeral
ceremony with indication of the order of precedence of the Councils).
"AHN,
tegen Ing., lib. 1279, fols. 97v—-98v
fe eae (example a protest by the Council at the appointment of a '"" AHIN, Inq., lib. 1276, fols, [S8r-v.
"Lea, History af the Inquisition of Spain, vol. 1], pp. 103-203.
 06 THE INQUISITION
the former confessor of Charles I, also a member of the Council) and the
isolation of the pope, who recognized only the legitimacy of the inquisitor
general. The sovereign pontiff eventually had to bend before the demands of the
Crown and appoint the new inquisitor general proposed in 1705 after the king
had forced Mendoza’s resignation.
The Consejo gradually built up its power by absorbing competences previ-
ously reserved to the inquisitor general and by imposing a number of controls on
the local tribunals, Its strategy to develop its instruments of power benefited
from the absences of the inquisitor general, vacancies and the inability of the
papal delegate to preserve the monopoly of his competences. The increasing
complexity of the administrative and judicial activities necessitated a division of
labour and also constant attention to the management and conclusion of cases.
But this expansion had only a very limited impact on the balance of power
within the organization. The inquisitor general retained his exclusive right to
appoint inquisitors and other officials, even in the local tribunals, and also his
power to commute penalties and lift the exclusion of those condemned and their
descendants from certain offices and functions. '*” Thus he retained the power to
appoint and to pardon, the former essential for controlling the network and
maintaining the loyalty of subordinates (the exercise of patronage being the key
to power in the ancien régime), the latter in imitation of the practices of toyal
Justice. The strategic importance of these two powers, in particular the first, was
recognized by the Consejo, which regularly complained to the king about the
appointment and removal of officials by the inquisitor general without consult-
ing them.'*! The Council’s pursuit of autonomy is spelt out in the letters sent to
the king on the death of an inquisitor general or before the appointment of a
successor: they suggest the line of conduct that should be imposed on the new
inquisitor general by the king, in particular in his relations with the Consejo de
la Suprema; they also seek permission to appoint to posts reserved to inquisitor
generals in their absence or before their appointment. However, the weakening
of the position of the inquisitor general vis-a-vis the Council, revealed by
successive disputes in the 1630s and until the crisis of 1643, was subsequently
reversed by the administration of Arce y Reinoso, who embarked ona campaign
to recover the power of the inquisitor general, a policy continued
successors. |”?
The complexity of relations within the hierarchy is suggested by the rites
developed over the centuries. A collection of documents compiled around 1713
°°" AHN, Ing., lib. 1233, fols. 183v-184r (copy ofa letter from the Council of 1570); lib. 1271, fol.
14r (copy ofa letter from the Inquisitor General of 1513).
121
AHN, Inq., lib. 1275, fols. 166r-—v (letter from the Council to the king before the appointment
his confessor, Brother Luis Aliaga, as Inquisitor General in 1619).
122
Lopez Vela, ‘Estruturas administrativas del Santo Oficio’, 104-5, 111, 116, 134-6,
Organization — 97
reveals the refinement that had been reached, especially with regard to the
meeting room, The large table and the chairs were set on a platform covered
with a rich carpet, in the middle of which was a canopy adorned with the crown,
(he royal arms and those of the Holy Office; under it was a more splendid chair
(han the others, on which the inquisitor general sat, with a cushion at his feet. On
lis right sat the most senior of the councillors, on his left the Dominican; the
others took their places in the same order as in the chapel. Alongside the
platform were the tables reserved for the secretaries and the reporters, who
had to sit on benches, the most senior secretary on the right of the inquisitor
weneral, the newest on his left.
These meetings were usually preceded by a rite in the chapel which was of
crucial importance in the organization of the ceremonial. Here, there was only a
single chair with a cushion for the inquisitor general, on the Gospel side, the
members of the Council alternating on two rows of benches according to
seniority, the prosecutor sitting on the last bench on the Epistle side and the
ininisters of lesser rank at the far end of the room. During the mass, the chaplain
bowed several times before the inquisitor general to ask for his blessing at key
moments in the liturgy. At the end of the ceremony, the officials of lower rank
bowed as their name was pronounced before the inquisitor general, then lefi the
chapel and stood in two rows to greet the councillors, who lefi in order of
seniority, the most senior accompanying the inquisitor general at the end of the
procession, An important detail: in the Corpus Christi mass, a chaplain in a
urplice received the osculary from the hands of the celebrant and carried it,
wrapped in white taffeta, to the inquisitor general to raise to his lips.
