Carena – Tractatus de Officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis, Lyon 1669 – Extensively Annotated Spanish Copy

CARENA, Cesare. Tractatus de Officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis, et Modo Procedendi in Causis Fidei, in Tres Partes Divisus… Lyon: Sumptibus Laurentii Anisson, 1669. Folio.

A substantial seventeenth-century manual of the law and procedure of the Holy Office, in an extensively annotated copy preserving a remarkable body of early Spanish manuscript material.

Cesare Carena’s Tractatus was one of the principal seventeenth-century works devoted to the practical jurisprudence of the Inquisition. First published at Cremona in 1636 and repeatedly enlarged and reprinted, it treats the machinery of inquisitorial procedure in considerable detail: jurisdiction, denunciation and accusation, examination of witnesses, confession, suspicion of heresy, abjuration, relapse, punishment and the handling of particular classes of offences.

The work belongs directly to the juridical world of the seventeenth-century Inquisition. Carena’s first edition appeared only three years after the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and the legal categories discussed throughout the book — suspicion of heresy, examination, abjuration and punishment — are those which shaped the proceedings of the Holy Office in celebrated cases from Giordano Bruno to Galileo. The connection is institutional and procedural rather than one of direct association: Carena’s treatise systematised the law and practice of the inquisitorial tribunals in the generation immediately following Galileo’s trial.

The appended Tractatus de Strigibus is particularly notable for Carena’s critical treatment of witchcraft prosecutions. Drawing on the experience of the Roman Inquisition, he complains of serious errors committed by local judges and inquisitors, including unlawful imprisonment, defective interrogation and excessive torture. He warns specifically against judges too readily persuaded that an accused woman is a witch and then determined to extract a confession by illicit means, noting that unjust sentences — even capital ones — had resulted. Carena further records that a number of sentences in Spanish witchcraft cases had been overturned by the Supreme Inquisition. Far from being merely a demonological tract, the work is therefore also a contemporary critique of defective judicial procedure in witchcraft trials.

Carena wrote in the aftermath of some of the most notorious witchcraft prosecutions of the early seventeenth century, including the Basque witch panic culminating at Logroño in 1610 and, elsewhere in Catholic Europe, the great persecutions at Bamberg and Würzburg and the trial of Urbain Grandier at Loudun in 1634. His insistence upon evidential caution, lawful procedure and the dangers of coerced confession places the Tractatus de Strigibus within the contemporary debate over the judicial abuses of the European witch hunts.

Manuscript Notes

The particular interest of the present copy lies in its extensive early manuscript annotation. Numerous passages throughout the volume have been underlined, marked and cross-referenced in an early hand, while several substantial manuscript slips in Spanish have been inserted beside passages to which their contents directly relate. The notes discuss such matters as bigamy and polygamy, solicitation in the confessional, the examination and admissibility of witnesses, abjuration, excommunication, relapse, punishment, inquisitorial jurisdiction, medical testimony, and distinctions between different forms of culpable ignorance.

Other legal and canonical authorities are cited and compared, suggesting a reader using Carena not simply as a theological text but as a working source of inquisitorial jurisprudence. Several of the inserted memoranda appear to summarise or test the rule applicable to particular situations, while shorter marginal annotations direct the reader between related passages and authorities. Taken together, they form a substantial body of working legal notes assembled around the printed text.

One substantial manuscript note cites Giacomo Pignatelli’s Novissimae consultationes canonicae, apparently referring to volume II, consultation 165. Since Pignatelli’s work first appeared in 1711, this provides a terminus post quem of 1711 for at least part of the manuscript annotation. The principal Spanish hand appears broadly compatible with an early eighteenth-century date. Although the identity of the annotator has not been established, the language, subject matter and manner of use strongly suggest a Spanish-speaking reader deeply engaged with the practical jurisprudence of the Holy Office.

Provenance

With the ownership label of the Rev. Michael Roy Barton, Mount Saint Gabriel, Peekskill, New York. Barton was an Episcopal clergyman associated with the Community of St Mary at Mount Saint Gabriel in Peekskill during the early twentieth century and was also involved in library work.

The volume subsequently entered the General Theological Seminary Library, New York, with its bookplate to the front pastedown recording the gift of Mrs Michael R. Barton. The earlier provenance of the volume, including the identity of the Spanish-speaking annotator, remains unidentified.

Size

35 × 23 cm.

Condition

Contemporary full vellum over boards, the binding substantially worn and soiled, with darkening to the spine and upper portions of the covers. Areas of loss to the vellum on both boards, most conspicuously along the fore-edge of the front cover, exposing the underlying board; further marks, scuffing and wear to the extremities. Faded manuscript title to spine.

Internally there is general age-toning, occasional staining, spotting and scattered marks, but the text generally well preserved. Extensive early manuscript annotation throughout, including underlining, marginal comments and cross-references, together with several loose or inserted manuscript slips in Spanish. General Theological Seminary Library bookplate to the front pastedown; earlier Barton ownership label present.

Bibliographical Note

Half-title and title page present, the latter printed in red and black. [28], 501, [65] pp. Complete, including all three parts of Carena’s Tractatus, the Tractatus de Strigibus concerning witchcraft, and the appended Praxis Inquisitorum.

Carena’s treatise was first published at Cremona in 1636. The present Lyon edition of 1669 belongs to the fully developed form of the work and includes, in addition to Carena’s principal treatise, the material on witchcraft and the appended Praxis Inquisitorum. Copies of this edition appear only infrequently on the market, and examples preserving substantial early manuscript working material are considerably more unusual.

USTC 6089083 presently records five institutional holdings for the 1669 edition and separately identifies a digitised copy from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma. We have traced six further institutional holdings not recorded there.

References

USTC 6089083; Louis Desgraves et al., Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimés en France au dix-septième siècle, vol. 16, no. 194, p. 90; Emile van der Vekene, Bibliotheca bibliographica historiae Sanctae Inquisitionis; Jean-Pierre Dedieu and Gunnar W. Knutsen, “The Trial of Faith in the Spanish Inquisition: Between Law and Repentance,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales.