Marriage was the source of infinite trouble. The Church had prohibited

unions within the fourth degree of kinship and, by inventing spiritual

affinity, it had complicated and enlarged the incestuous area while, by

assuming for the pope the profitable power of selling dispensations, it

admitted that the restriction was purely artificial. Among the Moors,

marriage between first cousins was permitted and, as the Moriscos dwelt

confined in their Morerías, or in small, isolated villages, without

power to change domicile, intermarriage throughout generations had

created such complexity of relationship that unions lawful under the

canon law must have been exceptional. We have seen the question raised

in the Concordia of 1528, with the result that existing marriages and

betrothals were dispensed for, but that future ones must conform to the

canons. This was a virtual impossibility; the rectors sought to make

their subjects purchase dispensations, but we are told that they rarely

did so; that, in some places, they merely told the lord that the parties

were of kin and that, if he made no objection, the marriage would take

place--an indifference for which more than one noble was prosecuted and

publicly penanced.[1027] Under such circumstances, there could have been

no Christian marriage-rites, and the union was legally pure concubinage,

or at best clandestine marriage, which the Council of Trent, in 1563,

pronounced invalid.[1028] It was probably the conciliar definitions that

induced the Córtes of Monzon, in 1564, to petition that facilities

should be afforded for obtaining dispensations from the Commissioner of

the Santa Cruzada, who possessed the requisite faculties, and further

that the offspring of such unions should be legally legitimate. To this

not unreasonable request the bishops of the Council of Valencia, in

1565, replied by threatening excommunication and other penalties on all

marrying within the prohibited degrees, and on all concerned in evasions

of the canons.[1029]

The matter was universally admitted to be of supreme importance, but it

was treated with the customary negligence and procrastination. At

length, in 1587, Philip II represented it to Sixtus V, but he only

obtained a brief, January 25, 1588, granting to the Valencia bishops,

for six months only, faculties to validate such marriages, legitimate

the children and absolve the parents _in utroque foro_, with salutary

penance, for all of which no fees were to be exacted. It is not likely

that the officials took much interest in performing this gratuitous

labor, or that the Moriscos, even if they chanced to hear of the brief,

exposed themselves to the annoyances which it entailed. The last

recorded action in the matter is that Philip, in 1595, resolved to apply

for another brief of the same nature. He doubtless obtained it with the

same nugatory result.[1030]

The Moorish rule, to eat no meat slaughtered by the uncircumcised, was

made the pretext for some troublesome intermeddling. In the Granada

decree of 1526, Charles V forbade all slaughtering by Moriscos, in

places where there was an Old Christian; where there was none, the

priest was to designate a person to perform the office.[1031] Little

attention appears to have been paid to the matter, until Archbishop

Ribera issued an edict prohibiting Moriscos from eating meat that had

not been slaughtered by an Old Christian. This was trespassing on the

jurisdiction of the Inquisition and, in 1579, the Suprema called upon

the Valencia tribunal for a report, including what Bishop Gallo of

Orihuela had done with regard to the same matter. The tribunal replied

that the edict was obeyed, but that the Moriscos would eat no meat

slaughtered by Old Christians, except in a few places, under compulsion

by their lords. The edict ought to be perpetuated, for the refusal to

eat the meat of a Christian butcher was proof of suspicion, requiring

prosecution by the Inquisition. In Orihuela there was doubt whether a

cow killed at Aspe had been properly slaughtered; the Moriscos refused

to eat of it, for which the Murcia tribunal punished a number of them,

leading Bishop Gallo to order that, at Aspe and Nobelda, the butchering

should be done by Old Christians. It was probably this which led to

general legislation forbidding Moriscos to follow the trade of butchers,

or even to kill a fowl for a sick man, a law repeated as late as

1595.[1032]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _RAVAGES ON THE COAST_]

Subjected to the perpetual exasperation of interference with their

habits and customs, to the oppression of their lords and the persecution

of the Inquisition, denied all opportunity to rise in the social scale,

forbidden to enjoy the faith of their ancestors, while sedulously

trained to hate the religion imposed on them, and despairing of relief

in the future, it is no wonder that the Moriscos were discontented

subjects, eager to throw off the insupportable yoke and to rise against

their oppressors. They were, however, but little more than half a

million of souls, weaponless and untrained, in a population of eight or

ten millions--a negligible quantity in the vigorous days of Ferdinand

and even in the earlier years of Charles V. The Spanish monarchy,

however, had squandered its strength on distant enterprises; even before

the fearful drain in the Netherlands, the exhaustive effort required to

crush the Moriscos of Granada showed that it was already bankrupt in

resources. That episode was a warning which Spanish statesmanship might

well take to heart, and, year by year, the fear grew greater of what

might be the fate of Spain if internal enemies should unite with

external.

There had long been a source of humiliation and annoyance, though not in

itself of danger, in the ravages of Moorish corsairs along the southern

coast, for which the Moriscos were held responsible. Undoubtedly they

aided by conveying information, maintaining relations with Barbary, and

availing themselves of the razzias to escape thither when they could,

but the primary fault lay in the incredible fatuity of a policy, so

preoccupied with foreign ambitions and the fatal Burgundian inheritance,

that it neglected the protection of the Spanish shores, until it became

a proverb that these were the Indies of the Turkish and Moorish

sea-rovers.

Complaints of these ravages commence with the Christianization of

Granada and continue uninterruptedly for more than a century, while the

measures to guard against these attacks were spasmodic and miserably

insufficient. Boronat gives a list of thirty-three descents, between

1528 and 1584, but this cannot include the innumerable landings from

small vessels to carry away bands of Moriscos and such pillage as could

hastily be gathered--little raids such as that picturesquely described

by Cervantes, with its characteristic feature of the fortified church,

in which the Christians of the sea-coast village defended themselves,

while the Moriscos eagerly hurried to embark.[1033] In the larger

expeditions, the Moriscos sometimes escaped in considerable numbers. In

1559, Dragut carried off twenty-five hundred; in 1570, all those of

Palmera were taken; in 1584, an Algerine fleet removed twenty-three

hundred, and the next year another fleet took away the whole population

of Callosa, all of which was exceedingly damaging to the lords who lost

their vassals.[1034]

These raids were practically unresisted and unavenged, for the coasts

were unguarded by land or sea. Occasionally, as in 1519, we hear of a

few hundred troops sent, when news was received of an expected hostile

fleet: sometimes there were negotiations between the central government

and the exposed provinces to maintain a force on the water, but the

inadequacy of these precautions is illustrated by the bargaining in

1547, when the Catalan Córtes complained of the irreparable damage

inflicted by the Moorish corsairs and asked that six of the Castilian

galleys be sent to winter there. Prince Philip would only promise that

he would do what was suitable, which brought an offer that Catalonia

would equip and man one galley while Valencia promised one or two, and

Philip acceded to the request that the Castilian galleys should

coöperate with them.[1035] Another expedient was based on the assumed

collusion of the Moriscos with the corsairs, and it seemed easier to

exclude them wholly from the coast than to guard it effectually. As

early as 1507 Ferdinand undertook to depopulate it from Gibraltar to

Almería, but the experiment proved a failure.[1036] It was tried again

repeatedly, in various savage laws to prevent Moriscos from travelling

within prescribed distances from the sea, and from holding communication

with the corsairs, but this naturally effected nothing.[1037] In 1604,

the Córtes of Valencia even proposed to enlist the coöperation of the

Moriscos, by suggesting that they should redeem all Christians captured

and enslaved on the Valencian coast, in return for which the rigor of

the Inquisition should be relaxed and their evidence against each other

should not be required, but it is needless to say that the plan was

rejected.[1038]

While this matter of the corsairs was comparatively trivial in itself,

it bore a disproportionately large share in the discussions on the

Morisco question, and undoubtedly had its influence on the final

decision. The result, indeed, showed that there was a connection between

the Moriscos and the corsairs, for one of the benefits derived from the

expulsion was relief to the coasts.[1039] Vastly greater, however, in

the eyes of statesmen, was the impending danger of rebellion, coincident

with attack from Barbary or from the Turk or, in later years, from

France.

[Sidenote: _CONSPIRACIES_]

Even as early as 1512, Peter Martyr, in describing the disturbed

condition of Granada, declared that if some daring pirate leader should

march into the interior, the population would rise and, as Ferdinand was

occupied with the conquest of Navarre, all would go to ruin.[1040] In

1519, there was a scare in Valencia over a report that the Moors of

Algiers were coming to seize the kingdom, in concert with the

Moriscos.[1041] It is somewhat remarkable that, when a conspiracy was

discovered in 1528, the eagerness of the Valencia tribunal to defend its

jurisdiction actually led it to protect the conspirators. The

authorities had arrested Pere de Alba and his mother-in-law Isabel, as

the leaders of the plot. The tribunal claimed them as apostates and,

when they were sent to it for examination, it threw them into its prison

and refused to surrender them, although the viceroy demanded them as

essential to unravelling the details of the conspiracy. Cardinal

Manrique was obliged to despatch a special courier with a letter

expressing his surprise, as the safety of the state was the first

consideration, but even then the tribunal only gave them up with a

warning that they must not be made to suffer in life or limb.[1042]

When Philip II returned to Spain, in 1559, he called for a report on the

Moriscos, and the information submitted to him comprised an account of a

plot with the Turks for an invasion.[1043] In 1565, a number of arrests

were made on charges of treasonable correspondence with the Turk, and it

was public rumor that thirty thousand Moriscos were enrolled, awaiting

only the capture of Malta to rise in aid of an invasion. The French

ambassador, who reported this, subsequently added that the story of the

conspiracy was contradicted, but the Moriscos were so badly treated by

the Inquisition that despair might readily lead them to rise in arms to

aid the Turk.[1044] In 1567, the trial of Gerónimo Roldan, by the

Valencia tribunal, revealed evidence of envoys from the ruler of Algiers

with a letter urging the Moriscos to rise, together with plans to

organize and arm them.[1045] It is true that the rebellion of Granada

showed that there was no such eagerness to invade Spain as was

apprehended, but, on the other hand if, with the aid of five or six

hundred Moors and Turks, the insurgents had taxed to the utmost the

power of the kingdom, what was the prospect if a powerful fleet, holding

command of the sea, should land a heavy force of trained and well-armed

fighting men? During the rebellion, the Venetian envoy, Sigismondo

Cavalli, pointed out that assistance from Barbary would involve the

kingdom in the greatest straits, for there were about six hundred

thousand Moriscos to help an invader. So, in 1575, Lorenzo Priuli,

estimating them at four hundred thousand, described them as the source

of perpetual danger.[1046] The peril constantly increased with time. It

was universally recognized that, through the drain to the colonies, the

external wars, and the growth of the celibate clergy, the Old Christians

were constantly diminishing in numbers, while the Moriscos were rapidly

increasing; the material and especially the military resources of Spain

were becoming gradually exhausted, and Spanish statesmen looked forward

anxiously to the time when, as Fray Bleda tells us, the Moriscos hoped

eventually, to reconquer the land with the aid of the Moors and

Turks.[1047]

[Sidenote: _CONSPIRACIES_]

