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The Inquisitorial Office in the Sixteenth-Century Habsburg Low Countries: A Dynamic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

GERT GIELIS  and
VIOLET SOEN
GERT GIELIS
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts, Blijde Inkomststraat 21/05 bus 3307, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium; e-mail: gert.gielis@arts.kuleuven.be
VIOLET SOEN
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts, Blijde Inkomststraat 21/05 bus 3307, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium; e-mail: violet.soen@arts.kuleuven.be
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Abstract

The long acknowledged Mediterranean character of the early modern Inquisition(s) has recently been positioned within a global context. This article aims to integrate the Habsburg Low Countries into this newly emerging picture. Firstly, it argues that the Inquisition there should be understood as an office rather than as a tribunal: only individual inquisitors were called upon as specialised judges for offending clerics, or for judicial procedures de fide conducted by laymen. Secondly, this article emphasises that the inquisitorial office underwent continual redefinition in the four decades of its existence. Hence, the situation in the Low Countries offers a contrast to the religious persecution in France and England, where secular courts more clearly monopolised jurisdiction over heresy, and to the institutionally organised tribunals on the Iberian and Italian peninsulas.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 47 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 
AGS

Archivo General de Simancas

ARAB

Archives Générales du Royaume de Belgique/Algemeen Rijksarchief van België, Brussels

ARG

Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte

CDI

Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis Hereticae Pravitatis Neerlandicae, ed. P. Fredericq, Ghent 1889–1906

CPhII

Correspondance de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays-Bas, ed. L. P. Gachard, Brussels 1848–1936

DI

M. Dierickx, Documents inédits sur l’érection des nouveaux diocèses aux Pays-Bas (1521–1570), Brussels 1960–2

PEA

Papiers de l’État et Audience

UAL

University Archive Leuven, University Library, Leuven.

Traditionally, the Inquisition in the early modern period has been studied within three areas: Spain, Portugal and the Italian peninsula. Recently (and rightly so), the long-acknowledged Mediterranean character of the early modern Inquisition has been positioned within a larger, even global context.Footnote 1 So far, this novel geographical perspective has not yet been expanded to include the Low Countries, as if no functioning Inquisition ever extended that far north.Footnote 2 Instead, there have been misinterpretations in the opposite sense, as if the Spanish Inquisition had been operational in the Habsburg Low Countries. This article aims to remedy these misunderstandings by situating the Inquisition in the Low Countries within the wider international literature and context. It argues that the Inquisition in the early modern Low Countries can only be assessed properly when understood as an inquisitorial office rather than as a tribunal. It also underlines that ‘the’ Inquisition should be studied from a dynamic perspective, because the office went through several phases of redefinition during the sixteenth century,Footnote 3 while archival sources reveal that religious persecution in the Low Countries steered an independent course from the Spanish Holy Office, and displayed organisational features unlike those in neighbouring northern European countries.Footnote 4

Inquisition: what's in a name?

The omission of the Low Countries from the ever-vaster field of Inquisition studies might be understandable from the classic Mediterranean perspective, in which this region figures as a barely visible periphery. Inversely, in the historiography on the Habsburg Low Countries, ‘the Inquisition’ seems omnipresent, as if it functioned as a branch of the more legendary Spanish Inquisition. Sometimes this view stems from the fact that the provinces of the Low Countries shared their Habsburg overlords with the Spanish kingdoms. More often the expression ‘the Spanish Inquisition’ is used as an explanation for the outbreak of the Revolt which eventually brought about the founding of the Dutch Republic.Footnote 5

These two opposite views call for terminological precision. The term ‘Inquisition’ was already leading to confusion in the sixteenth century. Even if ‘inquisitio’ originally only referred to a canonical procedure, soon this ecclesiastical connotation broadened towards a more general understanding in the sixteenth century: Netherlandish contemporaries used the term for almost any sort of juridical investigation in matters of faith.Footnote 6 The word ‘Inquisition’ progressively conflated different forms of religious repression, and dissident propagandists cleverly exploited this. Genuine misunderstandings lay at the basis of the misinterpretations, but in the 1560s semantic confusion clearly increased because of the disinformation spread by religious and political malcontents.Footnote 7 Since then, ‘the Inquisition’ has also been used in historiography as a container term and has obfuscated historical debates.

But while a new analysis is necessary, this one is certainly not an attempt to revive the nineteenth-century debate about the ‘true origin’ of the Inquisition in the Low Countries. As in Spain, Portugal, Italy and many other southern European countries, Liberals and Catholics in Belgium and the Netherlands discussed the importance of the Inquisition in their national histories. The liberal protagonist in Belgium, Paul Frédéricq, professor at the young state university in Ghent, regarded the Low Countries Inquisition as a clerical institution, emanating from the intrusive collaboration of State and Church, both propagating intolerance.Footnote 8 The most famous Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne, also identified the Inquisition as the expression of an oppressive and intolerant state.Footnote 9 In response, such Catholic authors as Pierre Claessens and, much later, Paul Emiel Valvekens minimised allegations that inquisitors were omnipotent and brutal by showing that these men tried to reconcile repentant heretics and to soften the harsh policies of their Habsburg rulers. These Catholic historians thus viewed the Inquisition not as an instrument serving a cruel, state-driven repression, as Frédéricq and Pirenne had done, but as a compassionate ecclesiastical court.Footnote 10

