Chapter III: Protestantism (1)

The fate of the little band of Spanish Protestants has, not unnaturally, excited the earnest sympathy of modern students. Much has been written about them; their works have been gathered and reprinted with pious care, and the importance of the reformatory movement has been largely exaggerated. There never was the slightest real danger that Protestantism could make such permanent impression on the profound and unreasoning religious convictions of Spain in the sixteenth century, as to cause disturbance in the body politic; and the excitement created in Valladolid and Seville, in 1558 and 1559, was a mere passing episode leaving no trace in popular beliefs. Yet, coming when it did, it exercised an enduring influence on the fortunes of the Inquisition, and on the development of the nation. At the moment, the career of the Holy Office might almost seem to be drawing to a close, for it had nearly succeeded in extirpating Judaism from Spain, while the influx of Portuguese New Christians had not commenced, and its operations against the Moriscos of Valencia were suspended. The panic, skilfully excited at the appearance of Lutheranism, raised it to new life and importance and gave it a claim on the gratitude of the State, which enabled it to dominate the land during the seventeenth century, while its audacious action against Carranza showed that no one was so high-placed as to be beyond its reach. It gained moreover a firmer financial basis than it had previously enjoyed, while, at the same time, Inquisitor-general Valdés was saved from banishment and disgrace. Yet more important even than all this was the dread inspired of heresy, which served as a reason for isolating Spain from the rest of Europe, excluding all foreign ideas, arresting the development of culture and of science, and prolonging medievalism into modern times. This was the true significance of the little Protestant movement and its repression, and it is this which deserves the attention of the student rather than the ghastly dramas of the autos de fe.

Before the Lutheran revolt there was much liberty of thought and speech allowed throughout Catholic Europe. Neither Erasmus nor popular writers and preachers had scruple in ridiculing and holding up to detestation the superstitions of the people, the vices, the greed and the corruptions of the clergy, and the venality and oppression of the Holy See. The Franciscan, Thomas Murner, who subsequently became the most virulent reviler of Luther, castigated the clergy, both regular and secular, with more vigor if with less skill than Erasmus. Erasmus himself, in his _Enchiridion Militis Christiani_, or Manual of the Christian Soldier, did not hesitate to stigmatise, as a new Judaism, the reliance reposed on external observances, which had supplanted true piety, causing the teachings of Christ to be neglected--and the Enchiridion had been approved by Adrian VI, at that time the head of the University of Louvain.

[Sidenote: _REPRESSION COMMENCED_]

When, however, it became necessary, in order to cure these universally admitted evils, to strike at the dogmas of scholastic theology, of which these evils were the outcome; when Northern Europe was rising almost unanimously in Luther's support, and when the curia recognized that it had to deal, not with a mere scholastic debate between monks, but with a rapidly developing revolution, the necessity was soon felt of a rigid definition of orthodoxy, while the licence which had been good-naturedly tolerated, so long as it did not threaten the loss of power and wealth, became heresy, to be diligently inquired into and relentlessly punished. Men who esteemed themselves good Catholics, and had no thought of withdrawing from obedience to the Holy See, found themselves accused of heresy and liable to its penalties. Prior to the definitions of the Council of Trent, there was a certain amount of debatable ground, within which no authoritative decision had as yet rendered the speculations of the schoolmen articles of faith. Erasmus, for instance, had not been called to account for asserting that sacramental confession was not of divine law but, as the conflict grew more desperate, and the Church found defence of its outworks to be requisite, it became heretical to question the divine origin of confession, even before the Council had made it _de fide_. We shall then find the chief sufferers from inquisitorial action divided into two classes. Before the middle of the century they largely consist of unconscious heretics--of men who, prior to the condemnation of Luther, would have been reckoned as undoubtedly orthodox. After 1550, with some exceptions, like Carranza, they were those who had knowingly and consciously embraced more or less of the doctrines of the Reformation. Outside of these another, and by no means the least numerous class, can be defined of those who incurred more or less vehement suspicion of heresy through mere carelessness, in the constantly increasing rigor of external observance. It is doubtless to the first of these classes that we may refer the earliest victim of so-called Lutheranism whom I have found recorded--Gonsalvo the Painter of Monte Alegre in Murcia, a resident in Majorca, relaxed, in 1523, by that tribunal as a Lutheran. It is inconceivable that Lutheran errors could have penetrated at that time to Majorca, or that the inquisitor could have had any clear conception of what they were and, as Gonsalvo is described as a _negativo_, he doubtless considered himself a good Catholic and perished because he would not admit himself to be otherwise.[1114]

It was not until 1521 that the curia was aroused to the necessity of preventing the dissemination in Spain of the new doctrines in the writings of Luther. The Nuncio Aleander, writing from Worms, February 18th of that year, mentioned that in Flanders Spanish versions of Luther's books were in press, through the efforts of the Marrani, and that Charles V had given orders to suppress them.[1115] Acting promptly on this, Leo X, on March 21st, addressed briefs to the Constable and Admiral of Castile--the governors in Charles's absence--exhorting them to prevent the introduction of such works, and Cardinal Adrian lost no time in ordering, April 7th, the tribunals to seize all the obnoxious volumes that they could find, an order which he repeated May 7, 1523, together with instructions to the corregidors to enforce the surrender of the books to the inquisitors.[1116] Very earnest letters were also written, April 12 and 13, 1521, to Charles V, by an assembly of grandees, and by the President and Council of State, urging him to adopt strong measures to prevent the spread of Lutheranism, which had been introduced into Spain and threatened to develop.[1117]

