“covered with red leather, and studded with nails well-gilt,” he obtains
six hundred marks from the Jews Rachel and Vidas. They are not to open
the chests for a year. On the wall in the cloister of the Cathedral at
Burgos still hangs an ancient chest known as the _Cofre del Cid_. Thus
furnished, the Cid leaves Castille, and he prays solemnly to God and the
glorious Saint Mary, “for here I leave Castille, since the King is wrath
with me, and I know not if in all my days I shall enter it again.” He
takes leave of his wife and children at the Convent of San Pedro de
Cardeña, and, after early Mass said by the Abbot Don Sancho, departs,
wistfully turning his head to look back. Doña Jimena, his wife, prays
for his safety to the “glorious Lord the Father, who madest Heaven and
Earth, and thirdly, the sea, who madest stars and moon and the sun to
give heat.” Already men were flocking to the Cid’s banner, and his first
exploit is the capture of the town of Castejon. He lies in ambush before
it: “The dawn is breaking, and morning was at hand. The sun went forth,
Heavens! how beautiful it rose. In Castejon all were awaking. They open
the gates, and quickly went forth to see their work in the fields and
their possessions.” When they were all gone forth, the Cid took the
town. The next town, Alcocer, he also captures by a wile. “The news
grieves those of Teca, the men of Teruel it does not please; it pleases
not the men of Calatayud.” A host of Moors besieges the Cid in Alcocer,
and after three weeks, the provisions failing, he goes forth and gains a
great victory. At the sound of the drums of the Moorish host “the earth
was like to crack.” He pursues the enemy to the walls of Calatayud.
_Fata Calatayuth duró el segudar._ He sends Alvar Fáñez to _Castiella la
gentil_ with a present of thirty horses for King Alfonso and money for
Doña Jimena, and for a thousand masses at Santa María de Burgos.
Zaragoza agrees to pay tribute to the Cid. Don Remont Berenger, Count of
Barcelona, goes out against him, and persists in coming to an
engagement, though the Cid sends him a message: “I have nothing of his,
bid him let me go in peace.” The result is a crushing defeat of the
“army of the Franks,” and the Count is taken prisoner. The account of
his captivity is entertaining. The Count refuses all food: “‘I will not
eat a mouthful for all there is in Spain. I will rather die (lit. lose
my body and leave my soul) since such ill-equipped men have beaten me in
battle.’ You will hear what said my Cid Ruy Diaz: ‘Eat, Count, of this
bread and drink this wine; if you do as I say you shall be free, if not
in all your days you shall not see Christian land.’” The Count eats
nothing for three days: “They dividing these great spoils cannot make
him eat a piece of bread.” Then the Cid renews his promise to give him
liberty: “But of what you have lost and I won in the field know that I
will not give you any part, but what you have lost I will not give you,
for I have need of it for me and for my vassals, and will not give it
you.” At length the Count yields. “The Count is eating, Heavens! with
what good will. Over against him sat he who was born in happy hour: ‘If
you eat not well, Count, and I am not satisfied, here we shall remain,
we shall not part.’... The Cid, who is watching him, is satisfied, so
quickly did Count Remont move his hands,” and he escorts him on his way.
The Count takes his leave and “goes turning his head and looking back;
with fear he went that the Cid will repent, that which he would not do
for all that is in the world.” Fresh victories follow. The Cid carries
the war “over against the salt sea” and takes among other towns
Murviedro (the old Saguntum and modern Sagunto). Here he is besieged by
the Valencians, but sallies forth and defeats them. _Fata Valencia duró
el segudar._ For three years he continues to wage war and take towns.
“The fame of my Cid, know well, is noised abroad.” “The inhabitants of
Valencia know not what to do. From no quarter came bread, father and son
are without counsel, friend cannot comfort friend. A bad thing, Sirs, it
is to have a lack of bread.” After a siege of nine months the Cid takes
Valencia. He establishes a Christian bishopric in his new town, and
sends a present of a hundred horses to King Alfonso. Alvar Fáñez on his
return escorts Doña Jimena and her daughters Elvira and Sol to Valencia.
