PROPOSITIONS.
[Sidenote: _DELATION HABITUAL_]
Although the Spanish Inquisition was founded for the suppression of
crypto-Judaism, it promptly vindicated its jurisdiction over all
aberrations from the faith. There were, at the time, no other formal
heresies in Spain, but the people at large were not universally versed
in all the niceties of theology, and the supineness of the spiritual
courts permitted a licence of speech in which the trained theologian
could discern potentialities of error. All this the Inquisition
undertook to correct and ultimately, under the general denomination of
"Propositions," there developed an extensive field of action, which
towards the end became the principal function of the institution.
Reckless or thoughtless expressions, uttered in anger or in jest, or
through ignorance or carelessness, gave to pious zeal or to malice the
opportunity of secret denunciation, which in time impressed upon every
Spaniard the necessity of caution, and left its mark upon the national
character. As we have seen, the closest family ties did not release from
the obligation of accusation, and every individual lived in an
atmosphere of suspicion, surrounded by possible spies of his own
household.[305] Men of the highest standing for learning or piety,
moreover, were exposed to the torture of prolonged prosecution and
possible ruin, for words spoken or written to which an heretical intent
could be ascribed, in relation to the obscurest points of theology, and
thus the development of the Spanish intellect was arrested at the time
when it promised to become dominant in Europe. From every point of view,
therefore, the miscellaneous offences, grouped under the general term
of Propositions, was by no means the least noteworthy subject of
inquisitorial activity.[306]
How soon began the espionage, which eventually brought every man under
its baneful influence, is seen in the case of Juan de Zamora, condemned
in the Saragossa auto of February 10, 1488, to perpetual prison, because
at Medina, in chatting with some casual aquaintances, he was said to
have spoken disrespectfully of the Eucharist and to have denied the real
presence, while, in the auto of May 10, 1489, Juan de Enbun, a notary,
was penanced for saying that he cared more for ten florins than for
God.[307] Even more significant of the danger overhanging every man was
the case of Diego de Uceda, before the Toledo tribunal, in 1494, on the
very serious charges of having said that the Eucharist was only bread,
that so villanous a crew as the Jews could not have put Christ to death,
and that he ate meat on fast-days. He explained that, some six or eight
years before, at Fuensalida, a priest in celebrating found the wafer
broken and angrily cast it on the floor, ordering the sacristan to bring
him another; the people were scandalized and Diego sought to quiet them
by explaining that the wafer before consecration was only bread. The
next charge arose from a remark in a discussion on an exuberant sermon
on the Passion. As for the third, he proved that he was a devout
Catholic, punctual in all observance, with a special devotion to St.
Gregory, to whose intercession he attributed his relief from a chronic
trouble of stomach and liver, that had forced him at one time to eat
meat on fast-days. He lay in the secret prison for six months, with
sequestration of property, and was finally sentenced to compurgation,
which he performed with the Count of Fuensalida and two priests as his
compurgators, but had he not been a man of standing and influence he
might have been burnt as an impenitent heretic.[308] There was no
prescription of time for heresy, and trivial matters occurring years
before might thus at any moment be brought up, when they had faded from
the memory of all but those who had a grudge to satisfy.
The ever-present danger impending over every man is well illustrated by
the case of Alvaro de Montalvan, a septuagenarian, in 1525. Returning to
Madrid, after a day's pleasure excursion in the country, Alonso Rúiz, a
priest, who was of the party, took occasion to moralize on the troubles
of life, in comparison with the prospects of future bliss. Alvaro (who
subsequently pleaded that he was in his cups) remarked that we know what
we have here but know nothing of the future. Some six months later, one
of the party, in his Easter confession, chanced to mention this, and was
instructed to denounce Alvaro. He was arrested and, on searching the
records, it was found that, nearly forty years before, in 1486, during a
term of grace, he had confessed to some Jewish observances without
intention, and was discharged without reconciliation or penance. On this
new charge he was made to confess intention and was sentenced, October
18, 1525, to reconciliation, confiscation and perpetual prison, the
latter being commuted, November 27, 1527, to confinement in his own
house.[309]
[Sidenote: _TRIVIALITIES_]
There was scarce anything, however innocently spoken, that might not be
tortured into a censurable sense and as, in so wide and vague a region,
no formal rules could be enunciated to restrain inquisitorial zeal, it
afforded ample opportunity for oppression and cruelty, especially before
the tribunals were thoroughly subordinated to the Suprema. The
occasional visitations by an inspector might reveal abuses but could
not prevent them. That of de Soto Salazar at Barcelona affords ample
evidence of the recklessness with which inquisitors exercised their
power. In 1564 we hear of a physician, Maestre Pla, prosecuted for
saying that his wife was so exhausted that she looked like a crucifix
dead with hunger. Juan Garaver, a swineherd, was forced to appear in an
auto with a mitre, followed by scourging, for saying that if he had
money and enough to eat, the devil might take his soul--which the
Suprema decided to belong to episcopal and not to inquisitorial
cognizance. It rebuked the tribunal sharply for relaxing Guillen
Berberia Guacho for a single proposition, without calling in learned men
to persuade and advise him, especially as one of the witnesses stated
that he uttered the words in French. Clemensa Paresa was fined ten
ducats and penanced for saying "You see me well enough off in this world
and you will not see me punished in the other," and Juana Seralvis, for
the same utterance was condemned to public penance. Badia, priest of