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

These may be regarded as measures rather precautionary than called for by existing exigencies. So far as the records of the Inquisition have been searched there is no trace, for some years as yet, of prosecutions for Lutheranism, save the solitary case above referred to. With the return of Charles to Spain, in 1522, the influence of Erasmus seemed to promise a perpetuation of the freedom and even licence of speech, of which he was the protagonist. The emperor was his admirer and he became the fashion among courtiers and churchmen pretending to culture. The Inquisitor-general Manrique openly defended him, and so did the primate, Alfonso Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo. His immense reputation, the immunity conferred on him by the patronage of successive popes against the vindictiveness of the religious Orders, provoked by his merciless ridicule, and the futility of condemnations by scholastic faculties, seemed a guarantee for those who merely echoed the opinions to which he had given currency so wide. So it continued until, in 1527, a translation of his Enchiridion was issued by Alonso Fernández de Madrid, Archdeacon of Alcor. It was dedicated to Archbishop Manrique, who had it duly examined and authorized its publication; its success was immediate, and it was universally read. From the standpoint of scholastic theology, however, it was too vulnerable not to invite attack from the religious Orders. The pulpits, which they virtually monopolized, resounded with their denunciations until Manrique felt obliged to interfere. Many prominent frailes were summoned before the Suprema and sharply reproved for exciting the people against Erasmus, in defiance of repeated edicts; if they found errors in the book, they should denounce them to the Inquisition. The challenge was promptly accepted and, with the assistance of the English Ambassador, Edward Lee, subsequently Archbishop of York, a list of twenty-one articles was drawn up, ranging from Arianism to irreverence towards the Virgin and the denial of various essentials of sacerdotalism. These were submitted to an assembly of twenty theologians and nine frailes, who disputed for a month over the first two articles; the debate promised to be interminable, and Manrique suspended it, at the same time issuing an absolute prohibition to write against Erasmus. As we have seen, however, he fell into disgrace in 1529 and was relegated to his see of Seville; Charles left Spain the same year, carrying with him some of the most powerful protectors of the Erasmists, and the inquisitors, who were largely frailes, were eager to detect the heresy latent in the latitude of speech which had become common among those who prided themselves on culture.[1118]

A typical case of this kind is that of Diego de Uceda, to which allusion has already been made on other accounts (_supra_, p. 68). He was an hidalgo of Córdova of unblemished Old Christian stock. Although a courtier, he was studious and deeply religious, even entertaining thoughts of entering the Geronimite Order. Greatly admiring Erasmus, the failure of the effort to condemn him by the Inquisition gave assurance that his works were approved, and Diego earned some reproof by constantly quoting his opinions and endeavoring to impress them on others. In February, 1528, he was journeying from Burgos to Córdova and, one evening at Corezo, he fell into discussion with a man named Rodrigo Duran who, with his servant, Juan de Avella, was on his way to Seville to embark for the West Indies. The talk fell upon confession and then upon images, in which Diego quoted the views of Erasmus; then upon miracles, when he expressed disbelief in a story of a Christian slave in Africa who prayed for deliverance to Our Lady of Guadalupe; his master overheard him, placed him in a chest, made his own bed on top and slept there, with the result that next morning the chest was in Guadalupe with the master inside and the Christian on top. Something also was said about Luther, whose name got mixed up with that of Erasmus. Duran, on reaching Toledo, denounced Diego to the tribunal, his serving-man furnishing the necessary _conteste_, and went on his way to the Indies. Diego was tracked to Córdova and was sent back as a prisoner to Toledo, where he vainly protested his orthodoxy and offered submission to the Church, although his frequent allusions to Erasmus probably did his case no good. He proved by witnesses that he habitually confessed four times a year, that he took all indulgences and that he was a man of blameless life and strong religious convictions, but it was all in vain. I have already shown how he was tortured, confessed and then revoked, and how he was condemned to a humiliating penance, July 22, 1529, ruining his career and leaving an indelible stain on a family that had boasted of its limpieza.[1119]

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

The danger impending over Erasmists is still more forcibly illustrated by the case of one who was regarded as perhaps the foremost among them in Spain. No man stood higher for learning and culture than Doctor Juan de Vergara. He had been secretary of Ximenes as Archbishop of Toledo, and subsequently to Fonseca, who succeeded to the primatial dignity in 1524. Ximenes had made him professor of Philosophy at Alcalá, where he translated the Wisdom of Solomon for the Complutensian Polyglot, and the treatises _de Anima_, _de Physica_ and _de Metaphysica_ for the projected edition of Aristotle. He was an elegant Latin poet, and Menéndez y Pelayo tells us that he was the father of historical criticism. He was regarded with favor by Manrique and was a warm defender of Erasmus in the contest over the Enchiridion.[1120] We shall have occasion hereafter to treat of the adventures of the _alumbrada_ Francisca Hernández and the men whom she entangled in her toils; among them was Bernardino de Tovar, also an Erasmist, half-brother of Vergara, who incurred her enmity by rescuing him from her clutches. To revenge herself, when on trial in 1530, she accused Vergara of holding all of Luther's doctrines, except as to confession, and of possessing some of Luther's works--the latter accusation being true, but when, in 1530, Manrique ordered the surrender of all such books, Vergara, after some delay, carried them to the tribunal. Another of Francisca's disciples, Fray Francisco Ortiz, when on trial, also accused Vergara of denying the efficacy of indulgences and abusing the University of Paris for condemning the writings of Erasmus, in which, he said, the Church had found no heretical errors. The tribunal collected some other evidence against Vergara and industriously searched for more, even as far as Flanders. In May, 1533, a willing witness was found in Diego Hernández, a buffoon of a priest, whom María Cazalla had employed as confessor until she dismissed him for seducing a nun and asserting that it was no sin. This worthy produced a list of seventy Lutheran heretics, qualified according to their degrees of guilt, among whom Vergara figured as _fino lutherano endiosado_ (mystically abstracted). Whatever hesitation there may have been in arresting such a man, however, disappeared when it was found, in April, 1533, that he had been communicating with Tovar in prison, by bribing the officials. The fiscal presented his clamosa, May 17th, accusing Vergara of being a fautor and defender of heretics, a defamer of the Inquisition and a corrupter of its officials, and his arrest and imprisonment followed on June 24th.