Nor was this all for, with the pacification of France under the able

control of Henry IV, there loomed before them a new and more dangerous

enemy. Henry had a long debt of vengeance to pay, and was but awaiting

his opportunity. He was in alliance with the Turk and had no

conscientious scruple as to Moslem aid. Even as early as 1583, while as

yet he was only King of Navarre, there was a scare over an asserted

combination between him and the Turk, for an invasion in combination

with the Moriscos, which led the Suprema, in January, 1584, to order

from the Saragossa tribunal a report on all the evidence in the records

as to plots for rebellion.[1048] This was furnished in detail and shows

the incessant vigilance and constant anxieties, since 1565, to which the

disaffection of the Moriscos had given rise, and their correspondence

not only with the Barbary States and the Turk, but with the French

Huguenots. A portion of the evidence was undoubtedly manufactured by the

spies in the pay of the Inquisition, but there was enough of genuine to

show that plots and intrigues were constantly on foot among the

Moriscos. Henry IV was quite ready to utilize their disaffection in

furtherance of his plans for the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy and,

in 1602, he entered into negotiations with them, through the Marshal

Duke de la Force, his governor in Béarn and Navarre. They promised to

raise eighty thousand men and to deliver three cities, one of them a

seaport and, as an earnest of their resolve, they paid to la Force, at

Pau, in 1604 or 1605, a hundred and twenty thousand ducats, but Henry

decided that the moment was not favorable and the plan was

postponed.[1049]

Then, in 1608, there came a fresh alarm through negotiations of the

Valencian Moriscos with Muley Cidan, a pretender to the throne of

Morocco, to whom they promised two hundred thousand men, if he would

bring twenty thousand and seize a seaport, while certain Hollanders

agreed to furnish transportation. Philip III was so impressed with this

that, in sending the report to the Royal Council, he ordered it to

consider the matter to the exclusion of everything else. He admitted the

defenceless condition of Spain; Muley Cidan was its declared enemy;

Sultan Ahmed I had his hands free from the war with Persia and had

suppressed his own rebels; Spain's Italian possessions were exhausted

and ripe for revolt, while at home the Moriscos were impatient for

liberation. The Council was therefore ordered to consider the means of

preserving peace, short of butchering them all.[1050]

This scare passed away; Muley Cidan rejected the Morisco overtures, and

Ahmed sent his fleet against the coasts of Italy. The impression

remained, however; the final impulsion had been given, and thenceforth

the expulsion of the Moriscos was only a question of means and

opportunity. Its execution can scarce be said to have been premature

for, although those of Valencia were deported in the autumn of 1609 and

those of Aragon in the spring of 1610, Henry IV still relied on those

who were left to aid him in his plans for the destruction of Spain. A

part of his design was an invasion by la Force with ten thousand men,

trusting to the coöperation of the Moriscos, with whom negotiations had

been resumed. La Force was in consultation with him, and was in his

carriage on May 14, 1610, when, in the Rue de la Ferronerie, the knife

of Ravaillac gave Spain a respite.[1051] It was evidently supposed that

the expulsion had been imperfect and that Spain was still an easy prey.

The Baron de Salignac, French Ambassador at Constantinople, wrote to

Henry, May 2, 1610, that no matter how many Moriscos had been banished,

enough remained to give the Spaniards trouble; war that elsewhere could

cost a crown would not there cost a maravedí, and when it should begin

Spain would find it more difficult to raise a maravedí than it would be

to raise a doubloon elsewhere.[1052] As events turned out, these were

vain speculations, but they have interest as showing how, in the

estimation of her enemies, Spain had fatally crippled herself by the

mismanagement of her Morisco subjects. To the Spanish statesmen of the

time the situation had become one from which extrication was imperative

at whatever cost.

* * * * *

It can readily be believed that the matter had long before awakened the

earnest solicitude of Philip II and his counsellors. As early as 1581,

when in Lisbon consolidating his rule over Portugal, he formed a junta

of his chief advisers to formulate a definite conclusion. That which

they reached was the merciful one of sending to sea all the Moriscos who

would not be catechised or did not desire to remain, embarking them on

worthless ships which were to be scuttled, for it was deemed unwise to

add to the population of Africa; it was resolved that, when the fleet

returned from the Azores, the plan should be executed by Antonio de

Leyva but, when the fleet arrived, it was wanted in Flanders, and the

project was abandoned. When, in 1602, Philip III was informed of this,

he expressed his pleasure because it justified what was then in

contemplation.[1053]

[Sidenote: _DELIBERATIONS_]

As Fray Diego de Chaves, confessor of Philip II, was a member of the

junta, there could have been no conscientious scruples concerning this

wholesale murder. The Church for centuries had taught that death was the

penalty for heresy; this was past discussion and was accepted as a

matter of course, so that anything short of it was a grace

undeserved--slavery, the galleys, the mines, castration, were mercies

for which the culprits should feel grateful. So all theologians taught

and so Fray Bleda learnedly set forth in his hideous book, the _Defensio

Fidei_, which was approved in Rome after careful examination, and was

printed at the expense of Philip III.[1054] Yet, for the honor of

humanity, it must be said that there were a few rare souls who held that

religion should be spread by love and charity--at least we may so assume

from a memorial presented to the Lisbon junta, setting forth that the

proper means of conversion had never yet been tried; that the cure had

failed through the use of violence, for the disease was not incurable

and the fault lay in the methods adopted; Christ had sent forth the

apostles to convert the world by preaching the gospel, and the effort

should be to find teachers of exemplary life, who would preach with love

and gentleness. The memorial recited calmly and temperately the mistakes

that had been made in the use of coercion and the absence of instruction

and persuasion, and it proposed a series of measures which show that the

writer was familiar with the difficulties of the task, the essential

condition of which was that those entrusted with it should persuade

themselves that it was not impossible. The junta contented itself with

proposing that, if the king so desired, the memorial could be sent to

the prelates of Valencia, Aragon and Granada, for examination and

report. It seems to have been so sent, but only two answers are on

record. Archbishop Ribera replied with the alternative of immediate

expulsion or, what would be better, thinning out the Moriscos by

appointing a body of special inquisitors, who should execute speedy

justice, until there should be so few left that they could be expelled

without trouble, thus calmly proposing to burn men and women by the

hundred thousand. A shade less ferocious was the suggestion of the

Inquisitor of Valencia, Ximenez de Reynoso, who favored expulsion to

Newfoundland, under the guard of soldiers, who should receive allotments

of land and vassals, similar to those of the conquistadores in the New

World.[1055] Such an expulsion averted the danger of increasing the

African population and was recommended, with a characteristically savage

addition, by Martin de Salvatierra, Bishop of Segorbe, when, in 1587,

his advice was sought by Philip. He responded by a long and brutal

attack on the Moriscos, and suggested deportation to Newfoundland, where

they would speedily perish, especially if the precaution were taken of

castrating all the males, old and young.[1056]

It is to the credit of Philip II and his counsellors that, after the

failure of the Lisbon project of 1581, they refused to entertain the

inhuman suggestions of their ecclesiastical advisers. The matter

continued to be threshed out, over and over again, in repeated juntas

and councils, in innumerable consultas, and in the system, which Philip

had reduced to perfection, of endless talking and writing, which served

as an excuse for inaction. One device after another was discussed, such

as reducing all the Moriscos to slavery, or sending the able-bodied to

the galleys, but the idea of expulsion gradually forged to the front. In

this confused tangle of prejudice, passion and fanaticism, it is

refreshing to meet with a more statesmanlike view, expressed in a letter

of the royal secretary, Francisco de Idiaquez, October 3, 1594,

concerning a paper, submitted to him by the king, from some zealous but

unpractical person, who argued that the existing scarcity arose from

overpopulation, which would be relieved by the expulsion of the

Moriscos. So far from this being the case, said Idiaquez, Spain had less

inhabitants than for the last two or three centuries. If the presence of

this vile race were as safe as it was profitable, there was not a corner

of land that should not be placed in their hands, for they alone would

bring fertility and plenty by their skill and thrift, which would reduce

the price of provisions and with them that of other products. Cheapness

was not caused by scanty population but by dense, if the people would

work; the high prices were the result of the vice, the idleness, the

luxury and the excessive superfluities indulged in by all classes.[1057]

[Sidenote: _DELIBERATIONS_]

The panic fear entertained of the Moriscos is reflected in an elaborate

memorial presented to Philip III, on his accession in 1598, by the

Marquis of Velada, who had been his tutor and was his _mayordomo mayor_,

seriously urging Sicilian Vespers to prevent them from adopting the same

expedient.[1058] Yet the simpler solution of allowing the

irreconcilables to depart was not without its advocates, and at one time

came near to adoption. In 1598, Don Martin González de Cellorigo

submitted to Secretary Idiaquez the suggestion that they should be

permitted or required to leave Spain, scattering the rest throughout

Castile, on their abjuring their heresies, and subjecting them to the

restrictions imposed on the exiles from Granada.[1059] Even as late as

1607, the _Junta de Tres_, to which the whole affair of the Moriscos had

been entrusted, in a consulta of January 1st, favored the plan of

allowing all, who would not accept Christianity, to betake themselves to

Barbary, pointing out the futility of the objection that this would

increase the power of the Moors, and this it repeated, October 29th,

adding the suggestion that the Moriscos of Castile should be scattered

and confined to agricultural labor, in all of which Philip signified his

concurrence.[1060]

This was too sensible and humane to suit the ecclesiastics, who were

bent on getting rid of the obnoxious apostates by expulsion or

extermination, and Spain was not to be allowed so easy a solution of the

difficulties created by a century of fanaticism and wrong-doing. In the

irresolute and vacillating policy of the court, a final effort was made,

as we have seen, to conciliate and instruct, in the Edict of Grace of

1599, under conditions that rendered it nugatory. Its failure, in 1601,

was followed by the memorials of Archbishop Ribera urging expulsion, and

any subsequent efforts to convert, such as a junta of bishops held in

1608 and 1609, were merely to keep the Moriscos amused and in ignorance

of the more drastic measures proposed, during the years in which Philip

III and his advisers discussed and rediscussed the question, pondered

over details and avoided an irrevocable decision.

When, under pressure of the alarm about Muley Cidan, Philip called upon

his Council of State for an immediate decision, it admitted that there

had been too much delay and that the matter must not be left for the

next generation, for the Christians, through wars and religion and

dissolute lives, were constantly diminishing in numbers, while the

Moriscos, through peace and frugality, were multiplying until in time

they would be the majority. The alternatives of massacre or slavery, or

the galleys, or allowing the discontented to emigrate were barely

alluded to, and expulsion was in the minds of all. The external

relations of Spain rendered the opportunity propitious and it ought not

to be wasted. The work should commence with Valencia, which was the most

dangerous centre, and the other kingdoms could be kept quiet with

assurances that the expulsion was not to go further. The opposition of

the nobles could be bought off by granting them the real and personal

property of their vassals, and preparations should be made to have a

powerful fleet off the coast by the end of Spring, and sufficient forces

on land to crush resistance. As the Inquisition was in the habit of

making many arrests, it could readily seize the influential Moriscos, so

as to deprive the rest of their leadership. This sketched out the plan

eventually followed, and the only partially dissentient voice was that

of the royal confessor, Cardinal Fray Gerónimo Xavierr, who pleaded the

forcible baptism and the futile endeavors to instruct by ministers, many

of whom were of lives so depraved that they wrought harm by their evil

example; he asked that efforts to convert should continue and if, by the

time set for expulsion, there was no prospect of improvement, the

proposed rigor would be justified. A process could then be formed by the

Inquisition as to their apostasy, when they could be condemned for

treason against God, or, if rebellion were proved, for treason against

the king.[1061]

This last suggestion refers to a characteristic scruple. Ribera had

alluded to it in his second memorial, to the effect that expulsion would

be an invasion of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, depriving it of

inflicting the canonical punishments, but this, he suggested, could be

removed by application to the pope.[1062] It was doubtless in view of

this scruple, and to avoid interference by the Inquisition, which was

interested in maintaining the existing situation, that the edict of

expulsion represented the measure as purely secular, caused by the

treasonable correspondence of the Moriscos with the enemies of Spain,

and by the necessity of placating God for their heresies.[1063]