These debates are, of course, long past. None the less, echoes of Pirenne's thesis can still be found in the most recent doctoral dissertation on the subject, Aline Goosens's Les Inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (1520–1633), published in two volumes in 1997 and 1998.Footnote 11 With the plural in her title, Goosens underlined her key thesis that no fewer than three Inquisitions were active in the Low Countries: one directed by the bishops, another one appointed by the pope, and a third that carried out the civil anti-heterodoxy laws, better known as the placards. In her account, the co-existence of these three levels of religious persecution resulted in a state-driven and largely secular inquisitorial system. Hence, she applied the term ‘inquisition civile’ to the papal Inquisition and the placards alike. Despite their institutional complexity, Goosens further argued that these three Inquisitions in the Low Countries resembled the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman organisational endeavours.Footnote 12

Goosens's work certainly contributed towards capturing the multi-layered religious persecution in the Low Countries, yet it also created acute problems of definition.Footnote 13 In order to remedy these, we argue that the repression of religious dissent took place on four different levels, instead of the three that Goosens proposed. This clarification permits the terminological precision that the current historiography lacks. Arranged in chronological order by seniority, the story goes as follows: (1) Episcopal inquisitors remained active throughout the sixteenth century, as they had been in the Middle Ages. They were often directly appointed by the bishops, usually ad hoc, and some were not even members of the traditional episcopal courts; (2) Equally, papal inquisitors remained active throughout the sixteenth century, just as before. The majority of them were Dominicans, commissioned directly by the pope with no princely intervention whatsoever. As late as 1572 there are records of their activity in the Low Countries;Footnote 14 (3) It is only following the Edict of Worms in 1521 that the Habsburg dynasty started continually to revise and update numerous anti-heresy edicts for their ever growing pays de par deça in the Low Countries. These placards constituted the legal basis for judging crimes against both divine and worldly majesty in local, provincial and supra–provincial civil courts; (4) Finally, a novel sort of inquisitor-general began to function in the Habsburg Netherlands from 1522–3 onwards. As a rule, these were appointed by the ruler of the Low Countries and subsequently confirmed by the pope through an official mandate and instruction. This mandate also stipulated that the inquisitors-general had the power to subdelegate their powers to other clerics.

Contrary to Goosens, and in agreement with Alastair Duke, it is argued that it is better to confine the term ‘Inquisition’ solely to this fourth level. Only the novel inquisitorial office can figure as, in the words of Duke, the ‘Inquisition properly so-called’.Footnote 15 If French anti-heresy legislation has never been qualified as an ‘Inquisition’ there is no reason to do so for the Low Countries.Footnote 16 But even so, the new inquisitorial office from 1522–3 onwards has been confusingly qualified as a papal, civil, imperial, imperial-papal and royal-papal Inquisition, both by contemporaries and in historical literature. It is difficult to label these men ‘papal’ inquisitors, as this applies more directly to the second level of inquisitors directly appointed by the pope. It is also misleading to name them ‘state inquisitors’: time and again they operated quite independently from their rulers. Moreover, this kind of Inquisition never evolved into classic fixed inquisitorial tribunals, as it did in Spain, Portugal, Italy and their overseas dominions. Therefore, in the following paragraphs, confusion is avoided by naming them ‘inquisitors’ tout court. We propose to examine the emergence, evolution and disappearance of this inquisitorial function sui generis from a dynamic perspective rather than to search vainly for its ultimate qualification. Thus can be demonstrated the problematic start of the inquisitorial office (1522–4); its prudent beginnings (1524–45); its contested consolidation (1545–59); and its almost silent demise (1559–89).

A problematic start, 1522–4

Unlike the Iberian kingdoms, in the Low Countries the plans for an inquisitorial function emerged only at the very start of the Reformation. The swift spread of Lutheran and other Protestant ideas in the Holy Roman Empire and in his native lands clearly disturbed the emperor Charles v and his councillors, their anxiety exacerbated by the papal legate Hieronymus Aleander. Both the emperor and his aunt Margaret of Savoy, then recently restored as governor of the Low Countries, realised that the traditional ecclesiastical courts responsible for judging heresy were not prepared to act. Moreover, the need for a new Inquisition arose because the medieval Inquisitions were not geared to dealing with heresy when it became a relatively widespread problem. Papal inquisitors, mostly Dominicans, were unpopular and very few in number. More important, the competent episcopal courts were mostly under ‘foreign’ archbishops (Cologne, Reims, Utrecht up to 1528) or bishops (Thérouanne). Their jurisdiction was based upon accusatory and not inquisitorial proceedings, preventing episcopal officials from actively inquiring into hotbeds of heresy. Given these circumstances, the emperor resolved to seize control of heresy prosecution in the Low Countries through two far-reaching measures.

First, the Edict of Worms (backdated to 8 May 1521) constituted the cornerstone of a series of anti-heresy placards for the Low Countries, which were regularly issued in the following decades, in different forms according to the provinces concerned.Footnote 17 Their increasing severity suggests that they were poorly observed. These official ordinances created a new judicial framework, giving all civil courts the authority and duty to counteract the spread of heterodox thoughts. The placards focused less on heretical ideas than on activities linked to heresy, such as the possession and propagation of heterodox literature and meetings of heterodox-minded people. It is often overlooked that these edicts, although promulgated by central government, had to be registered by provincial courts in order to have legal force. More than once, provincial courts opposed their registration, most often in Holland-Zeeland and Frisia, but also in Brabant and Flanders – all core regions of the Low Countries. As a result, anti-heresy placards were never in effect across the entire territory under Habsburg rule, and the application of civil heresy law showed notable differences on a provincial and even a local level.