Falset, was fined twenty ducats, with spiritual penances, for saying
that he would not forgive God. Juan Canalvero was fined six ducats and
penanced for saying that he would cheat his father or God in buying or
selling. There were many other similar cases, in some of which the
Suprema ordered the fines to be returned and the names to be stricken
from the registers.[310]
The very triviality of these cases illustrates the atmosphere of
suspense and distrust in which the Spanish population existed, nor can
their full import be realized unless we remember that, slight as the
penalties may seem, they were the least part of the punishment, for
penancing by the Inquisition was fatal to limpieza. How readily a man's
career could thus be ruined by rivals or enemies is seen in the case of
the Dominican Alonso de los Raelos in the Canaries. In 1568 some
assertions of his respecting purgatory attracted attention, but led to
no formal trial, because he did not deny its existence, and theologians
are not agreed as to its exact locality and character. Some years later,
there were feuds in the Order, due to an attempt to erect the Canaries
into a separate province, when the prior, Blas de Merino, who hoped to
become provincial, and who regarded Fray Alonso as a possible rival,
accused him to the tribunal for this proposition. He was thrown into
prison and, in 1572, was sentenced to penance and reclusion, thus
rendering him ineligible.[311]
We have seen in the previous chapter the penalties regarded as
sufficient for the crime of seduction in the confessional, and a
comparison between these and the punishments inflicted for utterances in
the heat of discussion and indicative of no settled tendency to heresy,
reveal the very curious standard of ethics prevalent at the period. In
1571, a priest named Miguel Lidueña de Osorio was accused in Valencia of
having said that the bishops at the Council of Trent deserved to be
burnt, because they assumed to be popes, and moreover that St. Anne was
deserving of higher honor than St. Joaquin. For this he was required to
abjure _de vehementi_, he was suspended from orders, recluded for six
years and banished perpetually from Valencia.[312] It was not often that
flagrant cases of solicitation were visited with such severity.
[Sidenote: _RULES OF PROCEDURE_]
The infinite varieties and intangible nature of the offence rendered
impossible the formulation of hard and fast rules for the tribunals,
which were thus left to their discretion in a matter which was
constantly forming a larger portion of inquisitorial business. The space
devoted to it by Rojas, in his little book, indicates its growing
importance, and he tells us that he was led to treat it thus at length
because so many of the accused admit the facts, while denying belief and
intention, and he had seen such diametrically opposite modes of
treatment and punishment adopted in different tribunals. He is emphatic
in insisting on the allowance to be made for the ignorance and rusticity
of most of the culprits, and he points out that, in view of the
restrictions on the defence, the inquisitor should be especially careful
to give weight to whatever could be alleged in favor of the accused,
whether he were ignorant and rude, or learned and subtle. The manner and
occasion of the utterance ought to be carefully considered, as well as
the nativity of the speaker, if he comes from lands where heresy
flourishes. How much depended on the temper of the tribunal is exhibited
in a case in which a man, going to hear mass and finding that it was
over, said "faith alone suffices" and was prosecuted for the remark.
Rojas decided that he was not to be held as asserting that faith without
works suffices, which would be heretical, for doubtful words are to be
interpreted according to circumstances, but a more zealous or less
conscientious inquisitor could readily have convicted him. For ordinary
cases, he tells us, the accused should rarely be confined in the secret
prison; the abjuration may be _de levi_ or _de vehementi_ according to
circumstances, and the extraordinary punishment should be scourging or
fines.[313]
As the Suprema gradually assumed control over the tribunals, there grew
up certain more or less recognized rules of procedure. Thus, if there
was evidence of heretical utterances, and the accused confessed them but
denied intention, he was to be tortured; if this brought confession of
intention, he was to be reconciled with confiscation in a public auto as
a formal heretic; if he overcame the torture he had to abjure _de
vehementi_ in an auto, with scourging, vergüenza, exile etc., according
to his station and the character of the propositions. This, we are told,
was merciful, for the common opinion of the doctors was that, if the
propositions were formally heretical, the offender should be relaxed, in
spite of his denying intention. Mercy was carried even further for, if
ignorance was alleged with probable justification, the accused was not
tortured nor condemned as a heretic, but abjured _de levi_, with
discretional penalties. There was moreover, as we have seen, a vast
range of propositions in which heresy was only inferential,
characterized as scandalous, offensive to pious ears etc., for which
abjuration _de levi_ was considered sufficient, with spiritual
penances.[314]
In this enumeration of penalties there is no allusion to fines, which,
however, were by no means neglected. In 1579, for instance, the
Bachiller Montesinos, in defending an adultress, put in an argument of
cynical ingenuity to prove that she had committed no sin. This was
transmitted to the Toledo tribunal, whose calificadores found in it four
heretical propositions besides a citation from St. Paul amounting to
heretical blasphemy. Montesinos threw himself on the mercy of the
tribunal, wept and wrung his hands, protested that he must have been out
of his senses, owing to old age, and offered every excuse that he could
suggest. He escaped with abjuration _de levi_, six months' suspension
from his functions as an advocate, and a fine of eight thousand
maravedís. Many similar cases could be cited from the Toledo record, but
two more will suffice. In 1582, the Bachiller Pablo Hernández denounced
himself for having, in the heat of discussion, been led on to say that
in canonizations the pope had to rely upon witnesses who might be false
and therefore it was not necessary to believe that all so canonized were