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

Still there were irresolution and delay, and the die was not cast until,

in April, 1609, the Council of State presented a consulta unanimously

agreeing on expulsion and virtually determining that the work should

commence in autumn, the interval being employed in organizing the

militia, bringing troops from Italy, and assembling squadrons to command

the coast. Early in May orders were sent to the viceroys of Sicily,

Naples and Milan to have the galleys in readiness and, at the end of

June, the squadrons were instructed to rendezvous at Majorca on August

15th. Even after this there were evidences of hesitation and

vacillation, but the plan was adhered to.[1064]

Early in August, Don Agustin de Mexia, an officer of high rank, who had

distinguished himself at the siege of Ostend, was sent to Valencia,

ostensibly to inspect the fortifications, but armed with full powers to

carry out the expulsion. He bore a letter from the king to Ribera,

expatiating on the influence which the latter had had in leading him to

a decision. Ribera had obtained more than he had bargained for. His

somewhat selfish theory had been that, by expelling the Moriscos from

the rest of Spain, those of Valencia and Aragon could be controlled, and

he shrank from the loss and misery to be inflicted on his immediate

surroundings. As late as December 19, 1608, he had urged this view in a

letter to the royal secretary, arguing that they were an injury to

Castile and Andalusia, while their removal would be ruin to Valencia and

Aragon, now the most flourishing kingdoms of Spain. The larger cities,

he said, lived on the provisions brought by the Moriscos; the churches,

hospitals, monasteries, brotherhoods, pious bequests, nobles, gentry and

citizens depended on their services and were supported by the censos

charged on their communities; he often wished to die rather than to

witness such destruction.[1065] So, when Mexia reached Valencia, August

20th, and, after conference with the Viceroy Caracena, Ribera was sent

for and read the royal letter, he repeated these arguments and proposed

that all three should join in appeal to the king to commence with

Andalusia. When the conference ended at 4 <small>P.M., he was still firm and

was told that a courier for Madrid would start at midnight when he could

write what he saw fit. On reflection he concluded that the king wanted

obedience, not advice, and he sent to the palace, in time for the

courier, a letter to the king, and word to Mexia and Caracena, setting

forth that the royal resolution came from heaven and he would further it

with all his power. Still, he could not reconcile himself to the

prospect of poverty. On August 23d he wrote to Secretary de Prada

repeating his urgency that commencement be made with Castile and

Andalusia and, on September 3d, he said to Fray Bleda and the Dominican

Prior Alcocer "Padres, we may well in the future have to eat bread and

herbs and to mend our own shoes."[1066]

The secret had been admirably kept, but the mission of Mexia on a duty

so incompatible with his rank caused suspicions which grew from day to

day. The Moriscos commenced to fortify their houses, to cease laboring

and bringing provisions to the city, which suffered in consequence; the

nobles brought their families to town to be prepared for the worst, and

Ribera's action in increasing his guard and laying in stores of victuals

increased the excitement. The _Estamento Militar_, or House of Nobles,

held two or three stormy meetings, in which it was resolved to send a

deputation to the king to represent the ruin which expulsion would bring

upon every class in the kingdom, where eleven millions of ducats were

invested in the censos charged on the Morisco communities. The envoys

went but, when they reached Madrid, they were told by the king that it

was too late, for the edict had been already published in

Valencia.[1067]

Everything, in fact, had worked with precision. By September 17th the

fleet, consisting of sixty-two galleys and fourteen galleons, conveying

about eight thousand disciplined troops, had reached their stations at

Alicante, Denia and the Alfaques de Tortosa, and had commenced landing

the men. Possession was taken of the Sierra de Espadan, while Castilian

cavalry guarded the frontiers. When all was in readiness, royal letters

to the Jurados, Diputados and Estamento Militar were read and, on the

22d, the edict was published.

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

The comparative liberality of the terms and the short notice allowed

manifest the sense of weakened power. Under irremissible pain of death,

within three days after publication in the several towns and villages,

all Moriscos were to depart for the port of embarkation designated by a

commissioner. They could take such portable property as they could carry

on their backs; they would find vessels ready to carry them to Barbary

and would be fed on the voyage. During the three days all must remain at

home awaiting the orders of the commissioners and, after that, any one

absent from his domicile could be robbed by the first comer and carried

to a magistrate or be slain if offering resistance. As the king gave to

the lords all real and personal property not carried off, any firing of

houses or harvests or hiding of portable things would be punished by

putting to death all the inhabitants of the place. In order to preserve

the houses, the sugar mills, the rice crop and the irrigating canals,

six per cent. of the Moriscos were allowed to remain. The same

permission was given to those who, for two years, had lived among

Christians without attending the meetings of the aljamas, as well as

those admitted to communion by their priests. Children under four years

of age desiring to stay could do so, with consent of parents or

guardians. Children under six, whose fathers were Old Christians, were

to stay, together with their Morisco mothers: if the father was a

Morisco and the mother an Old Christian, he was to go and children under

six were to stay with their mother. Sheltering fugitives was forbidden,

under pain of six years of galleys, and all soldiers and Old Christians

were strictly forbidden to insult or injure Moriscos by word or deed. As

an evidence of good faith, after every instalment had been carried to

Barbary, ten were allowed to return and report to their fellows what

their treatment had been.[1068]

The publication was followed by days of anxious suspense. The people, we

are told, rejoiced, for they hated both the Moriscos and the nobles, and

there were symptoms of a rising against the latter. The lords grieved

over the ruin of their lands and the religious communities over the loss

of their enormous investments in censos. The Moriscos at first were

inclined to resist and, after vainly offering large sums to the viceroy,

they sought to arm themselves by forging ploughshares and reaping-hooks

into pikes, which with slings were their only weapons.[1069] Then

suddenly their purpose changed. They were awed by the large bodies of

disciplined troops and by the cavalry on the border. A meeting was held

of their alfaquíes and leaders, in which it was agreed that resistance

was hopeless and that, in case of defeat, their children would be

brought up as Christians, while prophecies were talked of which promised

an unexpected blessing. Consequently it was resolved that all should go,

including the six per cent. allowed to remain, and that any one who

stayed should be regarded as an apostate. This had such an effect that

those who had been offering large sums to be included in the six per

cent. now refused to stay, although asked to name their own terms. The

Duke of Gandía, who had an enormous sugar crop and who could get no

other skilled labor to work his mills, vainly offered whatever they

might ask. The only condition they would accept was the free exercise of

their religion; the Duke applied to the viceroy, but Ribera declared it

to be a concession beyond the power of king or pope to grant, for they

were baptized.[1070]

The nobles, for the most part, loyally accepted the situation and aided

in the execution of the decree. The Duke of Gandía who, next to the Duke

of Segorbe, had the largest number of vassals, wrote to the king,

October 9th, that on September 28th the Marquis of Santa Cruz had

embarked for him five thousand of them, whom he desired to be the first,

in order to quiet the apprehensions of the rest as to the safety of the

voyage. To protect and reassure their vassals, a number of the

nobles--the Duke of Gandía, the Marquis of Albaida and

others--accompanied them and saw them safely on shipboard, and the Duke

of Maqueda even sailed with them to Oran, the point of

debarkation.[1071] All, however, were not thus self-sacrificing. Bishop

Balaguer of Orihuela reported, October 31st, that some were retaining

their vassals by threats or by force, and that, unless energetic

commissioners were sent, many would be kept.[1072]

The Moriscos objected to abandoning their personal effects to their

lords and sought to convert what they possessed into money. Gandía and

some others permitted this, but many insisted on their rights and, on

October 1st, the viceroy issued a proclamation forbidding all sales, but

this led to imminent danger of rebellion and was wisely abandoned. The

land became a universal fair in which stock, produce and household gear

were sold at a fraction of their value, and finally were given away. The

Grao or port of Valencia, while the exiles were awaiting fair winds,

became a bazaar, in which exquisite Moorish garments, rare embroideries,

rich gold and silver laces and the like were bought for a song.[1073]

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

As soon as the first shock was over, of abandoning home and possessions,

the prospect of reaching a land, where they could openly profess their

faith and escape paralyzing oppression, stimulated them to intense

eagerness to leave Spain. They contended for places in the first

embarkation, and the commissioners had no trouble in assembling and

leading them to the designated ports. Troops escorted them to protect

them from the savage greed of the Old Christians, who gathered in bands,

robbing and often murdering those whom they encountered. Royal edicts

commanding swift justice were issued, gallows were erected along the

roadsides and executions were numerous, but it was impossible to prevent

outrages. In spite of this the Moriscos pressed forward to the shores.

At Alicante they came with music and song, thanking Allah for the

happiness of returning to the land of their fathers, which suggests how

simple a solution of the question it would have been to permit the

emigration of the discontented. Many, indeed, distrusting the royal

faith, preferred to charter ships and pay for transportation, which was

encouraged by providing elaborate regulations to ensure, as far as

possible, their safe passage and fair treatment. All the Spanish ports

were ordered to send their ships to the Valencia coast, even discharging

those which were loaded, and all arrivals were pressed into service.

Seeing this eagerness, the promise of free passage was broken after the

first embarkation, and the royal galleys charged the same fare as the

private vessels--seventy-five reales per head for all over sixteen and

thirty-five for those younger. In all there were three embarkations,

occupying about three months and including, according to lists kept at

the ports, over a hundred and fifty thousand souls.[1074]

This eagerness to go was, however, not universal. There were many who,

not unreasonably, felt little confidence in the royal faith and

preferred the chances of resistance. Gathering into bands they sought

refuge in two easily defensible positions, one on a peak in the Val del

Aguar, where their numbers were reckoned at from fifteen to twenty-five

thousand, and the other in the Muela de Cortes, where there were said to

be nine thousand. Mexia paid no attention to them, until the business of

embarkation was nearly concluded, when they were readily reduced. In

the Val del Aguar it was a massacre of the weaponless wretches, rather

than a battle; three thousand Moriscos were slain and only one Spaniard,

Bautista Crespo, who was killed by his own firelock. The survivors,

starved, frozen and dying with thirst, surrendered at discretion,

November 28th, and were conducted to the port of embarkation, but many

perished of exhaustion on the road and many women and children were

stolen by the soldiers and sold as slaves, while of those who embarked

but few reached Africa. At the Muela de Cortes they surrendered on

promise of safety to life and property, provided they embarked within

three days, but the soldiery, disappointed at the loss of expected

booty, fell upon them. Only three thousand were brought to the

sea-ports, and more than two thousand scattered among the mountains,

where for a year or two they gave much trouble. They had elected as king

Vicente Turixi, who was tracked to a cave and brought to Valencia, where

he was put to a cruel death, December 18th. He died as a good Christian

and made a most edifying end, for we are told that he had been a most

liberal almsgiver and was devoted to the Virgin and to the religious

Orders.[1075] This ended the only open resistance to the expulsion

throughout Spain.

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

The unexpected ease of the affair in Valencia, regarded as the most

dangerous district, quickened the preparations for the other kingdoms.