Secondly, and unlike in the Holy Roman Empire, the emperor launched an Inquisition-like policy in the Low Countries, fitting it into his overall strategy of secularising heresy trials. On 23 April 1522 he commissioned his confidant Frans van der Hulst as an imperial commissioner for heresy prosecution, granting this jurist from the Council of Brabant, a provincial court, the authority to initiate and even to conclude heresy trials anywhere in the Low Countries.Footnote 18 Even if van der Hulst had to accept assistance from theologians and/or legal experts, his final sentence had only to be confirmed by the president of the Great Council of Mechelen, the supreme court of the Low Countries.Footnote 19 The advantage of such a new and centralised function was clear: the search for religious dissidents could be applied to the entire territory under Habsburg control.

Nevertheless, the appointment of an autonomous civil commissioner seems to have happened for practical reasons, rather than as a result of an overarching master plan. A few months earlier, van der Hulst had been the key lawyer in the famous trial of Jacobus Praepositus, prior of the Antwerp Augustinian monastery and a personal friend of Martin Luther.Footnote 20 Officially, this trial was conducted by two prominent theologians of the University of Leuven in Brabant, endorsed for that occasion with a commission from the bishop of Cambrai.Footnote 21 In practice, the Habsburg government pulled the strings, and Frans van der Hulst was responsible for the suspect's arrest and imprisonment. Not coincidentally, it is after this first important trial with its many conflicting jurisdictions that the emperor appointed van der Hulst as a permanent and central imperial commissioner. Most probably, van der Hulst's own ideas and initiatives about the need for such a function contributed to creating this new office.Footnote 22

After his official appointment as imperial commissioner for heresy in 1522, van der Hulst's main concern remained the Augustinian monastery in Antwerp. Lutheranism was still preached there by, amongst others, its new prior, Hendrik van Zutphen. Again, on the orders of the Brussels government, the margrave of Antwerp arrested the prior, who soon escaped. Other friars were then arrested; their monastery was closed down and razed to the ground. Most of the friars were imprisoned and interrogated in the castle of Vilvoorde near Brussels, but were shortly afterwards released. During these events van der Hulst was again assisted by two theologians from the University of Leuven. On 1 July 1523 two of the three friars who refused to recant, Hendrik Voes and Jan van Esschen, were burned at the stake in Brussels, becoming the first martyrs of the Reformation.Footnote 23

Older historiography argued that the emperor hereby introduced an Inquisition after the Spanish model.Footnote 24 In 1976, for example, Jozef Scheerder came to this conclusion on the grounds that the commission given to van der Hulst bore remarkable textual similarities to a contemporary letter from Alonso Manrique, archbishop of Seville, to Charles v. Manrique assisted the emperor in the Low Countries but was shortly afterwards promoted to Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Holy Office.Footnote 25 The model of the Spanish Holy Office certainly played a role; much later Charles v acknowledged to his daughter that he had had the idea of introducing the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands, but that he had never put the plan into effect.Footnote 26 Hence, the novel inquisitorial model for the Low Countries did not resemble the Spanish Inquisition very closely. To cite but the two most remarkable differences: first, all members of the Suprema dealing with heretical lawsuits had to be ordained clerics, but van der Hulst never was; secondly, he acted on his own, not within an institution.

Moreover, although historiography labels van der Hulst as ‘inquisitor’ after his appointment by Charles v in 1522, the imperial mandate and instruction neither regarded nor named him as an ‘inquisitor’. It is only a year later, during the trial of the Augustinian monks in 1523, that the nature of van der Hulst's commission changed. With a bull on 1 June 1523, Pope Adrian vi appointed van der Hulst as universalis et generalis inquisitor et investigator. Footnote 27 Henceforth, he could proceed ‘cum plena potestate et auctoritate inquisitoribus heretici pravitatis hujusmodi concessis’. Van der Hulst thus received equal competence with the existing episcopal and papal inquisitors, though he still had to be assisted by two theologians. It was exceptional for a pope to allow any layman to hold this office and its prerogatives. For the pope, it presented a way to assert control over the new function of ‘inquisitor of the Low Countries’. Perhaps this papal commission was not even solicited by the emperor, who preferred to control the prosecution of heresy through his own judges. It seems more likely that van der Hulst himself lobbied his old acquaintance Adrian vi, for they had known each other well at the court of the young Charles v.

Nevertheless, the novel papal instruction proved of little use in the case of van der Hulst against Cornelis Hoen.Footnote 28 This elderly lawyer from Holland was prosecuted for writing the famous Epistle on the eucharist, in which he propagated a symbolic interpretation for the holy sacrament. As a lawyer from Holland, Hoen did not recognise the jurisdiction of van der Hulst, who after all was still a member of the provincial Council of Brabant. Cornelis Hoen's protest was eagerly supported by the States of Holland and the Council of Holland. All vehemently opposed the jurisdiction of a Brabant councillor in Holland, even if he had been given an imperial and even a papal commission. They invoked their long-acquired privilege jus de non evocando to argue that Hoen must be judged by a local court and local councillors. As the legal conflict escalated van der Hulst did not dare to show himself in Holland. His opponents then discovered that he had committed fraud: in September 1523 Margaret of Savoy had to dismiss van der Hulst as imperial commissioner while emphasising that she could not discharge him from his role as a papal inquisitor.Footnote 29 This underlines once again that the imperial commission and the papal warrant were seen as separate mandates. This first attempt to establish a general imperial commissioner for the repression of heresy thus failed at its first hurdle in 1523, when it collided with strongly-defended provincial and local privileges.