The Cid bids them welcome to the city: “‘You, loved and honoured wife,
and both my daughters, my heart and my soul, enter with me the city of
Valencia, the possession that I have won you.’ Mother and daughters
kissed his hands, with such honour entered they Valencia. My Cid went
with them to the Citadel: he led them up to the highest part. Velvet
eyes glance on all sides. They look at Valencia, how the city lies, and
on the other side they have the sea. They look on the plain, luxuriant,
and large. They raise their hands to pray to God. So glad is my Cid and
his companions for this good and great spoil. The winter is departing,
and March is about to come in....” The Moorish King Jucef, with “fifty
times a thousand” Moors, comes up against the Cid, but is defeated with
great slaughter. “There escaped not more than a hundred and four.” A
fresh present of two hundred horses is sent to King Alfonso. The Counts
of Carrión now determine to ask for the Cid’s daughters in marriage, and
the King proposes an interview with the Cid “above the Tagus, which is a
principal river.” The marriage is arranged, and the Counts return with
the Cid to Valencia, where the wedding festivities last a full
fortnight. The guests depart laden with presents from the Cid. “Rich
return to Castille those who had come to the wedding.” And here there is
a very definite division in the poem. “The verses of this song have here
an ending. May the Creator be with you and all his Saints” (lines, 2286,
7). The remainder of the poem tells of the treachery and punishment of
the Counts of Carrión. It begins with the incident of the lion. A lion
that was kept in the court of the Cid’s house escaped one day as the Cid
lay asleep. His trusty followers drew round him to keep him from harm,
but of the Counts of Carrión one scrambled under the Cid’s bench, the
other ran out by the door crying: “I shall not see Carrión,” and hid
behind the beam of a wine-press, so that his cloak and doublet were all
soiled. The Cid, having cowed the lion, “asked for his sons-in-law, but
found them not. They call aloud for them, but none answers. When they
found them and they came, they came all pale. You have not seen such
jests as went about the Court. My Cid the Campeador ordered that they
should cease.” Further events showed the small spirit and treachery of
the Cid’s sons-in-law, and his daughters are ultimately betrothed to
nobler men, the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon. The poem, as we have it,
ends with a prayer that God may give Paradise to him who wrote (_i.e._
copied) it, and with a request for money or a glass of wine for its
reciters: “Dat nos del vino si non tenedes dineros.”
XVIII
A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION
I.--NOVEDADES
The poetry of Luis de León is not voluminous; he has no great variety of
theme; he sings “the quiet life of him who shuns the world’s uproar;”
but there is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not
exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de León stands in the front of
Spanish literature, as a writer of eloquent and well-moulded Castilian
prose he has had few equals. His “Nombres de Cristo” is one of the
masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences are perhaps
occasionally too prolix, lengthening out in a rich profusion of words
and images. He had, as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in
similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his style a colour and a
sound which rank him among the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as
a writer Luis de León is too well known to need comment. And to himself
his literary works were of a secondary importance, and held a
subordinate place in his strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of
a well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he was sent by his father
at the age of fourteen to the University of Salamanca with the advice to
“follow the common opinion in letters, _que siguiese la opinión comun en
las letras_.” The precept was not unneeded in that age, for the
Reformation had unhinged men’s beliefs and left them a prey to many
fears. Intolerance on the side of reformers was answered by fresh
intolerance. In Spain one might least expect any dissent from the
accepted religion. Even in Spain, however, the general ferment of the
rest of Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and inquiry had
penetrated to the Spanish Universities, and men’s minds were opening to
new lines of thought. There was indeed ample scope for reform.
Scholasticism had become a dry and stilted system, well qualified to
call down ridicule on all learning. Its professors delighted in
hairsplitting and quibbles. Luis de León speaks with a scathing sarcasm
of the type of professor who said that he was ... “content with a
knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints ... and had no wish for any new
learning (_novedades_);” of those who “flatter themselves and fancy
that, because they have in their rooms a score of books covered with
dust, and have obtained the degree of master of arts, they have well
earned the name of men of letters, and may for the rest give themselves
up quite securely to sleep and good living ... and they consider that
the mere fact of having the books and dipping into some part of them
once a year bestows on them a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints.”
But the new spirit of inquiry and reform led those who belonged to the
old school to fence themselves the more closely with narrow and bigoted
beliefs, to cling to conventionalities of dogma, and to cry out on the
most innocent innovations. Violent attacks on Scholasticism had the
effect of showing more moderate attempts at reform in an odious light.
Suspicions were everywhere rife, and it required no little care to avoid
the accusation of being anxious for “new things.” The highest
ecclesiastics were not exempt from attack. Carranza, the Archbishop of
Toledo, had spent a certain number of years in England. In 1556 he had
visited Oxford and found it Catholic, _la encontró católica_, but in the
following year at Cambridge he burnt many heretical books and English
Bibles. On his return to Spain he was thought to have been contaminated
by contact with so many heretics, though he boasted that he had done
more than any other in discovering them.
