PROTESTANTISM IN SPAIN.
Philip's Arrival in Spain.--The Reformed Doctrines.--Their
Suppression.--Autos da Fé.--Prosecution of Carranza.--Extinction of
Heresy.--Fanaticism of the Spaniards.
1559.
The voyage of King Philip was a short and prosperous one. On the
twenty-ninth of August, 1559, he arrived off the port of Laredo. But
while he was in sight of land, the weather, which had been so
propitious, suddenly changed. A furious tempest arose, which scattered
his little navy. Nine of the vessels foundered, and though the monarch
had the good fortune, under the care of an experienced pilot, to make
his escape in a boat, and reach the shore in safety, he had the
mortification to see the ship which had borne him go down with the rest,
and with her the inestimable cargo he had brought from the Low
Countries. It consisted of curious furniture, tapestries, gems, pieces
of sculpture, and paintings,--the rich productions of Flemish and
Italian art, which his father, the emperor, had been employed many years
of his life in collecting. Truly was it said of Charles, that "he had
sacked the land only to feed the ocean."[432] To add to the calamity,
more than a thousand persons perished in this shipwreck.[433]
The king, without delay, took the road to Valladolid; but on arriving at
that capital, whether depressed by his late disaster, or from his
habitual dislike of such empty parade, he declined the honors, with
which the loyal inhabitants would have greeted the return of their
sovereign to his dominions. Here he was cordially welcomed by his
sister, the Regent Joanna, who, long since weary of the cares of
sovereignty, resigned the sceptre into his hands, with a better will
than that with which most persons would have received it. Here, too, he
had the satisfaction of embracing his son Carlos, the heir to his
empire. The length of Philip's absence may have allowed him to see some
favorable change in the person of the young prince, though, if report be
true, there was little change for the better in his disposition, which,
headstrong and imperious, had already begun to make men tremble for the
future destinies of their country.
Philip had not been many days in Valladolid when his presence was
celebrated by one of those exhibitions, which, unhappily for Spain,
maybe called national. This was an _auto da fé_, not, however, as
formerly, of Jews and Moors, but of Spanish Protestants. The Reformation
had been silently, but not slowly, advancing in the Peninsula; and
intelligence of this, as we have already seen, was one cause of Philip's
abrupt departure from the Netherlands. The brief but disastrous attempt
at a religious revolution in Spain is an event of too much importance to
be passed over in silence by the historian.
[Sidenote: THE REFORMED DOCTRINES.]
Notwithstanding the remote position of Spain, under the imperial sceptre
of Charles she was brought too closely into contact with the other
states of Europe not to feel the shock of the great religious reform
which was shaking those states to their foundations. Her most intimate
relations, indeed, were with those very countries in which the seeds of
the Reformation were first planted. It was no uncommon thing for
Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, to be indebted for some portion of
their instruction to German universities. Men of learning, who
accompanied the emperor, became familiar with the religious doctrines so
widely circulated in Germany and Flanders. The troops gathered the same
doctrines from the Lutheran soldiers, who occasionally served with them
under the imperial banners. These opinions, crude for the most part as
they were, they brought back to their own country; and a curiosity was
roused which prepared the mind for the reception of the great truths
which were quickening the other nations of Europe. Men of higher
education, on their return to Spain, found the means of disseminating
these truths. Secret societies were established; meetings were held;
and, with the same secrecy as in the days of the early Christians, the
Gospel was preached and explained to the growing congregation of the
faithful. The greatest difficulty was the want of books. The enterprise
of a few self-devoted proselytes at length overcame this difficulty.
A Castilian version of the Bible had been printed in Germany. Various
Protestant publications, whether originating in the Castilian or
translated into that language, appeared in the same country. A copy, now
and then, in the possession of some private individual, had found its
way, without detection, across the Pyrenees. These instances were rare,
when a Spaniard named Juan Hernandez, resident in Geneva, where he
followed the business of a corrector of the press, undertook, from no
other motive but zeal for the truth, to introduce a larger supply of the
forbidden fruit into his native land.
With great adroitness, he evaded the vigilance of the custom-house
officers, and the more vigilant spies of the Inquisition, and in the end
succeeded in landing two large casks filled with prohibited works, which
were quickly distributed among the members of the infant church. Other
intrepid converts followed the example of Hernandez, and with similar
success; so that, with the aid of books and spiritual teachers, the
number of the faithful multiplied daily throughout the country.[434]
Among this number was a much larger proportion, it was observed, of
persons of rank and education than is usually found in like cases; owing
doubtless to the circumstance that it was this class of persons who had
most frequented the countries where the Lutheran doctrines were taught.