saints. He was sentenced to abjure _de levi_, to pay six thousand
maravedís, and to have his sentence read in his parish church while he
heard mass. From this he appealed to the Suprema, which remitted the
humiliation in church, but thriftily increased the fine to twenty
thousand maravedís. In 1604 the tribunal had a richer prize, in an old
German named Giraldo Paris, a resident of Madrid who seems to have been
a dabbler in alchemy. He was accused of saying that the Old Testament
was a fable, that St. Job was an alchemist, the Christian faith was a
matter of opinion and much more of the same kind. The evidence must have
been flimsy for, serious as were these charges, there was _discordia_ on
the question of arresting him, and it required an order from the Suprema
before he was confined in the secret prison. He gradually confessed the
truth of the charges, but was not sentenced to reconciliation, escaping
with absolution _de vehementi_, a year's reclusion in a monastery, the
surrender of all books and papers dealing with alchemy and
quintessences, and a fine of three thousand ducats. The general
impression produced by a group of these cases is that scourging was
reserved for those too poor to pay a moderate fine, and that fines were
scaled rather upon the ability of the culprit than on the degree of his
guilt.[315] In determining penalties, however, it was advised that
considerable weight in extenuation should be allowed for drunkenness,
and for the readiness and frankness of the culprit in confessing, as
well as for his ignorance or simplicity.[316]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _MARRIAGE BETTER THAN CELIBACY_]
There were two special propositions, which were so widely held and came
so repeatedly before the tribunals that they almost form a special
class. One of these was the assertion that the married state is as good
as or better than that of celibacy as prescribed for clerics and
religious. That this was plainly heretical could not be doubted after
the anathema of the Council of Trent in 1563, and its prevalence is a
noteworthy fact.[317] In the Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, there
are thirty cases of this: in strictness, as the assertion of a doctrine
contrary to the teachings of the Church, and condemned as heretical, it
should have been visited with reconciliation, or at least with
abjuration _de vehementi_ and heavy penalties, but, as the heresy was
one of Tridentine definition and a novelty, it was mercifully treated
with abjuration _de levi_ and usually with a moderate fine or vergüenza,
or even with less. Extreme leniency was shown to Sebastian Vallejo, in
1581, who had declared that if he had a hundred daughters he would not
make nuns of them, in view of the licentiousness of the frailes, for
those in the convents were as lecherous as those outside; no parent
should put his children in religion until they were of full age and, as
to marriage, he advanced the customary argument that it was established
by God, while monachism was the work of the saints. He came to denounce
himself and pleaded drunkenness in extenuation, which probably explains
his escape with a reprimand. Soon after this María de Orduña was treated
with equal mercy, on denouncing herself for the same offence, the reason
alleged being that she was a very simple-minded woman.[318] As the
offence was thus lightly regarded, it follows that torture was not
permitted in the prosecution.[319] The error was difficult of
eradication. In 1623 a writer calls attention to the number of cases
still coming before the tribunals, and suggests for its repression that
the sentences be read in the churches of the offenders, so that a
knowledge of the erroneous character of the assertion should be
disseminated.[320] Some twenty years later it still was sufficiently
frequent to be treated as a separate class, though we are told that it
was visited with less severity than of old, as it presumably arose from
ignorance and was not to be considered as a heresy.[321] This is
remarkable in view of the ease with which it might have been regarded as
Lutheran.
A still more frequent proposition, which gave much trouble to eradicate,
was that fornication between unmarried folk is not a mortal sin.
Although the theologians held that this assertion in itself was a mortal
sin,[322] there was really in it nothing that savored of heresy, and its
cognizance by the Inquisition was an arbitrary extension of
jurisdiction without justification. Perhaps there was some confused
conception that it was derived from the Moors whose sexual laxity was
well known, but the usual argument offered in its defence, by those who
entertained it, was the toleration by the State of public women and of
brothels, whence the inference was natural that it could not be a mortal
sin.
[Sidenote: _FORNICATION NOT SINFUL_]
It seems to have been between 1550 and 1560 that the Inquisition
commenced its efforts to suppress this popular error. The earliest
record of its action that I have met occurs in the great Seville auto of
September 24, 1559, where there were no less than twelve cases, of whom
eight abjured _de levi_, one _de vehementi_, six were paraded in
vergüenza, four were scourged with a hundred lashes (of whom one was a
woman) and two heard mass as penitents.[323] The requirement of
abjuration shows that suspicion of heresy was already attributed to the
proposition, but this as yet was not universally accepted for, in 1561,
the Suprema wrote to the tribunal of Calahorra that Pedro Cestero, whom
it had penanced for this offence, ought to have been prosecuted as a
heretic, for it would seem to be heresy.[324] Thus heresy was injected
into it and we speedily find it to be a leading source of business in
the Castilian tribunals. Seville was notably active. In the auto of
October 28, 1562, there were nineteen cases.[325] In that of May 13,
1565, out of seventy-five penitents, twenty-five were for this
proposition. The punishments were severe. All abjured _de levi_ and
appeared in their shirts with halter and candle; all but one were
gagged; fourteen were scourged with an aggregate of nineteen hundred
lashes; five were paraded in vergüenza, two were fined in two hundred
ducats apiece, and two others in a thousand maravedís each; six were
exiled and one was forbidden to leave Seville without permission.