In the Council Chamber, the members remained standing round the table,
heads bared, until the inquisitor general took his seat. The secretaries and the
reporters entered only after this ceremony, summoned by the inquisitor gener-
(il’s bell, which was also rung to mark the beginning of the reading of the
correspondence and the vote, taken from the most recent to the most senior
councillor, Each time that the name of the pope, the king or the inquisitor
jeneral was spoken, the councillors and the ministers had to raise their hats
and the inquisitor general had to address the councillors and officials imperso-
by his nally as seforia (in outside sessions he must say merced), At the exit, the most
venior councillors accompanied him as far as the door, standing in a row, heads
hare, to greet him and receive his greeting.'?*
lhe intermediate level, which enjoyed considerable power, consisted of the
(wo or three inquisitors who headed each local tribunal. They controlled a
bureaucratic machine consisting of secretaries, the prosecutor, consultores,
assessors (calificadores), judicial officials and lesser servants, not to speak of
of
"ALIN, Ing., lib, 500, fols. [8r-20r, 47r—v, 432r435r,
98 THE INQUISITION Organization — 99

vonsultores, commissioners, notaries and familiars), the entire network of the

liquisition in the Spanish Empire must have directly involved between 10,000
ad 15,000 persons during the most important phases of the Holy Office’s
oxpansion.'?* Strategic decisions may have been taken at the higher levels,
hut these officials had to manage the routine business and make decisions about
ihe detention of the accused, the preparation of trials and the publication of
books. Their activities were controlled from above, of course, but this added to
rather than diminished their responsibility, because they knew they were under
surveillance and that their promotion depended on this constant scrutiny of their
curcers. In fact the functioning of the entire inquisitorial machine was to a large
extent dependent on their initiatives, not only in the pursuit of heretics (the task
(hat was their raison d’étre), but in the way they handled disputes with other
powers. Indeed a number of inquisitors were admonished by the Council
because they had been unable to maintain the positions of the tribunal, espe-
vinlly in matters of etiquette, so causing the institution to lose face.'*5
Problems of etiquette tell us both about the position of the tribunal in relation
to other powers and about the internal hierarchy. In this context, the position of
the bishop during the conclusion of trials is significant. In the sixteenth century,
he still enjoyed the pre-eminence of the prelate in specific circumstances: a letter
(yom the Council sent in 1580 to the inquisitors of Cordoba considered that the
bishop, ifhe chose to attend the consultations of the Inquisition, should have the
best seat and the final vote.'*° However, another letter from the Council, in
1615, this time to the inquisitors of Sardinia, declared that the archbishop of
Sassari should not be prevented from attending sessions but that he should be
informed that the most senior inquisitor would have the best seat.'?” A report
drawn up around 1640 clearly stipulated that the bishops (or their representa-
lives) could intervene only at the conclusion of trials; if they wished to be
present in person, they would have to be content with second place after the
Most senior inquisitor, and their delegates would be placed only after the last
inquisitor.'?8 When the civil authorities entered the premises of the Inquisition,
ihey had to accept certain conditions: a corregidor must leave the insignia of his
office, the wand of command, at the door; a governor, for example of Valencia,
must enter without the maceros (the officials holding the wand of command).'”
Intemal etiquette is also of interest because it reveals the ranking and the relative
fi i A positions of those concerned, In the first place, forms of address were codified,
Plate 7. Plan of the headquarters of the tribunal of Seville. Based on Maria Victoria Gonzalez de Caldas especially during the seventeenth century, since the increasing complexity of
Mendez, “El Santo Oficio en Sevilla”, Melanges de la Casa de Velazquez, XXVII, 2 (1991) 59-114.

the local commissioners and familiars. Each tribunal had a staff of at least 20 ‘The figure has been calculated by Lopez Vela, ‘Estruturas administrativas del Santo Oficio’,
salaried officials, which, from magistrates with jurisdiction to officials, brings 149-53.
AHN, Ing., lib. 1278, fol. 55r (censure of the inquisitors of Valencia in 1626 for having lost face).
the number of paid individuals employed by the Spanish Inquisition on a '" AHN, Inq., lib. 1276, fol. 177v, 27 AHN, Ing., lib. 1276, fols. 255r-v.
permanent basis to 500 persons. If we add the unpaid officials (assessors, "2" AHN, Inq,, lib. 1252, fol. 269, '2? AHN, Inq,, lib. 1275, fol. 20v; lib. 1276, fol. 241y.