Thus the Reformed Church grew and prospered, not indeed as it had
prospered in the freer atmospheres of Germany and Britain, but as well
as it could possibly do under the blighting influence of the
Inquisition; like some tender plant, which, nurtured in the shade, waits
only for a more genial season for its full expansion. That season was
not in reserve for it in Spain.
It may seem strange that the spread of the Reformed religion should so
long have escaped the detection of the agents of the Holy Office. Yet it
is certain that the first notice which the Spanish inquisitors received
of the fact was from their brethren abroad. Some ecclesiastics in the
train of Philip, suspecting the heresy of several of their own
countrymen in the Netherlands, had them seized and sent to Spain, to be
examined by the Inquisition. On a closer investigation, it was found
that a correspondence had long been maintained between these persons and
their countrymen, of a similar persuasion with themselves, at home. Thus
the existence, though not the extent, of the Spanish Reformation was
made known.[435]
No sooner was the alarm sounded, than Paul the Fourth, quick to follow
up the scent of heresy in any quarter of his pontifical dominions,
issued a brief, in February, 1558, addressed to the Spanish
inquisitor-general. In this brief, his holiness enjoins it on the head
of the tribunal to spare no efforts to detect and exterminate the
growing evil; and he empowers that functionary to arraign and bring to
condign punishment all suspected of heresy, of whatever rank or
profession,--whether bishops or archbishops, nobles, kings, or emperors.
Paul the Fourth was fond of contemplating himself as seated in the chair
of the Innocents and the Gregories, and like them setting his pontifical
foot on the necks of princes. His natural arrogance was probably not
diminished by the concessions which Philip the Second had thought proper
to make to him at the close of the Roman war.
Philip, far from taking umbrage at the swelling tone of this apostolical
mandate, followed it up, in the same year, by a monstrous edict,
borrowed from one in the Netherlands, which condemned all who bought,
sold, or read prohibited works to be burned alive.
In the following January, Paul, to give greater efficacy to this edict,
published another bull, in which he commanded all confessors, under pain
of excommunication, to enjoin on their penitents to inform against all
persons, however nearly allied to them, who might be guilty of such
practices. To quicken the zeal of the informer, Philip, on his part,
revived a law fallen somewhat into disuse, by which the accuser was to
receive one fourth of the confiscated property of the convicted party.
And finally, a third bull from Paul allowed the inquisitors to withhold
a pardon from the recanting heretic, if any doubt existed of his
sincerity; thus placing the life as well as fortune of the unhappy
prisoner entirely at the mercy of judges who had an obvious interest in
finding him guilty. In this way the pope and the king continued to play
into each other's hands, and while his holiness artfully spread the
toils, the king devised the means for driving the quarry into them.[436]
Fortunately for these plans, the Inquisition was at this time under the
direction of a man peculiarly fitted to execute them. This was Fernando
Valdés, cardinal-archbishop of Seville, a person of a hard, inexorable
nature, and possessed of as large a measure of fanaticism as ever fell
to a grand-inquisitor since the days of Torquemada. Valdés readily
availed himself of the terrible machinery placed under his control.
Careful not to alarm the suspected parties, his approaches were slow and
stealthy. He was the chief of a tribunal which sat in darkness, and
which dealt by invisible agents. He worked long and silently under
ground before firing the mine which was to bury his enemies in a general
ruin.
[Sidenote: SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORM.]
His spies were everywhere abroad, mingling with the suspected, and
insinuating themselves into their confidence. At length, by the
treachery of some, and by working on the nervous apprehensions or the
religions scruples of others, he succeeded in detecting the
lurking-places of the new heresy, and the extent of ground which it
covered. This was much larger than had been imagined, although the
Reformation in Spain seemed less formidable from the number of its
proselytes than from their character and position. Many of them were
ecclesiastics, especially intrusted with maintaining the purity of the
faith. The quarters in which the heretical doctrines most prevailed were
Aragon, which held an easy communication with the Huguenots of France,
and the ancient cities of Seville and Valladolid, indebted less to any
local advantages than to the influence of a few eminent men, who had
early embraced the faith of the Reformers.
At length, the preliminary information having been obtained, the
proscribed having been marked out, the plan of attack settled, an order
was given for the simultaneous arrest of all persons suspected of
heresy, throughout the kingdom. It fell like a thunderbolt on the
unhappy victims, who had gone on with their secret associations, little
suspecting the ruin that hung over them. No resistance was attempted.