This occasioned general surprise. Archbishop Fonseca was deeply moved and endeavored to obtain his release under bail for fifty thousand ducats, or to have him confined in a house under guard, but the only result of his efforts was to lead the tribunal to shut up the windows of Vergara's cell, converting it into a dungeon and seriously affecting his health. The trial proceeded through the regular stages. He refused the services of an advocate and, on January 29, 1534, he presented his defence, denying nearly all the errors attributed to him and explaining the rest in a Catholic sense. After this a fresh accusation was presented based on his friendship for and correspondence with Erasmus, to whom he had induced Archbishop Fonseca to grant a pension. Fonseca had died, February 24th, so that his evidence was unattainable, but Vergara pronounced the story as to the pension to be false, though had it been true it would have been innocent. Everyone knew that Erasmus had neither income nor benefice, never having been willing to accept either, and that he was supported by the liberality of gentlemen who contributed to him from all parts. Fonseca had only offered him an income if he would come to reside at Alcalá, an offer which Ximenes had previously made. It was true that, when Erasmus dedicated to him his edition of St. Augustin, Fonseca sent him two hundred ducats, scarce enough, in the case of so large a work, to give the printers their customary _pour-boire_. Fonseca felt this, and, when he heard of the death of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury (+ 1532), who was accustomed to provide liberally for Erasmus, he said that he ought to pay for the printing of the book, whereupon Vergara wrote that he would send something, but it was not done. As for corresponding with Erasmus, popes and kings and the emperor himself were gratified to have letters from him and, in the printed collections of his epistles, were to be found his answers to Vergara, showing that the latter had urged him to write in confutation of Luther.

The day after this defence was presented, there came the most serious evidence as yet offered against him. This was from another distinguished Erasmist, then on trial, Alonso de Virués, who testified that, four years before, in a discussion whether the sacrament worked _ex opere operato_, Vergara ridiculed it as a fantastic opinion, and further, that he did not hold as he should, certain pious and Catholic doctrines. It is true that the Council of Trent had not yet pronounced, as it did in 1547 (Sess. VII, De Sacramentis, can. viii) the self-operation of the sacrament to be _de fide_, but the doctrine was coeval with the development of the sacramental theory in the twelfth century and was indispensable in vindication of its validity in polluted hands against the Donatist heresy. To deny it, even in disputation, could not fail to prejudice Vergara's case, which dragged on, in spite of the efforts of his friends, and even of the empress, to expedite it. At length, on December 21, 1535, he was sentenced to appear as a penitent in an auto de fe, to abjure _de vehementi_, to be recluded in a monastery for a year irremissibly, and to pay a fine of fifteen hundred ducats. In three months, however, Manrique charitably transferred him to the cathedral cloister and, on February 27, 1537, his confinement came to an end.[1121] He incurred no disabilities; his reputation seems not to have suffered, for he retained his Toledo canonry and, as we have seen, he incurred, in 1547, the displeasure of Archbishop Silicio by opposing the statute of limpieza.

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

Virués was a similar victim to the revulsion against Erasmus. He was Benedictine Abbot of San Zoilo, a learned orientalist and the favorite preacher of Charles V, who had carried him to Germany. Envy of his favor at court caused his denunciation; isolated passages in his sermons were cited against him, and he was thrown in prison in 1533. His incarceration lasted for four years, in spite of Charles's efforts for his liberation; it was in vain that he pleaded that, some fourteen years before, Erasmus had been regarded as orthodox, and that he adduced the arguments which he had used against Melanchthon in the Diet of Ratisbon. In 1537, he was declared to be suspect of Lutheranism, he was required to abjure and was recluded in a convent for two years, with suspension from preaching for two more. Charles was so much interested in him that, notwithstanding his strenuous objection to papal interference, he procured from Paul III a brief of May 29, 1538, by which the sentence was set aside and Virués was declared capable of any preferment, even episcopal. When Juan de Sarvia, Bishop of Canaries, died in 1542, Virués was appointed his successor and died in 1545.[1122]

Contemporary with these cases was that of Pedro de Lerma, a member of one of the leading families of Burgos. He was a canon of the Cathedral and Abbot of Alcalá, renowned as a preacher and a man of the highest consideration. He had spent fifty years in the University of Paris, where the Sorbonne made him dean of its faculty. Happening to read some of the works of Erasmus, he was so impressed that they influenced his sermons. He was denounced to the Inquisition, which imprisoned him and, after a long trial he was required, in 1537, to recant eleven propositions publicly in all the towns where he had preached, confessing that he had taught them at the instigation of the devil to propagate error in the Church. He was so humiliated that he abandoned Spain for Paris, where he was warmly received as dean of the faculty, and where he died in 1541. The people of Burgos, we are told, who had regarded him with the greatest reverence, were so impressed by this that those who had sent their sons abroad to study at once recalled them.[1123]

