Chapter VII: Propositions (2)

In addition to their exhibiting the attitude of the Inquisition towards the most distinguished intellects of the period, these two trials of Fray Luis illustrate its arbitrary methods, operating as it did in secret. His fault, if fault there was, was the same in both cases--the enunciation of opinions on which the most learned doctors differed. In both cases he denounced himself, freely confessed what he had spoken or written, and submitted himself unreservedly to the judgement of the church. In the first case he was arrested; he endured nearly five years of incarceration and only escaped torture or the ruin of his career through the kindly interposition of Quiroga. In the second, there was no arrest, the case was decided on the _sumaria_, or suspended, and although Quiroga probably again intervened, it was only to save the accused from a humiliation which would have gratified malevolence. Judged by its own standard, the Inquisition abused its powers--either, in one case, by unpardonable severity or in the other by excessive moderation, but it was responsible to no one and had no public opinion to dread.

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[Sidenote: _FRANCISCO SANCHEZ_]

Just as the case of Fray Luis was ending, prosecution was commenced against another Salamanca professor, of equal or even greater distinction. As a man of pure letters, no one at the time was the peer of Francisco Sánchez, known as el Brocense, from his birth-place, las Brozas. Vainglorious, quarrelsome, caustic and reckless of speech, he made numerous enemies, but probably he would have escaped the Inquisition had he confined himself to his chair of grammar and rhetoric. He delighted however in paradoxes, and he held himself so immeasurably superior to the theologians, and was so confident in the accuracy of his own varied learning, that he could not restrain himself from ridiculing their pretensions, from exposing the errors of pious legends and denouncing some of the grosser popular superstitions, thus rendering himself liable to inquisitorial animadversion, whenever malice or zeal might call the attention of the tribunal to his eccentricities. He flattered himself that he did not meddle with articles of faith, but he failed to realize how elastic were the boundaries of faith, and that, in attacking vulgar errors, he might be regarded as undermining the foundations of the Church. Scandal was a convenient word which bridged over the line between the profane and the sacred.[359]

His habitual intemperance of speech was stimulated by a custom in the Salamanca lecture-rooms of students handing up questions for the lecturer to answer, and it would appear that malicious pleasure was felt in thus provoking him to exhibit his well-known idiosyncrasies. It was an occasion of this kind that prompted the first denunciation, January 7, 1584, by Juan Fernández, a priest attending the lectures. Others followed, and the character of his utterances appears in the propositions submitted to the calificadores:--That Christ was not circumcised by St. Simeon but by his mother the Virgin.--That there ought to be no images and, but for apparent imitation of the heretics, they would have been abolished.--That those were fools who, at the procession of Corpus Christi, knelt in the streets to adore the images, for only Christ and his cross were to be adored.--Only saints in heaven were to be adored and not images, which were but wood and plaster.--Christ was not born in a stable, but in a house where the Virgin was staying.--That the eleven thousand virgins were only eleven.--Doubts whether the Three Kings were kings, as Scripture speaks only of Magi.--That the Magian kings did not come at Christ's birth, but two years after, and found him playing with a ball.--That theologians know nothing.--That many Dominicans thought the faith was based on St. Thomas Aquinas; this was not so and he did not care a ---- for St. Thomas.--When asked why St. Lucia was painted without eyes, he said that she had not torn them out, but she was reckoned the patron saint of eyes from her name--Lucia _a lucere_.

That these free-spoken propositions should be duly characterized by the calificadores as heretical, rash, erroneous, insulting and so forth was a matter of course and, on May 18th, the consulta de fe voted for imprisonment in the secret prison with sequestration, subject to confirmation by the Suprema. The latter delayed action until August 29th and then manifested unusual consideration for the eccentricities of Sánchez, which were doubtless well known. He was merely to be summoned before the tribunal, to be closely examined and to be severely reprimanded, with a warning to give no further occasion for scandal, as otherwise he would be treated with all rigor.[360]