Men and women, churchmen and laymen, persons of all ranks and
professions, were hurried from their homes, and lodged in the secret
chambers of the Inquisition. Yet these could not furnish accommodations
for the number, and many were removed to the ordinary prisons, and even
to convents and private dwellings. In Seville alone eight hundred were
arrested on the first day. Fears were entertained of an attempt at
rescue, and an additional guard was stationed over the places of
confinement. The inquisitors were in the condition of a fisherman whose
cast has been so successful that the draught of fishes seems likely to
prove too heavy for his net.[437]
The arrest of one party gradually led to the detection of others.
Dragged from his solitary dungeon before the secret tribunal of the
Inquisition, alone, without counsel to aid or one friendly face to cheer
him, without knowing the name of his accuser, without being allowed to
confront the witnesses who were there to swear away his life, without
even a sight of his own process, except such garbled extracts as the
wily judges thought fit to communicate, is it strange that the unhappy
victim, in his perplexity and distress, should have been drawn into
disclosures fatal to his associates and himself? If these disclosures
were not to the mind of his judges, they had only to try the efficacy of
the torture,--the rack, the cord, and the pulley,--until, when every
joint had been wrenched from its socket, the barbarous tribunal was
compelled to suspend, not terminate, the application, from the inability
of the sufferer to endure it. Such were the dismal scenes enacted in the
name of religion, and by the ministers of religion, as well as of the
Inquisition,--scenes to which few of those who had once witnessed them,
and escaped with life, dared ever to allude. For to reveal the secrets
of the Inquisition was death.[438]
At the expiration of eighteen months from the period of the first
arrests, many of the trials had been concluded, the doom of the
prisoners was sealed, and it was thought time that the prisons should
disgorge their superfluous inmates. Valladolid was selected as the
theatre of the first _auto da fé_, both from the importance of the
capital and the presence of the court, which would thus sanction and
give greater dignity to the celebration. This event took place in May,
1559. The Regent Joanna, the young prince of the Asturias, Don Carlos,
and the principal grandees of the court, were there to witness the
spectacle. By rendering the heir of the crown thus early familiar with
the tender mercies of the Holy Office, it may have been intended to
conciliate his favor to that institution. If such was the object,
according to the report it signally failed, since the woeful spectacle
left no other impressions on the mind of the prince than those of
indignation and disgust.
The example of Valladolid was soon followed by _autos da fé_ in Granada,
Toledo, Seville, Barcelona,--in short, in the twelve capitals in which
tribunals of the Holy Office were established. A second celebration at
Valladolid was reserved for the eighth of October in the same year, when
it would be graced by the presence of the sovereign himself. Indeed, as
several of the processes had been concluded some months before this
period, there is reason to believe that the sacrifice of more than one
of the victims had been postponed, in order to give greater effect to
the spectacle.[439]
The _auto da fé_--"act of faith"--was the most imposing, as it was the
most awful, of the solemnities authorized by the Roman Catholic Church.
It was intended, somewhat profanely, as has been intimated, to combine
the pomp of the Roman triumph with the terrors of the day of
judgment.[440] It may remind one quite as much of those bloody festivals
prepared for the entertainment of the Cæsars in the Colisæum. The
religions import of the _auto da fé_ was intimated by the circumstance
of its being celebrated on a Sunday, or some other holiday of the
Church. An indulgence for forty days was granted by his holiness to all
who should be present at the spectacle; as if the appetite for
witnessing the scenes of human suffering required to be stimulated by a
bounty; that too in Spain, where the amusements were, and still are, of
the most sanguinary character.
The scene for this second _auto da fé_ at Valladolid was the great
square in front of the church of St. Francis. At one end a platform was
raised, covered with rich carpeting, on which were ranged the seats of
the inquisitors, emblazoned with the arms of the Holy Office. Near to
this was the royal gallery, a private entrance to which secured the
inmates from molestation by the crowd. Opposite to this gallery a large
scaffold was erected, so as to be visible from all parts of the arena,
and was appropriated to the unhappy martyrs who were to suffer in the
_auto_.
