Flores, Manuel de (1732 -- ?) and Francisco Javier Mier y Campillo (1748 -- 1818). Nos el Dr. D. Manuel de Flores, Inquisidor Apostólico, contra la herética pravedad y apostasía en la Ciudad de México, Estados y Provincias de esta Nueva España… A todas … Dado en la Inquisición de México a dos de Septiembre de mil ochocientos quince. Mexico, 2 September 1815. Letterpress broadside, 24 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches, on 2 conjoined sheets, signed in type by Flores as Inquisitor and his secretary with their manuscript rubrics; minor wear, folds, else fine.

     An important colonial broadside signed by Manuel de Flores, the last Inquisitor in the New World, promulgating an order from Francisco Javier Mier y Campillo, who served as Grand Inquisitor of Spain from 1814 to his death in 1818. Meir y Campillo’s order, dated 5 April 1815, opens with a remarkable invocation of the devastation of the Peninsular War:

Todos admiramos y lloramos con sobrada razón el horroroso estrago que ha causado en nuestro suelo la barbarie y fiereza enemiga, sellada para largas generaciones en la multitud de ruinas y escombros, que ofenden nuestra vista de un extremo á otro del Reyno.

But these disasters of war, which would inspire Goya’s macabre imagination, were second to the much greater horrors of heresy:

Pero por grande que sean estos males, y la desolación á que han quedado reducidos pueblos enteros y un sin número de familias de todas condiciones y clases, todavía hay que llorar otro incomparablemente mayor con que la divina Providencia ha castigado nuestros pecados; porque aunque la miseria, la pobreza, la viudez y horfandad, y qualquiera otro género de trabajos sean justo motivo de pena y de dolor, no pueden de modo alguno compararse con el que debe causarnos la pérdida de nuestra santa Fe, y de los consuelos inefables con que en medio de las mayores aflicciones y calamidades nos sostiene y conforta la Religion de Jesucristo.

      The danger that occupied Mier y Campillo here issued not from “Judaizers” – the usual concern of the Inquisition in Mexico – but rather from Enlightenment thought. As historian Darrin M. McMahon notes, "when the New World exploded in a series of national wars of independence amid the uncertainty created by Napoleon's occupation of Spain, supporters of Catholic orthodoxy found little trouble in attributing this ferment to the accursed doctrines of los filósofos." In this edict Mier y Campillo references filosofismo as:

la incredulidad y la espantosa corrupcion de costumbres, que ha contaminado al suelo español … los mismos errores y doctrinas nuevas y peligrosas, que han perdido miserablemente á la mayor parte de la Europa.

     The broadside explains that the Holy Tribunal will occupy itself with purifying the land from these dangers; generously, extends a grace period to allow Spanish subjects to confess their errors, abjure their heretical opinions, clear their consciences, and reconcile themselves to the faith before being called before the Inquisition. The coda by Flores explains that the grace period in Mexico will expire four months after the publication of this order.

     The Inquisition’s war against Enlightenment thought in Mexico came up in Flores’s denunciation of José María Morelos (1765-1815), the priest who embarrassed the Church by leading the movement for independence after the execution of Hidalgo in 1811. On 15 November 1815, Morelos was captured. Flores presented the case for prosecution at a public auto da fe, which Henry Charles Lea called “the most expeditious trial in the annals of the Holy Office.” The Inquisition degraded Morelos from the priesthood for “abandoning the Church for the filthy and abominable heresies of Hobbes, Helvetius, Voltaire, Luther, and other pestilent writers.” He would be executed by civil authorities in December.

     Although two other broadsides by Flores have survived, we can find no other copy of this Mexican publication – or indeed of the text of Mier y Campillo’s edict. Not recorded in Medina, Palau, or OCLC.

Selected References

• Lea, Henry Charles. The Inquisition in the Spanish dependencies. New York: Macmillan, 1908.
• McMahon, Darrin M. Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002
• Medina, José Toribio. Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de México. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1905.
• Torres Puga, Gabriel and José Luis Quezada Lara, “1820: la supresión definitiva de la Inquisición de México,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana, n. 65 (julio-diciembre 2021): 179-217