His first audience was held on September 24th. There is a refreshing and characteristic frankness in his reply to the customary question whether he knew the cause of his summons. He supposed it was because, about Christmas-time, in his lecture-room, he was asked why St. Lucia was painted with her eyes on a dish and why she was patron saint of eyes, when he replied that she was not such a fool as to tear out her eyes to give them to others; the vulgar believed many things that had no authority save that of painters, and it was on account of her name that she was patron saint of eyes. Then, he added, some days later he was asked why he talked against what the Church holds; this angered him and he told them they were great fools who did not know what the Church is; they must think that sacristans and painters are the Church; he would be speaking against the Church if he spoke against the Fathers and Councils. If they saw eleven thousand virgins painted in a picture, they would think that there were eleven thousand, but in an ancient calendar there was only _undecim M. virgines_--there were ten martyrs and Ursula made the eleventh. Then, some three years ago, the Circumcision was represented in the cathedral of Salamanca, where appeared the Virgin, Simeon and the child Jesus. He said to many of those present that it was a pity such impertinences were permitted in Salamanca; that the Virgin did not go to the temple until the forty days were expired, and no priest was required for the circumcision, for it is rather believed that the Virgin performed it in her own house. He mentioned various other criticisms which he had made on pictures, such as the Last Supper, where Christ and the apostles should be represented on triclinia, and the Sacrifice of Abraham where Isaac should be a man of 25. For this all he was called in Salamanca a rash and audacious man, and he supposed this was the cause of his summons; if there was more, let him know it and he would obey the Church; if in what he had said he had caused scandal, he was ready to retract and to submit to the Church.[361]

[Sidenote: _FRANCISCO SANCHEZ_]

This fearless frankness was preserved in the examination that followed on the charges not explained in his avowal. When asked whether he knew these things to be heretical and if his intention was to oppose the Church, he replied that in the form of the charges he held them to be heretical, but he had uttered them only in the way he stated, with the intention of a good Christian and for the instruction of others, but, if he had erred, he begged mercy with penance, and was ready to make whatever amends were required. His confessions were duly submitted to calificadores who reported, reasonably enough, that he denied some, explained others and left others as they were, but that as a whole he deserved to be reprimanded and punished, because he exceeded his functions without discretion and, if not restrained, he would come to utter manifold errors and heresies. Under ordinary routine his punishment would have been exemplary, but the tribunal was controlled by the instructions of the Suprema and, on September 28th, he was duly reprimanded and warned to abstain in future from such utterances, for they would be visited with rigorous punishment. He promised to do this and was dismissed.[362]

With any one else this narrow escape, which shows the strong disinclination to deal harshly with him, would have ensured lasting caution, and even on Sánchez it seems to have imposed restraint for some years. The impression, however, wore away and the irrepressible desire to manifest his contempt for theology and theologians, and to display the superior accuracy of his wide learning, gradually overcame prudence. In 1588, he printed a little volume entitled _De erroribus nonnullis Porphyrii et aliorum_ which, when subsequently examined by calificadores, was said to prove that the author was insolent, audacious and bitter, as were all grammarians and Erasmists; that, if its conclusions were true, we might burn all the theology and philosophy taught by the schoolmen, from the Master of Sentences to Caietano, and by all the universities, from Salamanca to Bologna. Another of his works bore the expressive title of _Paradoxos de Theulugia_, which went to two editions and was censured as requiring expurgation. Theology seems to have had for him the fatal fascination of the candle for the moth and, with his temperament, he could not touch it without involving himself in trouble. He gradually resumed his free speech and repeated his old assertions which he had promised to suppress, and to these he added new ones, such as approving the remark of a canon of Salamanca that he who spoke ill of Erasmus was a fraile or an ass, adding that, if there were no frailes in the world, none of the works of Erasmus would have been forbidden. From 1593 to 1595, Dr. Rosales, the commissioner at Salamanca, repeatedly forwarded to the Valladolid tribunal reports and evidence as to his relapse in these evil ways, and urged that he should be summoned and corrected and told not to meddle with theology but to confine himself to his grammar, for he knew nothing else.[363]