A prudent new beginning, 1524–45

The short-lived story of this novel inquisitorial office in the Low Countries could thus have ended in 1523. To grant another exceptional mandate initially seemed out of the question. The Brussels government remained very uncertain as to what strategy it should adopt to check the spread of the Reformation. The emperor proposed a return to the status quo ante, ‘when the bishops or my councillors had cognisance in abuses and errors of faith’.Footnote 30 Charles v therefore did not insist on a separate imperial officer. Yet Margaret and some of her councillors now saw the need for exactly such an independent inquisitor. In order to circumvent local privileges in the Low Countries, they insisted that papal authority offered the best way to introduce a uniform system for the prosecution of heresy in the Low Countries. They proposed three clerical candidates to Pope Clement vii for the single position of inquisitor-general.Footnote 31

The pope supported Margaret and her councillors, and, instead of choosing between the three clerical candidates, he appointed all three of them as inquisitors-general: Olivier Buedens (who died three years later), Nicolas Houzeau and Nicolas Coppin, giving all of them extensive inquisitorial authority for the Habsburg Low Countries as a whole.Footnote 32 They were also authorised to engage sub-inquisitors. Six months later, Clement vii appointed a fourth inquisitor-general, the prince-bishop of Liège, Erard de la Marck, to preside over the others.Footnote 33 However, the Brussels government refused to approve this last appointment, since it gave a ‘foreign’ bishop authority over heresy prosecutions across the entire Habsburg Low Countries. Coppin too protested with a letter that illustrated well the difficult relationship with the episcopal Inquisition, and Margaret forwarded his complaints to the pope. In the end the government and Coppin won: de la Marck's commission was revoked and the pope increased Coppin's powers.Footnote 34 A new papal breve of 20 March 1525 defined the judicial authority of Dutch inquisitors for the coming decades.Footnote 35

The creation of an inquisitor-general in 1524 thus followed no grand design, but depended on contingencies and the very fragmented political situation in the Low Countries. By 1524–5, inquisitors in the Low Countries were legitimate on two levels: they were selected by the ruler and endorsed by the pope. Nominations remained highly personal and conditional: no new appointments occurred as long an inquisitor-general was alive. To name but one example, inquisitor-general Coppin died in 1535. A report (informatio) around 1537 indicates that the Curia considered naming a successor, but this plan was abandoned.Footnote 36 Nobody else was appointed, and Inquisitor-General Houzeau remained in office until his death in 1547. Although inquisitors could delegate their powers – which they didFootnote 37 – no effort was made to transform the inquisitorial office into a formal hierarchical tribunal, as was done in both Portugal and Italy at this time. Instead, by the fortunes of life and death, ever fewer inquisitors-general were active until 1545.

Nevertheless, the appointment in 1524 of three inquisitors-general definitively established a system with four different levels of jurisdiction over heresy. As Goosens copiously demonstrated, this complicated system constantly caused innumerable conflicts. Most heresy cases were dealt with exclusively by civil courts on the basis of the placards, without interference from an inquisitor. For example, the first wave of Anabaptists was prosecuted in the 1530s mostly by civil lawsuits.Footnote 38 Inquisitors were thus often left out of their core business, although the civil authorities cooperated with them in more ordinary heresy cases. In practice, the inquisitors functioned as experts in the identification of heretical opinions. They never initiated a trial, but were summoned by central government or by the civil courts to examine a suspect's religious beliefs, and, most often, to determine whether or not the suspect could be reconciled to the Catholic Church.

Despite problems, heresy trials show an emerging modus vivendi between inquisitors and secular courts. While the inquisitors confined themselves to the inquisitio proper, civil authorities took responsibility for the more material aspects, from the arrest and detention to the execution of penalties. Also a certain dichotomy ratione personae steadily arose, even though this distinction never became strict: inquisitors were mainly concerned with suspect clergy, and secular courts prosecuted lay people. The heresy trials in Leuven in 1543 clearly show this ‘division of labour’.Footnote 39 When at the end of 1542 the chaplain of St Peter's (Leuven's main parish), Paulus de Roovere, was arrested on suspicion of heresy, his trial was conducted by the vice-chancellor of the university and the inquisitor, Ruard Tapper, who was also dean of St Peter's. When this trial subsequently led to the discovery of at least forty other religious dissidents, the lay suspects were called before an ad hoc court made up of four members of the Council of Brabant and four city magistrates, this time excluding the theologians. Inquisitor Tapper and a colleague still visited the lay prisoners, trying to make them recant, but neither theologian sat on the tribunal that judged the forty suspects. Hence, inquisitors were certainly not the moving forces in the prosecution of heresy, but they served conscientiously as specialised judges whenever their expertise was called upon.