At six in the morning all the bells in the capital began to toll, and a
solemn procession was seen to move from the dismal fortress of the
Inquisition. In the van marched a body of troops, to secure a free
passage for the procession. Then came the condemned, each attended by
two familiars of the Holy Office, and those who were to suffer at the
stake by two friars, in addition, exhorting the heretic to abjure his
errors. Those admitted to penitence wore a sable dress; while the
unfortunate martyr was enveloped in a loose sack of yellow cloth,--the
_san benito_,--with his head surmounted by a cap of pasteboard of a
conical form, which, together with the cloak, was embroidered with
figures of flames and of devils fanning and feeding them; all
emblematical of the destiny of the heretic's soul in the world to come,
as well as of his body in the present. Then came the magistrates of the
city, the judges of the courts, the ecclesiastical orders, and the
nobles of the land on horseback. These were followed by the members of
the dread tribunal, and the fiscal, bearing a standard of crimson
damask, on one side of which were displayed the arms of the Inquisition,
and on the other the insignia of its founders, Sixtus the Fifth and
Ferdinand the Catholic. Next came a numerous train of familiars, well
mounted, among whom were many gentry of the province, proud to act as
the body-guard of the Holy Office. The rear was brought up by an immense
concourse of the common people, stimulated on the present occasion, no
doubt, by the loyal desire to see their new sovereign, as well as by the
ambition to share in the triumphs of the _auto da fé_. The number thus
drawn together from the capital and the country, far exceeding what was
usual on such occasions, is estimated by one present at full two hundred
thousand.[441]
[Sidenote: AUTOS DA FE.]
As the multitude defiled into the square, the inquisitors took their
place on the seats prepared for their reception. The condemned were
conducted to the scaffold, and the royal station was occupied by Philip,
with the different members of his household. At his side sat his sister,
the late regent, his son, Don Carlos, his nephew, Alexander Farnese,
several foreign ambassadors, and the principal grandees and higher
ecclesiastics in attendance on the court. It was an august assembly of
the greatest and the proudest in the land. But the most indifferent
spectator, who had a spark of humanity in his bosom, might have turned
with feelings of admiration from this array of worldly power, to the
poor martyr, who, with no support but what he drew from within, was
prepared to defy this power, and to lay down his life in vindication of
the rights of conscience. Some there may have been, in that large
concourse, who shared in these sentiments. But their number was small
indeed in comparison with those who looked on the wretched victim as the
enemy of God, and his approaching sacrifice as the most glorious triumph
of the Cross.
The ceremonies began with a sermon, "the sermon of the faith," by the
bishop of Zamora. The subject of it may well be guessed, from the
occasion. It was no doubt plentifully larded with texts of Scripture,
and, unless the preacher departed from the fashion of the time, with
passages from the heathen writers, however much out of place they may
seem in an orthodox discourse.
When the bishop had concluded, the grand-inquisitor administered an oath
to the assembled multitude, who on their knees solemnly swore to defend
the Inquisition, to maintain the purity of the faith, and to inform
against any one who should swerve from it. As Philip repeated an oath of
similar import, he suited the action to the word, and, rising from his
seat, drew his sword from its scabbard, as if to announce himself the
determined champion of the Holy Office. In the earlier _autos_ of the
Moorish and Jewish infidels, so humiliating an oath had never been
exacted from the sovereign.
After this, the secretary of the tribunal read aloud an instrument
reciting the grounds for the conviction of the prisoners, and the
respective sentences pronounced against them. Those who were to be
admitted to penitence, each, as his sentence was proclaimed, knelt down,
and, with his hands on the missal, solemnly abjured his errors, and was
absolved by the grand-inquisitor. The absolution, however, was not so
entire as to relieve the offender from the penalty of his transgressions
in this world. Some were doomed to perpetual imprisonment in the cells
of the Inquisition, others to lighter penances. All were doomed to the
confiscation of their property,--a point of too great moment to the
welfare of the tribunal ever to be omitted. Besides this, in many cases
the offender, and, by a glaring perversion of justice, his immediate
descendants, were rendered for ever ineligible to public office of any
kind, and their names branded with perpetual infamy. Thus blighted in
fortune and in character, they were said, in the soft language of the
Inquisition, to be _reconciled_.
As these unfortunate persons were remanded, under a strong guard, to
their prisons, all eyes were turned on the little company of martyrs,
who, clothed in the ignominious garb of the _san benito_, stood waiting
the sentence of the judges,--with cords round their necks, and in their
hands a cross, or sometimes an inverted torch, typical of their own
speedy dissolution. The interest of the spectators was still further
excited, in the present instance, by the fact that several of these
victims were not only illustrious for their rank, but yet more so for
their talents and virtues. In their haggard looks, their emaciated
forms, and too often, alas! their distorted limbs, it was easy to read
the story of their sufferings in their long imprisonment, for some of
them had been confined in the dark cells of the Inquisition much more
than a year. Yet their countenances, though haggard, far from showing
any sign of weakness or fear, were lighted up with a glow of holy
enthusiasm, as of men prepared to seal their testimony with their blood.
