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
This prostitution of an ecclesiastical tribunal to temporal purposes was
one of the reasons given by the Córtes of Cádiz for its abolition. Even
its chief defender, Fray Maestro Alvarado, could not deny the
accusation, but, he turned the tables by ascribing the fault to the
Jansenists, to whom the orthodox attributed all the evils of the time.
It was they, he argued who mingled religion and politics, and set the
State above the Church.[564] He did not live to see the refutation of
his dialectics, when Ultramontanism triumphed in the Restoration, and
the political functions of the Inquisition became still more prominent.
In 1814, a copy of the treaty of July 30th with Louis XVIII was sent to
the tribunals in order that they might enforce the clauses appertaining
to them, and when, in 1815, the news of Napoleon's return from Elba was
received, King Fernando, by an order of April 8th, included the
tribunals of the Inquisition in the instructions given to the military
and ecclesiastical authorities to keep watch on the frontier against
surprises, and to guard in the interior against the artifices and
seductions of the disaffected.[565] In fact, we may say, the chief work
expected of the Inquisition was that of the _haute police_, for which
its organization rendered it especially fitted. April 8, 1817 we find it
notified that the refugees, General Renovales and Colonel Peon,
accomplices in the attempted rising of Juan Diaz Porlier in Galicia,
were hovering on the Portuguese border. The tribunal of Santiago
(Galicia) was therefore to put itself in communication with that of
Coimbra, it was to devise means for their capture and, through its
commissioners and familiars, find out what was on foot, for the security
of the throne and of the altar required of the Holy Office extreme
vigilance under existing circumstances. The inquisitor-general forwarded
this to Galicia with orders to execute it "at once, at once, at once"
and, not content with this, instructions were sent to the tribunals of
Murcia, Córdova, Saragossa and Barcelona, all of which responded with
promises of the utmost activity and of watchfulness over
reactionaries.[566] So, in 1818 the Logroño tribunal reported that its
commissioner at Hernani (Guipúzcoa) reported that he had heard a person
utter the proposition _"La nacion es soberana."_ To this the Suprema
replied that this was a matter of high importance and might lead to
great results. Llano must make a formal denunciation with all details;
also he must declare why he suspected Don Joseph Joaquin de Mariategui,
and how he knows of his journey to France and England and his relations
with the refugees there--all of which must be done with the utmost
caution and speed and the results be reported.[567]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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