Besides these there was one man who had a hundred lashes for saying that
there was no sin in keeping a mistress, and three women were penanced
for saying the same of living in concubinage, of whom two had a hundred
lashes apiece and the third was paraded in vergüenza. Two men appeared
for saying that keeping a mistress was better than marriage, of whom one
had the infliction of the gag. To these we may add two who held that
marriage was better than the celibacy of the frailes, and we have a
total of thirty-three cases, or nearly one-half of all in the auto, for
errors concerning the relations of the sexes.[326]
Active as was this work it did not satisfy the Suprema which, in a carta
acordada of November 23, 1573, speaks of the prevalence of the offence
as indicated in the reports of autos, and the little progress thus far
made in its suppression; greater vigor was therefore ordered and, in
future, all delinquents were to be prosecuted as heretics. This was
followed by another, October 2, 1574, ordering the proposition to be
included in the Edict of Faith, and yet another December 2^{d}, of the
same year, repeating the complaint of its frequency and the little
improvement accomplished. It was apparently an error of ignorance and,
to remedy this, a special edict was ordered to be published everywhere,
declaring it to be a heresy condemned by the Church, and that all
uttering and believing it would be punished as heretics; all preachers
moreover were to be instructed to warn and admonish the people from the
pulpits.[327]
All this was wholesome, and yet it is difficult to understand this
ardent zeal for the morals of the laity, when compared with the
slackness as to solicitation. Be this as it may, the activity of the
tribunals under this stimulus was rewarded with an abundant harvest of
culprits. We chance to hear of eight cases in the auto of 1579 at
Llerena and of five at Cuenca in 1585.[328] A more effective showing is
that of the Toledo record from 1575 to 1610, in which the number of
cases is two hundred and sixty-four--by far the largest aggregate of any
one offence, the Judaizers only amounting to a hundred and seventy-four
and the Moriscos to a hundred and ninety.[329] These statistics
comprehend only the tribunals of the crown of Castile; those at hand for
the kingdoms of Aragon are scanty but, from such as are accessible, it
would appear probable either that there was less energy or a much
smaller number of culprits. The only cases that I have happened to meet
are two in a Saragossa auto of June 6, 1585, while, in a Valencia list
for the five years 1598-1602, comprising in all three hundred and
ninety-two cases, there are but four of this offence and not a single
one in the reports for the three years 1604-6.[330]
Notwithstanding the characterization of the offence as heresy, torture
was not to be employed in the trial, although confinement in the secret
prison and sequestration were permitted.[331] The energy and severity
with which it was prosecuted virtually suppressed it in time. In 1623 a
writer speaks of it as less common than formerly and, in a list of the
cases tried at Toledo, commencing in 1648, the first one of this offence
occurs in 1650, the next in 1665 and the third in 1693. Thenceforth it
may be said practically to disappear from the tribunals, although as
late as 1792, Don Ambrosio Pérez, beneficed priest of Candamas was tried
for it in Saragossa and in 1818 there was a case in Valencia.[332] Thus
the Inquisition succeeded in suppressing the expression of the opinion
though, as it took no action against the sin, its influence on the side
of morality was inappreciable.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _INTELLECTUAL REPRESSION_]
A reference to the cases of propositions tried by the Toledo tribunal
between 1575 and 1610 (see Vol. II, p. 552) will indicate the very
miscellaneous character of the utterances for which its interposition
was invoked. These involved culprits of all classes of society and as,
for the most part, they concerned theological questions of more or less
obscurity, this method of enforcing purity of faith frequently brought
under animadversion the foremost intellects of Spain and rendered the
Inquisition the instrument through which rivals or enemies could mar the
careers of those in whom lay the only hope of intellectual progress and
development. What between its censorship and the minute supervision,
which exposed to prosecution every thought or expression in which
theological malevolence could detect lurking tendencies to error, the
Spanish thinker found his path beset with danger. Safety lay only in the
well-beaten track of accepted conventionality and, while Europe, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was passing through a period of
evolution, Spanish intellect became atrophied. The splendid promise of
the sixteenth century was blasted by the steady repression of all
originality and progress, and Spain, from the foremost of the nations,
became the last.
The minuteness of the captious criticism which exposed the most eminent
men to the horrors of inquisitorial prosecution can best be understood
by two or three cases. Of these perhaps the most notable is that of the
Augustinian Fray Luis de Leon, who was not only one of the most eminent
theologians of his day, and who was unsurpassed as a preacher, but who
ranks as a Castilian classic in both prose and poetry.[333] It is so
suggestive of inquisitorial procedure in such matters that it is worthy
of examination in some detail.
To a brilliant intellect Luis de Leon united a personal activity which
led him to take a prominent part in the feverish life of the schools,
not only in disputations but in the frequent rivalries and competitions,
through which professorial vacancies were filled, for in Salamanca the
professors were elected for terms of four years by the students of the
faculty to which the chair belonged, after a disputation between the
candidates. In these he had abundant opportunities of making enemies
for, at the age of 34, he had been elected to the chair of Thomas
Aquinas, from which he passed to that of Durandus. These opportunities
he largely improved, if we may trust his characterizations of the
numerous opponents whom he sought to disable as witnesses in the course
of his trial. Even in his own Order he had enemies, owing to his active
and influential participation in its internal politics.
