The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies: Sicily—Naples—Sardinia—Milan—the Canaries—Mexico—Peru—New GranadaLea, Henry Charles
History
The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies: Sicily—Naples—Sardinia—Milan—the Canaries—Mexico—Peru—New Granada
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition
The next encounter was with the Audiencia, in 1661. For eight years
there had been no physician in the island, when the tribunal, needing
one for the torture-chamber, induced, in 1659, Dr. Domingo Rodríguez
Ramos to come. He became a frequent visitor at the house of Doña Beatriz
de Herrera, the _amiga_ of the judge Alvaro Gil de la Sierpe, to whom
she had borne several children. Sierpe became jealous and, on some
pretext, Dr. Ramos was arrested, January 28, 1661, and imprisoned in
chains. The tribunal asserted its jurisdiction by inhibiting the
Audiencia from prosecuting the case and, on this being disregarded, the
judges were excommunicated with all the solemnities. They impassively
continued their functions; the tribunal then excommunicated the
officials of the court, who were more easily frightened; for several
months there was much popular excitement but, in October, the
competencia was decided in favor of the Audiencia--doubtless because the
physician was not an official of the tribunal--and a royal letter
sharply rebuked the inquisitors.[363]
The tribunal was evidently losing its prestige and matters did not
improve with the advent of the Bourbon dynasty. The enmity between it
and the chapter continued undiminished and when, on the death of the
Marquis of Celada, in 1707, his son, the Inquisitor Bartolomé Benítez de
Lugo, asked that his exequies should be performed in the cathedral, the
request was refused. This led to a violent rupture, in the course of
which the tribunal voted the arrest of the canons, with sequestration.
The chapter appealed to Philip V, who condemned the tribunal in a cédula
of November 7, 1707. This did not arrive until the following year, when
the chapter kept it secret until Easter; in the crowded solemnity of the
feast-day, when Inquisitor Benítez was present, a secretary mounted the
pulpit and read the royal decree, to his great mortification.[364] Even
worse befell the tribunal in 1714, when its inexcusable violence, in
another quarrel with the chapter, led Philip V to demand the recall of
the inquisitors and to enforce his commands in spite of the repeated
tergiversations of the Suprema.[365]
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