II.--SALAMANCA UNIVERSITY
In the Universities especially accusations of every kind hung fire over
men marked out by their position or abilities. The University of
Salamanca had always been eminently conservative. Popes and Kings were
anxious for its welfare. Philip II. saw in the University a stronghold
of religion and loyalty. Pedro Chacon tells how “in the year 1560, on
the return of our sovereign Don Philip to Spain after an absence of
several years spent in reducing and governing the kingdom of England, he
at once confirmed all the privileges which the University had received
from his predecessors.” He intervened personally in the general affairs
and particular disputes of the University, and seems to have considered
no trouble too great to preserve the ancient purity of its opinions.
Luis de León became deeply attached to the University, “the light,” as
he said, “not of Spain only, but of all Europe,” and to Salamanca as
student and professor he devoted his entire life. He entered the
Augustinian order a few months after arriving at Salamanca, and by so
doing renounced a very considerable income which he would otherwise have
inherited as his father’s eldest son. His success was rapid. He obtained
the chair of philosophy, and afterwards that of theology, and this
latter chair he still held when he was arrested in the beginning of 1572
and detained for nearly five years in the prison of the Inquisition at
Valladolid. The most serious charges against him were that he had
translated the Song of Solomon into the vulgar tongue, and that he had
depreciated the authority of the Vulgate. But it was a question
primarily between two schools of thought in the University, between the
rival Greek and Hebrew scholars, between the members of the order of St.
Dominic and the members of the order of St. Augustine, and the case only
came under the authority of the Inquisition through the denunciations of
Luis de León’s enemies, such as León de Castro. León de Castro was a
professor of the old school. He was an excellent Latin and Greek
scholar, and was possessed of great energy and perseverance. By his
learning, and partly by sheer force of character, he had won a position
of high authority in the University, and he guarded his authority with a
jealous care. Intolerant of opposition, he sought to crush all who by
their talents or popularity might throw him into the shade. He wished to
reign supreme. He was easily roused to such a pitch of anger that he
lost all control of himself; “when engaged in a dispute,” says Luis de
León, “he does not know what he is doing or saying.” He was hasty in his
judgment of men and opinions, and supplied deficiencies in his own
knowledge by a fierce positiveness. It is said that if he found an
opinion in the work of a saint or philosopher, he would at once say,
“This is the opinion of all the saints, of all the philosophers.” To him
the Vulgate was the final and irrefragable authority, and he opposed
with the utmost vigour those scholars who went back to the Hebrew
original. Such Hebrew scholars he called “Jews,” a name that smelt of
fire in that age. (Against Luis de León the accusation was actually
brought of being a Jew, and descended from Jews.) If it was shown that
the Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate, Castro answered that the
Hebrew text had been altered by the “Jews” since the translation had
been made. His position was thus impregnable. He would listen to no
arguments, but shouted down his opponents. In a narrow age he might
persuade himself that in thus asserting his opinions he was doing good
service to the Church. His influence was without doubt great, and it
needed no little courage to oppose him. Luis de León, however, was not a
man to lie flat and love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature, even
to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness for reform was not
afraid of making enemies. When he took his degree he attacked certain
abuses in a Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another occasion
he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with the heresies of their order,
and the thrust seems to have gone home, for he himself says that they
felt it keenly, “_sintieronse fieramente_.” Above all, he had no
sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was impossible that two men
of characters so different should not come into collision, and in fact
the discussions between professors were often marked by boisterous
disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling and discourtesy that sometimes
strangely enough creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one
occasion Luis de León threatened to have Castro’s book--a commentary on
Isaiah--burnt by the Inquisition. On this book Castro had spent much
trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to the quick, so that he
answered that he would have Luis de León himself burnt. And such threats
were not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an idle hour. That
Luis de León had many malignant enemies was amply shown at his trial.
III.--IN A VALLADOLID DUNGEON.