When that part of the process showing the grounds of their conviction
had been read, the grand-inquisitor consigned them to the hands of the
corregidor of the city, beseeching him to deal with the prisoners _in
all kindness and mercy_;[442] a honeyed, but most hypocritical phrase,
since no choice was left to the civil magistrate, but to execute the
terrible sentence of the law against heretics, the preparations for
which had been made by him a week before.[443]
The whole number of convicts amounted to thirty, of whom sixteen were
_reconciled_, and the remainder _relaxed_ to the secular arm,--in other
words, turned over to the civil magistrate for execution. There were few
of those thus condemned who, when brought to the stake, did not so far
shrink from the dreadful doom that awaited them as to consent to
purchase a commutation of it by confession before they died; in which
case they were strangled by the _garrote_, before their bodies were
thrown into the flames.
Of the present number there were only two whose constancy triumphed to
the last over the dread of suffering, and who refused to purchase any
mitigation of it by a compromise with conscience. The names of these
martyrs should be engraven on the record of history.
One of them was Don Carlos de Seso, a noble Florentine, who had stood
high in the favor of Charles the Fifth. Being united with a lady of rank
in Castile, he removed to that country, and took up his residence in
Valladolid. He had become a convert to the Lutheran doctrines, which he
first communicated to his own family, and afterwards showed equal zeal
in propagating among the people of Valladolid and its neighborhood. In
short, there was no man to whose untiring and intrepid labors the cause
of the Reformed religion in Spain was more indebted. He was, of course,
a conspicuous mark for the Inquisition.
[Sidenote: AUTOS DA FE.]
During the fifteen months in which he lay in its gloomy cells, cut off
from human sympathy and support, his constancy remained unshaken. The
night preceding his execution, when his sentence had been announced to
him, De Seso called for writing materials. It was thought he designed to
propitiate his judges by a full confession of his errors. But the
confession he made was of another kind. He insisted on the errors of the
Romish Church, and avowed his unshaken trust in the great truths of the
Reformation. The document, covering two sheets of paper, is pronounced
by the secretary of the Inquisition to be a composition equally
remarkable for its energy and precision.[444] When led before the royal
gallery, on his way to the place of execution, De Seso pathetically
exclaimed to Philip, "Is it thus that you allow your innocent subjects
to be persecuted?" To which the king made the memorable reply, "If it
were my own son, I would fetch the wood to burn him, were he such a
wretch as thou art!" It was certainly a characteristic answer.[445]
At the stake De Seso showed the same unshaken constancy, bearing his
testimony to the truth of the great cause for which he gave up his life.
As the flames crept slowly around him, he called on the soldiers to heap
up the fagots, that his agonies might be sooner ended; and his
executioners, indignant at the obstinacy--the heroism--of the martyr,
were not slow in obeying his commands.[446]
The companion and fellow-sufferer of De Seso was Domingo de Roxas, son
of the marquis de Poza, an unhappy noble, who had seen five of his
family, including his eldest son, condemned to various humiliating
penances by the Inquisition for their heretical opinions. This one was
now to suffer death. De Roxas was a Dominican monk. It is singular that
this order, from which the ministers of the Holy Office were
particularly taken, furnished many proselytes to the Reformed religion.
De Roxas, as was the usage with ecclesiastics, was allowed to retain his
sacerdotal habit until his sentence had been read, when he was degraded
from his ecclesiastical rank, his vestments were stripped off one after
another, and the hideous dress of the _san benito_ thrown over him, amid
the shouts and derision of the populace. Thus apparelled, he made an
attempt to address the spectators around the scaffold; but no sooner did
he begin to raise his voice against the errors and cruelties of Rome,
than Philip indignantly commanded him to be gagged. The gag was a piece
of cleft wood, which, forcibly compressing the tongue, had the
additional advantage of causing great pain, while it silenced the
offender. Even when he was bound to the stake, the gag, though contrary
to custom, was suffered to remain in the mouth of De Roxas, as if his
enemies dreaded the effects of an eloquence that triumphed over the
anguish of death.[447]
The place of execution--the _quemadero_, the burning-place, as it was
called--was a spot selected for the purpose without the walls of the
city.[448] Those who attended an _auto da fé_ were not, therefore,
necessarily, as is commonly imagined, spectators of the tragic scene
that concluded it. The great body of the people, and many of higher
rank, no doubt, followed to the place of execution. On this occasion,
there is reason to think, from the language--somewhat equivocal, it is
true--of Philip's biographer, that the monarch chose to testify his
devotion to the Inquisition by witnessing in person the appalling close
of the drama; while his guards mingled with the menials of the Holy
Office, and heaped up the fagots round their victims.[449]
Such was the cruel exhibition which, under the garb of a religious
festival, was thought the most fitting ceremonial for welcoming the
Catholic monarch to his dominions! During the whole time of its duration
in the public square, from six in the morning till two in the afternoon,
no symptom of impatience was exhibited by the spectators, and, as may
well be believed, no sign of sympathy for the sufferers.[450] It would
be difficult to devise a better school for perverting the moral sense,
and deadening the sensibilities of a nation.[451]
[Sidenote: PROSECUTION OF CARRANZA.]