This atmosphere of all-pervading suspicion, and this exaggerated sensitiveness to possible error, exposed everyone to prosecution for the most innocently unguarded remark. Miguel Mezquita, a gentleman of Formiche (Teruel) appeared January 19, 1536, before the Valencia tribunal in obedience to a citation and, under the usual formula of being told to search his conscience, he intuitively recurred to Erasmus and related a talk which he had, some five or six years previous, with a Dominican, in which he had defended the Enchiridion on the ground that it had been subjected to examination without being condemned. This however proved not to be the cause of his summons, for Pedro Forrer, a priest of Teruel, had denounced him as having said that Luther preached the gospel and was therefore called an evangelist, while the followers of the pope were called papists, and that Luther was right in maintaining that Scripture did not say that Christ gave power to St. Peter, but to all the apostles. Mezquita explained that he had been several times to Italy and had been sent to Flanders; the priest had asked him what was said about Luther, and he had merely gratified his curiosity by repeating what he had heard abroad in common talk. He earnestly implored to be released, for he had eight children, four of them studying in Salamanca and, when suddenly carried off from home, he had left but six sueldos in his house. Fortunately for him, the inquisitors were not unreasonable and, on January 29th, he was allowed to return to his family, but the case remained on the records to be brought up against him should any malevolent neighbor see fit to distort some careless utterance.[1124]

Mysticism and illuminism, which, about this time, commenced their development in Spain, furnished another source of accusations of Lutheranism, due to their common tendency to cast aside the observances of sacerdotalism and to bring the sinner into direct relations with God, but this field of inquisitorial activity demands separate consideration. Meanwhile the above cases will probably suffice to indicate the way in which Catholics, who had no thought of wandering from the faith, fell under suspicion of partaking in the new heresies and were consequently subjected to persecution more or less distressing. It would scarce be worth while to follow in detail the long succession of those who had similar experience. The case of Carranza has already been discussed. Fray Juan de Regla, confessor of Charles V at San Yuste, and one of the witnesses against Carranza, was imprisoned by the Saragossa tribunal and was required to abjure eighteen propositions. Fray Francisco de Villalba, who preached the funeral sermon of Charles V, was denounced for Lutheranism and was saved only by the protection of Philip II. Miguel de Medina, one of the theologians of the Council of Trent, was so orthodox that, in his _Disputatio de Indulgentiis_, he ascribes to indulgences a virtue so great that without them Christianity would be a failure, yet this did not prevent his prosecution for defending certain propositions thought to savor of Lutheranism and, after four years' detention, he died in prison with his trial unfinished.[1125]

[Sidenote: _LUTHERANISM_]

All these were cases of good Catholics, whose prosecution is attributable to a hyperæsthesia of orthodoxy. As regards the real Protestantism, there was necessarily a double duty, one with respect to its literature and the other to its professors. The former will be discussed in the next chapter and it suffices here to point out that although there was as yet no organized censorship of the press, the possession or reading of any of Luther's books was forbidden, under pain of excommunication, in 1520, by Leo X, in the bull _Exsurge Domine_, and this was extended to the works of all his followers in the recension of the bull _in C[oe]na Domini_ by Adrian VI.[1126] We have seen the flurry produced, in 1521, by the dread of the introduction of this literature into Spain, and it would appear that there was a demand for it, or that the German heretics were endeavoring to create one for, in 1524, we hear that a ship from Holland for Valencia, captured by the French and recaptured, was brought into San Sebastian, when two casks of Lutheran books were found in her cargo, which were publicly burnt. Some eight months later, three Venetian galeasses brought large quantities of similar books to a port in Granada, where the corregidor seized and burnt them and imprisoned the captains and crews.[1127] As yet, however, there seems to have been no definite penalty, save the papal censures, for possessing this forbidden literature. We have seen Juan de Vergara simply surrendering what he had; in 1527 we chance to find a commission, issued by the Suprema, to absolve a fraile from the excommunication thus incurred and, in 1528, a similar one for the benefit of the Licenciado Fray Diego de Astudillo.[1128]

As regards heretics in person, the relations of Spain with the Netherlands and Germany, at this period, were too intimate for it to escape their intrusion. The earliest case I have met occurred in 1524, when a German named Blay Esteve was condemned by the tribunal of Valencia.[1129] Again the same tribunal, in 1528, tried Cornelis, a painter of Ghent, for saying that Luther was not a heretic and for denying the existence of purgatory, the utility of masses, confession etc. He had not the spirit of martyrdom but pleaded intoxication and that he had abandoned in Spain the errors which he had entertained in Flanders; he was sentenced to reconciliation and perpetual prison and, in the papers of the trial, there is an allusion to the prosecution of Jacob Torres, apparently another Lutheran. Valencia, in 1529, had another case in the person of Melchor de Württemberg, who came there by way of Naples. He preached in the streets, saying that he had searched the world in vain for a true follower of Christ, and he predicted that in three years the world would be drowned in blood. He was probably an Anabaptist and, when on trial, he admitted that he had visited Martin Luther to learn whether the Lutheran sect possessed the truth. The tribunal referred the case to the Suprema, which replied that, if he held any Lutheran errors, justice should be done; if not, the case was trifling and a hundred lashes would suffice. The papers are imperfect and we can only gather that he denied Lutheranism and escaped with the scourging.[1130]