The order of imprisonment was issued on the 26th of February, 1572. His
goods were to be confiscated with the exception of a bed and forty
ducats to provide for his food in prison. He was to be seized, wherever
found, “in church, monastery, or other sacred place,” and he was to
bring with him nothing but clothes and linen. A curious clause adds that
“beasts of burden to carry him and his bed, etc., are to be provided at
the customary price, and the price is not to be raised.” He was thus
arrested and conducted to Valladolid. The following description of the
prison is given in the trial of Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, who had
been confined there some ten years before. “The prison consisted of two
rooms, one for him and one for two servants. They were so remote that
the Archbishop heard nothing of a fire which broke out on the 21st of
September, 1561, and, lasting for a day and a half, consumed more than
four hundred houses, some of them close to the secret prison. The stench
was so intolerable that they were obliged at times to beg that the doors
might be opened, or they would be suffocated. The infection of the place
rendered both master and servants seriously ill, and the doctors of the
Holy Office reported that it was indispensable to bathe the apartment in
pure air morning and evening. In consequence the Inquisitors arranged
that a grating should be made in the door, a device which the Archbishop
scorned as adding insult to injury. The rooms were not swept ... the
shutters of the windows were kept closed, and on some days the
Archbishop had to light a candle at nine in the morning. The food was
brought on broken plates; the sheets served as table-cloth....” In a
letter written to Philip II., after two years of imprisonment, the
Archbishop says, “I fear and expect death daily, and to this end my
treatment seems to have been directed ever since I came here.” The loss
of sun and light, and the actual dirtiness and horror of the place must
have been utterly repulsive to a man of Luis de León’s temperament. In
one of his writings, “La Perfecta Casada,” he says, “Is not cleanliness
the fountain head of beauty--the first and greater part of it?” He loved
the open air, and was wont to regret the loss of liberty which even his
duties as professor at Salamanca entailed. But to the actual and severe
hardships to be undergone there was added, for the devout Catholic, the
more subtle and indefinite torture of the mind. For he could not be
certain that by some involuntary sin he had not incurred degradation in
this life, and punishment unceasing in the next, and in the loneliness
and gloom of the prison these doubts would often recur. Luis de León
acknowledged the full authority of the Inquisition, and his unqualified
submission was not forced or hypocritical, but the fruit of a sincere
conviction. The extreme clearness of his intellect was his safeguard,
and, though he bowed himself in all things to the will of the Church, he
was well assured of his own innocence. Shortly after his arrest he drew
up a profession of faith, declaring that he lived and died “now and in
the future in the faith and belief of the Holy Catholic Church, and
confessing his sins _con entrañable dolor_.” His defence was conducted
throughout in a masterly way. During these five years of suffering he
showed a fine sincerity and a clearness of argument that remind one very
strongly of Pascal. Never was his style more trenchant and lucid, his
reasoning more subtle than in the numerous “Unpublished Documents” that
have come down to us. On no occasion was the patience and humility of
the man more clearly shown. It is a strange reflection that many of
these documents, in accordance with the secrecy of the Inquisition’s
proceedings, were kept hidden from Luis de León himself, and that he
probably never knew, as we know, that he came within a little of being
examined upon the rack. In spite of his ingenious and elaborate defence,
Luis de León’s trial was a long one, and one must shudder to think of
the sufferings and despair of men of weaker metal and less subtle
intellect, such as his intimate friend Grajal, who died in prison. The
Inquisition proceeded as usual in an extremely slow and thorough
fashion. “_Recato y secreto_,” caution and secrecy, were indeed its
watchwords. Witnesses concerning Luis de León’s case were examined in
many parts of Spain, and even at Cuzco, in Peru. It were easy to declaim
against the cruelty and tyranny of the Inquisition, but on closer view
it would seem unjust to lay the blame entirely at its door. The times,
as we have noted, called for the utmost vigilance on the part of the
upholders of the true and Catholic faith. They might hold themselves
bound to investigate with unwearied diligence the most trifling disputes
concerning the doctrine of the Church. Already unorthodox books had been
filtering into Spain. A translation of the Psalms had been received at
Cadiz, and one man alone, a kind of sixteenth-century Borrow, had
brought two bales of heretical books to Seville. The life of the
bookseller was rendered anxious and difficult by such proceedings. In a
letter to the Inquisitors of Valladolid we read: “The booksellers of
this town (Salamanca) have received and continue daily to receive bales
of books from France and other parts. These they dare not open for sale
without permission.” The evil must be stopped before it spread contagion
through the country. It may be argued plausibly that the firmness of the
Inquisition saved Spain from the religious dissensions that raged so
fiercely in France, Germany, and England, nor may it be forgotten that
the centuries of the Inquisition’s most rigorous power were the
centuries of Spain’s greatest literary glory.