Under the royal sanction, the work of persecution now went forward more
briskly than ever.[452] No calling was too sacred, no rank too high, to
escape the shafts of the informer. In the course of a few years, no
less than nine bishops were compelled to do humiliating penance in some
form or other for heterodox opinions. But the most illustrious victim of
the Inquisition was Bartolomé Carranzo, archbishop of Toledo. The
primacy of Spain might be considered as the post of the highest
consideration in the Roman Catholic Church after the papacy.[453] The
proceedings against this prelate, on the whole, excited more interest
throughout Christendom than any other case that came before the tribunal
of the Inquisition.
Carranza, who was of an ancient Castilian family, had early entered a
Dominican convent in the suburbs of Guadalajara. His exemplary life, and
his great parts and learning, recommended him to the favor of Charles
the Fifth, who appointed him confessor to his son Philip. The emperor
also sent him to the Council of Trent, where he made a great impression
by his eloquence, as well as by a tract which he published against
plurality of benefices, which, however, excited no little disgust in
many of his order. On Philip's visit to England to marry Queen Mary,
Carranza accompanied his master, and while in that country he
distinguished himself by the zeal and ability with which he controverted
the doctrines of the Protestants. The alacrity, moreover, which he
manifested in the work of persecution made him generally odious under
the name of the "black friar,"--a name peculiarly appropriate, as it
applied not less to his swarthy complexion than to the garb of his
order. On Philip's return to Flanders, Carranza, who had twice refused a
mitre, was raised--not without strong disinclination on his own part--to
the archiepiscopal see of Toledo. The "_nolo episcopari_," in this
instance, seems to have been sincere. It would have been well for him if
it had been effectual. Carranza's elevation to the primacy was the
source of all his troubles.
The hatred of theologians has passed into a proverb; and there would
certainly seem to be no rancor surpassing that of a Spanish
ecclesiastic. Among the enemies raised by Carranza's success, the most
implacable was the grand-inquisitor, Valdés. The archbishop of Seville
could ill brook that a humble Dominican should be thus raised from the
cloister over the heads of the proud prelacy of Spain. With unwearied
pains, such as hate only could induce, he sought out whatever could make
against the orthodoxy of the new prelate, whether in his writings or his
conversation. Some plausible ground was afforded for this from the fact,
that, although Carranza, as his whole life had shown, was devoted to the
Roman Catholic Church, yet his long residence in Protestant countries,
and his familiarity with Protestant works, had given a coloring to his
language, if not to his opinions, which resembled that of the Reformers.
Indeed, Carranza seems to have been much of the same way of thinking
with Pole, Contarini, Morone, and other illustrious Romanists, whose
liberal natures and wide range of study, had led them to sanction more
than one of the Lutheran dogmas which were subsequently proscribed by
the Council of Trent. One charge strongly urged against the primate was
his assent to the heretical doctrine of justification by faith. In
support of this, Father Regla, the confessor, as the reader may
remember, of Charles the Fifth, and a worthy coadjutor of Valdés,
quoted words of consolation employed by Carranza, in his presence, at
the death-bed of the emperor.[454]
The exalted rank of the accused made it necessary for his enemies to
proceed with the greatest caution. Never had the bloodhounds of the
Inquisition been set on so noble a quarry. Confident in his own
authority, the prelate had little reason for distrust. He could not ward
off the blow, for it was an invisible arm stronger than his own that was
raised to smite him. On the twenty-second of August, 1559, the
emissaries of the Holy Office entered the primate's town of Torrelaguna.