[Sidenote: _PERSECUTION ORGANIZED_]

Cases of this kind were doubtless occurring in the various tribunals, but it was some time as yet before systematic action was taken by the Inquisition. Clement VII addressed a brief, May 8, 1526, to the Observantine Franciscans, empowering them to receive all Lutherans desiring to return to the Church, who were to be reincorporated on accepting salutary penance, and to be absolved and relieved from all the penalties decreed by Leo X and by others.[1131] This was evidently designed for temporary effect in Germany and, although sent to Spain, it was too subversive of the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition to be observed there. The earliest action of the Suprema to protect Spain from the dissemination of the new heresies would seem to be a letter, in 1527, to the provisor of Lugo and to the Dominican provincial and Franciscan guardian there, about the heretics arriving at the Galician ports, and ordering them to enquire after Lutheran books, which they were required to seize.[1132] Coruña was one of the chief ports of commerce with the northern seas, thus calling for special watchfulness, and, though a tribunal had recently been provided for Galicia, apparently on this account, it seems not to have been in working order. Still the heretics continued to come, and the Suprema issued, April 27, 1531, a _carta acordada_ instructing the tribunals to publish special Edicts of Faith requiring the denunciation of persons suspected of holding Lutheran opinions.[1133] Apparently the time had arrived when some definite position with regard to the growing danger had to be taken; there seems to have been doubt felt as to the authority of the Inquisition to deal with it, and as to the policy to be observed towards these heretics, for a brief was procured, July 15th of the same year, from Clement VII empowering Manrique and his deputies to proceed against the followers of Martin Luther, their fautors and defenders, and a clause to this effect continued subsequently to be included in the commissions of the inquisitor-general. The brief moreover extended Manrique's personal jurisdiction, for this heresy, over archbishops and bishops, although these were not to be arrested and imprisoned; impenitents were to be relaxed, in accordance with the canons, while those who sought reconciliation were to be admitted, with due punishment, and could even be dispensed for irregularity and be relieved of all disabilities and note of infamy.[1134] There was evidently as yet a disposition to treat these new heretics with special tenderness.

For some time as yet the labors of the Inquisition, in the suppression of Lutheranism, were confined to foreigners, the most conspicuous of whom was Hugo de Celso, a learned Burgundian doctor of both laws and author of a serviceable _Reportorio de las Leyes_, which saw the light at Valladolid in 1538 and again at Alcalá in 1540. In 1532 he seems to have been prosecuted without conviction at Toledo, but fell again under suspicion and was finally burnt in 1551.[1135] It is true that Queen Mary of Hungary, sister of Charles V, did not escape suspicion,[1136] but the earliest undoubted heretic recorded of Spanish blood would seem to be Francisco de San Roman of Burgos. Engaged, while still a young man, in business in the Netherlands, his affairs took him to Bremen, where he was converted and became so ardent a proselyte that, after various adventures, he undertook to convert Charles V at Ratisbon. Persisting in the attempt, he was sent in chains to Spain and, as he refused to recant, there was nothing to do with him save to give him the fiery death that he courted--the first of the few Spanish martyrs to Protestantism. Carranza attended him at the stake and urged him to submit to the Church, but the ferocious crowd pierced him with their swords--a not infrequent occurrence at the autos de fe. We have no dates, but an allusion to Charles's expedition to Tunis would seem to place his career about 1540.[1137]

Nearly at the same time there appeared another, who was classed as a Lutheran, although he seems to have worked out his heresies independently. All that we know of Rodrigo de Valero rests on the unreliable testimony of González de Montes, who describes him as a wealthy youth of Lebrija, near Seville, suddenly converted from the vanities of the world to an assiduous study of Scripture and the conviction that he was a new apostle of Christ. His special heresies are not recorded, but they led to his trial by the Seville tribunal, which confiscated his property and discharged him as insane. He continued his apostolate and, on a second trial, he was condemned to perpetual prison and sanbenito. Here, in the obligatory Sunday attendance at mass, he contradicted the priest until, to silence him, he was recluded in a convent at San Lucar de Barrameda, where he lay until his death.[1138]

[Sidenote: _MODERATION_]

Valero was not without importance, for he was the perverter of Juan Gil, or Doctor Egidio, the founder of the little Protestant community of Seville which came, as we shall see, to an untimely end. Egidio was magistral canon of the cathedral and a man of the highest consideration for learning and eloquence; indeed, he was nominated by Charles V to the see of Tortosa, which was vacant from 1548 to 1553. On his post-mortem trial, in 1559, evidence showed that, as early as 1542, he had preached to the nuns of Santa Clara on the uselessness of external works, denying the suffrages of the saints, and stigmatizing image-worship as idolatry.[1139] A letter of Charles to Valdés, from Brussels, January 25, 1550, shows that Egidio was then on trial in Seville; Charles ordered Valdés to investigate the case personally in Seville and consult him before concluding it, all of which must be done speedily for that church (Tortosa) must be provided with a prelate.[1140]

Charles's solicitude shows that the matter was regarded as important. Egidio, in fact, was the centre of a little band of Lutherans whom the Inquisition was eagerly tracking. The Suprema wrote, July 30, 1550, to Valdés at Seville, urging him to expedite the case, and adding that it had written to Charles about the arrest of those in Paris and Flanders implicated with Dr. Egidio, and about Dr. Zapata who had delivered Lutheran books to Antonio de Guzman.[1141] Yet when Egidio's trial ended, August 21, 1552, he was treated with singular moderation. He was obliged publicly to abjure as heretical ten propositions which he admitted to have uttered, subjecting himself to the penalty of relapse for reincidence. Eight more propositions he recanted as false and erroneous, and seven he explained in a Catholic sense--all of these being more or less Lutheran. He was sentenced to a year's confinement in the castle of Triana and never to leave Spain; for a year after release he was not to celebrate mass and for ten years he was suspended from preaching, confessing and partaking in disputations.[1142] Death in 1556 saved him from a harsher fate, although, as we shall see, his bones were exhumed and burnt in 1560.

