Casually, I have been reading over the last few weeks the Letters of another inquisitor, the Dominican Francisco Alvarado (1756-1814). Born in Marchena (Seville) and died in the Hispalian capital (when he had just been appointed counselor of the Holy Inquisition, after it was restored by Ferdinand VII), he was a dialectical scourge against the French invaders and those liberals -«blind and deaf to the feelings and desires of the people they claimed to represent» according to Menéndez Pelayo-, who took advantage of the power vacuum to revolutionize Spain’s political history with the Constitution of Cádiz of 1812. They tried to disqualify him as a stale philosopher, but he was very proud of that title as a badge of glory. His quixotic dialectical battle against the liberals/Masons (Agustín Arguelles), the Spanish Jansenists (Ireneo Nistactes), and the Voltairians and impious satirists (Antonio Puigblanc, who under the Jewish pseudonym of Natanael Yom-Tob wrote a famous history of the Spanish Inquisition, or Bartolomé Gallardo, author of a Critical-Burlesque Dictionary, full of irreverences), gifts us pages full of humor, with a jovial and ironic style full of jests. I agree with Menéndez y Pelayo in his stylistic judgment: «I am not one of those who admire his prolix, redundant, and sloppy style», but also in the praises of the Santander polygraph, highlighting that Alvarado «personified the Catholic apologetics of those days», in such a way that «there is scarcely any revolutionary maxim, nor pompous speech from the Constituent Cortes, nor pamphlet or flyer from that time that does not have in them an impugnment or corrective» (History of the Spanish Heterodox, Book VII, Chap. II).
Precisely the most controversial aspect of his Letters is found in his staunch defense of the Holy Inquisition, suppressed after harsh debates in the Gaditan Cortes. In the 1915 edition of his Unpublished Letters (written during his Portuguese exile in Tavira between August 1810 and February 1811), the historian and prologuist D. Edmundo González-Blanco openly qualifies them as «black pages.» However, when one reads his apology for such a controversial institution, one observes on one hand that it responded not only—as we already mentioned—to the desire of a Catholic people who wanted to live in peace with their religion and their traditional laws. It was also the natural consequence of his loyalty to the classic doctrine of the Church regarding the bond of the two swords, which dates back to Pope Gelasius I (5th century), and which had its most brilliant embodiment in the Dictatus Papae of Gregory VII (11th century) or in the norms of Innocent III and the Council of Lateran of 1215; principles that were upheld in the Church from then until just sixty years ago. At the end of the 19th century, Leo XIII in his Inmortale Dei, referring to Catholic States, affirmed that «among the principal obligations (of the State) must be placed the obligation to favor religion, defend it effectively, place it under the protection of the laws, and legislate nothing contrary to the integrity of it»« (3).
As we see, on one hand, the Church always had it crystal clear (until the Second Vatican Council) that religious unity was the basis of social unity. And, on the other, Catholic States knew from experience that there were no better laws for the happiness of citizens than those inspired by the Gospel. Therefore, the State and the Church, each sword with its specific and autonomous mission, had to collaborate hand in glove, even in the most unpleasant aspects like the repression of the propagation of heresy (which, if not punished in the responsible persons, would end up tearing apart the social fabric of the nation with violence, as history demonstrated). Hence the Inquisition.
«Sedition, carnal sister of heresy, came at forced marches behind its inseparable sister (…) and the unfortunate province that harbored in its bosom the older sister then had to see itself covered with the blood, tears, and fires that the younger one spilled, poured, and propagated (…). The temporal powers thus became convinced of the danger that threatened them from those enemies of eternal truths, and had to declare themselves against them, not only for the crime of high treason against Him whose place they occupy on earth, but also for that of disturbers of the peace and tranquility of their empire, and of rebels against their laws and crowns.»
But today—oh tempora, oh mores—everything has changed. The world, of course, which is logical; but also the Catholic Church, which was not foreseeable by virtue of the principle «stat crux dum volvitur orbis.» And it gives the impression that it was prophesied by Alvarado himself in another of his letters:
«Hell, in short, will not prevail against the Catholic Church, but we can deserve that it prevail against the Church of Spain as it has prevailed against that of France in our days, and a few centuries ago against those of Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, England, etc.»
We observe today that our bishops collaborate with rabidly anti-Christian governments (the Valley), and support the regularization of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, without considering the future consequences for the faith of the country they must shepherd; a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn with respect to all that for which the stale philosopher fought and for a long time the Church itself, until our days. If the brave Dominican contemplated our nation today, he would think that the defeat of the impious French was a dream, and that their bad philosophies have taken possession of the soul of our homeland with the aid of bishops lacking in faith. Then probably that biblical verse would come to his mind, which warns countries of the cost of their defection:
«The nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish, and those nations shall certainly be destroyed» (Is. 60:12).