Thus far it had been represented as confined exclusively to Valencia,

but the rest felt that their turn was to come, and remonstrances were

showered upon the government, which met them with equivocating denials

and assurances. The mask was gradually thrown off. Towards the end of

October the Marquis of San German was sent to Seville to prepare for the

expulsion from Murcia, Granada and Andalusia. Murcia succeeded in

obtaining a suspension of the decree, which was published for the other

provinces on January 12, 1610, after the galleys and troops had been

brought from Valencia. It gave the exiles thirty days--subsequently

reduced to twenty--after which they were threatened with death and

confiscation without trial or sentence. Their lands were confiscated to

the king, for the service of God and the public, but they were allowed

to sell movable property and carry away the proceeds in merchandise

bought of Spanish subjects, but were forbidden to take bills of

exchange, jewels, bullion or money, beyond what was needed for

transportation. They could take their children with them, provided they

went to Christian lands, which led many to charter vessels, ostensibly

for France, but in reality for Africa. In spite of the reports of the

cruelties perpetrated in Algiers on the Valencia exiles, they are said

to have gone with cheerfulness, and many of them sought Morocco. By

April, Andalusia was reported clear of Moriscos and that a few remained

on the coast of Granada, waiting for vessels. The whole number was

estimated at from eighty to a hundred thousand, besides twenty thousand

who had voluntarily gone in advance. They were reported to have carried

much wealth with them, which is not improbable, as many, especially

those of Seville, were rich and prosperous and held positions of honor.

A significant incident was the desire of Córdova to retain six per cent.

of them and, when this was refused, it petitioned for the retention of

two Morisco saddlers, for the encouragement of horsemanship, especially

as they were old and childless. Apparently there were no Spaniards

capable of making harness.[1076]

Yet, at first, there were some exceptions made. It had been represented

to the king that there were many descendants of Mudéjares, voluntarily

converted prior to the enforced baptism, who were Spaniards in dress,

language and religion, including many _beatas_ and persons vowed to

chastity. Accordingly an order was issued, February 7, 1610, to the

bishops to examine all such cases and report to San German those whom

they found worthy to be retained. This, however, amounted only to a

brief reprieve. Their cases were referred to the Royal Council and those

who did not, within the impossibly brief term of thirty or sixty days,

obtain favorable decisions were hunted like wild beasts and forcibly

carried off.[1077]

Expulsion from Castile had been resolved upon by the Council of State,

September 15, 1609, but was deferred to await the result in Valencia. In

preparation, an attempt was made in October to organize the militia, by

enrolling one in five of the able-bodied men--a measure twice attempted

in vain by Philip II--but it met with resistance which forced its

abandonment, for there was no military ardor in Spain, even for local

service. Then an enumeration of the Moriscos was ordered which, in

conjunction with events in Valencia, aroused much excitement. Appeals to

the court were unanswered, while orders to the magistrates intended to

quiet alarm only increased it. Many commenced to sell their lands, and

this diminution of prospective confiscations was met, towards the end of

October, by prohibiting sales, but they were continued under various

devices.[1078]

On November 3d, the Count of Salazar was appointed to superintend the

expulsion from Old and New Castile, La Mancha and Extremadura. From

their anxiety to sell their lands he assumed that they mostly would go

voluntarily, and he suggested the granting of permission to emigrate.

This was adopted, and a royal cédula of December 28th allowed them to

leave Spain within thirty days, under the same conditions as those of

Andalusia. Such multitudes arranged to pass through Biscay into France

that the term was extended for thirty days and, on January 19, 1610,

Salazar was sent to Burgos to register them and issue certificates.

Under this arrangement 16,713 persons, of 3,972 families were registered

up to May 1st, when intimations that further admissions to France would

be refused, turned the stream to Cartagena, where 10,642 embarked,

nominally for Christian lands, in order to retain their children.[1079]

The prohibition to carry money or jewels was naturally evaded as far as

possible and, for infractions of it, more than thirty were hanged at

Burgos. There were also at hand obliging Portuguese brokers, who

undertook the transmission of the forbidden valuables and who were

detected and prosecuted. A safer conduit was found through the French

ambassador at Madrid, who received very large sums, to be repaid in

various French cities. His steward was despatched with the documents,

but the Spanish authorities were on the alert; he was arrested at

Buitrago and brought back to Madrid, whereupon the ambassador threatened

that, if the letters were opened, thereafter no Spanish courier should

pass through France without seizure of his papers. After an angry

correspondence, the Spaniards yielded, and the steward was allowed to

resume his journey.[1080]

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

Aragon and Catalonia were next taken in hand. There had been much

disquiet there, which the glozing assurances from the court failed to

allay. The Old Christians began to maltreat the Moriscos, who ceased

their labors and commenced to sell their movables, while their creditors

and holders of censos became alarmed and proceeded to collect their

claims with rigor. Envoys were sent to the king from Aragon with an

elaborate memorial detailing the enormous damage to result from

expulsion, and the impolicy of reducing the diminishing population of

Spain. Philip made fruitless efforts to prevent the mission from coming,

and when it came it was put off with reassuring generalities.[1081]

The edicts for Aragon and Catalonia were the same as that for Valencia,

except in two points. The Catalan one retained children under seven

years of age, whose parents were going to infidel lands, which led them

to make their way through France to Barbary. The other exception,

induced by the expense of the Valencia expulsion, the cost of which had

been swelled to eight hundred thousand ducats, threw upon the exiles all

the charges, not only of the journeys and voyage, but the wages of the

superintending officials and half a real per head as export duty on what

they carried with them, all of which amounted to twenty-four reales at

the Alfaques de Tortosa. The rich were required to pay for the poor, and

the commissioners were unmerciful in their exactions, making them pay

for the water in the brooks and the shade of the trees in their long

summer journeys, besides exacting from them as wages much more than was

due.[1082]

The edicts were published simultaneously, in Saragossa and Barcelona, on

May 29, 1610. No resistance was attempted, but there went up a cry of

despair which moved even their persecutors to compassion; they protested

that they were Christians and would die as such, even though torn to

pieces, but it was too late for this, and they were led submissively in

bands of from one to four thousand souls, without guards, although they

suffered severely from the brigandage of the Old Christians. This apathy

of despair was most fortunate for Spain, as resistance would have been

overcome with difficulty. The troops, debarked at the Alfaques de

Tortosa, had not been paid since they left Italy; after vainly clamoring

for their money, they disbanded, leaving none but the officers, who were

fain to gather together such raw recruits as they could find. From

Aragon the number of exiles was estimated at seventy-five thousand and

from Catalonia at fifty thousand.[1083]

France was inundated by the emigration. Henry IV had anticipated it and,

in February, had issued an ordonnance permitting those who would profess

the Catholic faith to settle in the lands beyond the Garonne and

Dordogne, while shipping should be provided for those desiring to sail

for Barbary.[1084] Under this the immigration from Castile had been

taken care of, but his assassination in May threw everything into

confusion, and there was no preparation for the twenty or twenty-five

thousand from Aragon, who passed through Navarre, or sought to make

their way over the mountains. La Force, after some delay, arranged to

admit them in bands of a thousand each, so as not to oppress the

population of the sterile district through which they had to pass, and

thus they struggled on towards Marseilles and other ports where they

hoped to find shipping.[1085]

There was one body, of some fourteen thousand souls, that was refused

admission to France, after they had reached Canfranc, the last Spanish

town on the mountain road over the Pyrenees. They had paid forty

thousand ducats for permission to go to France, besides the export

duties on what they carried, and the expense of the commissioners in

charge of them. Forced to turn back on the long road to the Alfaques, so

many of them sickened and died in the summer heat that it was feared

that they would bring pestilence to the ships.[1086] In short the story

of the exodus from Aragon is one of heartless greed and reckless

inhumanity.

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

The dangers which had weighed so heavily on Spanish statesmanship were

thus removed, but fanaticism and race hatred were not yet satisfied, and

it was resolved to root out all traces of the old Moorish population. An

edict of July 10, 1610, banished all Moriscos of Granada, Valencia and

Aragon, who were settled in the Castilian kingdoms, and this was

followed, August 2d, by a similar provision for the kingdoms of Aragon.

These edicts exempted those who had lived as good Christians, but this

was a point difficult to establish, and the claims under it were

multitudinous and embarrassing. To save the trouble of deciding them an

end was put to the matter by banishing all who had thus far been

exempted, including even the _Moriscos antiguos_, descendants of the old

Mudéjares. This was effected by orders of March 22d and May 3, 1611, to

the corregidores, stating that it was for the service of God and the

kingdom that the matter be perfected, wherefore all who had previously

been exempted and all who, after expulsion, had returned, were given two

months to leave the kingdom, under the irrevocable penalty of death and

confiscation, the only exceptions being priests, nuns and the wives of

Old Christians with their children.[1087]

This final rooting-out gave infinite trouble. There was often nothing to

distinguish these Moriscos from Old Christians, in language, dress or

mode of life, and there was no lack of persons to harbor them, whether

from compassion or to have the benefit of their services. Commissioners

were sent to the different provinces with instructions that no

privileges or antiquity should avail them, while the courts were

expressly prohibited from interference; it was added, indeed, that those

who bore the reputation of Old Christians could appeal to the king, but

his representatives soon grew tired of the multitude of perplexing cases

thus thrust upon them. The number thus expelled was computed at about

six thousand, exclusive of young children, who were given to Old

Christians to bring up. The difficulty of effecting this final clearance

was increased by the number of exiles who persisted in returning, in

spite of an edict of September 12, 1612, which consigned them all to the

galleys. The work seemed endless and finally it was confided to the

Count of Salazar. In this he labored long and strenuously. At Almagro he

found more than eight hundred returned exiles, of whom he consigned some

to the galleys, others to the quicksilver mines of Almaden, and the rest

he sent abroad at the expense of the magistrates, who had been remiss

in detecting and punishing them. His greatest trouble, we are told, lay

in deciding the numerous suits of those who claimed that they were not

comprised in the edicts and, to cut matters short, on October 26, 1613,

he issued, in the name of the king, an edict commanding all Moriscos to

leave the kingdom within fifteen days; any person receiving or harboring

them was threatened with confiscation and, as he included in this fiefs,

castles, vassals and royal grants, it shows that nobles were sheltering

them. Finally a reward of ten ducats was offered for information leading

to the capture of a Morisco.[1088] In this insane determination to

purify the land of all trace of Moorish blood, and in the confusion of

the process, many Catholics as sincere as their persecutors must have

been consigned to infidel lands.

The time came at last for the Moriscos of Murcia and the Val de Ricote

to share the fate of their brethren. Influence had been exercised to

procure the suspension of the edict of December 9, 1609, and of a

subsequent one of October 8, 1611, but, after the work was completed

elsewhere, the Duke of Lerma and the royal confessor, Fray Aliaga, sent

investigators who of course reported them to be Christians only in name.

Lerma insisted, Philip yielded, and a cédula of October 6, 1613, ordered

Salazar to enforce the edicts. He was hurried from Madrid, November

20th, with instructions to lose no time and, in January 1614, some

fifteen thousand were deported, although many old people and invalids

were allowed to remain. Many women married Old Christians in order to

obtain exemption, and numerous husbands and wives of honorable birth

entered religion, to the great enrichment of the monasteries, for which

the bishops and the superiors of the Orders cheerfully granted licence.