The mildness of the Inquisition shows that thus far there was no alarm to stimulate severity, nor was there any cause for it. We hear a good deal of the missionary efforts of the German or other heretics; but up to this time there is slender trace of such work. The only indication--and that a very dubious one--that I have met of such attempts, is the case of Gabriel de Narbonne, before the Valencia tribunal in 1537. He was a Frenchman, who had learned heresy during four years spent in Germany and Switzerland. As a wandering mendicant in Spain, he spoke freely of his beliefs to all whom he met. When arrested, he confessed fully to all the leading tenets of Lutheranism and begged mercy; after a year's confinement, under threat of torture, he stated that he had been sent by the Swiss heretics to Spain as a missionary; there were three others, one named Beltran, who was likewise in Spain, one was destined to Venice and the other to Savoy. He had wandered, he said, on foot for two years through the whole Peninsula, from Catalonia and Navarre to Lisbon, disseminating his heresies wherever he could find a listener, especially among the clergy. Had the tribunal believed his story, he would have been sharply tortured to discover his converts; as it was, he was merely reconciled with irremissible prison, while his nephew, another Gabriel de Narbonne, who spontaneously denounced himself as having been perverted by his uncle, was reconciled with spiritual penance and forbidden to leave the kingdom.[1143]

[Sidenote: _THE SEVILLE GROUP_]

It would seem as though the Holy See were desirous to arouse the Spanish Inquisition to a sense of its inertness in combating these dangerous innovations for, in 1551, Julius III sent to Inquisitor-general Valdés a brief empowering him to punish Lutheranism irrespective of the station of the offender--a wholly superfluous grant, for he already possessed by his commission all requisite faculties, except as regards bishops, and the case of Carranza shows that they were not included in the brief.[1144] If the object was to stimulate, it failed, for the cases of Lutheranism continued for some time to be few and mostly of foreigners. The year 1558 may be taken as a turning-point in the history of Spanish Protestantism and up to that time the industrious researches of Dr. Ernst Schäfer, into the records of all the tribunals, have only resulted in finding an aggregate of a hundred and five cases, of which thirty-nine are of natives and sixty-six of foreigners.[1145] Of course, in the chaos of archives, no such statistics can be regarded as complete, but, on the other hand, the tribunals were in the habit of classing as "Lutheranism" any deviation, even in a minor degree, from dogma or observance, or any careless speech, such as those of which we have had examples above. As a whole, the figures are significant of the slender impression thus far made on Spanish thought by the intense religious excitement beyond the Pyrenees. A few individuals--mostly those who had been abroad--are all that can be regarded as really infected with the new doctrines. Thus far there had been nothing of organization, of little associations or conventicles, in which those of common faith assembled for worship, for mutual encouragement or for planning measures to disseminate their belief, but something of the kind was beginning to develop in Seville, where the teachings of Rodrigo de Valero and Dr. Egidio gradually spread through a widening circle. After Egidio's death, in 1556, the leading figure was Doctor Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, who was elected by the chapter to the vacant magistral canonry, and who was a man of the highest consideration, having served Charles V in Flanders as confessor and chaplain. Another important personage was Maestro García Arias, known as Doctor Blanco, prior of the Geronimite house of San Isidro, all the brethren of which became converts, as well as some of the inmates of the Geronimite nunnery of Santa Paula. An influential beneficiary of the church of San Vicente named Francisco de Zafra also joined the group which, although largely composed of clerics, secular and regular, contained many laymen. We hear of two rag-pickers, Francisco and Antonio de Cardenas, while there was also a noble of the highest rank, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, of the great house of the Dukes of Arcos. Every class of society was represented in the little band, which numbered altogether over a hundred and twenty, besides Doctor Juan Pérez de Pineda and Julian Hernández, who had sought safety in flight, probably about the time of the arrest of Dr. Egidio.[1146]

[Sidenote: _THE VALLADOLID GROUP_]