The tribunal had these various charges submitted to calificadores, who duly characterized them in fitting terms, but it took no action until May 18, 1596, when it commissioned Rosales to put in shape the informations against Sánchez. Rosales was replaced by Francisco Gasca de Salazar, who was instructed, September 17th, to finish the matter without delay. He returned the papers as completed, September 29th, adding that Sánchez was so frank that he said these things publicly, as a man unconscious of error and, if examined, would tell the truth and give his reasons; he did not seem to err with pertinacity but like the grammarians, who usually deal in paradoxes, for which reason Gasca said that he had taken no notice of them.[364]

[Sidenote: _FRANCISCO SANCHEZ_]

Probably some restraint exercised by the Suprema explains why, after these preparations, four years were allowed to pass without action. If so, this restraint was suddenly removed, for there is no evidence that any fresh imprudences on the part of Sánchez stimulated the tribunal when, September 25, 1600, it took a vote that, in view of the previous warning and continued repetition of the same propositions and additional ones, and especially of the _De Erroribus Porphyrii_ and other books suspect in doctrine, he should be summoned to the tribunal and a house be assigned to him as a prison, while all his books and papers should be seized. The Suprema confirmed this; on October 20th the summons was issued and, on November 20th, the books and papers were forwarded. On November 10th Sánchez appeared before the tribunal and, with kindly consideration, the house of his son, Dr. Lorenzo Sánchez, a physician residing in Valladolid, was assigned as his prison. Three audiences were held, on November 13th, 16th, and 22d, in which he said that, if he had uttered or done anything contrary to the faith, he was ready to confess it and reduce himself to the unity of the Church. As the charges were not as yet made known to him, he tried to explain various matters which were not contained in them, such as denying free-will, as holding the opinion that Magdalen was not the sister of Lazarus, and that Judas did not hang himself.[365]

No more audiences were held. The next document is a petition, dated November 30th, in which Sánchez set forth that he was mortally sick and given over by the physicians; that he had through life been a good Christian, believing all that the Holy Roman Church believes, and now, at the hour of death, he protested that he died in and for that belief. If, having labored for sixty years in teaching at Salamanca and elsewhere, he had said or was accused of saying anything against the holy Catholic faith, which he denied, if yet by error of the tongue it was so, he repented and begged of the Inquisition pardon and penance in the name of God. When taking pen in hand he had always recommended himself to God and, if in his MSS. there should be found anything ill-sounding, he desired it stricken out and, if there were useful things, he asked the Inquisition to permit their printing, as he left no other property to his children, and also that his enemies and rivals might be confounded. Finally, as he was in prison, by order of the Inquisition, he supplicated that he might have honorable burial, suitable to his position, and that the University of Salamanca be ordered to render him the customary honors.[366]

Thus closed, in sorrow and humiliation, the career of one of the most illustrious men of letters that Spain has produced. Under the existing system the Inquisition could do no otherwise than it had done, and its treatment of him had been of unexampled forbearance. That forbearance, however, seems to have ceased with his death. The records are imperfect, and we have no knowledge of the course of his trial which, as usual, was prosecuted to the end, but the outcome apparently was unfavorable. On December 11th the calificadores who examined his papers made an unexpectedly moderate report. There was a certain amount of minute and captious verbal criticism, but the summing up was that he seemed somewhat free in his expositions of Scripture, attaching himself too much to human learning and departing too readily from received opinions, but he was easily excusable as these were private studies and mostly unfinished, so that his final opinions could not be assumed.[367]

Notwithstanding this, his dying requests were not granted. The interment was private and without funeral honors. As regards the University of Salamanca, Dr. Lorenzo Sánchez reported, on December 22d, that his father had many enemies there, that there was much excitement and scandal, and it was proposed not to render him the customary honors, to the great injury of his children's honor, wherefore he petitioned for orders to pay the honors and also the salary for the time of his detention. To this supplication no attention was paid, and the same indifference was shown when, long afterwards, on June 25, 1624, another son, Juan Sánchez, a canon of Salamanca, represented that malicious persons asserted that his father had died in the secret prison, wherefore he petitioned for a certificate that his father had not been imprisoned in either the secret or public prison, and that no sentence had been rendered against him. The influence of all this on the fortunes of his descendants can readily be estimated. As for the MSS. which had occupied the dying man's thoughts, the final judgement passed upon them left little to be delivered to the children.[368]