Theological disputes are rarely wanting in rancor, no matter how minute
may be the points at issue. In Salamanca, not only were there frequent
disputations but, as the leading school of theology, questions were
frequently submitted to it by the Suprema on which conferences and
congregations were held, leading to interminable wrangles. Azpilcueta
tells us that this disputatious mania led the participants to uphold
what was false, for the purpose of exhibiting their dexterity, not only
misleading their auditors but often blinding themselves to the truth,
and Luis de Leon himself says that the warmth of debate sometimes
carried them beyond the bounds of reason, and so confused them that they
could scarce recall what they themselves had said. One of his witnesses,
Fray Juan de Guevara, corroborates this with the remark that Maestro
Leon de Castro (Luis de Leon's chief accuser) sometimes might not
understand what was said, but this happened to all theologians when
heated in the disputations.[334]
A fairer field for inquisitorial intervention could scarce be devised
and, from one point of view, its restraint of this dialectic ardor might
not be amiss, but its influence on intellectual development was
deplorable, when it made every man feel that he stood on the brink of an
abyss into which, at any moment, he might be precipitated. Nor was such
dread uncalled for; while Luis de Leon was on trial, three other
Salamanca professors were in the same predicament--Antonio Gudiel,
Gaspar de Grajal and Martin Martínez, while yet another, Dr. Barrientos,
was released just prior to the arrest of Luis. Denunciation was an easy
recourse for a defeated disputant; an incautious utterance in heated
debate, imperfectly understood, or distorted in remembrance, furnished
the means. Even lectures in the ordinary courses contributed their
share, when zealous students disagreed with their teachers or made
mistakes in their hasty notes.
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
The two prime movers in the prosecution of Fray Luis were Leon de Castro
and Bartolomé de Medina. De Castro was an elderly man, a _jubilado_
professor of Grammar, who had frequent wordy encounters with Fray Luis,
usually to his discomfiture.
He had based great hopes on a Commentary on Isaiah, the publication of
which was delayed by the Suprema requiring him to submit it to
examination; he had to spend some months at the court before he could
obtain permission for its sale, and then it proved a failure, entailing
on him a loss of a thousand ducats--all of which he attributed to Fray
Luis, who happened at the time to be in Madrid. Bartolomé de Medina was
a younger man, ambitiously working his way upward, and meeting several
rebuffs from Fray Luis, which accentuated the traditional hostility
between the Dominicans and Augustinians, to which they respectively
belonged. They were habitually opposed in the disputations, but it seems
somewhat eccentric to find Medina accusing Luis and his friends Grajal
and Martínez of introducing novelties and innovations, seeing that his
own reputation is chiefly based on his invention of the greatest novelty
of the period--the Probabilism which revolutionized the ethical teaching
of the Church and gave rise to the new science of Moral Theology.[335]
It was not difficult for these enmities to find means of gratification.
Robert Stephen's edition of the Latin Bible, with the notes of François
Vatable, had involved that printer in endless disputes with the
Sorbonne, which accused him of having hereticated the comments of the
thoroughly orthodox editor. In 1555, the University of Salamanca
undertook its correction, but the result did not satisfy the
sensitiveness of Spanish theology, and the edition was forbidden in the
Index of 1559. Yet the work was wanted in Spain and, at command of the
Suprema, in 1569, the university undertook the task anew. Numerous
congregations were held, in which every point was hotly disputed.
Medina, who had not yet attained his master's degree, took no part in
the meetings, but Leon de Castro and Fray Luis had many passages at
arms. De Castro accused him of scant respect for the Vulgate text of the
Bible, and of preferring the authority of the Hebrew and Greek
originals. He stigmatized Luis, who was of converso descent, of being a
Jew and a Judaizer and, on one occasion, declared that he ought to be
burnt. In truth the question of the Vulgate was one of importance. The
new heresies were largely based on the assumption of its imperfection,
and sought to prove this by reference to the originals. Scholastic
theology rested on the Vulgate and, in self-defence, the Council of
Trent, in 1546, had declared that it was to be received as authentic in
all public lectures, disputations, preaching and expositions, and that
no one should dare to reject it under any pretext.[336] Yet it was
notorious that, in the course of ages, the text had become corrupt; the
Tridentine fathers included in their decree a demand for a perfected
edition, but the labor was great and was not concluded until 1592, when
the Clementine text was issued, with thousands of emendations. Meanwhile
to question its accuracy was to venture on dangerous ground and to
invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one of the
calificadores, during Fray Luis's trial, asserted "Catholic doctors
affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate,
as the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew
and Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the
means of confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free
interpretation."[337] Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a
lecture on the subject four years before, he had maintained the accuracy
of the Hebrew text, contending that St. Jerome the translator was not
inspired, nor were the words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover
that the Tridentine decree in no way affirmed such verbal
inspiration.[338]
On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously,
at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo
Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an
exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray
Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy,
which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular
versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous
proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by
charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory
dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon.
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
In December 1571, de Castro and Medina presented formal denunciations of
Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez, to the Salamanca commissioner of the
Valladolid tribunal, charging them with denying the authority of the
Vulgate and preferring the interpretations of the rabbis to those of the
fathers, while the circulation of Canticles in the vernacular was not
forgotten. Other accusers, including students, joined in the attack,
making thirteen in all, with a formidable body of denunciations. Grajal
was soon afterwards arrested and Fray Luis, warned of the impending
danger, presented himself, March 6, 1572, to Diego González, the former
inquisitor of Carranza, then on a visitation at Salamanca, with a copy
of his lecture on the Vulgate and the propositions drawn from it, and
also his work on Canticles. He asked to have them examined and professed
entire submission to the Church, with readiness to withdraw or revoke
anything that might be found in the slightest degree objectionable.[339]
In any other land, this would have sufficed. The inculpated works would
have been expurgated or forbidden, if necessary. Luis would have
retracted any expressions regarded as erroneous, and the matter would
have ended without damage to the faith. Under the Inquisition, however,
the utterance of objectionable propositions was a crime to be punished,
and the submission of the criminal only saved him from the penalties of
pertinacious heresy. On March 26th the warrant for the arrest of Fray
Luis was issued and, on the 27th he was receipted for by the alcaide of
the secret prison of Valladolid. He was treated with unusual
consideration, in view of his infirmities and delicate health for, on
his petition, he was allowed a scourge, a pointless knife to cut his
food, a candle and snuffers and some books.[340] The trial proceeded at
first with unusual speed. By May 15th the fiscal presented the formal
accusation, in which Fray Luis was charged with asserting that the
Vulgate contained many falsities and that a better version could be
made; with decrying the Septuagint and preferring Vatable and rabbis and
Jews to the saints as expositors of Scripture; with stating that the
Council of Trent had not made the Vulgate a matter of faith and that, in
the Old Testament, there was no promise of eternal life; with approving
a doctrine that inferred justification by faith, and that mere mortal
sin destroyed faith; with circulating an exposition of Canticles
explaining them as a love-poem from Solomon to his wife--all of which
was legitimately based on the miscellaneous evidence of the adverse
witnesses.[341] This, as required, Fray Luis answered on the spot,
article by article, attributing the charges to the malice of his
enemies, denying some and explaining others clearly and frankly.