In 1557, from some cause, suspicion was aroused and the tribunal commenced a secret investigation, which seems to have reached the ears of some of the inculpated, and eleven of the Geronimites of San Isidro sought safety in flight, among whom were two who became noteworthy--Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina.[1147] This increased the suspicion and certain writings of Doctor Constantino were subjected to examination; they had passed current without animadversion for ten years, but, in 1557, a carta acordada addressed to all the tribunals called attention to them, followed, January 2, 1558, by a list of books to be burnt,[1148] to which were added three of his to be seized but not burnt. Finally the tribunal was able to obtain positive evidence against individuals. Juan Pérez, in the refuge of Geneva, had been busy in preparing propagandist works.[1149] To convey them into Spain was a perilous task, but it was undertaken by Julian Hernández, who had spent some years in Paris, had then wandered to Scotland and Germany, and had become a deacon in the Walloon church of Frankfort. The story that he reached Seville with two large casks of Pérez's Testament, Psalms and Catechism is probably an exaggeration, but he brought a supply of them, reaching Seville in July, 1557. The books were deposited outside the walls and were smuggled in at night, or were brought in by Don Juan Ponce de Leon in his saddlebags. Julian made a fatal blunder with a letter and a copy of the _Imajen del Antichristo_, addressed to a priest, which he delivered to one of the same name who was a good Catholic. When the latter saw as the frontispiece the pope kneeling to Satan, and read that good works were useless, he hastened with the dangerous matter to the Inquisition which made good use of the clue thus furnished. Don Juan promptly fled to Ecija and Julian to the Sierra Morena, but they were tracked and brought back on October 7th. Other arrests speedily followed and the prisons began to fill.[1150] With its customary unwearied patience, the tribunal traced out all the ramifications of the heretical conventicle, arresting one after another as denunciations of accomplices were obtained from prisoners. Dr. Constantino and his friend Dr. Blanco were not seized until August, 1558, and the first auto de fe was not celebrated until September 24, 1559.

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, a similar association of Protestants had been discovered at Valladolid, then the residence of the court. An Italian gentleman, Don Carlos de Seso, said to be the son of the Bishop of Piacenza, had been converted about 1550, apparently by the writings of Juan de Valdés. He came to Spain, bringing with him heretical books and ardently desiring to spread the reformed faith. He settled first in Logroño, where he made some converts, and then, through the influence of his wife, Isabel de Castilla, of royal blood and highly esteemed, he was appointed corregidor of Toro, about 1554. There he converted the Bachiller Antonio de Herrezuelo and his wife, Leonor de Cisneros, Doña Ana Enríquez, daughter of Elvira, Marchioness of Alcañizes, Juan de Ulloa Pereira, Comendador of San Juan, and others of more or less distinction, while, in Pedrosa, a town lying between Toro and Valladolid, Pedro de Cazalla, the parish priest, also fell under his influence and became a missionary in his turn. Among his converts was his sacristan, Juan Sánchez, whose imprudent zeal greatly alarmed Cazalla; in 1557, Sánchez left Pedroso for Valladolid, where he entered the service of Doña Catalina de Hortega, whom he soon converted, and with her Doña Beatriz de Vivero, a sister of Cazalla. Through them, seven nuns of the Cistercian house of Nuestra Señora de Belen were brought to the new faith, but the greatest conquest, about May, 1557, was made when Beatriz de Vivero and Pedro Cazalla won their brother, Doctor Agustin de Cazalla. No ecclesiastic was of higher repute or greater influence with all classes; he was the favorite preacher of Charles V, who had carried him to Germany in 1543, where possibly his debates with heretics may have unconsciously undermined his faith. Next to him among the converts might be ranked the Dominican Fray Domingo de Rojas, whose reputation for learning and eloquence was of the highest. He had been a fellow student of Pedro de Cazalla; he had accompanied Carranza to Trent, in 1552, where he had encountered heretics, and since then some of his utterances had led his brother Dominicans to entertain suspicions, but, when Beatriz de Vivero first sought to convert him, he was firm and even thought of denouncing her. In the autumn of 1557, however, Agustin Cazalla and Carlos de Seso won him over to heresy and he, in his turn, brought in his brother, Don Pedro Sarmiento and his nephew Don Luis de Rojas, heir to the marquisate of Pozo. As in Seville, the reformers thus included men of the highest consideration, socially and ecclesiastically, as well as those of the lower classes. Still, their numbers were few; the wild estimates of five hundred or six thousand are baseless, for they did not exceed fifty-five or sixty, wholly without organization, being scattered from Logroño to Zamora, though the house of Doña Leonor de Vivero, the widowed mother of the Cazallas, served occasionally as a meeting-place. Of her ten children, four sons, Agustin and Pedro Cazalla, Francisco and Juan de Vivero, and two daughters, Beatriz and Costanza, were involved; the rest seem to have escaped. She herself, after the prosecutions commenced, was only confined to her house; she speedily died and received Christian burial, but her bones were subsequently exhumed and burnt. Notwithstanding this, one of the sons, Gonzalo Pérez de Cazalla, obtained, May 12, 1560, a dispensation from the _cosas arbitrarias_.[1151]

[Sidenote: _THE VALLADOLID GROUP_]

It was inevitable that such a propaganda should be discovered, and the only source of surprise is that it should have been carried on for two or three years without betrayal, but this came at last almost simultaneously from several sources. In Zamora, Christóbal de Padilla, steward of the Marchioness of Alcañizes, was unguarded in his talk; towards Easter of 1558 the publication of the Edict of Faith led to two denunciations, on which he was arrested by the bishop and thrown into the public prison. As he was not _incomunicado_ he was able to send word to his accomplices and Herrezuelo promptly advised Pedro de Cazalla, with warning that no reliance could be placed on Padilla's reticence. Even more threatening than this was the inconsiderate zeal of Francisco de Vivero and his sister Beatriz, in seeking to convert two friends, Doña Antonia de Branches and Doña Juana de Fonseca. Their confessors refused absolution and Easter communion unless they would obtain full information; this they did and the tribunal was speedily in possession of the names of nearly all the converts, and made arrangements to seize them all. Despite its profound secrecy, Dr. Cazalla chanced to hear it said that there were heretics in Valladolid who had been denounced by Juana de Fonseca. The purport of this was unmistakable and wild confusion reigned among the little band. Desperate plans of escape were projected, but the time was too short. Some sought mercy by surrendering themselves and denouncing their accomplices; others silently awaited arrest. Only three attempted flight. Fray Domingo de Rojas, disguised in secular apparel, hastened to Logroño to Carlos de Seso and the two tried to escape through Navarre; at Pampeluna they secured a pass from the viceroy, but the agents of the Inquisition were in hot pursuit; they were recognized and conducted back under guard of twelve familiars and some mounted officials, which was rather for their protection than to prevent escape for, wherever they passed, crowds assembled with demonstrations of burning them. Fray Domingo was in mortal fear lest his kinsmen should slay him on the road, and it was deemed necessary to enter Valladolid at night to avoid lapidation by the mob. Of all concerned, the only one who succeeded in leaving Spain was Juan Sánchez, who found at Castro de Urdiales a vessel bound for Flanders and he, as we have seen, was caught a year later and shared the fate of his associates.[1152]