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[Sidenote: _JOSEPH DE SIGUENZA_]

Another contemporaneous case is worthy of mention if only because the Geronimite Joseph de Sigüenza has customarily been included among the victims of the Inquisition, in place of which he sought its jurisdiction in order to protect himself against the machinations of his brethren. At an early age he had entered the Order, where his talents and varied learning gained him rapid advancement. When the Escorial was completed, Philip II sent for him to preach the first sermon in the church of San Lorenzo; since then he had preached oftener than any one else and many of the gentlemen and ladies of the court had selected him as their confessor. Philip placed him in charge of the royal archives and of the _sagrarios_ and reliquaries of the two libraries, which brought him into frequent communication with the king, and he had utilized this to cause appointments and dismissals, and to institute reforms in the college of Párraces. This caused jealousy and enmity, and Diego de Yepes, the prior of his convent of San Lorenzo, endeavored to procure his removal. Then he incurred the hostility of the prior of the college, Cristóbal de Zafra, who was a florid preacher. In a sermon before the king on the previous Nativity of the Virgin (September 8th) he had said that the Minotaur was Christ and the Labyrinth was the Gospel and Ariadne was Our Lady and the child she bore to Theseus was faith, and if any one desired to enter the Labyrinth he must pray to the Virgin for her child. Such sermons were the fashion, and Diego de Yepes eclipsed this, on January 1st, when he told his audience that when Delilah had exhausted Samson she removed him from her and delivered him to the Philistines, so when the Virgin had exhausted God she removed him and placed him in the manger, with other equally filthy topics. Fray Joseph sought to repress this style of preaching, insisting that it should be confined to expositions of the Evangel and moral instruction, which gained him enemies among those whose eccentricities and bad taste he reproved. Another source of enmity was that he was entrusted with the selection of students to attend the lectures on Hebrew of Arias Montano, when he came to San Lorenzo, which angered those who were omitted. A formidable cabal was formed for his ruin; careful watch was kept on his utterances in unguarded moments and in the pulpit, and it was not difficult to collect propositions which, when exaggerated or distorted, might furnish material for prosecution.

It was safer to trust to a prejudiced court within the Order than to the Inquisition. A visitation of the convent and college was ordered, with instructions to withdraw the licence of any preacher or confessor found to be insufficient. The visitors came on April 13, 1592 and reported on the 17th. The frailes were examined separately and secretly and, of twenty-two, all but one offered objections to opinions uttered by Fray Joseph. From their testimony was extracted a series of nineteen propositions, most of them utterly trivial. He was accused of decrying scholastic theology, of holding that preaching should be based on the bare Scriptures, of exaggerated praise of Arias Montano at the expense of other expounders of Holy Writ, of advising a fraile to study Scripture in place of books of devotion and much else of the same nature. The frailes had learned the processes of the Inquisition; they submitted these propositions for qualification to Gutiérrez Mantilla, the chief professor of theology in the college, who rendered three opinions, varying in tone, but the final one declared that some of the propositions inclined to Lutheranism and Wickliffitism and others to Judaism. Moreover, on May 18th he wrote to the king, announcing the discovery of a dangerous heresy in the college of San Lorenzo which, if not checked at the outset, might bring upon Spain the dangers developed in other lands. It had spread among the students, some of whom, by the vigilance of the prior, were already in the Inquisition of Toledo, and he begged Philip to urge on the prior unrelaxing efforts to avert the evil.

All this had been done in secret, but enough reached the ears of Fray Joseph to convince him of the ruin impending at the hands of his brethren. Such matters belonged exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and they could not prevent his appealing to that tribunal, in which he lost no time. On April 23d he presented himself at Toledo, with a letter from his prior, Diego de Yepes, stating that he was learned, able and a prior of the Order, but that some of his expressions in preaching and conversation had created scandal, in consequence of which he had been tried by visitors; this trial Yepes was ready to submit to the tribunal, and he asked that Fray Joseph be treated with its customary benignity. With this Fray Joseph handed in a written statement, containing what he had been able to gather as to the accusations, and submitting himself to the judgement of the Inquisition, both in correcting what was wrong and in accepting whatever punishment might be imposed.