It was a special favor that he was at once provided with counsel and
allowed to arrange his defence--a favor which brought upon the tribunal
a rebuke from the Suprema, January 13, 1573, as contrary to the
_estilo_, which must be followed, no matter what might be the
supplications of the accused. Fray Luis identified many of the
witnesses--out of nineteen he recognized eight--and he drew up six
series of interrogatories, mostly designed to prove his allegations of
mortal enmity. Of these the inquisitors threw out three as "impertinent"
and the answers to the others were, to a considerable extent,
unsatisfactory, as was almost inevitable under a system which made the
accused grope blindly in seeking evidence. As time wore on in this
necessarily dilatory business, Fray Luis grew impatient at the
stagnation which seemed to preclude all progress, not being aware that
in reality it had been expedited irregularly.[342]
It would be wearisome to follow in detail the proceedings which dragged
their slow length along. Additional witnesses came forward, whose
depositions had to go through the usual formalities; Fray Luis presented
numberless papers as points occurred to him; he defended himself
brilliantly and, through the course of the trial there were few of the
customary prolonged intervals, for his nervous impatience kept him
constantly plying the tribunal with arguments and appeals which it
received with its habitual impassiveness. At length, after two years,
early in March, 1574, it decided that there was no ground for suspicion
against him in the thirty articles drawn from the testimony of the
witnesses, while he could not be prosecuted criminally on the seventeen
propositions extracted from his lecture on the Vulgate, seeing that he
had spontaneously presented them and submitted himself to the Church.
The fiscal, however, appealed from this to the Suprema and his appeal
must have been successful, for the trial took a fresh start.[343]
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
After some intermediate proceedings, Fray Luis, on April 1st was told to
select _patrones theólogos_ to assist in his defence. He at once named
Dr. Sebastian Pérez, professor in the royal college which Philip II had
founded at Párraces, in connection with San Lorenzo del Escorial, and
two days later he added other names.
In place of accepting them the tribunal endeavored to compel him to take
men of whom he knew nothing and who, in reality, were the calificadores
who had already condemned his propositions. The struggle continued
until, on August 3d, the Suprema wrote that he could have Pérez, but his
limpieza must first be proved and Philip's consent to his absence be
obtained. We have seen how prolonged, costly and anxious were
investigations into limpieza and, as Fray Luis remarked, this was to
grant and to refuse in the same breath. At last, after endless
discussions, in October he despairingly accepted Dr. Mancio, a Dominican
and a leading professor of theology at Salamanca. Mancio came in
October, again towards the end of December, and finally on March 30,
1575, while Fray Luis meanwhile was eating his heart in despair. At
length, on April 7th Mancio approved of Fray Luis's defence, declaring
that he had satisfied all the articles, both the series of seventeen and
that of thirty, which had been proved against him or which he had
admitted having uttered.[344]
If Fray Luis imagined that this twelve months' work to which such
importance had been attributed, had improved his prospects, he was
speedily undeceived. We hear nothing more of Dr. Mancio or of his
approval. The propositions, with the defence, were submitted again to
three calificadores (men who had been urged upon him as patrones) and it
illustrates the uncertainties of theology and the hair-splitting
subtilties in which the doctors delighted, that not only were the
original seventeen articles declared to be heretical for the most part,
but five new ones, quite as bad, were discovered in the defence which
had elicited Dr. Mancio's approval, and these five thenceforth formed a
third category of errors figuring in the proceedings.[345] It is not
easy for us to comprehend the religious conceptions which placed men's
lives and liberties and reputation at the hazard of dialectics in which
the most orthodox theologians were at variance.
When Fray Luis was informed that five new heretical propositions had
sprouted from the hydra-heads of the old ones, he was dismayed. Sick and
exhausted, the prospects of ultimate release from his interminable trial
seemed to grow more and more remote. Arguments and discussions continued
and were protracted. New calificadores were called in, who debated and
opined and presented written conclusions on all three series of
propositions. It would be useless to follow in detail these scholastic
exercises, of which the chief interest is to show how, in these
infinitesimal points, one set of theologians could differ from another
and how completely the enmity of the two chief witnesses, Leon de Castro
and Bartolomé de Medina, was ignored. Thus wore away the rest of the
year 1575 and the first half of 1576. There was no reason why the case
might not be continued indefinitely on the same lines, but the
inquisitors seem to have felt at last that an end must be reached, and a
consulta de fe was finally held, in which Dr. Frechilla, one of the
calificadores who had condemned the propositions, represented the
episcopal Ordinary.[346]
The case illustrates one incident of these protracted trials. During its
course it had been heard by seven inquisitors, of whom Guijano de
Mercado was the only one who served from the commencement to the end,
and his colleague in the consulta, Andrés de Alava, had appeared in it
only in November, 1575, and had not been present in any audiences after
December. There was, moreover, an unusual feature in the presence of a
member of the Suprema, Francisco de Menchaca, indicating perhaps that
the case was regarded as one of more than ordinary importance. There
were five consultors, Luis Tello Maldonado, Pedro de Castro, Francisco
Albornoz, Juan de Ibarra and Hernando Niño, but the two latter fell
sick, when the examination of the voluminous testimony was half
completed, and took no further part in the proceedings.
