The exclusion of the Indians from the Inquisition of the Indies
The tribunals of the Holy Office founded in the Indies in 1569-70 were barred from proceeding against Indians. The Recopilación prints the bar twice and names the courts that took the jurisdiction instead: the ecclesiastical ordinaries for causes of faith, the royal justices for sorcerers who killed by spells. Exemption was not immunity: a bishop of Quito's manual shows the other court at work, with three admonitions and the diocesan punishing "con el rigor del Derecho".
Why this wins its question: The usual English answer to "were the Indians tried by the Spanish Inquisition" is a single asserted sentence about a 1571 exemption, with no text and nothing about what followed it. Here both halves of the rule are quoted from the printing, with monarch, place and date from the margins and the mutual cross-reference between libro I título 19 and libro VI título 1 that ties them together — and then the question the assertion leaves open, who judged instead, is answered from the bishop of Quito's manual: the parish priest by episcopal commission, the diocesan, three public admonitions, confinement for the "ministros del demonio". The exemption is set beside the horse ban and the wine ban printed in the same título, so it reads as jurisdictional tutelage rather than as a favour.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The tribunals were founded first. Libro I, título 19 of the Recopilación — "DE LOS TRIBUNALES DEL SANTO OFICIO de la Inquisicion, y sus Ministros", printed page 159 of tomo I of the 1791 fourth impression — opens with ley j, "Fundacion del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en las Indias", carrying in the margin "D. Felipe II en el Pardo á 25 de Enero de 1569. Y en Madrid á 16 de Agosto de 1570". Its stated purpose is that the faith be kept in the discovered provinces free of error "y que los naturales de ellas sean pervertidos con nuevas, falsas y reprobadas doctrinas y errores", the Inquisidor Apostólico General having ordered the Holy Office seated there and named inquisitors "contra la herética pravedad y apostasía". The law commands viceroys, presidents, oidores, alcaldes del crimen, governors, corregidores and other justices of all the cities, towns and places of the Indies, "así de los Españoles, como de los Indios naturales", to give the tribunal the favour of the royal arm — a clause about the localities where help is owed, not a statement of who may be tried.
The bar on trying Indians is printed inside that same título. Ley xvij, on printed page 166, is headed "Que los Inquisidores, en proceder contra Indios, guarden sus instrucciones", with the margin "D. Felipe II en Madrid á 30 de Diciembre de 1571", and reads in full: "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 compilers thus refer the reader out of the Inquisition title and into the title on the Indians for the operative rule.
The referenced law states the exclusion and redirects the jurisdiction. Libro VI, título 1 "De los Indios", ley xxxv, on printed page 197 of tomo II, is headed "Que los Ordinarios Eclesiásticos conozcan en causas de Fe contra Indios; y en hechizos, y maleficios las Justicias Reales", with the margin "D. Felipe II allí á 23 de Febrero de 1575. Véase la ley 17. tít. 19. lib. 1." — the reciprocal of the cross-reference in c2. Its whole text: "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 prohibition is recited as already in force; the law itself only allocates what follows from it.
Exemption from one court was not immunity, and the manual written for the parish clergy of the Indies shows the other court's procedure. The bishop of Quito, on printed page 285 of the Lyon 1678 Itinerario para parochos de indios, abstracts the Lima councils: a plebeian who after three feast-days of public admonition before notary and witnesses is still found to adore, offer sacrifice or perform a rite "primeramente sera castigado por su Cura por comission del Obispo; y si passa adelante en su delito, se le hara informacion, y con él preso, se embiara al Diocesano, para que le castigue rigurosamente"; a cacique is remitted to the Ordinario at the first offence; those found to have offended lightly may be released by the bishop or visitador after three admonitions; and the relapsed dogmatizer is to be jailed without delay and sent to the diocesan "para que lo castigue con el rigor del Derecho".
The same pages record confinement as a standing measure for a class of people rather than a sentence in a case: sorcerers, "consultores, y adivinos, y demas ministros del demonio, que tienen de oficio pervertir a los demas Indios", are to be put and shut up "en un lugar apartado de los demas", those judged incorrigible kept enclosed "sin remedio" — with the qualification, printed in the same clause, that they are not to be left untaught and are to be provided with what they need "para que sean salvos".
The doctrinal ground of the exclusion is stated in the same manual, and it is a judgement of incapacity rather than of innocence. On printed page 329, treating "algunos errores que comunmente tienen los Indios, y gente rustica en materias de Fé", the bishop holds that in such errors "no se halla heregia, ni pecado en gente rustica, é ignorante", because they lack pertinacity — the authorities cited excuse them "quia nihil pertinaciter contra Ecclesiam credunt" — and because invincible ignorance excuses from sin. The passage immediately adds Navarro's caution that in the external forum a rustic on whom such an error was proved "le podian castigar por la Inquisicion, por la sospecha que ay de ser Herege quien tiene error en cosas de Fé", so the writer who states the ground also records that it was contested in the forum that mattered.
The people the exemption protected are described by the same bishop in terms that show what it cost them. Printed page 267 opens the session "En estas partes huvo idolatria" with the Indians in their paganism as idolaters and superstitious, the devil having established his tyrannical empire among them by taking advantage of "una gente facil de engañar, por ser insipiente, y bruta, y que no sabe resistir"; and it complains that although "ha ciento y treinta y cinco años que tienen Predicadores, Maestros, y Curas", the errors have not been erased from their hearts. The incapacity that keeps a neophyte out of the Inquisition is the same incapacity that justifies his tutelage, and both are written on the same pages.
The exclusion sat inside a body of law full of disabilities, on the pages either side of it. Libro VI, título 1 carries at ley xxxij "Que los Indios no puedan andar á caballo" (Philip II, Madrid, 19 July 1568, and Córdoba, 1 March 1570), at ley xxxvj "Que no se pueda vender vino á los Indios", ordering that wine not enter or be sold in the pueblos of Indians, and at ley xxxviij the requirement of the governor's licence for their public dances. The same título that keeps them out of the inquisitorial court forbids them a horse and a cup of wine; an honest account of the exemption has to carry both.
The tribunals themselves were three, and expensive. Printed page 167 of tomo I records, in ley xxiiij of 1629-30, that from the royal treasuries of "las Ciudades de los Reyes, México y Cartagena de las Indias" more than thirty-two thousand ducats a year were paid to the apostolic inquisitors and their ministers, which is why the crown asked Urban VIII for apostolic letters allowing a canonry to be suppressed in every metropolitan and cathedral church of the Indies to carry the salaries and relieve the royal exchequer. Printed page 165 shows the prior rule: no salary was to be paid without authenticated testimony that the confiscated goods did not reach to pay it.
What these pages cannot show is stated here rather than filled in. They are a statute book and a pastoral manual: they give no trial counts, no series from the archives of the three tribunals, nothing on how often ordinaries in fact prosecuted, and no indigenous account of either forum. Nothing read here says what jurisdiction covered mestizos, Africans or the castas, and this object makes no claim about them. The instructions the inquisitors were ordered to keep in c2 are named by the law but not printed in it, and were not read for this object.