The tribunal sent for the papers of the trial and assigned to him the convent of la Sisla as a prison, which he was not to leave without permission under the customary penalties. This confinement, however, was scarce more than nominal for, on May 14th, he represented that the king and court were at San Lorenzo, and his absence would be a great dishonor to him, wherefore he asked to have, by return of his messenger, permission to go there, which was immediately granted. Subsequently he was allowed the unusual favor of consulting with his counsel at the latter's house and, on October 21st, he asked licence to return to San Lorenzo for a month, because he was suffering from fever and his physician stated that his life was at risk at la Sisla--a request which was doubtless granted. The contrast is marked between his treatment and that of Luis de Leon.

[Sidenote: _THEOLOGICAL TRIVIALITIES_]

Meanwhile the trial was in progress with all customary formalities. The propositions were submitted to calificadores and, on July 30th, the fiscal presented the accusation, denouncing him as an apostate heretic and excommunicated perjurer, demanding his relaxation and asking that he be tortured as often as necessary. He duly went through the examinations on the accusation and publication of evidence, and presented eight witnesses, who testified to his distinguished reputation for learning, piety and orthodoxy, also that Fray Cristóbal de Zafra was noted for bringing fables and poetry into his sermons, and that Fray Justo de Soto, who had accused him of saying that Jews and Turks could be saved, was an ignoramus, knowing little of grammar and nothing of theology.

It was not until October 22d that was held the consulta de fe, which voted unanimously for acquittal; the Suprema confirmed the sentence, on January 25, 1593, when Fray Joseph was probably absent, for it was nearly a month before he appeared, on February 19th to hear it read. At his request a copy of it was given to him and thus ended a case in which the Inquisition was the protector of innocence against fraternal malignity.[369]

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The extent to which Spanish intellect wasted itself in interminable controversies over the infinitely little, and the dangers to which all men were exposed who exercised the slightest originality, are illustrated in the case of Padre Alonso Romero, S. J., lector, of theology in the Jesuit college of Valladolid. For a proposition concerning the intricate question whether a man violates the law of fasting by eating nothing on a fast-day, his fellow-Jesuit, Fernando de la Bastida, with a number of students, denounced him to the Inquisition, August 29, 1614. The main proposition, and a number of others, on which it was based, or which were deduced from it, were pronounced by the calificadores, or at least by some of them, to be false, scandalous, rash and approximating to error. No less than seventeen witnesses were examined against him and when, on January 9, 1615, he presented himself, he admitted uttering the proposition, but said that he had consulted many learned men and the principal universities and he offered in defence the signatures of many Jesuits and of professors of Salamanca, Alcalá and Valladolid, to the effect that it was not subject to theological censure. The case proceeded to a vote _in discordia_, October 15th, when the Suprema ordered his confinement in a Jesuit house, that he should cease lecturing, and that the papers in his cell should be examined. On October 29th, while he was detained in the audience-chamber, his keys were taken and his papers were seized, although during this audience he stated that, when he found that many learned men condemned his proposition, he had retracted it publicly and had defended the opposite, which he offered to do again. To the ordinary mind this would appear to render further proceedings superfluous, but the assumed injury inflicted on the faith demanded reparation, and the case went on.