A contested consolidation, 1545–59

This inquisitorial system was remodelled around 1545, when the emperor Charles v again tried to make religious prosecution more efficient: while substantially updating the heresy placards, he also reorganised the inquisitorial office. Its staff was increased by governmental initiative: ten new sub-inquisitors were appointed for most provinces of the Habsburg Low Countries.Footnote 40 They now received a permanent subdelegation from the lone surviving inquisitor-general Houzeau, something that had happened only occasionally before then. Upon the death of Houzeau, two new inquisitors-general were appointed on 6 July 1547, Ruard Tapper and Michael Driutius, a professor of canon law in Leuven.Footnote 41 The latter appointment was probably intended to avoid possible future jurisdictional conflicts with the prince-bishop of Liège, since Driutius was already the Official of his episcopal court.Footnote 42

Moreover, the emperor extended the responsibilities of the inquisitors. In February 1546 he issued an instruction exhorting them to be more proactive.Footnote 43 Henceforth, inquisitors had immediately to inform a secular court whenever they suspected someone of having contravened the placards. Charles v considered them as a kind of intelligence service. A simultaneous placard compelled all civil authorities to cooperate fully with the inquisitors.Footnote 44 Yet the emperor also fully subordinated the inquisitors to the civil courts in executing the heresy placards; even clerics were henceforth judged in the civil courts. Only cases of heresy which did not fall under the civil heresy legislation could be judged by the inquisitors, and even then a provincial councillor had to be present at the trial. Moreover, cases of mere heresy that did not violate some civil heresy law had now become extraordinarily rare, if not non-existent. As a result, in practice, inquisitors could no longer proceed without a civil commission.

The new inquisitors-general protested vigorously against this new instruction.Footnote 45 Tapper and Driutius claimed that their office was independent and argued that, according to legal practices and medieval tradition, they were bound only by their papal mandate, not by civil regulations. In their view, civil courts should play only a secondary, subservient part in the matter of heresy.Footnote 46 Tapper and Driutius achieved a small success in 1548 when they were again allowed independently to judge clerics who had contravened the placards.Footnote 47 But despite the inquisitors' efforts to restore their jurisdiction and minimise secular interference, civil courts retained by far the greater share of heresy jurisdiction. Finally, in 1550, Charles v issued new anti-heresy legislation which was soon nicknamed the ‘Blood Placard’. This set the seal on what had become the most stringent anti-heresy legislation anywhere in Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula. One month later, the imperial instructions for the inquisitors were also reissued.Footnote 48

The reorganisation of the inquisitorial office in 1545 only aggravated the problem of competing jurisdictions. The anti-heresy edicts encroached on canon law, but anyone who held heterodox beliefs was almost always simultaneously in breach of the placards.Footnote 49 Although the central government desired cooperation between civil courts and inquisitors, they did not collaborate smoothly. Several inquisitors deemed the new placard of 1550 too severe, while others considered it a necessary evil to extirpate heresy.Footnote 50 At least one inquisitor refused to execute the Blood Placard.Footnote 51 Ruard Tapper refused to hand over his intelligence to the civil courts and other inquisitors imitated him.Footnote 52 Despite such friction, in 1555 both the Blood Placard and the inquisitorial instruction were reissued without modification.Footnote 53

In the 1550s, discontented with the confusion and obstructions, several inquisitors made new proposals for restructuring heresy persecution. Around 1555 the inquisitor for Flanders, Pieter Titelmans, tried to strengthen the role of the inquisitors by allowing them to appoint a sub-inquisitor in each city, accountable to the provincial inquisitor. Sub-inquisitors were to meet regularly to report on the local religious situation and to outline a common policy.Footnote 54 However, most inquisitors wanted to return to a situation closer to that of the Middle Ages, when the episcopal authorities had been dominant. Hence, when in 1551–2 the Holland inquisitor Franciscus Sonnius drafted a plan for the reorganisation of bishoprics, he also sought to remodel the inquisitorial office by completely subsuming it under the authority of the bishop. Sonnius proposed to add six inquisitors to the episcopal staff, three to be granted a papal mandate and the other three an episcopal mandate.Footnote 55 After several adjustments Sonnius' plan was implemented with the proclamation of the papal bull Super Universas in 1559, creating fourteen new bishoprics.

An almost silent death, 1559–89

Although plans for episcopal reform aspired to strengthen episcopal competence regarding heresy and to suppress the separate inquisitorial office, in March 1559 Philip ii instructed his agents in Rome about assigning new inquisitors-general.Footnote 56 This reinforces the impression that the appointment of inquisitors-general was an ad hoc reaction to the death of Ruard Tapper on 2 March of that same year, a fact to which the king clearly referred.Footnote 57 At that moment the outcome of the negotiations on the reform of the bishoprics was still unpredictable. Philip wanted to avoid an inquisitorial vacuum and therefore proposed four new candidates – Michael Baius, Judocus Tiletanus, Petrus Curtius and Martinus Rythovius. They were all members of the Leuven Faculty of Theology, illustrating once again the intimate relationship between inquisitors and academic theologians.Footnote 58 Pope Paul iv added a fifth name motu proprio: the architect of the proposed episcopal reforms Sonnius, who was then still in Rome negotiating. Two other inquisitors-general died in the same year. Once again, the nomination of inquisitors-general followed no grand design, but reacted to the contingencies of life and death of previous office-holders. By 1560 all five theologians had received a copy of their papal instruction as inquisitor-general. Also the close link between the inquisitors and the new bishops would soon become clear: three of them were quickly summoned to take on three of the new bishoprics. As bishops, they occasionally used their inquisitorial mandate to reconcile repentant heretics.Footnote 59