Early in February, Salazar returned to Madrid with his work

accomplished, although some had escaped to Valencia and had returned on

being driven out from there. In 1615 Salazar reported that he had sent

his assistant Manrique to Murcia to complete the expulsion, but there

were still some Moriscos in Tarragona and the Balearic Isles, and he

knew of others in Sardinia and the Canaries.[1089]

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

For some years yet the effort was continued to discover and eject those

who were concealed among the Old Christians--an effort complicated by

the numbers who persisted in returning after experiencing the

inhospitable reception accorded to them in Africa. They offered

themselves as slaves to those who would receive them, and in this manner

many succeeded in remaining. To prevent this, royal orders were

repeatedly issued, but they were ineffective, and the Royal Council at

length grew tired of reiterating them, so that Bleda, writing in 1618,

deplores the fact that he would die without seeing his land purified of

this evil seed. Total purification, in fact, was impossible. We are told

that, in Valencia, La Mancha, and Granada, there are still communities

which in dress, customs and tendencies may be regarded as Moriscos with

scarce any trace of Christianity, and Padre Boronat ascribes to this

element the growth of modern scepticism and the mingled fanaticism and

superstition which afflict certain portions of Spain.[1090]

However this may be, in so far as the Inquisition was concerned, the

expulsion was a success. In such of its records as I have been able to

examine, the _cosas de Moros_ virtually disappeared, the exceptions

being scarce more than enough to show that vigilance was unrelaxed. For

awhile, it is true, there were Morisco slaves to be looked after. A

letter of March 14, 1616, from the commissioner at Denia, asks for

instructions concerning some baptized Morisco slaves, who had plotted to

escape to Barbary, which shows how carefully they were watched.[1091]

Then the exiles who chanced to be captured in Moorish corsairs, or who

were brought to Spain as slaves, or who were in the royal galleys, were

subject to prosecution as apostates because they had been baptized,

until, in 1629, the Suprema mercifully decreed that they should not be

molested unless they gave occasion for scandal.[1092] The scattering

cases of Mahometanism, which figure in the autos de fe subsequent to the

expulsion, are mostly of Christian renegades, captured at sea, or of

Moorish slaves taken in the perpetual warfare of the Mediterranean, who

were baptized under legislation of 1626, repeated in 1638 and

1712.[1093] Occasionally, however, we hear of a Morisco, such as

Gerónimo Buenaventura--probably one of the children detained in 1609 or

1610--condemned to relaxation by the tribunal of Valencia, transferred

in 1635 to Valladolid and, in 1638 to Saragossa, to be burnt for

pertinacity.[1094]

Yet, in spite of the sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition, there were

descendants of the Old Moriscos who managed to preserve an organization

for the perpetuation of their faith. In 1727 such a one was discovered

in Granada, so numerous that it furnished forty-five reconciled in an

auto of May 9, 1728, followed by twenty-eight more in that of October

10. They must have been wealthy, for the confiscations proved so

profitable that the Inquisition granted to the chief informer and his

heirs a perpetual pension of a hundred ducats.[1095] Probably one of

these Granadans, escaped to Jaen, was the Ana del Castillo, condemned in

the Córdova auto of March 4, 1731, as a _herege Mahometana_, to

reconciliation, confiscation and irremissible prison.[1096] The latest

allusions to these persistent Moriscos occurs in a report, in 1769, by

the Inquisition to Carlos III, that it had verified the existence, in

Cartagena, of a mosque maintained by New Christians.[1097] Details are

lacking but, if there were prosecutions and convictions, they may safely

be assumed to be the last endured by Moriscos. In the complete record of

the operations of all the tribunals from 1780 to 1820, there is not a

single case of a Morisco and the only Mahometans are renegades.[1098]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

Contemporary estimates of the number of exiles vary from three hundred

thousand to three millions, and the statistics furnished are too

fragmentary to admit of accurate computation.[1099] In modern times

Llorente assumes a total of a million, while Janer estimates at the same

figure the total Morisco population, of whom a hundred thousand perished

or were enslaved, leaving nine hundred thousand exiles. Vicente de la

Fuente reduces the number to a hundred and twenty thousand, while

Danvila y Collado, after a careful comparison of all official

statistics, reaches an estimate of something under five hundred thousand

souls, which Padre Boronat accepts.[1100] This is probably somewhat

under the mark. The nearest approach to a contemporary official

statement is that of Sebastiano Gigli, the Lucchese envoy, August 12,

1610, placing the number at six hundred thousand. This he doubtless

procured at head-quarters, for he adds that the ministers assured him

that it was much greater than they had foreseen.[1101] Considering how

large had been the Mudéjar population and its notorious fecundity, these

figures indicate how many had been Christianized and had merged into the

general mass. One cannot help concluding that with time and reasonable

treatment, there would have been no Morisco question to perplex the

statesmen of Spain.

The fate of the exiles parallelled that of the Jews in 1492, and indeed

was even worse, for they were banished more precipitately, and were

absolutely forbidden to return even as Christians. They were thrust into

the new and strange life before them under most unpromising conditions,

intensified by the inhumanity of their reception in the homes which they

sought. The transit to Africa in the royal ships was doubtless safe

enough, but the masters of the vessels chartered by them had no scruple

in robbing and murdering them, despite the regulations adopted for their

safety. Many who sailed were never accounted for as arriving. It was not

that the Spanish authorities were indifferent. Fonseca relates that in

Barcelona, on December 12, 1609, he witnessed the execution of the

captain and crew of a barque which had sailed with seventy Moriscos.

Falling in with a Neapolitan felucca, the united crews conspired to kill

the passengers and divide the booty, amounting to three thousand ducats.

Under promise of pardon a dissatisfied sailor revealed the crime, when

not only were the Spaniards punished but the Viceroy wrote to Naples

with details that enabled the authorities there to seize and execute the

crew of the felucca.[1102]

In France, la Force no doubt did what he could to minimize the

sufferings of the outcasts, but their hardships were such as to call

forth energetic remonstrances from Ambassador Salignac and from Ahmed I

himself. Cardinal Richelieu tells us that some of the officials

commissioned to superintend their passage were guilty of much thievery

and even permitted murder, but they were punished with such severity

that the outrages ceased.[1103] France, however, was only a place of

transit. Some who passed through sought refuge in Italy, where their

reception was not hospitable. In 1610 and 1611 the Holy See refused to

allow those arriving at Civita Vecchia to remain but, in 1612, some

seventy, who reached Recanati and asked to be allowed to live as

Christians, were permitted to settle at a distance from the coast,

broken up into small parties and under close surveillance.[1104]

Barbary, however, was the destination of the vast majority of the

exiles, whether direct from Spain or by way of France, and their

reception by their fellow religionists was terrible. They were landed at

Oran, whence they had to make their way to the Moorish states; they had

the reputation of bringing money with them and, after the first

embarkation had been safely convoyed by paying heavily for a guard, they

were plundered and slain without mercy, and their women were taken from

them. Even before the year 1609 was out, the Count of Aguilar,

Governor-general of Oran, wrote that, through fear of the Arabs, many

were remaining and were starving; twenty of their principal men had come

to him, professing to be Christians, for they had not known what to

believe until they had seen the abominations of the Moors, and now they

desired to remain and die as Christians. In his perplexity, Aguilar

threw them into prison and applied for instructions. What were given to

him we know not, but there is doubtless truth in the statement of the

Comendador de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes of Oran that, what between

disease and the atrocities of the Arabs, two-thirds of the exiles had

perished. Indeed, the general estimate was that the proportion was at

least three-quarters.[1105]

[Sidenote: _EXPULSION_]

These horrors are heightened by the fact that, in the vigorous

determination to eradicate every vestige of Islam, and in the cruel

haste of the process, many who were really Christians were cast upon

the tender mercies of the infidel. Discrimination was difficult and

doubt was settled adversely. A typical case is furnished in a petition,

November 26, 1609, of Gaspar Galip, a priest and vicar of the general

hospital of Valencia, in favor of his two brothers-in-law, Francisco

Castillo and Vicente de Alcázar. Galip himself was the son of a Morisco

father and Old Christian mother; his sisters were Christians and so were

their husbands and children, two in each family, the latter being even

ignorant that they had Morisco blood. Yet Ribera was pitiless and both

families were deported, doubtless to perish among unbelievers.[1106]

Escolano tells us that in Tunis some of the Castilians continued to hear

mass and to live as Christians, and he prints a letter from a Valencian

in Algiers expressing his determination to persevere in the faith.[1107]

If remorse were possible to those who believed that they were rendering

a service to God, it might have been felt by the prime movers of the

expulsion when they learned that in Tetuan, exiled Moriscos, firm in the

faith, were lapidated or otherwise put to death, because they resolutely

refused to enter the mosques.[1108] These were true martyrs, and the

Church might well have canonized them, in place of beatifying their

persecutor Ribera.[1109]

* * * * *

Among the arguments advanced in favor of expulsion was that the

confiscation of Morisco property would bring permanent relief to the

treasury and enable it to discharge the enormous and constantly

increasing indebtedness. Undoubtedly the amounts realized from the

rapacious seizure of the property of the exiles were large. Already, in

October, 1610, the Council of Finance reported that, in Ocana and

Madrid, it had mostly been sold, and that two hundred thousand ducats

had been paid in.[1110] Whatever was the magnitude of the receipts, they

were quickly dissipated to the greedy courtiers who profited by Philip's

reckless prodigality. Sir Francis Cottingham, the English Ambassador, in

letters of March 4th and May 16, 1610, reports that commissioners had

been sent to the provinces to sell the houses and farms of the exiles,

but the king did not propose to lighten the burdens of the state, for he

was dividing the proceeds among his favorites in advance with scandalous

liberality. To Lerma were assigned two hundred and fifty thousand

ducats, to his son, the Duke of Uceda, a hundred thousand, to his

daughter, the Countess of Lemos, fifty thousand and to her husband a

hundred thousand.[1111] We need not be surprised, therefore, to find

Philip, in 1611, when appealing to the Córtes for relief, enumerating,

among the reasons for his poverty, the expulsion of the Moriscos, in

which he had postponed the interest of the treasury to the service of

God and of the state.[1112]

* * * * *

Thus, nine hundred years after the overthrow of the Gothic monarchy,

Spain purified her land of the invader by a stroke which Cardinal

Richelieu qualified as the boldest and most barbarous in human

annals.[1113] The yearning for unity of faith was gratified, and the

anxiety as to attack from without was allayed. That the price paid was

heavy is seen in the premature decrepitude which overtook the monarchy

during the rest of the century. The causes of decadence were many, but

not least among them must be reckoned the fierce intolerance which led

to the expatriation of the most economically valuable classes of the

population.

CHAPTER III.

PROTESTANTISM.

The fate of the little band of Spanish Protestants has, not unnaturally,

excited the earnest sympathy of modern students. Much has been written

about them; their works have been gathered and reprinted with pious

care, and the importance of the reformatory movement has been largely

exaggerated. There never was the slightest real danger that

Protestantism could make such permanent impression on the profound and

unreasoning religious convictions of Spain in the sixteenth century, as

to cause disturbance in the body politic; and the excitement created in

Valladolid and Seville, in 1558 and 1559, was a mere passing episode

leaving no trace in popular beliefs. Yet, coming when it did, it

exercised an enduring influence on the fortunes of the Inquisition, and

on the development of the nation. At the moment, the career of the Holy

Office might almost seem to be drawing to a close, for it had nearly

succeeded in extirpating Judaism from Spain, while the influx of

Portuguese New Christians had not commenced, and its operations against

the Moriscos of Valencia were suspended. The panic, skilfully excited at

the appearance of Lutheranism, raised it to new life and importance and

gave it a claim on the gratitude of the State, which enabled it to

dominate the land during the seventeenth century, while its audacious

action against Carranza showed that no one was so high-placed as to be

beyond its reach. It gained moreover a firmer financial basis than it

had previously enjoyed, while, at the same time, Inquisitor-general

Valdés was saved from banishment and disgrace. Yet more important even

than all this was the dread inspired of heresy, which served as a reason

for isolating Spain from the rest of Europe, excluding all foreign

ideas, arresting the development of culture and of science, and

prolonging medievalism into modern times. This was the true significance

of the little Protestant movement and its repression, and it is this

which deserves the attention of the student rather than the ghastly

dramas of the autos de fe.