Thirty-three propositions, dependent on the first one, were submitted to calificadores and condemned as before, while nineteen others, extracted from his papers, were explained by him and dropped. Drearily and slowly the proceedings dragged along. On March 3, 1616, the accusation was presented, but it was not until June 6, 1619, that the publication of evidence was reached. Yet the case seems still to have been in the preliminary stage for on July 10th the Suprema ordered that the propositions, which had now grown to fifty-seven in number, should be submitted to calificadores and on their report the tribunal should decide whether to transfer him to the secret prison. It waited more than six months before it reached a decision, February 5, 1620, to make no change but, when the Suprema learned this, it ordered him to the prison of familiars, which was done on August 12th. Then, on the 18th, he selected patrones to advise him and, on September 25th, he presented the interrogatories for the witnesses in defence. On May 12, 1621, he was informed that all that he had required had been done for him. On July 5th the consulta de fe voted that he should be warned and required to retract the proposition respecting fasting and those derived from it--which he had already done spontaneously six years before; as for the others, he was acquitted. The Suprema took nearly a year to consider this and did not confirm it until June 2, 1622, when the trial ended with the reading of the sentence on June 30th.[370] All this reads like a travesty and might well be the subject of ridicule were it not for the serious import on a nation's destiny of a system under which eight years of a man's life could be consumed on a matter which the outcome showed to be so frivolous, to say nothing of the indefinite number of calificadores and officials whose energies were wasted on this solemn trifling.

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[Sidenote: _THE PULPIT_]

Preachers were as liable as professors to prosecution for their utterances, and Spanish pulpit eloquence, as we have seen it illustrated in the case of Fray Joseph de Sigüenza, afforded ample field for censure. The auditor who took exception to anything heard in a sermon had only to denounce the speaker and, if the proposition was exceptionable, prosecution followed. Thus, in 1580, Fray Juan de Toledo, a Geronimite of the convent of Madrid, was denounced to the Toledo tribunal for having, in a sermon before Philip II, asserted that the royal power was so absolute that the king could take his vassals' property and their sons and daughters to use at his pleasure. Possibly this exuberance of loyalty might have escaped animadversion, had not the preacher called attention to the enormous revenues of the bishops, squandered on their kindred, and urged that the king and pope should unite to reduce them to apostolic poverty. On trial he admitted his remarks in a somewhat less offensive form; he attempted to disable the witnesses and presented evidence of good character without much success. The consulta de fe voted in discordia, and the Suprema sentenced him to abjure _de levi_, to recant, in the pulpit on a feast-day, the propositions, in a formula drawn up for him, to be recluded in a convent for two years, to be suspended from preaching for five years, and to perform certain spiritual penances.[371]

The severity of this sentence shows how little ceremony there was in restraining the eccentricities of the Spanish pulpit, even when it would be difficult to discern where suspicion of heresy came in. The formula of retraction prescribed rendered the humiliation of the ceremony most bitter. There were forms suited for the different characters of propositions, but all bore the essential feature that the culprit in the pulpit admitted having uttered the condemned expression; that the inquisitors had ordered him to retract it; that he recognized that it ought to be retracted and, as an obedient son of the Church and in fulfilment of the command, he declared, of his own free will, that he had uttered a proposition heretical and contrary to express passages of Holy Writ and, as such, he retracted and unsaid it and confessed that he did not understand it when he said it nor, for lack of knowledge, did he understand the evil contained in it, nor did he believe it in its heretical sense, nor understand that it was heresy and, as he had spoken evil and given occasion to be justly suspected that he said it in an heretical sense, he was grieved and begged pardon of God and the holy Roman Catholic Church, and begged pardon and mercy of the Holy Office. A notary with a copy followed his words and, if the performance was correct, made an official attestation of the fact.[372]

Instances of this sharp censorship of pulpit eloquence were by no means rare. Thus in the single tribunal of Toledo, after Madrid had been separated from it, Fray Juan de Navarrete, Franciscan Guardian of Talavera, was sentenced, December 19, 1656, for an heretical proposition in a sermon, to make a retraction. On April 21, 1657, Fray Diego Osorio, regent of studies in the Augustinian convent of Toledo, was required to retract, was suspended for two years from preaching and was banished for the same period from Madrid and Mascaraque. On April 23, 1659, the Mercenarian, Maestro Lucas de Lozoya, Definidor General of his Order and synodal judge of the province, was condemned to retract, was suspended from preaching for two years and was exiled from Madrid and Toledo. Similar sentences were pronounced July 14, 1660, on the Trinitarian Jacinto José Suchet, and August 31st on the Franciscan Juan de Teran. The Trinitarian, Juan de Rojas Becerro, December 24, 1660, was allowed to retract in the audience-chamber, but was suspended and banished for one year. Juan Rodríguez Coronel, S. J., on June 28, 1664, was suspended and banished for two years, but was not required to retract. These instances will suffice to indicate the frequency of these prosecutions and the manner in which such cases were treated. They offer a curious contrast to the mercy shown, January 31, 1665, to Sebastian Bravo de Buiza, assistant cura of Fresno la Fuente, who was only reprimanded and required to explain in the pulpit the most offensive proposition that the Virgin was a sinner and died in sin.[373]