The doors of the episcopal palace were thrown open to the ministers of
the terrible tribunal. The prelate was dragged from his bed at midnight,
was hurried into a coach, and while the inhabitants were ordered not so
much as to present themselves at the windows, he was conducted, under a
strong guard, to the prisons of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The
arrest of such a person caused a great sensation throughout the country,
but no attempt was made at a rescue.
The primate would have appealed from the Holy Office to the pope, as the
only power competent to judge him. But he was unwilling to give umbrage
to Philip, who had told him in any extremity to rely on him. The king,
however, was still in the Netherlands, where his mind had been
preoccupied, through the archbishop's enemies, with rumors of his
defection. And the mere imputation of heresy, in this dangerous crisis,
and especially in one whom he had so recently raised to the highest post
in the Spanish church, was enough, not only to efface the recollection
of past services from the mind of Philip, but to turn his favor into
aversion. For two years Carranza was suffered to languish in
confinement, exposed to all the annoyances which the malice of his
enemies could devise. So completely was he dead to the world, that he
knew nothing of a conflagration which consumed more than four hundred of
the principal houses in Valladolid, till some years after the
occurrence.[455]
At length the Council of Trent, sharing the indignation of the rest of
Christendom at the archbishop's protracted imprisonment, called on
Philip to interpose in his behalf, and to remove the cause to another
tribunal. But the king gave little heed to the remonstrance, which the
inquisitors treated as a presumptuous interference with their authority.
In 1566, Pius the Fifth ascended the pontifical throne. He was a man of
austere morals and a most inflexible will. A Dominican, like Carranza,
he was greatly scandalized by the treatment which the primate had
received, and by the shameful length to which his process had been
protracted. He at once sent his orders to Spain for the removal of the
grand-inquisitor, Valdés, from office, summoning, at the same time, the
cause and the prisoner before his own tribunal. The bold inquisitor,
loth to lose his prey, would have defied the power of Rome, as he had
done that of the Council of Trent. Philip remonstrated; but Pius was
firm, and menaced both king and inquisitor with excommunication. Philip
had no mind for a second collision with the papal court. In imagination
he already heard the thunders of the Vatican rolling in the distance,
and threatening soon to break upon his head. After a confinement of now
more than seven years' duration, the archbishop was sent under a guard
to Rome. He was kindly received by the pontiff, and honorably lodged in
the castle of St. Angelo, in apartments formerly occupied by the popes
themselves. But he was still a prisoner.
[Sidenote: PROSECUTION OF CARRANZA.]
Pius now set seriously about the examination of Carranza's process. It
was a tedious business, requiring his holiness to wade through an ocean
of papers, while the progress of the suit was perpetually impeded by
embarrassments thrown in his way by the industrious malice of the
inquisitors. At the end of six years more, Pius was preparing to give
his judgment, which it was understood would be favorable to Carranza,
when, unhappily for the primate, the pontiff died.
The Holy Office, stung by the prospect of its failure, now strained
every nerve to influence the mind of the new pope, Gregory the
Thirteenth, to a contrary decision. New testimony was collected, new
glosses were put on the primate's text, and the sanction of the most
learned Spanish theologians was brought in support of them. At length,
at the end of three years further, the holy father announced his purpose
of giving his final decision. It was done with great circumstance. The
pope was seated on his pontifical throne, surrounded by all his
cardinals, prelates, and functionaries of the apostolic chamber. Before
this august assembly, the archbishop presented himself unsupported and
alone, while no one ventured to salute him. His head was bare. His once
robust form was bent by infirmity more than by years; and his care-worn
features told of that sickness which arises from hope deferred. He knelt
down at some distance from the pope, and in this humble attitude
received his sentence.
He was declared to have imbibed the pernicious doctrines of Luther. The
decree of the Inquisition prohibiting the use of his catechism was
confirmed. He was to abjure sixteen propositions found in his writings;
was suspended from the exercise of his episcopal functions for five
years, during which time he was to be confined in a convent of his order
at Orvieto; and, finally, he was required to visit seven of the
principal churches in Rome, and perform mass there by way of penance.
This was the end of eighteen years of doubt, anxiety, and imprisonment.
The tears streamed down the face of the unhappy man, as he listened to
the sentence; but he bowed in silent submission to the will of his
superior. The very next day he began his work of penance. But nature
could go no further; and on the second of May, only sixteen days after
his sentence had been pronounced, Carranza died of a broken heart. The
triumph of the Inquisition was complete.