Before the Lutheran revolt there was much liberty of thought and speech

allowed throughout Catholic Europe. Neither Erasmus nor popular writers

and preachers had scruple in ridiculing and holding up to detestation

the superstitions of the people, the vices, the greed and the

corruptions of the clergy, and the venality and oppression of the Holy

See. The Franciscan, Thomas Murner, who subsequently became the most

virulent reviler of Luther, castigated the clergy, both regular and

secular, with more vigor if with less skill than Erasmus. Erasmus

himself, in his _Enchiridion Militis Christiani_, or Manual of the

Christian Soldier, did not hesitate to stigmatise, as a new Judaism, the

reliance reposed on external observances, which had supplanted true

piety, causing the teachings of Christ to be neglected--and the

Enchiridion had been approved by Adrian VI, at that time the head of the

University of Louvain.

[Sidenote: _REPRESSION COMMENCED_]

When, however, it became necessary, in order to cure these universally

admitted evils, to strike at the dogmas of scholastic theology, of which

these evils were the outcome; when Northern Europe was rising almost

unanimously in Luther's support, and when the curia recognized that it

had to deal, not with a mere scholastic debate between monks, but with a

rapidly developing revolution, the necessity was soon felt of a rigid

definition of orthodoxy, while the licence which had been good-naturedly

tolerated, so long as it did not threaten the loss of power and wealth,

became heresy, to be diligently inquired into and relentlessly punished.

Men who esteemed themselves good Catholics, and had no thought of

withdrawing from obedience to the Holy See, found themselves accused of

heresy and liable to its penalties. Prior to the definitions of the

Council of Trent, there was a certain amount of debatable ground, within

which no authoritative decision had as yet rendered the speculations of

the schoolmen articles of faith. Erasmus, for instance, had not been

called to account for asserting that sacramental confession was not of

divine law but, as the conflict grew more desperate, and the Church

found defence of its outworks to be requisite, it became heretical to

question the divine origin of confession, even before the Council had

made it _de fide_. We shall then find the chief sufferers from

inquisitorial action divided into two classes. Before the middle of the

century they largely consist of unconscious heretics--of men who, prior

to the condemnation of Luther, would have been reckoned as undoubtedly

orthodox. After 1550, with some exceptions, like Carranza, they were

those who had knowingly and consciously embraced more or less of the

doctrines of the Reformation. Outside of these another, and by no means

the least numerous class, can be defined of those who incurred more or

less vehement suspicion of heresy through mere carelessness, in the

constantly increasing rigor of external observance. It is doubtless to

the first of these classes that we may refer the earliest victim of

so-called Lutheranism whom I have found recorded--Gonsalvo the Painter

of Monte Alegre in Murcia, a resident in Majorca, relaxed, in 1523, by

that tribunal as a Lutheran. It is inconceivable that Lutheran errors

could have penetrated at that time to Majorca, or that the inquisitor

could have had any clear conception of what they were and, as Gonsalvo

is described as a _negativo_, he doubtless considered himself a good

Catholic and perished because he would not admit himself to be

otherwise.[1114]

It was not until 1521 that the curia was aroused to the necessity of

preventing the dissemination in Spain of the new doctrines in the

writings of Luther. The Nuncio Aleander, writing from Worms, February

18th of that year, mentioned that in Flanders Spanish versions of

Luther's books were in press, through the efforts of the Marrani, and

that Charles V had given orders to suppress them.[1115] Acting promptly

on this, Leo X, on March 21st, addressed briefs to the Constable and

Admiral of Castile--the governors in Charles's absence--exhorting them

to prevent the introduction of such works, and Cardinal Adrian lost no

time in ordering, April 7th, the tribunals to seize all the obnoxious

volumes that they could find, an order which he repeated May 7, 1523,

together with instructions to the corregidors to enforce the surrender

of the books to the inquisitors.[1116] Very earnest letters were also

written, April 12 and 13, 1521, to Charles V, by an assembly of

grandees, and by the President and Council of State, urging him to adopt

strong measures to prevent the spread of Lutheranism, which had been

introduced into Spain and threatened to develop.[1117]

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

These may be regarded as measures rather precautionary than called for

by existing exigencies. So far as the records of the Inquisition have

been searched there is no trace, for some years as yet, of prosecutions

for Lutheranism, save the solitary case above referred to. With the

return of Charles to Spain, in 1522, the influence of Erasmus seemed to

promise a perpetuation of the freedom and even licence of speech, of

which he was the protagonist. The emperor was his admirer and he became

the fashion among courtiers and churchmen pretending to culture. The

Inquisitor-general Manrique openly defended him, and so did the primate,

Alfonso Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo. His immense reputation, the

immunity conferred on him by the patronage of successive popes against

the vindictiveness of the religious Orders, provoked by his merciless

ridicule, and the futility of condemnations by scholastic faculties,

seemed a guarantee for those who merely echoed the opinions to which he

had given currency so wide. So it continued until, in 1527, a

translation of his Enchiridion was issued by Alonso Fernández de Madrid,

Archdeacon of Alcor. It was dedicated to Archbishop Manrique, who had it

duly examined and authorized its publication; its success was immediate,

and it was universally read. From the standpoint of scholastic theology,

however, it was too vulnerable not to invite attack from the religious

Orders. The pulpits, which they virtually monopolized, resounded with

their denunciations until Manrique felt obliged to interfere. Many

prominent frailes were summoned before the Suprema and sharply reproved

for exciting the people against Erasmus, in defiance of repeated edicts;

if they found errors in the book, they should denounce them to the

Inquisition. The challenge was promptly accepted and, with the

assistance of the English Ambassador, Edward Lee, subsequently

Archbishop of York, a list of twenty-one articles was drawn up, ranging

from Arianism to irreverence towards the Virgin and the denial of

various essentials of sacerdotalism. These were submitted to an assembly

of twenty theologians and nine frailes, who disputed for a month over

the first two articles; the debate promised to be interminable, and

Manrique suspended it, at the same time issuing an absolute prohibition

to write against Erasmus. As we have seen, however, he fell into

disgrace in 1529 and was relegated to his see of Seville; Charles left

Spain the same year, carrying with him some of the most powerful

protectors of the Erasmists, and the inquisitors, who were largely

frailes, were eager to detect the heresy latent in the latitude of

speech which had become common among those who prided themselves on

culture.[1118]

A typical case of this kind is that of Diego de Uceda, to which allusion

has already been made on other accounts (_supra_, p. 68). He was an

hidalgo of Córdova of unblemished Old Christian stock. Although a

courtier, he was studious and deeply religious, even entertaining

thoughts of entering the Geronimite Order. Greatly admiring Erasmus, the

failure of the effort to condemn him by the Inquisition gave assurance

that his works were approved, and Diego earned some reproof by

constantly quoting his opinions and endeavoring to impress them on

others. In February, 1528, he was journeying from Burgos to Córdova and,

one evening at Corezo, he fell into discussion with a man named Rodrigo

Duran who, with his servant, Juan de Avella, was on his way to Seville

to embark for the West Indies. The talk fell upon confession and then

upon images, in which Diego quoted the views of Erasmus; then upon

miracles, when he expressed disbelief in a story of a Christian slave in

Africa who prayed for deliverance to Our Lady of Guadalupe; his master

overheard him, placed him in a chest, made his own bed on top and slept

there, with the result that next morning the chest was in Guadalupe with

the master inside and the Christian on top. Something also was said

about Luther, whose name got mixed up with that of Erasmus. Duran, on

reaching Toledo, denounced Diego to the tribunal, his serving-man

furnishing the necessary _conteste_, and went on his way to the Indies.

Diego was tracked to Córdova and was sent back as a prisoner to Toledo,

where he vainly protested his orthodoxy and offered submission to the

Church, although his frequent allusions to Erasmus probably did his case

no good. He proved by witnesses that he habitually confessed four times

a year, that he took all indulgences and that he was a man of blameless

life and strong religious convictions, but it was all in vain. I have

already shown how he was tortured, confessed and then revoked, and how

he was condemned to a humiliating penance, July 22, 1529, ruining his

career and leaving an indelible stain on a family that had boasted of

its limpieza.[1119]

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

The danger impending over Erasmists is still more forcibly illustrated

by the case of one who was regarded as perhaps the foremost among them

in Spain. No man stood higher for learning and culture than Doctor Juan

de Vergara. He had been secretary of Ximenes as Archbishop of Toledo,

and subsequently to Fonseca, who succeeded to the primatial dignity in

1524. Ximenes had made him professor of Philosophy at Alcalá, where he

translated the Wisdom of Solomon for the Complutensian Polyglot, and the

treatises _de Anima_, _de Physica_ and _de Metaphysica_ for the

projected edition of Aristotle. He was an elegant Latin poet, and

Menéndez y Pelayo tells us that he was the father of historical

criticism. He was regarded with favor by Manrique and was a warm

defender of Erasmus in the contest over the Enchiridion.[1120] We shall

have occasion hereafter to treat of the adventures of the _alumbrada_

Francisca Hernández and the men whom she entangled in her toils; among

them was Bernardino de Tovar, also an Erasmist, half-brother of Vergara,

who incurred her enmity by rescuing him from her clutches. To revenge

herself, when on trial in 1530, she accused Vergara of holding all of

Luther's doctrines, except as to confession, and of possessing some of

Luther's works--the latter accusation being true, but when, in 1530,

Manrique ordered the surrender of all such books, Vergara, after some

delay, carried them to the tribunal. Another of Francisca's disciples,

Fray Francisco Ortiz, when on trial, also accused Vergara of denying the

efficacy of indulgences and abusing the University of Paris for

condemning the writings of Erasmus, in which, he said, the Church had

found no heretical errors. The tribunal collected some other evidence

against Vergara and industriously searched for more, even as far as

Flanders. In May, 1533, a willing witness was found in Diego Hernández,

a buffoon of a priest, whom María Cazalla had employed as confessor

until she dismissed him for seducing a nun and asserting that it was no

sin. This worthy produced a list of seventy Lutheran heretics, qualified

according to their degrees of guilt, among whom Vergara figured as _fino

lutherano endiosado_ (mystically abstracted). Whatever hesitation there

may have been in arresting such a man, however, disappeared when it was

found, in April, 1533, that he had been communicating with Tovar in

prison, by bribing the officials. The fiscal presented his clamosa, May

17th, accusing Vergara of being a fautor and defender of heretics, a

defamer of the Inquisition and a corrupter of its officials, and his

arrest and imprisonment followed on June 24th.

This occasioned general surprise. Archbishop Fonseca was deeply moved

and endeavored to obtain his release under bail for fifty thousand

ducats, or to have him confined in a house under guard, but the only

result of his efforts was to lead the tribunal to shut up the windows of

Vergara's cell, converting it into a dungeon and seriously affecting his

health. The trial proceeded through the regular stages. He refused the

services of an advocate and, on January 29, 1534, he presented his

defence, denying nearly all the errors attributed to him and explaining

the rest in a Catholic sense. After this a fresh accusation was

presented based on his friendship for and correspondence with Erasmus,

to whom he had induced Archbishop Fonseca to grant a pension. Fonseca

had died, February 24th, so that his evidence was unattainable, but

Vergara pronounced the story as to the pension to be false, though had

it been true it would have been innocent. Everyone knew that Erasmus had

neither income nor benefice, never having been willing to accept either,

and that he was supported by the liberality of gentlemen who contributed

to him from all parts. Fonseca had only offered him an income if he

would come to reside at Alcalá, an offer which Ximenes had previously

made. It was true that, when Erasmus dedicated to him his edition of St.

