{
  "id": "indios-outside-the-jurisdiction-of-the-inquisition",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Indians outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (Recopilación, libro I título 19 ley 17 and libro VI título 1 ley 35)",
  "summary": "Two cross-referenced laws of the Recopilación keep the indigenous population out of the tribunals of the Holy Office: because proceeding against Indians is prohibited to the inquisitors, faith cases go to the ecclesiastical ordinary and lethal sorcery to the royal courts. The exemption is real and narrow. The same code hands indigenous religion to other judges, charges the extirpation of idolatry to the Indians' own community chest, and there predicts accusations manufactured for money.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "law",
    "spanish-empire",
    "indigenous-peoples",
    "religion",
    "inquisition",
    "jurisdiction",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "laws-of-the-indies"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cajas-de-comunidad-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "concilio-provincial-mexicano-iii-1585"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Were indigenous people tried by the Spanish Inquisition?",
    "Why were Indians exempt from the Inquisition in Spanish America?",
    "Who prosecuted indigenous religion in the Spanish Indies if not the Inquisition?",
    "What does the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias say about the Holy Office and the Indians?",
    "Did exemption from the Inquisition mean indigenous religion was tolerated?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Título 19 of the first book of the Recopilación is headed \"DE LOS TRIBUNALES DEL SANTO OFICIO de la Inquisicion, y sus Ministros\", and its first law, \"Fundacion del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en las Indias\" (Felipe II, el Pardo, 25 January 1569, and Madrid, 16 August 1570), recites that the Inquisitor General with the Council of the General Inquisition ordered tribunals to be seated in those provinces, and commands the viceroys, presidents, oidores, alcaldes del crimen, governors, corregidores, alcaldes mayores \"y otras Justicias de todas las Ciudades, Villas y Lugares de las Indias, así de los Españoles, como de los Indios naturales\" to lend the Holy Office the favour of the royal arm. The jurisdiction is established over the territory, including the towns of Indians.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Seventeen laws later, in the same título, stands the rule that removes the persons. Ley xvij is headed \"Que los Inquisidores, en proceder contra Indios, guarden sus instrucciones\" and is dated Felipe II, Madrid, 30 December 1571 — the year the tribunals began work in the Indies. Its whole text is one sentence: \"Ordenamos que sobre conocer y proceder los Inquisidores contra Indios en las causas que tocan al Santo Oficio, guarden sus instrucciones, y la ley 35. tít. 1. lib. 6.\" The compilation does not restate the exemption here; it points at the instructions given to the inquisitors and at another law in another book.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The cross-reference resolves in the second volume, at the título \"De los Indios\". Ley xxxv is headed \"Que los Ordinarios Eclesiásticos conozcan en causas de Fe contra Indios; y en hechizos, y maleficios las Justicias Reales\", dated Felipe II, 23 February 1575, and reads in full: \"Por estar prohibido á los Inquisidores Apostólicos el proceder contra Indios, compete su castigo á los Ordinarios Eclesiásticos, y deben ser obedecidos, y cumplidos sus mandamientos; y contra los hechiceros, que matan con hechizos, y usan de otros maleficios, procederán nuestras Justicias Reales.\" The line of authorities printed above it closes the circle: \"D. Felipe II allí á 23 de Febrero de 1575. Véase la ley 17. tít. 19. lib. 1.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Two things in the wording decide how much the exemption is worth. It is stated as a fact already in force and not as a grant — \"por estar prohibido\" — so the compilation is registering a prohibition it did not itself create; and the sentence that removes the inquisitors installs other judges in the same breath, the ecclesiastical ordinary for causes of faith and the royal justices for sorcery that kills. What the law does is redistribute jurisdiction over indigenous religion. It does not withdraw it.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "What the exemption was an exemption from is printed on the facing pages of the same título. Ley xviij (Felipe II, Madrid, 16 August 1570, and Felipe III, Lerma, 22 May 1610) orders the viceroys, audiencias, governors, corregidores, alcaldes mayores \"y otras qualesquier Justicias\" to execute the penalties laid down by law upon all convicts whom the inquisitors, exercising their office, \"relaxaren al Brazo Seglar, siendo condenados, relapsos y convencidos de heregía y apostasía\"; ley xviiij orders that those penanced by the Holy Office be put on ships and sent out of the Indies; ley xx orders that those it condemns to the galleys be received in the royal gaols and taken to them. The tribunals had the full apparatus, and the Indians were outside it.