The pope raised a monument to the memory of the primate, with a pompous
inscription, paying a just tribute to his talents and his scholarship,
endowing him with a full measure of Christian worth, and particularly
commending the exemplary manner in which he had discharged the high
trusts reposed in him by his sovereign.[456]
Such is the story of Carranza's persecution,--considering the rank of
the party, the unprecedented length of the process, and the sensation it
excited throughout Europe, altogether the most remarkable on the records
of the Inquisition.[457] Our sympathy for the archbishop's sufferings
may be reasonably mitigated by the reflection, that he did but receive
the measure which he had meted out to others.
While the persecution of Carranza was going on, the fires lighted for
the Protestants continued to burn with fury in all parts of the country,
until at length they gradually slackened and died away, from mere want
of fuel to feed them. The year 1570 may be regarded as the period of the
last _auto da fé_ in which the Lutherans played a conspicuous part. The
subsequent celebrations were devoted chiefly to relapsed Jews and
Mahometans; and if a Protestant heretic was sometimes added to this
list, it was "but as the gleaning of grapes after the vintage is
done."[458]
Never was there a persecution which did its work more thoroughly. The
blood of the martyr is commonly said to be the seed of the church. But
the storm of persecution fell as heavily on the Spanish Protestants as
it did on the Albigenses in the thirteenth century; blighting every
living thing, so that no germ remained for future harvests. Spain might
now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled the hem of her
garment. But at what a price was this purchased! Not merely by the
sacrifice of the lives and fortunes of a few thousands of the existing
generation but by the disastrous consequences entailed for ever on the
country. Folded under the dark wing of the Inquisition, Spain was shut
out from the light which in the sixteenth century broke over the rest of
Europe, stimulating the nations to greater enterprise in every
department of knowledge. The genius of the people was rebuked, and their
spirit quenched, under the malignant influence of an eye that never
slumbered, of an unseen arm ever raised to strike. How could there be
freedom of thought, where there was no freedom of utterance? Or freedom
of utterance, where it was as dangerous to say too little as too much?
Freedom cannot go along with fear. Every way the mind of the Spaniard
was in fetters.
His moral sense was miserably perverted. Men were judged, not by their
practice, but by their professions. Creed became a substitute for
conduct. Difference of faith made a wider gulf of separation than
difference of race, language, or even interest. Spain no longer formed
one of the great brotherhood of Christian nations. An immeasurable
barrier was raised between that kingdom and the Protestants of Europe.
The early condition of perpetual warfare with the Arabs who overran the
country had led the Spaniards to mingle religion strangely with their
politics. The effect continued when the cause had ceased. Their wars
with the European nations became religious wars. In fighting England or
the Netherlands, they were fighting the enemies of God. It was the same
everywhere. In their contest with the unoffending natives of the New
World, they were still battling with the enemies of God. Their wars
took the character of a perpetual crusade, and were conducted with all
the ferocity which fanaticism could inspire.
[Sidenote: RECEPTION OF ISABELLA.]
The same dark spirit of fanaticism seems to brood over the national
literature; even that lighter literature which in other nations is made
up of the festive sallies of wit, or the tender expression of sentiment.
The greatest geniuses of the nation, the masters of the drama and of the
ode, while they astonish us by their miracles of invention, show that
they have too often kindled their inspiration at the altars of the
Inquisition.
Debarred as he was from freedom of speculation, the domain of science
was closed against the Spaniard. Science looks to perpetual change. It
turns to the past to gather warning, as well as instruction, for the
future. Its province is to remove old abuses, to explode old errors, to
unfold new truths. Its condition, in short, is that of progress. But in
Spain, everything not only looked to the past, but rested on the past.
Old abuses gathered respect from their antiquity. Reform was innovation,
and innovation was a crime. Far from progress, all was stationary. The
hand of the Inquisition drew the line which said, "No further!" This was
the limit of human intelligence in Spain.
The effect was visible in every department of science,--not in the
speculative alone, but in the physical and the practical; in the
declamatory rant of its theology and ethics, in the childish and
chimerical schemes of its political economists. In every walk were to be
seen the symptoms of premature decrepitude, as the nation clung to the
antiquated systems which the march of civilization in other countries
had long since effaced. Hence those frantic experiments, so often
repeated, in the financial administration of the kingdom, which made
Spain the byword of the nations, and which ended in the ruin of trade,
the prostration of credit, and finally the bankruptcy of the state.--But
we willingly turn from this sad picture of the destinies of the country
to a more cheerful scene in the history of Philip.