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
On the final decision, September 18, 1576, Menchaca, Alava, Tello and
Albornoz voted for torture on the intention, including the propositions
which the theologians had declared that Fray Luis had satisfied, after
which another consulta should be held. They humanely added that it
should be moderate in view of the debility of the accused. Those better
acquainted with the case, Guijano and Frechilla, were more lenient. They
voted for a reprimand, after which, in a general assembly of professors
and students, Fray Luis should read a declaration, drawn up by the
calificadores, pronouncing the propositions to be ambiguous, suspicious
and likely to cause scandal. Moreover his Augustinian superior was to be
told, extra-judicially, to order him privately to employ his studies in
other directions and to abstain from teaching in the schools. The
vernacular version of Canticles was to be suppressed, if the
inquisitor-general and Suprema saw fit.[347] Comparatively mild as this
sentence might seem, it gratified to the full the vindictiveness of his
enemies--it humiliated him utterly and destroyed his career.
As there was discordia the case necessarily reverted to the Suprema,
which seems to have recognized that both votes assumed the nullity of
the laborious trifling, by which the calificadores had found dangerous
heresies in his acknowledged propositions. Discussion must have been
prolonged however, for the final sentence was not rendered until
December 7th. This fully acquitted Fray Luis of all the charges, but
ordered a reprimand in the audience-chamber and a warning to treat such
matters in future with great circumspection, so that no scandal or
errors should arise. The Suprema could scarce say less, if the whole
dismal farce, of nearly five years, was not to be admitted as wholly
unjustifiable, and it enclosed the sentence in a letter instructing the
tribunal to order Fray Luis to preserve profound silence and to avoid
dissension with those whom he suspected of testifying against him. It
was probably on December 15th that the sentence was read and the
reprimand administered. Fray Luis took the necessary oaths, he made the
promises required, and was discharged as innocent after an
incarceration, _incomunicado_, which had lasted for four years, eight
months and nineteen days. His requests were granted for a certificate
_de no obstancia_ and for an order on the paymaster of the schools to
pay him his professorial salary from the date of his arrest to the
expiration of his quadrennial term.[348]
During this prolonged imprisonment, Fray Luis seems to have been treated
with unusual consideration. He was allowed to send for all the books
needed for his defence and for study--even for recreation, for we find
him, July 6, 1575, asking for the prose works of Bembo, for a Pindar in
Greek and Latin and for a copy of Sophocles.[349] He relieved the
distractions of his defence and the anxieties of his position by the
composition of his _De los Nombres de Christo_, which has remained a
classic. Yet these were but slender alleviations of the hardships and
despairing tedium of his prison cell. On March 12, 1575, he is begging
for the sacraments; though he is no heretic, he says, he has been
deprived of them for three years. This petition was forwarded to the
Suprema, which replied by drily telling the tribunal to complete the
cases of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez as soon as opportunity would
permit.[350] At an audience of August 20th, of the same year, when
remanded to his cell, he paused to represent that, as the inquisitors
well knew, he was very sick with fever; there was no one in his cell to
take care of him, save a fellow-prisoner, a young boy who was simple;
one day he fainted through hunger, as there was no one to give him food,
and he asked whether a fraile of his Order could be admitted to assist
him and to aid him to die, unless they wished him to die alone in his
cell. This was not refused but, as the condition was imposed that the
companion should as usual share his imprisonment to the end, the request
was in vain. Then, on September 12th, in his reply to the five
propositions suddenly sprung upon him, he feelingly referred to the
years of prison and the sufferings caused by the absence of comforts in
his weakness and sickness, as a torture long and cruel enough to purge
all suspicions.[351] Even more pitiful was a petition to the Suprema in
November of the same year--"I supplicate your most illustrious body, by
Jesus Christ, on my giving ample security, to order me to be placed in
one of the convents of this city, even in that of San Pablo (Dominican),
in any way that it may please you, until sentence is rendered, so that
if, during this time, God should call me, which I greatly fear, in view
of my much trouble and feeble health, I may die as a Christian among
religious persons, aided by their prayers and receiving the sacraments,
and not as an infidel, alone in prison with a Moor at my bed-side. And
since the rancor of my enemies and my own sins have deprived me of all
that is desirable in life, may the Christian piety of your most
illustrious body give me this consolation in death, for I ask nothing
more."[352] It is perhaps needless to say that this touching appeal did
not even receive an answer.
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
After the term of his professorship had expired, about March 1, 1573,
his special enemy, Bartolomé de Medina, was elected in his place and was
promoted, in August 1576, to the leading chair in theology, while Fray
García del Castillo succeeded to that of Durandus. On Fray Luis's
return, he was warmly and honorably received in an assembly of the
Senate, convoked for the purpose, where the Commissioner of the
Inquisition declared that the Holy Office had ordered his restoration
to honor and to his professorship. Luis however refused to disturb
Castillo and, in January 1577, an extraordinary chair on the Scriptures
was created for him. The next year, on the chair of moral philosophy
falling vacant, he obtained it and subsequently he became regular
professor of Scripture--one of the highest positions in the University.