In public opinion, the episcopal reform of 1559 reinforced the legend, long in the making, that the Spanish Inquisition would now be introduced. This message, as Duke noted, was at first confined to pamphlets by and for Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire, but after 1550 it was eagerly spread by dissidents in the Low Countries. Pamphlets and songs equated the inquisitors in the Low Countries with their ‘cruel and brutal’ counterparts in Spain, deliberately employing an ill-defined and ambivalent terminology. Accounts of autos-da-fé in Seville and Valladolid in 1559 contributed to the fear of a harsh, Spanish-style persecution in the Low Countries. Some alleged that ‘the Inquisition’ – by the 1560s a synonym for every kind of religious repression – was brought about by the new bishops; others by the Leuven doctors of theology; still others, by the existing placards or even later on by the newly-published Tridentine decrees.Footnote 60 Since several (former) inquisitors were also summoned to take on the new bishoprics, in public opinion the close link between the new bishops and new inquisitors was obvious and suspicious. In fact, the propaganda against ‘the Inquisition’ even proved highly effective in slowing down governmental efforts regarding both religious reform and repression. Violent opposition to ‘the Inquisition’ caused serious delays in implementing episcopal reform. The last bishops were not appointed until November 1570, a delay of almost eleven years. At the same time malcontent grandees successfully exploited the myth of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ to overthrow the principal royal councillor, Antoine de Perrenot, Lord of Granvelle, who had become the first archbishop of Malines and soon received a cardinal's hat. Many pamphlets vilified Granvelle as the ‘evil minister’ advising the king to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into the Low Countries. Historical research has refuted this allegation;Footnote 61 but it served as an excellent means to express the grandees' opposition both to the harsh religious policy and to the hispanisation of government.Footnote 62

The broad opposition to ‘the Inquisition’, together with the spectacular rise of Calvinism, made the task of the newly-appointed inquisitors highly unpleasant in the 1560s. Openly upset over the lukewarm support from local authorities, the Holland inquisitor Wilhelmus Lindanus presented his formal resignation to the Leuven inquisitors-general Baius and Tiletanus in the spring of 1565.Footnote 63 They soon followed his lead and resigned themselves. Their resignations were quickly communicated to Philip ii himself by Lorenzo Villavicencio, a Spanish Augustinian monk, who travelled from Bruges to Madrid to warn the king about the spread of heresy.Footnote 64 When Philip ii wrote to his regent that he would not concede the political demands of the malcontent grandees, he also asked her to support the inquisitors and to reinstate them in their previous position. This message was included in the famous series of letters in October 1565 known as the ‘Letters from the Segovia Woods’. Philip's concrete reactions to the personal resignations of the inquisitors in Holland were soon interpreted as programmatic declarations in favour of ‘the Inquisition’.Footnote 65

Over the autumn and winter of 1565–6, a dissident ‘Compromise of the Nobles’ used the uncompromising language of the Segovian letters to raise support. They built a coalition around a text opposing ‘the Inquisition under whatsoever form it might be’ – most probably the wisest formulation if support were to be gained from Protestants and moderate Catholics alike. After making their way to Brussels, they presented their petition to abolish the ‘Inquisition’ to the Regent on 5 April 1566. By then Margaret of Parma also thought it more prudent to force the inquisitors to resign once again. Thus, within one eventful year, the inquisitors had resigned of their own accord, been rehabilitated, and forced to present a letter of resignation.Footnote 66 By the end of July 1566, Philip ii seemed to agree to abolish the inquisitorial office in order to stop the turmoil – but on this matter he left any final decision to the pope. Whatever the case, these concessions proved insufficient to prevent a great wave of iconoclasm in the summer and autumn of the same year. When the time came to punish those responsible, the inquisitors in post were not called upon. Instead, under the command of the new governor-general, the duke of Alba, a special and temporary tribunal – the ‘Council of Troubles’ – was set up to punish the huge number of those guilty of crimes against both God and the king.Footnote 67

It would seem that afterwards the inquisitors' letters of resignation were either annulled or discarded. Certainly they were ignored, for inquisitors remained entitled to handle some cases, although on a much more modest scale than before. Remarkably, the inquisitorial competence to reconcile repentant heretics – traditionally one of the casus reservati of the pope – proved crucial for proclaiming a general pardon in 1572. Philip ii had issued a collective grace for repentant heretics once before, in 1570, but then he had asked the pope for a separate breve. This papal pardon commissioned ad hoc the archbishop of Cambrai to delegate clerics for the reconciliation of all repentant heretics willing to accept the Tridentine Professio fidei. On the occasion of the birth of a male heir to the throne in 1571, Philip ii extended the possibility of reconciliation for another three months without soliciting a new papal breve. Alba decided to untangle the legal and canonical uncertainties by asking the only remaining inquisitor-general, Michael Baius, to delegate the clerics, on the basis of his inquisitorial competence to do so. In a rather paradoxical way, the Revolt accentuated the inquisitorial task of reconciling repentant heretics, and that even for large groups of minor offenders.