 100 THE INQUISITION
relations within the institution made it necessary to formalize ways of greeting and
addressing others. A letter from the Council in 1610, confirmed by another in
1622, decreed that all officials, including the prosecutor, should address the
inquisitors as sefioria, while they, for their part, had to remove their hats only
before the prosecutor and the judge of confiscations while using the form merced
(which was not to be used for other officials, before whom the inquisitors were to
remain seated).'*° Another letter from the Council, in 1642, stipulated the use of
sefor for the prosecutor in the despatches of the notaries of the Secret and in
notifications, but ruled out the same form of address in documents signed by the
inquisitors.'*! A report of 1745 shows that the use of sefioria had been extended to
the prosecutor, but only in the courtroom. At this date, the a/guacil mayor was
permitted to enter the tribunal wearing his sword.'*? Dress, and in particular the
wearing of headgear, was also regulated. In 1635 a letter from the Council decreed
that the inquisitors and the prosecutor should wear the cape and the soutane, and
excluded civil dress.!7? Another letter, in 1707, made the wearing of the biretta
compulsory for all officials during the acts of the tribunal and the publication of
edicts, and also the wearing of the cross on the cloak; in public ceremonies, the
inquisitors were to wear a sombrero with tassels for ‘maior decensia y autoridad
del tribunal’ .'**
So far, what we see are borrowings from ecclesiastical customs (the distinc-
tive use of tassels) and significant changes in the internal perception and
representation of the hierarchy. The order of precedence enables us to observe
this more clearly at all levels. First, among the lesser officials, the algwacil
preceded the notaries of the Secret and the fiscal receivers in seating, proces-
sions and meeting rooms (letter of 1610). In a report from the first half of the
seventeenth century, the ranking of these officials is defined for the public
functions of the tribunal of Valencia: a/guacil mayor, receiver, notaries of the
Secret in order of seniority, official of the accounts, notary of sequestrations,
alcayde, notary of the juzgado, prosecutor, notary of civil trials, prisoners’
defence lawyers, physicians, chaplains, messenger (nuncio) and caretaker,'*°
In a letter from the Council in 1578, the consudtores and the calificadores were
ranked lower than the officials of the accounts. The ministers of lower rank must
always sit on benches, leaving the chairs (provided with cushions) to the
inquisitors, the prosecutor and the judges of confiscated property.'°° Among
the officials of higher rank, we may note the rise of the prosecutor, first to parity
with the judge of confiscated property (a letter of 1582 granted him a chair ~
although more modest than those of the inquisitors — during public ceremonies
a AHN, Ing., lib. 1233, fols. 54v—55r; lib. 1243, fols. 73v—74r,
a AHN, Inq., lib. 1226, fol. 736v. . AHN, Inq., lib. 1278, fol. 403r.
i AHN, Inq., lib. 1276, fol. 527," AHN, Ing., lib. 1276, fol. 116r,
AHN, Ing., lib. 1237, fol. 390. '°° AHN, Ing,, lib, 1231, fols, 67r-v; lib, 1243, fols. 22r-v,
Organization 101
or acts of the tribunal),'*” then to parity with the inquisitors: a letter of 1608
established his precedence over the judge of confiscated property, in 1625 the
Council allowed him use of a chair and a robe with tails in public acts; another
letter of 1642 granted him a chair under the canopy similar to that of the
inquisitors, but without a cushion; in 1645 he had a place equivalent to that of
the newest inquisitor and the right to wear a robe with tails and a sombrero
without tassels. This position was confirmed in 1660, when a letter from the
Council explicitly granted the prosecutor equal prerogatives and honours with
the inquisitors, allowing him unrestricted use of tails, tassels and cushions. !38
Etiquette sometimes reveals shifis in the status of officials of which we would
otherwise be ignorant, though this information needs to be collated with other
evidence. The evolution of salaries, for example, is very revealing. In 1498, the
inquisitor received 60,000 maravedis, the prosecutor 30,000, the notary of the
secret 30,000, the a/evacil in charge of the cells 60,000, the receiver (who paid
his own procurator) 60,000, the nuncio 20,000, the caretaker 10,000, the judge
of confiscations 20,000 or 30,000, the officer-general of the accounts 60,000
and the receiver-general 40,000. In 1660, when he was gaining ground in
matters of etiquette, the Council decided that the prosecutor should receive as
much as the inquisitor.'*? This was the culmination of a long process, because
the prosecutor was a creation of the Spanish Inquisition; the position had not
existed in the Middle Ages or even the early stages of the Roman Inquisition,
when the inquisitor still combined the roles of examining judge and prosecutor.