This last case suggests that favoritism sometimes intervened to shield culprits and this would seem to be confirmed by the leniency shown, in 1696, to Fray Francisco Esquerrer. He was the leading Observantine preacher and theologian in Valencia and teacher of theology in the convent of San Francisco in Játiva. It was an episode in the quarrel between Dominicans and Franciscans over the Immaculate Conception, when, November 13, 1695, the Dominican Fray Juan Gascon denounced him to the Valencia tribunal for having defended at Játiva, October 9, 1693, the proposition that Christ, in the three days of his death, was sacramented alive in the heart of the Virgin; that he who should die in defence of the Immaculate Conception would die a martyr, for it was a point of faith settled by Scripture, by the Council of Trent, by the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem and by the cult of the Church. Gascon had denounced this at the time, but the tribunal had taken no notice of it, and he now repeated the charge, adding that Esquerrer, preaching in 1693 at Olleria, had held it to be a point of faith that the adoration of _latria_ was due to St. Francis; in the same year at Játiva he preached that Christ owed more to St. Antony of Padua than St. Antony owed to Christ. Also, when preaching about an image known as the Virgin of Salvation, he said that she was rather the Mother of Salvation than the Mother of Christ. Then, on August 28, 1695, preaching to the Augustinians of Játiva, he proved logically that the wisdom of St. Augustin was greater than the wisdom of the Logos and, on November 6, 1695, to the Franciscans of Játiva, he declared that the Immaculate Conception had been made a point of faith by Alexander VII and Innocent XI. Then the tribunal at last was spurred to action; it gathered evidence and procured from the calificadores a definition that some of the propositions were blasphemous, others heretical and others ill-sounding. Early in 1696 Esquerrer was thrown into the secret prison; he endeavored to explain away the propositions; the trial proceeded with unwonted celerity and, on September 9th, the case was suspended with merely the usual reprimand and the suppression of the propositions of October 9, 1693.[374] Apparently the Inquisition was content to have the people fed upon such doctrines.

It was probably less to favoritism than to indolence that we may attribute the outcome of the case of the Minim, Fray N. Serra, lector in the Barcelona convent of S. Francesco de Paula. On St. Barbara's day, December 4, 1721, he preached a sermon in which, among various other ineptitudes, he said that St. Barbara was a virgin and yet pregnant, and that Christ was the fourth person of the Trinity. An artillery regiment in quarters had been taken to the church and, in the evening, some of the officers, visiting Doña Bernarda Vueltaflores, amused themselves by repeating his grotesque utterances. A week later she chanced to mention the matter to Fray Antonio de la Concepcion and he, for the discharge of his conscience, carried the tale to the tribunal. Doña Bernarda was sent for, told what she remembered and furnished the names of the witnesses. They were summoned and gave their evidence. The fiscal fussed over it, said that he had only two concurrent witnesses, and wanted others of the audience looked up and examined, which was not done. The registers were searched, but no former complaints against Fray Serra were found. Then the fiscal asked that all the other tribunals of Spain be written to, which was postponed. On April 22, 1722 he had the propositions submitted to calificadores, five of whom unanimously pronounced that the one relating to Christ was formally heretical and the others scandalous and irreverent, rendering the culprit vehemently suspect and of little sense. Then ensued a pause until 1726, when in July replies were received from all the tribunals that they had nothing against Fray Serra. Then followed another pause, until June 27, 1728, when the inquisitors resolved that the case should be suspended after consulting the Suprema, which assented with the mild rebuke that, as the sumaria had been formed in 1721, it should have been acted upon at once, in place of waiting until 1728.[375]