According to Goosens, the inquisitors' tasks virtually ended by 1571,Footnote 68 but this overlooks their involvement in the general pardon of 1572. Also at Alba's request, Baius handled the case of the Frisian priest Laurens of Asselborn in the autumn of 1572.Footnote 69 Tradition has it that the Inquisition ceased to function following the conclusion of a peace agreement in Ghent on 8 November 1576 between the States-General and the rebellious provinces of Holland and Zeeland. In the collective historical memories first of the Dutch Republic and subsequently of the modern states of Belgium and the Netherlands, this treaty is thought to have brought toleration, although that term did not appear anywhere in the text. Yet when the quadricentennial of the Pacification was commemorated in 1976, Jozef Scheerder ascribed the ‘end of the Inquisition’ to the famous peace treaty. Indeed, the Pacification of Ghent stipulated the end of persecution for religious reasons anywhere in the Low Countries, until a new States-General could make a final decision on the religious question.Footnote 70 However, neither formally nor institutionally did the States-General have the jurisdiction to abolish the authority or instructions of inquisitors who had been appointed by the king and commissioned by the pope. When the new governor-general, Don John of Austria, ratified this treaty in February 1577, he made this conditional on exclusive recognition being granted to Catholicism, and observers in his entourage remarked that it would still be possible to prosecute heretics.Footnote 71 These arguments continued when the next governor-general, Alexander Farnese, ratified the Pacification of Ghent ‘in its Catholic interpretation’ in 1579.

It is thus difficult to argue decisively that the inquisitorial function disappeared altogether after the Pacification of Ghent, although its prominence faded as that of the bishops grew. Michael Baius remained the lone surviving inquisitor-general, and no new ones were ever appointed. In all probability, Baius considered himself as holding this function until the end of his life, as becomes clear from a portrait that he commissioned in 1577 and the inscription on his tombstone.Footnote 72 Instead of the rather legendary date of 1576, the history of the inquisitorial function in the Low Countries might just as well end with his death in 1589. Afterwards, only bishops, papal inquisitors and civil courts continued to investigate heresy.

The Inquisition in the Low Countries remains a slippery fish. Different historiographical traditions have identified it contradictorily as either a state or a papal court. This article has made clear that the ‘Inquisition’ ‘proper’ cannot be described either as a purely state-run institution or as an inquisition civile, as Goosens has done. More than once inquisitors acted against or opposed official instructions from their ruler. In the mid-1560s they even resigned against the wishes of the king. Neither can the ‘Inquisition’ be considered a papal institution, even if many contemporaries did so. Inquisitors directly delegated by the pope best qualify for this description. Moving beyond this fruitless distinction, it should be recognised that the inquisitors ‘proper’ relied on a hybrid source of power, being appointed by the ruler and commissioned by the pope. This was also the case in the Iberian Inquisitions. When they received lukewarm support from the Habsburg government, inquisitors did not hesitate to call upon their papal competence. But when opposed by local authorities, they turned for help to the Habsburg governor-general. In either situation, they tried to maximise their authority.

This article contends that the outreach of the Inquisition in the Low Countries should not be exaggerated as Goosens has done by equating it with other early modern centralised Inquisitions. Unlike Spain, Portugal or Italy, the Inquisition in the Low Countries never turned into a stable organisation which survived for centuries: it was certainly buried by 1589, if not already by 1576–7. In fact, we argue that the Inquisition in the Low Countries should primarily be regarded as an ‘office’ bestowed upon individuals rather than as a proper institution. It never acquired a building or created separate archives. In the Low Countries, the Inquisition never formed a tribunal, yet individual inquisitors were called upon as specialised judges for offending clerics, or for judicial procedures de fide conducted by laymen. Inquisitors – and there were not so many of them in total – were often appointed ad hoc, after the death of the previous holder of the function.

As importantly, the inquisitorial function was continuously reassessed during the sixteenth century, while never attaining a fixed equilibrium. Its functions were thus subject to changing dynamics: first, the inquisitors served as a much-needed check-and-balance on the civil courts and episcopal and papal inquisitors. Then they became an intelligence service for civil courts which had received broadened competence regarding heretics. Finally, after the episcopal reform in 1559, even inquisitors themselves no longer insisted on the necessity of their function. Hence, the inquisitorial office went through different phases of cooperation and antagonism with both the secular and the ecclesiastical officials with whom it shared responsibility for the repression of heterodoxy. This dynamic analysis of religious repression in the Low Countries offers a fascinating perspective for comparative research in early modern religious history. The situation in the Low Countries offers a contrast to religious persecution in France and England, where secular courts immediately and effectively monopolised jurisdiction over heresy, and to the institutionally organised tribunals on the Iberian and Italian peninsulas.

References

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14 List of subdelegati for the general pardon in the Ghent bishopric, 1572: UAL, Documenta autograp(i)a, fo. 37. See also Soen, Geen pardon zonder paus, appendix i, i–x.

15 A. Duke, ‘The “Inquisition” and the repression of religious dissent in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1521–1566’, in Duke, Pollmann and Spicer, Dissident identities, 99–118.

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17 The Edict of Worms affirmed and extended two former edicts (Leuven, 8 Oct. 1520 and 20 Mar. 1521) and the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem (3 Jan. 1521), containing general measures to obliterate all Lutheran literature. On the body of imperial anti-heresy placards see Goosens's seminal study, Les Inquisitions modernes, i. 56–8.

18 Mandate for Frans van der Hulst granted by Charles v, 23 Apr. 1522, CDI iv. 101–4; imperial placard, 29 Apr. 1522, CDI iv. 115–20; Gielis, Verdoelde schaepkens, 87–109.