His status had originally been low, but it steadily improved until 1660, when he
ucquired equivalent status to that of the inquisitor.
The ceremonies of the local tribunals were sometimes copied from those of
the central bodies, but they were also adapted to the needs and circumstances of
this intermediate level, where the punishment of deviance and the normalization
of behaviour developed. At this concrete level, a need emerged to legitimate
routine decisions and to reassure inquisitors who were not entirely immune to
the natural doubts raised by their activities. In 1660 the Council sent a letter to
all tribunals requiring the most senior inquisitor to read a prayer to the Holy
Spirit at the beginning of every session, in the presence of the officials, who
were to remain standing with bared heads, This prayer is of particular interest
because, as well as asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten the inquisitors in their
investigations, it also contains a number of supplications designed to strengthen
the fair-mindedness and clear-sightedness of the judges, saving them from
ignorance, favouritism, corruption, commiseration and discord; in sum, the
7 AHN, Ing., lib, 1233, fol. 8r.
|S AHN, Ing., lib. 1233, fols. 8r, 48; lib. 1243, fol. 75y; lib. 498, fols. 79r-80r; lib. 1234, fols.
142r-y,
AHN, Ing., lib, 1234, fols, 174v—175r.
1022. THE INQUISITION Organization — 103
way for further royal intervention: the Dominican was usually chosen from
mong those with some prior experience of inquisitorial work, in particular as
\iwwessors or book censors. Almost from the beginning, the General Council was
fovognized as the court of final appeal with authority over the activities of the
local tribunals; its sphere of action was very early and explicitly regulated by the
/eulmento of 1570, We should also note other ‘modern’ features of the structures
of the Portuguese Inquisition: the intermediate level did not include const/tores,
(he officials who staffed the Spanish local tribunals, giving them a mixed
eharacter which brought them closer to the bureaucratic organization of the
Ktoman Inquisition. Instead, there were salaried ‘deputies’, one for each local
(ribunal, whose functions resembled those of the consu/tores, but within a more
vlearly defined and stable bureaucratic system.'*' These deputies enjoyed from
(he beginning a position equivalent to that of the prosecutors, second only to the
inquisitors. In practice, the post was virtually that of trainee, since in Portugal new
members of the Inquisition were not usually immediately appointed inquisitors (it
vould also be a retirement post, making it possible to benefit from the experience
of seasoned inquisitors no longer vigorous enough to perform all their duties).
Sometimes the deputies combined their posts with those of prosecutor, and it was
thanks to this clearly defined stage in their career that the prosecutors had no need
lo have their status upgraded as happened in Spain.
We find among the inquisitors — there were three in every tribunal in
Plate 8. Plan of the headquarters of the tribunal of Lisbon (1634). Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre lortugal — the same problems in defining seniority, because the most senior
de Tombo, Casa Forte.
Inquisitor in each local tribunal presided over representational functions and
over the daily management of affairs and the organization and distribution of
‘professional code’ of the inquisitors was evoked and placed under the protec- work. In Spain, in 1534, the Council reformed the practice by which an
tion of the Holy Spirit. The prayer, supposed to have an immanent effect, a Inquisitor transferred from one tribunal to another had to comply with the
spiritual virtue acting directly on the consecrated men, explicitly requested the existing hierarchy: the date of appointment, no longer that of arrival in a
Holy Spirit to intervene to enable the inquisitors to make well-advised decisions particular tribunal, was in future to count.'*? When the inquisitor general
and so merit an eternal reward. !“ Appointed several inquisitors on the same day, he had to indicate the order of
The structures of the Portuguese Inquisition were influenced by the Spanish precedence immediately. In Portugal, the problem was solved in a way that
example, but there were some significant differences. First, the appointment of reveals the stability of the bureaucratic structure: inquisitors appointed on the
members of the General Council was the direct responsibility of the inquisitor sume day were ranked according to the date of their appointment as deputies.'*
general, after consulting the king. Formally, royal intervention ceased here: the ‘The etiquette in Portugal had many points in common with that in Spain: for
Portuguese king never appointed lay members from other royal councils or example, the bishops very rarely attended the sessions of the tribunals or the
tribunals to the Council of the Inquisition. In these appointments (originally public ceremonies of the Inquisition, in particular the autos-da-fé, so as to avoid
three councillors, six from the seventeenth century), preference was given lo finding themselves in an inferior position. Salary levels confirm the order of
those with inquisitorial experience in the local tribunals, unlike in Spain (see precedence, In 1583 Philip II increased the remuneration of the officials of the
Chapter 4). The creation of a temporary post destined for a Dominican on the
Council in 1614 (date ofa similar initiative in Spain), did not, as in Spain, pave the
"All these aspects are consecrated in the regimentos quoted above.
