A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
lay-brother of the Servite convent of Quarto, whom the testimony showed
to be an adherent of the Archduke Charles, industriously carrying
intelligence to the Allies and, on his return, spreading false reports,
to the disturbance of men's minds. In this trial the formality of a
_clamosa_ by the fiscal was omitted; the inquisitors had the testimony
taken and on receiving it ordered the arrest of Gueralt without
submitting it to calificadores.[561]
From this time forward the Inquisition was at the service of the State
whenever it was required to suppress opinions that were regarded as
dangerous though, when its interests clashed with those of the crown,
the cases of Macanaz and Belando show that it could still assert its
aggressive independence. As the century wore on, however, it became more
and more subservient. A writer about 1750, while regretting that it did
not repress the Probabilism of the fashionable Moral Theology, gives it
hearty praise for its political utility; it is not only, he says,
engaged in preserving the purity of the faith, but, in an ingenious way,
it maintains the peace of the State and the subordination due to the
king and the magistracy. In his wars Philip V made use occasionally of
its tribunals in difficult conjunctures with happy results and therefore
he honored and distinguished it throughout his reign.[562]
[Sidenote: _UNDER THE RESTORATION_]
Thus, as its original functions declined, a new career was opened. We
have seen how its censorship was utilized to prevent the incursion of
modern liberalism, and its procedure was similarly employed against
individuals. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, its vigilance
was directed especially against the propagation of the dangerous
doctrines of popular liberty, and any expression of sympathy with events
beyond the Pyrenees was sufficient to justify prosecution. As early as
1790, Jacques Jorda, a Frenchman, was tried by the Barcelona tribunal
for propositions antagonistic to the spiritual and temporal authorities,
and prosecutions for such offences continued to be frequent. In 1794,
during the war with the French Republic, even so important a personage
as Don Antonio Ricardo, general-in-chief of the army in Roussillon, was
on trial by the tribunal of Madrid for utterances in sympathy with
occurrences in France and, at the same time, his secretary, Don Josef
del Borque, was undergoing a similar experience in the Logroño
tribunal.[563] War carried on in such fashion could not fail to be
disastrous.
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