Augustin, Fonseca sent him two hundred ducats, scarce enough, in the

case of so large a work, to give the printers their customary

_pour-boire_. Fonseca felt this, and, when he heard of the death of

Archbishop Warham of Canterbury (+ 1532), who was accustomed to

provide liberally for Erasmus, he said that he ought to pay for the

printing of the book, whereupon Vergara wrote that he would send

something, but it was not done. As for corresponding with Erasmus, popes

and kings and the emperor himself were gratified to have letters from

him and, in the printed collections of his epistles, were to be found

his answers to Vergara, showing that the latter had urged him to write

in confutation of Luther.

The day after this defence was presented, there came the most serious

evidence as yet offered against him. This was from another distinguished

Erasmist, then on trial, Alonso de Virués, who testified that, four

years before, in a discussion whether the sacrament worked _ex opere

operato_, Vergara ridiculed it as a fantastic opinion, and further,

that he did not hold as he should, certain pious and Catholic doctrines.

It is true that the Council of Trent had not yet pronounced, as it did

in 1547 (Sess. VII, De Sacramentis, can. viii) the self-operation of the

sacrament to be _de fide_, but the doctrine was coeval with the

development of the sacramental theory in the twelfth century and was

indispensable in vindication of its validity in polluted hands against

the Donatist heresy. To deny it, even in disputation, could not fail to

prejudice Vergara's case, which dragged on, in spite of the efforts of

his friends, and even of the empress, to expedite it. At length, on

December 21, 1535, he was sentenced to appear as a penitent in an auto

de fe, to abjure _de vehementi_, to be recluded in a monastery for a

year irremissibly, and to pay a fine of fifteen hundred ducats. In three

months, however, Manrique charitably transferred him to the cathedral

cloister and, on February 27, 1537, his confinement came to an

end.[1121] He incurred no disabilities; his reputation seems not to have

suffered, for he retained his Toledo canonry and, as we have seen, he

incurred, in 1547, the displeasure of Archbishop Silicio by opposing the

statute of limpieza.

[Sidenote: _ERASMISTS_]

Virués was a similar victim to the revulsion against Erasmus. He was

Benedictine Abbot of San Zoilo, a learned orientalist and the favorite

preacher of Charles V, who had carried him to Germany. Envy of his favor

at court caused his denunciation; isolated passages in his sermons were

cited against him, and he was thrown in prison in 1533. His

incarceration lasted for four years, in spite of Charles's efforts for

his liberation; it was in vain that he pleaded that, some fourteen years

before, Erasmus had been regarded as orthodox, and that he adduced the

arguments which he had used against Melanchthon in the Diet of Ratisbon.

In 1537, he was declared to be suspect of Lutheranism, he was required

to abjure and was recluded in a convent for two years, with suspension

from preaching for two more. Charles was so much interested in him that,

notwithstanding his strenuous objection to papal interference, he

procured from Paul III a brief of May 29, 1538, by which the sentence

was set aside and Virués was declared capable of any preferment, even

episcopal. When Juan de Sarvia, Bishop of Canaries, died in 1542,

Virués was appointed his successor and died in 1545.[1122]

Contemporary with these cases was that of Pedro de Lerma, a member of

one of the leading families of Burgos. He was a canon of the Cathedral

and Abbot of Alcalá, renowned as a preacher and a man of the highest

consideration. He had spent fifty years in the University of Paris,

where the Sorbonne made him dean of its faculty. Happening to read some

of the works of Erasmus, he was so impressed that they influenced his

sermons. He was denounced to the Inquisition, which imprisoned him and,

after a long trial he was required, in 1537, to recant eleven

propositions publicly in all the towns where he had preached, confessing

that he had taught them at the instigation of the devil to propagate

error in the Church. He was so humiliated that he abandoned Spain for

Paris, where he was warmly received as dean of the faculty, and where he

died in 1541. The people of Burgos, we are told, who had regarded him

with the greatest reverence, were so impressed by this that those who

had sent their sons abroad to study at once recalled them.[1123]

This atmosphere of all-pervading suspicion, and this exaggerated

sensitiveness to possible error, exposed everyone to prosecution for the

most innocently unguarded remark. Miguel Mezquita, a gentleman of

Formiche (Teruel) appeared January 19, 1536, before the Valencia

tribunal in obedience to a citation and, under the usual formula of

being told to search his conscience, he intuitively recurred to Erasmus

and related a talk which he had, some five or six years previous, with a

Dominican, in which he had defended the Enchiridion on the ground that

it had been subjected to examination without being condemned. This

however proved not to be the cause of his summons, for Pedro Forrer, a

priest of Teruel, had denounced him as having said that Luther preached

the gospel and was therefore called an evangelist, while the followers

of the pope were called papists, and that Luther was right in

maintaining that Scripture did not say that Christ gave power to St.

Peter, but to all the apostles. Mezquita explained that he had been

several times to Italy and had been sent to Flanders; the priest had

asked him what was said about Luther, and he had merely gratified his

curiosity by repeating what he had heard abroad in common talk. He

earnestly implored to be released, for he had eight children, four of

them studying in Salamanca and, when suddenly carried off from home, he

had left but six sueldos in his house. Fortunately for him, the

inquisitors were not unreasonable and, on January 29th, he was allowed

to return to his family, but the case remained on the records to be

brought up against him should any malevolent neighbor see fit to distort

some careless utterance.[1124]

Mysticism and illuminism, which, about this time, commenced their

development in Spain, furnished another source of accusations of

Lutheranism, due to their common tendency to cast aside the observances

of sacerdotalism and to bring the sinner into direct relations with God,

but this field of inquisitorial activity demands separate consideration.

Meanwhile the above cases will probably suffice to indicate the way in

which Catholics, who had no thought of wandering from the faith, fell

under suspicion of partaking in the new heresies and were consequently

subjected to persecution more or less distressing. It would scarce be

worth while to follow in detail the long succession of those who had

similar experience. The case of Carranza has already been discussed.

Fray Juan de Regla, confessor of Charles V at San Yuste, and one of the

witnesses against Carranza, was imprisoned by the Saragossa tribunal and

was required to abjure eighteen propositions. Fray Francisco de

Villalba, who preached the funeral sermon of Charles V, was denounced

for Lutheranism and was saved only by the protection of Philip II.

Miguel de Medina, one of the theologians of the Council of Trent, was so

orthodox that, in his _Disputatio de Indulgentiis_, he ascribes to

indulgences a virtue so great that without them Christianity would be a

failure, yet this did not prevent his prosecution for defending certain

propositions thought to savor of Lutheranism and, after four years'

detention, he died in prison with his trial unfinished.[1125]

[Sidenote: _LUTHERANISM_]

All these were cases of good Catholics, whose prosecution is

attributable to a hyperæsthesia of orthodoxy. As regards the real

Protestantism, there was necessarily a double duty, one with respect to

its literature and the other to its professors. The former will be

discussed in the next chapter and it suffices here to point out that

although there was as yet no organized censorship of the press, the

possession or reading of any of Luther's books was forbidden, under pain

of excommunication, in 1520, by Leo X, in the bull _Exsurge Domine_, and

this was extended to the works of all his followers in the recension of

the bull _in C[oe]na Domini_ by Adrian VI.[1126] We have seen the flurry

produced, in 1521, by the dread of the introduction of this literature

into Spain, and it would appear that there was a demand for it, or that

the German heretics were endeavoring to create one for, in 1524, we hear

that a ship from Holland for Valencia, captured by the French and

recaptured, was brought into San Sebastian, when two casks of Lutheran

books were found in her cargo, which were publicly burnt. Some eight

months later, three Venetian galeasses brought large quantities of

similar books to a port in Granada, where the corregidor seized and

burnt them and imprisoned the captains and crews.[1127] As yet, however,

there seems to have been no definite penalty, save the papal censures,

for possessing this forbidden literature. We have seen Juan de Vergara

simply surrendering what he had; in 1527 we chance to find a commission,

issued by the Suprema, to absolve a fraile from the excommunication thus

incurred and, in 1528, a similar one for the benefit of the Licenciado

Fray Diego de Astudillo.[1128]

As regards heretics in person, the relations of Spain with the

Netherlands and Germany, at this period, were too intimate for it to

escape their intrusion. The earliest case I have met occurred in 1524,

when a German named Blay Esteve was condemned by the tribunal of

Valencia.[1129] Again the same tribunal, in 1528, tried Cornelis, a

painter of Ghent, for saying that Luther was not a heretic and for

denying the existence of purgatory, the utility of masses, confession

etc. He had not the spirit of martyrdom but pleaded intoxication and

that he had abandoned in Spain the errors which he had entertained in

Flanders; he was sentenced to reconciliation and perpetual prison and,

in the papers of the trial, there is an allusion to the prosecution of

Jacob Torres, apparently another Lutheran. Valencia, in 1529, had

another case in the person of Melchor de Württemberg, who came there by

way of Naples. He preached in the streets, saying that he had searched

the world in vain for a true follower of Christ, and he predicted that

in three years the world would be drowned in blood. He was probably an

Anabaptist and, when on trial, he admitted that he had visited Martin

Luther to learn whether the Lutheran sect possessed the truth. The

tribunal referred the case to the Suprema, which replied that, if he

held any Lutheran errors, justice should be done; if not, the case was

trifling and a hundred lashes would suffice. The papers are imperfect

and we can only gather that he denied Lutheranism and escaped with the

scourging.[1130]

[Sidenote: _PERSECUTION ORGANIZED_]

Cases of this kind were doubtless occurring in the various tribunals,

but it was some time as yet before systematic action was taken by the

Inquisition. Clement VII addressed a brief, May 8, 1526, to the

Observantine Franciscans, empowering them to receive all Lutherans

desiring to return to the Church, who were to be reincorporated on

accepting salutary penance, and to be absolved and relieved from all the

penalties decreed by Leo X and by others.[1131] This was evidently

designed for temporary effect in Germany and, although sent to Spain, it

was too subversive of the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition to

be observed there. The earliest action of the Suprema to protect Spain

from the dissemination of the new heresies would seem to be a letter, in

1527, to the provisor of Lugo and to the Dominican provincial and

Franciscan guardian there, about the heretics arriving at the Galician

ports, and ordering them to enquire after Lutheran books, which they

were required to seize.[1132] Coruña was one of the chief ports of

commerce with the northern seas, thus calling for special watchfulness,

and, though a tribunal had recently been provided for Galicia,

apparently on this account, it seems not to have been in working order.

Still the heretics continued to come, and the Suprema issued, April 27,

1531, a _carta acordada_ instructing the tribunals to publish special

Edicts of Faith requiring the denunciation of persons suspected of

holding Lutheran opinions.[1133] Apparently the time had arrived when

some definite position with regard to the growing danger had to be

taken; there seems to have been doubt felt as to the authority of the

Inquisition to deal with it, and as to the policy to be observed towards

these heretics, for a brief was procured, July 15th of the same year,

from Clement VII empowering Manrique and his deputies to proceed against

the followers of Martin Luther, their fautors and defenders, and a

clause to this effect continued subsequently to be included in the

commissions of the inquisitor-general. The brief moreover extended

Manrique's personal jurisdiction, for this heresy, over archbishops and

bishops, although these were not to be arrested and imprisoned;

impenitents were to be relaxed, in accordance with the canons, while

those who sought reconciliation were to be admitted, with due

punishment, and could even be dispensed for irregularity and be relieved

of all disabilities and note of infamy.[1134] There was evidently as yet

a disposition to treat these new heretics with special tenderness.