"AHN, Ing., lib. 1233, fol. 81x; lib. 1278, fol. 34r.
" ANTT, CGSO, liv. 346, fol. 36v (this is how the General Council, in 1589, resolved the case of
4°” AHIN, Inq,, lib, 1278, fols, 49v-50r; lib. 1234, fol, 152; lib, 1243, fol, 403v. three inquisitors appointed on the same day).
104. THE INQUISITION
Portuguese Inquisition: the deputy of the General Council was paid 200,000 reiy
a year, the inquisitor 120,000, the deputy and the prosecutor 80,000, the notary,
the meirinho and the alcaide 50,000 and the soficitador and the caretaker
40,000. Elvira Mea has compared the salary of the deputies of the General
Council with the pay of the principal judicial officers at the same period: the
desembargadordo Pago received 300,000 reis a year, the desembargador of the
Casa de Suplicagéo 200,000 and the desembargador of the Casa do Civel
160,000. The renneration of the inquisitors was equivalent to the average
pay of a professor of the university of Coimbra but, like the deputies of the
General Council, the inquisitors also held ecclesiastical benefices. The officials
of lower rank seem to have been better paid than those employed by the state,!""
At all levels, in the seventeenth and even more the eighteenth century, the
number of appointments grew; responsibilities were sometimes expanded and
the presence of ‘supernumeraries’ caused a malaise within the bureaucracy. The
same phenomenon can be seen in Spain, where the increase in the number of
officials in the seats of the local tribunals contrasted with the shrinkage of the
network of commissioners and familiars. In Portugal, the bureaucratic inflation
was widespread both in the seats of the tribunals and in the rural networks.
‘44 Baitio, Inquisigde em Portugal e no Brasil, esp. pp. 51-6, 69-70 and also supplement pp. 21-2;
Mea, /nquisigde de Coimbra, vol. 1, pp. 332-45.
4. Presentation
—
‘the way in which the viceroys of the Portuguese territories in Asia treated
iio inquisitors led to many complaints, regularly submitted to the inquisitor
jeneral, They had received the inquisitors, it emerges, as if they were private
jemons, offering them a simple backless chair and not telling them to keep
(elt hats on. Thus the inquisitors had been uncompromisingly put in a
osition of inferiority, and not enjoyed the privileges of the royal tribunals.
li) « letter of 1620, the inquisitors of Goa explained the real reasons for their
fesentment:
In 0 land where we are watched by the pagans, the Moors and other enemies,
ll this serves to reinforce the contempt in which we are held; if we are to gain
ihe respect of infidels it is essential that the ministers of the faith are honoured
by appropriate treatment, because our zeal has as its purpose the glory of God
und his holy faith. !
This is typical of a peripheral tribunal, where distance from the centre dis-
fupted normal relationships and provided fertile ground for disputes over
tutus. The inquisitors demanded more honourable treatment by invoking
{heir position as ministers of the faith, and we know how crucial the difference
between individual treatment and collective treatment was in etiquette dis-
pules, especially for the tribunal as an institution. What is also striking in these
womplaints is the strong sense of being watched, the feeling that every gesture
find every attitude in the course of these rituals of interaction was assessed and
wvaluated down to the tiniest detail, as if on a sort of stock exchange where the
(uoted value of the tribunal of the faith depended on the results of a ritual
vompetition with the other powers. This is characteristic of court societies,
where the position of each individual is measured by the favour he enjoys with
the prince.”
' ANTT, CGSO, liv. 96, fol 243r,
’ Norbert Elias, The Court Soctery, trans, Edmund Jepheott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
105