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The cost of the arrangement is legible in the fourth título of the same sixth book, where the money comes from. Ley xv, \"Que los gastos de Misiones, y Seminario de Indios se hagan de los bienes de Comunidades\" (Felipe III, Madrid, 17 March 1619), provides that the expenses of missions \"para extirpar, y desarraygar la idolatría de los Indios, Casas de reclusion, y Seminarios de los hijos de los Caciques, se podrán sacar de los bienes de Comunidad de la Caxa de aquella Ciudad donde se hicieren\". The campaign against indigenous religion was charged to the indigenous towns' own funds.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The same law then states, as its reason for capping the expense, what the crown expected the people running it to do. The spending is to be \"muy moderado\", no salaries, ayudas de costa or any other kind of maintenance are to be assigned against this head, \"porque las partes interesadas no causen perjuicio á las haciendas públicas de los Indios, y sin justa causa los hagan culpados en las idolatrías\" — so that the interested parties do not damage the public funds of the Indians and, without just cause, get them found guilty of idolatry. A law authorising the extirpation of idolatry writes into its own text that accusations of idolatry were expected to be manufactured for money.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The exemption also sits among laws of a different kind, on the same page of the same título. Ley xxxiij, \"Que los Indios no puedan andar á caballo\" (Felipe II, Madrid, 19 July 1568, Córdoba, 1 March 1570), prohibits them from riding and orders the justices to enforce it \"sin remision alguna\"; ley xxxvj forbids wine to be brought into or sold in the towns of Indians; ley xxxvij deals with the drinking of pulque. The compilation that keeps them out of the tribunals of the Holy Office keeps them off horseback two articles earlier, and both rules were set in type on the same page.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "A caution about what this evidence is. The two operative laws are dated 1571 and 1575, contemporary with the seating of the tribunals of Mexico and Lima, but the sheets read here are the fourth impression of the Recopilación, printed at Madrid by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra in 1791 for the Council of the Indies. They are first-rate evidence of what the rule was and of how the crown itself described it, and no evidence at all of how often it was kept. For that, the cases and the tribunal papers are the sources, and they are not cited here.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1",
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The fact that indigenous people were outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in Spanish America is either absent from English-language accounts of the Holy Office in the Indies or produced as a debating point — proof of benevolence on one side, waved away as a technicality on the other. Neither version quotes the law. This object prints both halves of it: the one-sentence ley 17 of libro I título 19, which does nothing but send the reader to the instructions and to another book, and the ley 35 of libro VI título 1 it points to, which states the prohibition as already existing and in the same sentence hands faith cases to the ecclesiastical ordinary and lethal sorcery to the royal courts. It then keeps the accounting honest from the same volumes rather than from commentary: the laws on relaxation to the secular arm that show what the exemption exempted people from, the article that charges the extirpation of idolatry to the Indians' community chest, the clause in that article anticipating that accusations would be manufactured for money, and the prohibition on riding horses two articles earlier. One code, read against itself.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-15",
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    "name": "Indians outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (Recopilación, libro I título 19 ley 17 and libro VI título 1 ley 35)",
    "description": "Two cross-referenced laws of the Recopilación keep the indigenous population out of the tribunals of the Holy Office: because proceeding against Indians is prohibited to the inquisitors, faith cases go to the ecclesiastical ordinary and lethal sorcery to the royal courts. The exemption is real and narrow. The same code hands indigenous religion to other judges, charges the extirpation of idolatry to the Indians' own community chest, and there predicts accusations manufactured for money.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/indios-outside-the-jurisdiction-of-the-inquisition",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-15",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Segundo (Libros IIII a VIII)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PP5"
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      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Primero (Libros I a III)",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Indians outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (Recopilación, libro I título 19 ley 17 and libro VI título 1 ley 35)"
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}