Chapter 6 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

More documents

Recommendations

Info

them to translate His laws into everyday behavior. When they wanted to ask something of God, the traditional prayers and rituals of the Church helped them to present their petitions in the proper form and language. Latin, the language of the priest before the altar, was of course unintelligible to most people in the congregation, but they believed that the priest could use it to speak to God for them. People often turned to the Church to explain disasters and to advise them what to do. A religious procession led by an image [118] of our Lady of the Water in 1605 helped the people of Seville feel less impotent in time of drought. Later in that century, Church authorities explained an epidemic as divine punishment for loose morals, and they urged the city to prohibit all drama and comedies in order to avoid another plague. (3) These intermediaries offered the security of clear-cut answers in uncertain times. They promoted unity by offering a single interpretation of the causes of all ills and the best remedies for them. A community that looked to a priestly intercessor did not fall apart so readily into quarreling factions. Underworld people awaiting execution in the city's prisons often turned from past cynicism and sinfulness to the monks and priests who could act as intermediaries. Pedro de León, the Jesuit chaplain of the Royal Prison in Seville between 1578 and 1616, described the prisoners' warm reception of his sermons and prayers. Many would kiss his hand and tell him with tears in their eyes how much his words meant to them. (4) There is no doubt that some lifelong thugs repented at the end and were sincerely grateful for the priests who walked and prayed with them and helped them to mount the steps to the scaffold, strengthened in spite of their quaking knees. Not all condemned prisoners looked to the Church as intermediary. Pedro de Leon wrote that it was very difficult to pierce the tough exterior of some prisoners, and another firsthand account of the Royal Prison of Seville describes how the prisoners would mock priests, playing at saying Mass or performing as dramatic penitents. At night they would call for the penitential brotherhood of the prison, not out of devotion but for the [119] horrifying delight of watching them punish themselves. (5) To these people the concept of the Church as intermediary was a joke. One reason for underworld cynicism was that the Church also acted as intermediary between them and the secular law. People of the underworld clearly recognized the close alliance between the institutional Church and political authority. Prisoners often tried to exploit this alliance, confessing to the prison chaplain in such a way that the priest would be moved to intervene on their behalf and get a last-minute reprieve. On the other hand, secular authorities tried to persuade priests to force prisoners to confess to crimes so that they could use their confessions as evidence against them. They sometimes condemned a prisoner to death without sufficient proof of his guilt, refused his appeals, and then assigned a confessor who would insist that the prisoner must confess to the crimes in order to "die a good Christian." (6) Priests who helped condemned men go to their death as "good Christians" undoubtedly provided comfort for many, but they also helped to sanctify this ritualized act of violence by secular justice against those accused of breaking its laws. One view of the priest with a condemned man at the gallows is that he was returning a stray sheep to the flock; another view is that he was mesmerizing the sheep, so that the creature would accept its fate as a sacrificial victim. Churchmen frequently used underworld people to personify evil to the people of Seville. The preacher who thundered against immorality in the city warned of sins committed by the "gente de mal vivir" (bad people), the "rufianes" (thugs), and the "mujeres perdidas" (prostitutes). Because city residents saw these underworld people on their own streets, they could understand the priests' admonitions. The secular government of Seville could use morality as a pillar of its legitimacy, but it lacked enough sheriffs and judges [120] to enforce its moral legislation without Church assistance. The parish priest railed against immorality from his pulpit, and he used the confessional to hear individual cases of
immorality. The more formal courts of the Inquisition punished moral offenders as well as heretics. The Church was an open partner in upholding the moral order of the city oligarchy, and to many underworld cynics this partisanship belied its posture as disinterested intermediary. Another reason for cynicism about the Church as intermediary was that some churchmen were more concerned with financial affairs than with matters of the spirit. The Archbishopric of Seville owned much of the land within the city walls, as well as large portions in the surrounding areas. Many religious groups administered extensive estates. In 1582 the Archbishop of Seville censured one of his bishops because he had virtually converted his residence into a manufacturing center and store. A great scandal erupted in 1642 when it was discovered that an administrator of the Jesuit School of San Hermenegildo in Seville had used the funds of his order for business speculations, buying and selling cargoes in the Indies and enriching many of his relatives while amassing a debt of 90,000 ducats against the Jesuits. (7) Ecclesiastical privileges benefited many churchmen in commercial enterprises, and it also provided many opportunities for the white collar crimes of smuggling and counterfeiting. Clerics and Inquisition officials were exempt from import duties, and they transported goods and papers without customary inspection at city gates. Occasionally they were caught smuggling precious metals and merchandise. (8) Theoretically outside the jurisdiction of secular justice, religious houses could be used for undercover counterfeiting. In 1639 a clergyman was arrested for counterfeiting the stamped paper that was required for all legal and [121] commercial transactions in the seventeenth century, and thirteen years later secular authorities invaded a monastery to arrest some clergymen who were restamping money there. (9) Ecclesiastical privilege permitted many people to escape the hand of secular justice that lay so heavily on people of the underworld. The numbers of familiares, lay servants to the Inquisition, increased dramatically as the Inquisition became more active during this period. Suspected of being secret informers, the familiares were also unpopular because they had the privilege of bearing arms and were exempt from certain prosecutions by secular authorities. The confusion resulting from the many new and unregistered appointments of familiares was very useful to those of the underworld, who would sometimes escape the secular law by claiming that they were familiares when they were arrested. (10) Underworld people could also feel cynical about the Church when churchmen squabbled among themselves. The rivalry between Jesuits and Dominicans often degenerated into a power struggle involving the Inquisition, for it had been dominated by the Dominicans since Tomás de Torquemada of this order was appointed by Ferdinand and Isabella to head the Inquisition in 1483. Jesuits were denounced for heresy and for making political sermons. They insisted that they were responsible for their own members and would punish them for misbehavior, but the Inquisition asserted that these matters were subject to the Holy Office. In the case of Padre Barba, for example, a Jesuit accused of having "dishonest relations" with several women, the Society of Jesus argued that this was a matter for internal discipline within the Order, but the Inquisition successfully asserted jurisdiction. (11) The Dominican-Jesuit controversy was further complicated because some bishops, opposing the Inquisition as a [122] rival to their own powerful positions within the Spanish Church, encouraged the Jesuit- Dominican controversy in order to weaken the Inquisition. Attempts to correct abuses and reform the clergy increased internal dissension within this group. When Cardinal Archbishop Rodrigo de Castro tried to reform the clergy in Seville in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, he ran into so much opposition that he asked the Crown to help him get support from Rome. He succeeded in making several reforms, but at the price of much dissension. Reformed monks attacked the unreformed secular clergy, a form of anticlericalism which one scholar has identified in the
Page 1: THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ON
Page 5 and 6: women. Some well-born women in the
Page 7 and 8: a particular chapel in the Cathedra
Page 9 and 10: nobles as patrons. When the Duke of
Page 11 and 12: eligious rituals with modern [137]
Page 13: describes some irreverent ruses of

Chapter 6 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?