His colleague Grajal had been less fortunate, having perished in prison
before the termination of his trial.[353]
Fray Luis's mental vigor was unimpaired, although his delicate frame
never wholly recovered from the effects of his long imprisonment. Such
an experience of the dangers attendant on the discussions of the schools
might seem sufficient to dampen his disputatious ardor, but in a
theology, which sought to reduce to hard and fast lines all the secrets
of the unknown spiritual world, there was risk of heresy in every
speculation. In an _acto_ of the University, held January 20, 1582, the
debate widened into a discussion upon predestination and free-will, in
which Fray Luis and Fray Domingo de Guzman were bitterly opposed to each
other. It was continued in another theological Act the next week; the
students became excited and called upon Father Bañez to repress these
novelties, which he did in a lecture declaring that the views of Fray
Luis savored of Pelagianism. The latter was angered and the next day, in
an assembly of all the faculties, the question under debate was: If God
confers equal and sufficing grace on two men, nothing else interfering,
can one be converted and the other reject the aid? The discussion
between Fray Luis and Bañez was hot, and the excitement increased. Then
on January 27th there was another assembly which wrangled over the
intricate questions involved in prevenient aid and human
coöperation.[354]
This was the commencement of the long debate _De Auxiliis_, between
Jesuits and Dominicans, which lasted for a century, until both sides
were silenced by the Holy See, without either being able to claim the
victory. Fray Luis had excited many enmities--though not as many as he
was in the habit of claiming--and the occasion was favorable for
striking at him and at those whom he supported. Fray Juan de Santa Cruz
drew up an account of the discussions, with a censure of the erroneous
and heretical propositions defended; it was not a personal denunciation
of any one, but he declared that the agitation and disquiet of the
schools demanded a settlement by the Inquisition. This he presented,
February 5th, at Valladolid, to the inquisitor, Juan de Arrese and, from
the marginal notes, it appears that, besides Fray Luis, two Jesuits and
a Benedictine were marked for prosecution. In March, Inquisitor Arrese
came to Salamanca on a mission to suppress astrology and took the
opportunity to gather testimony on the scholastic quarrel. Various
witnesses, some of them Augustinians, came forward spontaneously with
evidence, and the Mercenarian, Francisco Zumel presented a series of
propositions, purporting to be drawn from a lecture by Fray Luis on
predestination, of which the worst was that Christ on the cross was
destitute of God and was provoked to sin. Zumel was a bitter enemy of
Luis, who had defeated him, four years before, in competition for the
chair of moral philosophy; both had their partizans and their quarrels
were the cause of much trouble.[355]
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
Fray Luis's experience of the Inquisition naturally led him to seek
exculpation. Three times he appeared voluntarily before Arrese and made
verbal and written statements, in which he rendered an account of his
share in the debates. He admitted that he had defended a position
opposite to what he had previously taught, which was not without a
certain temerity, as differing from the ordinary language of the
schools, and not proper for public debate, as it was delicate, difficult
of comprehension and liable to lead the hearers into error. He protested
that he had not intended to offend Catholic doctrine and, if he had said
anything inconsiderately, he submitted it to the censure and correction
of the holy tribunal. He also laid much stress on the notorious hatred
of the Dominicans towards him, and the manner in which they lost no
opportunity of decrying his doctrine, his person and his morals.[356]
Inquisitor Arrese returned to Valladolid with the evidence, after which
there was pause before the case of Fray Luis was taken up. There would
seem to have been some hesitation concerning it, for the Suprema took
the unusual step of summoning him before it, from which he excused
himself on the plea of illness and forwarded a physician's certificate
in justification. The next document in the case is a letter of August
3d, from the Suprema to the tribunal, calling for the papers in the
cases of the Salamanca theologians, with its opinion concerning them. In
its reply the tribunal said that Fray Luis had confessed to everything
testified against him, submitting himself to correction, and conceding
that what he had said was not devoid of temerity; he had evidently
spoken with passion and after the debate had begged pardon of Domingo de
Guzman for telling him that what he advocated was Lutheran heresy. In
view of all this the tribunal proposed to call him before it and examine
him when, if nothing further resulted, he should be gravely reprimanded
and, as the school of Salamanca was gravely excited and, as some
Augustinians were boasting that his utterances had been accepted by the
tribunal as true, he should be required publicly to read in his chair a
declaration drawn up for him censuring the propositions, and also to
declare that he had spoken wrongly when he had characterized the
opposite as heresy.[357]
This would have been a profound humiliation for the proud and
domineering theologian, but again Quiroga seems to have interposed to
save him. There is a blank in the records for eighteen months,
explicable by the affair being in the hands of the Suprema. What
occurred during the interval is unknown, but the outcome appears in the
final act of the trial, February 3, 1584, at Toledo. There Fray Luis
stood before Inquisitor-general Quiroga who reprimanded and admonished
him charitably not in future to defend, publicly or privately, the
propositions which he had admitted were not devoid of temerity, adding a
warning that otherwise he would be prosecuted with all the rigor of the
law, to all of which Fray Luis promised obedience.[358] That he had in
no way lost the respect of his fellows is seen in his election to the
Provincialate of the Augustinian Order, in 1591, shortly before his
death.
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.
* * * * *
[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]
* * * * *
[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]
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
[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.