19 Imperial instruction for Frans van der Hulst and Josse Lauwereijns, 7 May 1522, CDI iv. 123–7.

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21 The Leuven theologians were Nicolaas Egmondanus and Jacobus Latomus: Inquisitorial mandate, granted by bishop Robert de Croÿ, 6 Dec. 1521, CDI iv. 80–1.

22 Goosens, Les Inquisitions modernes, i. 50.

23 CDI iv. 191–5, 199–203, 205, 208–10; Gielis, Verdoelde schaepkens, 91–8.

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28 Spruyt, B.-J., Cornelius Henrici Hoen (Honius) and his epistle on the eucharist (1525): medieval heresy, Erasmian humanism, and reform in the early sixteenth-century Low Countries, Leiden 2006, 75–84Google Scholar. For relevant documents see CDI iv. 179–83, 214–18, 232–4, 237.

29 Report of a meeting between Holland deputies and the governor, 7 Sept. 1523, CDI iv. 232–3.

30 Charles v to Margaret of Austria, 15 Jan. 1524, CDI iv. 247–8. It seems that during the ‘inquisitorial vacuum’ (Sept. 1523–June 1524) the government had to rely on the medieval-style Inquisition, i.e. the episcopal and the papal Inquisition; cf. CDI iv. 256.

31 Margaret of Austria to Charles v, 21 Feb., 3 Apr. 1524, CDI iv. 256–7, 269–70.

32 Open letter of Cardinal Campeggio, responsible for screening the candidates, 17 June 1524, CDI iv. 275–8.

33 Breve addressed to prince-bishop Erard de la Marck, 12 Feb. 1525, CDI iv. 307–8.

34 Draft of a petition by inquisitor-general Nicolas Coppin, before 20 Mar. 1525, CDI iv. 315–56.

35 Breve addressed to Nicolas Coppin, Olivier Buedens and Nicolas Houzeau, 20 Mar. 1525, CDI iv. 319–25; Gielis, Verdoelde schaepkens, 114–25.

36 Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijk-staatkundigen toestand der Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw, ed. G. Brom and A. Hensen, ’s Gravenhage 1922, 32–6. The Curia considered Ruard Tapper. He did not receive a papal mandate as inquisitor-general until 1547. Until then, his inquisitorial authority was based upon other commissions.

37 This was supposedly due to the inactivity of inquisitor-general Buedens, who died the following year: Monseur, E., ‘Contributions à l'histoire des inquisiteurs des Pays-Bas au xvie siècle’, in Fredericq, P. (ed.), Travaux de cours pratique d'histoire nationale. Ghent–The Hague 1883–4, 79–111 at p. 93Google Scholar. Coppin did in fact make use of this opportunity: after his inquisitions in Holland (July–Sept. 1525) he commissioned the dean of Naaldwijk, Pieter van der Goude, as sub-inquisitor for Holland, and in 1527 the Dominican inquisitor Jean Frelin received inquisitorial authority for la Flandre gallicante.

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41 ARAB, PEA, 1177, fos 571r–572v; UAL, Fonds Van de Velde, no. 6. Historians have long been confused about this date, as it was often thought that Tapper had been commissioned in July 1537. This confusion, however, arose from a copyist's error: ARAB, PEA, 1177, fo. 572r.

42 In 1543 a concordat was arranged between Charles, as duke of Brabant, and the prince-bishop of Liège, arranging the respective competences of the bishop (and Official) on the one hand and the duke of Brabant (or his representatives) on the other. It was laid down that the Official was only competent for crimes concerning faith and dogma, as any contravention of the placards fell to civil courts. With regard to heresy prosecution and jurisdiction, this settlement turned out to be very much to the disadvantage of the episcopal courts: Van Peteghem, P., ‘Laat-middeleeuwse concordaten en het concordaat tussen het hertogdom Brabant (1515–1555) en het Prinsbisdom Luik (Cornelis van Bergen, 1538–1544 en Joris van Oostenrijk, 1544–1557)’, in Berkvens, A. and Gehlen, A. (eds), Van Verminkingsstraf tot Vrederechter: Opstellen ter gelegenheid van het twintigjarig bestaan van de Werkgroep Limburgse Rechtsgeschiedenis (1980–2000), Maastricht 2000, 63–106Google Scholar.

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44 Recueil des ordonnances, 2nd ser. v. 231–2; ARAB, PEA, 1177, fos 266r–267v.

45 ARAB, PEA, 1177, fos 508–9.

46 Ibid. fos 490–2; Decavele, De dageraad, 19.

47 Goosens, Les Inquisitions modernes, i. 155–6.

48 For the slight alterations see CPhII i, p. cxx.

49 Duke, ‘The Inquisition’, 108–9.

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51 Valvekens, De inquisitie, 270–1.

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53 The same year a new papal breve created the position of a third inquisitor-general, the dean of St James, Cornelius Meldert, another Leuven law professor: ARAB, PEA, 1177, fos 276–84.

54 Van de Wiele, ‘De inquisitierechtbank’, 21–2.

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58 As a result of the delay caused by the death of Paul iv in August 1559, the five theologians did not receive a copy of their papal instruction as inquisitors-general until September 1560.

59 Sonnius, Curtius and Rythovius became respectively bishops of ’s-Hertogenbosch, Bruges and Ypres: Memoire pour monsieur l'audiencier, n.d. but 1572: ARA Aud.1.177/5, s.f.; Soen, Geen pardon, 109–10.

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72 Soen, Geen pardon zonder paus, 23.