* * * * *

Cognizance of the more or less trivial utterances of individuals continued to the last and formed an increasing portion of inquisitorial business as Judaism gradually disappeared. How the people were still taught to keep a watch over their fellows is exhibited in the case of Manuel Ribes, of Valencia, in 1798. He was a boy only nine years of age, attending a primary school, who was denounced by a fellow-pupil for an heretical expression. That the case was seriously considered is inferable from the fact that it was suspended, not dismissed, and remained of record against the child in case of future offences. How keen, moreover, was the inquisitorial eye to discern peril to the faith, is visible in the prosecution at Murcia, in 1801, of Don Ramon Rubin de Celis y Noriega, a dignitary of the cathedral of Cartagena and rector of the conciliar seminary, for a proposition concealed in his printed plan for instruction in Latin.[376]

[Sidenote: _RELIGION AND POLITICS_]

Under such impulses it is not a matter for surprise that, in this later period "propositions" furnished half the business of the tribunals. In the register compiled in Valencia of all the cases tried in Spain, after 1780 until the suppression of the Inquisition in 1820, the aggregate is 6569 cases, out of which 3026, or not far from one-half, are designated as for propositions. Of these latter 748 are noted as suspended or laid aside in Valencia, leaving 2278 carried on through trial. Of the 3543 cases for other offences, 1469, as we have seen, were for solicitation, leaving only 2074 as the total number for the miscellaneous business of the tribunals. Those accused for propositions represent every sphere of life, but a larger portion than of old belong to the educated classes--clerics, professional men, officers of the army, municipal officials, professors in colleges and the like.[377]

That this class of business should increase was natural in view of the infiltration of the irreligious philosophy and liberal ideas of the later eighteenth century, which escaped the censorship and watchfulness at the ports. The Napoleonic war poured a flood of this upon the land, traversed in almost every part by armies, whether hostile like the French or heretic allies like the English. After the Restoration, the duty of the Inquisition was largely the extirpation of these seeds of evil in a political as well as a spiritual sense, and propositions _antipoliticas_, as we shall see, were as freely subject to its jurisdiction as the _irreligiosas_. The punishments inflicted were not usually severe, but the trial itself was a sufficient penalty, for the accused was thrown into the secret prison during the dilatory progress of his case, his property was embargoed and his career was ruined, while in most cases he was subsequently kept under strict surveillance, for which the inquisitorial organization furnished special facilities.

As a typical case it will suffice to allude to that of two merchants of Cádiz, Julian Borrego and Miguel Villaviciosa, sentenced in 1818 by the Seville tribunal, for "propositions and blasphemies," to abjure _de vehementi_ and to ten years' exile from Cádiz, Seville and Madrid, including service in a presidio. In consideration, it is said, of the extraordinarily long imprisonment which they had endured, the service of the former was only to be four years in Ceuta and of the latter six years in Melilla. As was so frequently the case at this time, the Suprema interposed in favor of leniency and reduced the term to presidio for both to two years. They were married men; the trial and sentence virtually meant ruin, and probably influence was exerted in their behalf for, after six months, the Suprema allowed them to return to Spain to support their families.[378]

What was the precise nature of the propositions the record does not inform us, but, had the offence been political, it is improbable that this mercy would have been shown. If it were religious, it may have been the deliberate expression of erroneous belief, or a hasty ejaculation called forth by an ebullition of wrath for, as of old the Inquisition took cognizance of everything and, in its awe-inspiring fashion, undertook to discipline the manners as well as the faith of the people. In 1819, the sentence of Bartolomé López of Córdova, for propositions, warns him on the consequences of his unbridled passion for gambling and lust, which had caused his offence, and, in another case, the culprit's inconsiderate utterances are ascribed to his quarrels with his wife, with whom he is urged to reconcile himself.[379]

* * * * *

Thus to the last the Inquisition, in small things as in great, sought to control the thoughts and the speech of all men and to make every Spaniard feel that he was at the mercy of an invisible power which, at any moment, might call him to account and might blast him for life.