1531 with 58 trials for heresy and about 45 burnings in person. This was perhaps the moderation and benignity on which Cardinal Manrique dwelt in reply about this time to an indignant complaint of the cortes of the three kingdoms that the Moors had not been taught and had no churches provided for them and yet were prosecuted for heresy.2 On the other hand Clement VII. grew impatient at the slow progress of the work and issued a brief, June 11, 1533, to Manrique, which Charles by a decree of January 13, 1534, ordered him to execute. In this he asserted that the Moors of Valencia, Aragon and Catalonia held relations with those of Africa, they converted many Christians to their faith and introduced many superstitions among the simple people, to the great danger of the Christian religion; he had exhorted the emperor as to all this in his brief of May 12, 1524, and repeatedly since then, and he now orders Manrique at once to depute persons of learning to instruct the Moors and that if they do not embrace Christianity within a term to be fixed, he must expel them from the kingdom or reduce them all to slavery without mercy.3

1 Arch. Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Legajos 98, 300. The figures for the next few years are―

2 Archivo de Simancas, Patronato Real, Legajo único, fol. 38. (See Appendix No. VI.)

3 Guadalajara y Xavierr, fol. 48.—Dormer, Lib. ii. cap. lxx.—Danvila, p. 116.

Thus stimulated the Inquisition increased its activity. The figures on the preceding page show what it was doing in Valencia, although this may perhaps be partly explained by orders to the tribunal to punish with the utmost rigor those detected in fasting for the success of Barbarossa in his resistance to the Tunis expedition of Charles V.1 In a list of the heretics relaxed or reconciled in Majorca, the first appearance of Moriscos is in 1535, when five were burnt in person and four in effigy.2 They did not always submit without resistance. In 1538, when Gaspar de Alfrex, a fugitive, was being conveyed from Saragossa to the Inquisition of Valencia, the party was set upon near Nules, two of the officials were killed and the rescued and rescuers escaped to Africa.3

With 1540 the operations of the Valencia Inquisition came to a temporary stop and in the three years, 1541, 1542, 1543, there was not a single prosecution for heresy.4 The nobles had complained earnestly of the disquiet caused among their vassals by its operations and the cortes petitioned that thirty or forty years might be given for their instruction, during which they should be exempt from prosecution. The emperor assembled a junta of prelates and clerics who counselled various plans of moderation and conciliation among which he selected that of granting a term of grace for former offences during which they could be confessed sacramentally to confessors and that a period should be named for their instruction during which the Inquisition should not prosecute them.

1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Libro 78, fol. 34, 152.

2 Ibid. Libro 595. After this, however, they occur but sparingly. Danvila, p. 124.

4 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Legajo 98.

This period was liberally fixed at twenty-six years, with the warning that it would be shortened or extended according as they should abuse or use it. The result was not satisfactory; they commenced to live openly as Moors, circumcising their boys, fasting the Ramadan, working on feast-days, abstaining from mass and saying that as they had thirty years in which to live as they pleased they would take full advantage of it. This well-meant effort to employ persuasion came to a speedy end. The Inquisition resumed operations with renewed vigor and in 1544 it had 79 cases, in 1545, 37 and in 1546, 49.2

In 1547 there was a reversion to a milder policy. In the endeavor to frame and conduct an organization for the instruction of the Moriscos, of which more hereafter, two "apostolic commissioners," Fray Antonio de Calcena, afterwards Bishop of Tortosa, and Antonio Ramirez de Haro, afterwards Bishop of Segovia, had been sent to Valencia. They had the faculties of inquisitors and bore that title, to give them greater authority, but they were instructed not to act as such or to interfere with the operations of the tribunal. In 1540, Haro's commission was renewed under the same conditions. Then a brief was obtained from Paul III., August 2, 1546, which completely superseded the Inquisition, as it granted faculties to appoint confessors empowered to hear confessions of the Moriscos and absolve them in utroque foro—both sacramentally and judicially—even if they had been

1 Danvila, p. 130.

2 Arch. Hist. Nac., Inq" de Valencia, Leg. 98.

3 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Libro 4, fol. 110; Lib. 77, fol. 353; Lib. 78, fol. 275.

tried and condemned by the Inquisition, and to prescribe for them either public or private abjuration on their professing contrition and swearing in future to abstain from heresy. They and their descendants were relieved from all disabilities and from confiscation and Old Christians could consort and trade with them freely.1 This was a most liberal measure, although St. Tomas de Vilanova, Archbishop of Valencia, says that it was ineffective because it required the penitent to abjure de vehementi—for vehement suspicion of heresy—which none of them would do, wherefore he suggested that more extensive faculties should be obtained to absolve and pardon without observing legal forms, considering that these people were converted as it were by force, that they never have been instructed and that their intercourse with the Algerine Moors renders them averse to Christianity."

It made little difference what were the powers conferred on the Bishop of Segovia, as the only effect of his commission was to render the Inquisition powerless and supersede also the episcopal jurisdiction. He left Valencia early in 1547 and never returned. April 12th the archbishop wrote to Prince Philip that since he had gone the Moriscos become daily bolder in performing their Moorish ceremonies as there is no one to restrain or punish them. The bishop had left no one to represent him and some one should speedily be sent with powers subdelegated by him. A promise was made that a person should shortly be sent, but the customary habit of procrastination pre

1 Bulario de la Orden de Santiago, Libro III. fol. 33 (Archivo Histórico Nacional).

2 Coleccion de Docum. inéd. T. V. p. 104. Abjuration de vehementi— for vehement suspicion of heresy-irrevocably entailed burning in case of relapse.

vailed. On November 10th the archbishop wrote again representing the complete liberty enjoyed by the conversos with no one to look after them, but no attention was paid to him, and, in 1551 and 1552, we find him still calling for some one empowered to keep the Moriscos in order; if no one can be sent they should be subjected to the Inquisition as formerly, or a papal faculty should be obtained enabling the episcopal ordinary to punish them. moderately. Even when, in 1551, the Bishop of Segovia appointed the Inquisitor Gregorio de Miranda as commissioner for the Moriscos he granted him no inquisitorial power and the Moriscos of Valencia remained free from persecution for ten years longer. This explains why the records of the Inquisition show only twelve cases in 1547, fifteen in 1548, four in 1549 and then an entire cessation of trials up to and including 1562, except two in 1558 and fifteen in 1560. In 1561 the Inquisitorgeneral Valdes was empowered by Paul IV. to enable the Archbishop of Valencia and his Ordinary to reconcile secretly relapsed New Christians; in those cases which could be judicially proved, the confessions were to be made before a notary and delivered to the Inquisition, while in those which could not be proved the penances were to be purely spiritual. This indicates that

1 Coleccion de Docum. inéd. T. V. pp. 100, 101, 107, 108, 122.

2 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Legajo 98. The cases in 1547, 1548 and 1549 may be unfinished business of previous years or heretics other than Moriscos, and the latter supposition may explain those of 1558 and 1560. So far as heresy was concerned however the business of the Valencia tribunal was almost exclusively with Moriscos.

3 Archivo de Simancas, Libro 4, fol. 262. (See Appendix No. VII. ) The futility of these apparent concessions arose from the insistence upon confessions being taken down by notaries and becoming matters of record not only against the penitent himself but against all his accomplices.