Inquisitor-general Valdés, whose disgrace was imminent, promptly took advantage of the situation to save himself. It is easy for us now to recognize the absurdity of the fear that a couple of hundred more or less zealous Protestants, in Seville and Valladolid, could constitute any real danger to the faith so firmly intrenched and so powerfully organized in Spain, but, at the moment, no man could know how far the infection had spread. There was reasonable cause for alarm at the simultaneous discovery, in places so far apart, of heresy numbering among its disciples those of high rank in the world and of distinguished position in the Church. This alarm it was the business of Valdés to intensify, in order to render himself indispensable, and the most exaggerated rumors were industriously spread. Abbot Illescas, who was an eye-witness, treats it as a most terrible conspiracy which, if the discovery had been postponed for two or three months, would have set all Spain aflame, resulting in the gravest misfortune that had ever befallen the land. That hideous stories were circulated is shown by his assertion that matters too horrible to mention were proved; in the Cazalla house nocturnal conventicles were held, abominable and Satanic gatherings, in which Lutheran doctrines were preached.[1153] The legend was industriously maintained. The Venetian envoy, Leonardo Donato, referring to the matter, in 1573, says that if it had not been remedied with speedy punishment, every one believes that the evil weed would have grown apace and would have infected all Spain, and this, perhaps, was not one of the least causes that induced Philip II to make peace with France and return home.[1154] So Inquisitor Páramo, towards the close of the century, tells us that no one doubts but that a great conflagration would have resulted had it not been for the vigilance of the Holy Office and that, in the nocturnal conventicles held in the Cazalla house, the heretics polluted themselves with horrid wickedness.[1155]

[Sidenote: _EXPLOITATION BY VALDES_]

That the government should feel keen anxiety at the unknown proportions of the portentous discovery was natural. Charles V was nearing his end in the retirement of Yuste, and Philip was in Flanders, engrossed in the war with France. His sister, the Infanta Juana, the temporary ruler, was a woman of very moderate capacity and she and her advisers, in view of the religious disquiet in France and Germany, might reasonably view with dread the prospect of civil dissension which in that age was the usual result of dissidence in faith. The outbreak in Seville had not excited much attention, but now this one at the court, involving such personages, portended unknown evils and came just in time to save Valdés from disgrace, as we have seen above (Vol. II, p. 47). On March 23, 1558 the Princess Juana had written to her father that when he had ordered the body of his mother Juana to be transferred to Granada, she had commanded Valdés to accompany it and then to visit his diocese of Seville; he had endeavored to excuse himself at the moment but promised to arrange so as to obey shortly. Then, when urged to do so some days later he raised further difficulties; it made no difference whether the body was buried then or in September; everybody was endeavoring to drive him away; troubles with his chapter required his presence at the court or in Rome; besides, he was occupied with some heresies which had arisen in Seville and in Murcia, and was busy in endeavoring to get a subsidy from the Moriscos of Granada. Evidently he was belittling the Seville heresies, lest they should serve as an excuse for sending him thither and, when Juana referred his letter to the Council of State, it insisted that he could be properly obliged to reside in his diocese.[1156]

It can therefore be easily conceived how eagerly he grasped the opportune explosion in Valladolid and how it was magnified so as to produce on the court a vastly greater impression than the more dangerous one in Seville. In a letter of May 12th to Philip, the Suprema briefly announced the discovery; the heretics were so numerous and the time had been so short that it could give no details, but it suggestively insisted on the necessity of the presence of Valdés to urge the matter forward and it hoped that, with the royal favor, action would be taken for the salvation of the delinquents and the example and restraint of others.[1157] As we have seen this produced immediate effect, for Philip, who had written June 5th that he must be relegated to his see, on the 14th countermanded the order. Charles had already been induced to take the same position. As early as April 27th, Juan Vázquez reported to him the arrest of Dr. Cazalla and the alarming outlook, adding that the remedy should be speedy and that the inquisitor-general and Suprema were actively at work.[1158] Charles was thoroughly aroused. He had spent his strength and his life in combating heresy; it had baffled his policies and frustrated his ambitions; it had been a thorn in the flesh, rankling and crippling him at every turn. It had fairly worn him out and driven him to abdication, and now its spectre broke in upon the repose for which his wearied soul and exhausted body had longed. He was appalled by the prospect of a renewal of the struggle, in the only land as yet preserved from its influence, and his religious zeal was enkindled with the conviction that only by the enforcement of unity of faith could public order and even the monarchy itself be maintained.

[Sidenote: _ALARM OF CHARLES V_]