For some time as yet the labors of the Inquisition, in the suppression

of Lutheranism, were confined to foreigners, the most conspicuous of

whom was Hugo de Celso, a learned Burgundian doctor of both laws and

author of a serviceable _Reportorio de las Leyes_, which saw the light

at Valladolid in 1538 and again at Alcalá in 1540. In 1532 he seems to

have been prosecuted without conviction at Toledo, but fell again under

suspicion and was finally burnt in 1551.[1135] It is true that Queen

Mary of Hungary, sister of Charles V, did not escape suspicion,[1136]

but the earliest undoubted heretic recorded of Spanish blood would seem

to be Francisco de San Roman of Burgos. Engaged, while still a young

man, in business in the Netherlands, his affairs took him to Bremen,

where he was converted and became so ardent a proselyte that, after

various adventures, he undertook to convert Charles V at Ratisbon.

Persisting in the attempt, he was sent in chains to Spain and, as he

refused to recant, there was nothing to do with him save to give him the

fiery death that he courted--the first of the few Spanish martyrs to

Protestantism. Carranza attended him at the stake and urged him to

submit to the Church, but the ferocious crowd pierced him with their

swords--a not infrequent occurrence at the autos de fe. We have no

dates, but an allusion to Charles's expedition to Tunis would seem to

place his career about 1540.[1137]

Nearly at the same time there appeared another, who was classed as a

Lutheran, although he seems to have worked out his heresies

independently. All that we know of Rodrigo de Valero rests on the

unreliable testimony of González de Montes, who describes him as a

wealthy youth of Lebrija, near Seville, suddenly converted from the

vanities of the world to an assiduous study of Scripture and the

conviction that he was a new apostle of Christ. His special heresies are

not recorded, but they led to his trial by the Seville tribunal, which

confiscated his property and discharged him as insane. He continued his

apostolate and, on a second trial, he was condemned to perpetual prison

and sanbenito. Here, in the obligatory Sunday attendance at mass, he

contradicted the priest until, to silence him, he was recluded in a

convent at San Lucar de Barrameda, where he lay until his death.[1138]

[Sidenote: _MODERATION_]

Valero was not without importance, for he was the perverter of Juan Gil,

or Doctor Egidio, the founder of the little Protestant community of

Seville which came, as we shall see, to an untimely end. Egidio was

magistral canon of the cathedral and a man of the highest consideration

for learning and eloquence; indeed, he was nominated by Charles V to the

see of Tortosa, which was vacant from 1548 to 1553. On his post-mortem

trial, in 1559, evidence showed that, as early as 1542, he had preached

to the nuns of Santa Clara on the uselessness of external works, denying

the suffrages of the saints, and stigmatizing image-worship as

idolatry.[1139] A letter of Charles to Valdés, from Brussels, January

25, 1550, shows that Egidio was then on trial in Seville; Charles

ordered Valdés to investigate the case personally in Seville and

consult him before concluding it, all of which must be done speedily for

that church (Tortosa) must be provided with a prelate.[1140]

Charles's solicitude shows that the matter was regarded as important.

Egidio, in fact, was the centre of a little band of Lutherans whom the

Inquisition was eagerly tracking. The Suprema wrote, July 30, 1550, to

Valdés at Seville, urging him to expedite the case, and adding that it

had written to Charles about the arrest of those in Paris and Flanders

implicated with Dr. Egidio, and about Dr. Zapata who had delivered

Lutheran books to Antonio de Guzman.[1141] Yet when Egidio's trial

ended, August 21, 1552, he was treated with singular moderation. He was

obliged publicly to abjure as heretical ten propositions which he

admitted to have uttered, subjecting himself to the penalty of relapse

for reincidence. Eight more propositions he recanted as false and

erroneous, and seven he explained in a Catholic sense--all of these

being more or less Lutheran. He was sentenced to a year's confinement in

the castle of Triana and never to leave Spain; for a year after release

he was not to celebrate mass and for ten years he was suspended from

preaching, confessing and partaking in disputations.[1142] Death in 1556

saved him from a harsher fate, although, as we shall see, his bones were

exhumed and burnt in 1560.

The mildness of the Inquisition shows that thus far there was no alarm

to stimulate severity, nor was there any cause for it. We hear a good

deal of the missionary efforts of the German or other heretics; but up

to this time there is slender trace of such work. The only

indication--and that a very dubious one--that I have met of such

attempts, is the case of Gabriel de Narbonne, before the Valencia

tribunal in 1537. He was a Frenchman, who had learned heresy during four

years spent in Germany and Switzerland. As a wandering mendicant in

Spain, he spoke freely of his beliefs to all whom he met. When arrested,

he confessed fully to all the leading tenets of Lutheranism and begged

mercy; after a year's confinement, under threat of torture, he stated

that he had been sent by the Swiss heretics to Spain as a missionary;

there were three others, one named Beltran, who was likewise in Spain,

one was destined to Venice and the other to Savoy. He had wandered, he

said, on foot for two years through the whole Peninsula, from Catalonia

and Navarre to Lisbon, disseminating his heresies wherever he could find

a listener, especially among the clergy. Had the tribunal believed his

story, he would have been sharply tortured to discover his converts; as

it was, he was merely reconciled with irremissible prison, while his

nephew, another Gabriel de Narbonne, who spontaneously denounced himself

as having been perverted by his uncle, was reconciled with spiritual

penance and forbidden to leave the kingdom.[1143]

[Sidenote: _THE SEVILLE GROUP_]

It would seem as though the Holy See were desirous to arouse the Spanish

Inquisition to a sense of its inertness in combating these dangerous

innovations for, in 1551, Julius III sent to Inquisitor-general Valdés a

brief empowering him to punish Lutheranism irrespective of the station

of the offender--a wholly superfluous grant, for he already possessed by

his commission all requisite faculties, except as regards bishops, and

the case of Carranza shows that they were not included in the

brief.[1144] If the object was to stimulate, it failed, for the cases of

Lutheranism continued for some time to be few and mostly of foreigners.

The year 1558 may be taken as a turning-point in the history of Spanish

Protestantism and up to that time the industrious researches of Dr.

Ernst Schäfer, into the records of all the tribunals, have only resulted

in finding an aggregate of a hundred and five cases, of which

thirty-nine are of natives and sixty-six of foreigners.[1145] Of course,

in the chaos of archives, no such statistics can be regarded as

complete, but, on the other hand, the tribunals were in the habit of

classing as "Lutheranism" any deviation, even in a minor degree, from

dogma or observance, or any careless speech, such as those of which we

have had examples above. As a whole, the figures are significant of the

slender impression thus far made on Spanish thought by the intense

religious excitement beyond the Pyrenees. A few individuals--mostly

those who had been abroad--are all that can be regarded as really

infected with the new doctrines. Thus far there had been nothing of

organization, of little associations or conventicles, in which those of

common faith assembled for worship, for mutual encouragement or for

planning measures to disseminate their belief, but something of the kind

was beginning to develop in Seville, where the teachings of Rodrigo de

Valero and Dr. Egidio gradually spread through a widening circle. After

Egidio's death, in 1556, the leading figure was Doctor Constantino Ponce

de la Fuente, who was elected by the chapter to the vacant magistral

canonry, and who was a man of the highest consideration, having served

Charles V in Flanders as confessor and chaplain. Another important

personage was Maestro García Arias, known as Doctor Blanco, prior of the

Geronimite house of San Isidro, all the brethren of which became

converts, as well as some of the inmates of the Geronimite nunnery of

Santa Paula. An influential beneficiary of the church of San Vicente

named Francisco de Zafra also joined the group which, although largely

composed of clerics, secular and regular, contained many laymen. We hear

of two rag-pickers, Francisco and Antonio de Cardenas, while there was

also a noble of the highest rank, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, of the great

house of the Dukes of Arcos. Every class of society was represented in

the little band, which numbered altogether over a hundred and twenty,

besides Doctor Juan Pérez de Pineda and Julian Hernández, who had sought

safety in flight, probably about the time of the arrest of Dr.

Egidio.[1146]

[Sidenote: _THE VALLADOLID GROUP_]

In 1557, from some cause, suspicion was aroused and the tribunal

commenced a secret investigation, which seems to have reached the ears

of some of the inculpated, and eleven of the Geronimites of San Isidro

sought safety in flight, among whom were two who became

noteworthy--Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina.[1147] This

increased the suspicion and certain writings of Doctor Constantino were

subjected to examination; they had passed current without animadversion

for ten years, but, in 1557, a carta acordada addressed to all the

tribunals called attention to them, followed, January 2, 1558, by a list

of books to be burnt,[1148] to which were added three of his to be

seized but not burnt. Finally the tribunal was able to obtain positive

evidence against individuals. Juan Pérez, in the refuge of Geneva, had

been busy in preparing propagandist works.[1149] To convey them into

Spain was a perilous task, but it was undertaken by Julian Hernández,

who had spent some years in Paris, had then wandered to Scotland and

Germany, and had become a deacon in the Walloon church of Frankfort. The

story that he reached Seville with two large casks of Pérez's Testament,

Psalms and Catechism is probably an exaggeration, but he brought a

supply of them, reaching Seville in July, 1557. The books were deposited

outside the walls and were smuggled in at night, or were brought in by

Don Juan Ponce de Leon in his saddlebags. Julian made a fatal blunder

with a letter and a copy of the _Imajen del Antichristo_, addressed to a

priest, which he delivered to one of the same name who was a good

Catholic. When the latter saw as the frontispiece the pope kneeling to

Satan, and read that good works were useless, he hastened with the

dangerous matter to the Inquisition which made good use of the clue thus

furnished. Don Juan promptly fled to Ecija and Julian to the Sierra

Morena, but they were tracked and brought back on October 7th. Other

arrests speedily followed and the prisons began to fill.[1150] With its

customary unwearied patience, the tribunal traced out all the

ramifications of the heretical conventicle, arresting one after another

as denunciations of accomplices were obtained from prisoners. Dr.

Constantino and his friend Dr. Blanco were not seized until August,

1558, and the first auto de fe was not celebrated until September 24,

1559.

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, a similar association of Protestants

had been discovered at Valladolid, then the residence of the court. An

Italian gentleman, Don Carlos de Seso, said to be the son of the Bishop

of Piacenza, had been converted about 1550, apparently by the writings

of Juan de Valdés. He came to Spain, bringing with him heretical books

and ardently desiring to spread the reformed faith. He settled first in

Logroño, where he made some converts, and then, through the influence of

his wife, Isabel de Castilla, of royal blood and highly esteemed, he was

appointed corregidor of Toro, about 1554. There he converted the

Bachiller Antonio de Herrezuelo and his wife, Leonor de Cisneros, Doña

Ana Enríquez, daughter of Elvira, Marchioness of Alcañizes, Juan de

Ulloa Pereira, Comendador of San Juan, and others of more or less

distinction, while, in Pedrosa, a town lying between Toro and

Valladolid, Pedro de Cazalla, the parish priest, also fell under his

influence and became a missionary in his turn. Among his converts was

his sacristan, Juan Sánchez, whose imprudent zeal greatly alarmed

Cazalla; in 1557, Sánchez left Pedroso for Valladolid, where he entered

the service of Doña Catalina de Hortega, whom he soon converted, and

with her Doña Beatriz de Vivero, a sister of Cazalla. Through them,

seven nuns of the Cistercian house of Nuestra Señora de Belen were

brought to the new faith, but the greatest conquest, about May, 1557,

was made when Beatriz de Vivero and Pedro Cazalla won their brother,

Doctor Agustin de Cazalla. No ecclesiastic was of higher repute or

greater influence with all classes; he was the favorite preacher of

Charles V, who had carried him to Germany in 1543, where possibly his

debates with heretics may have unconsciously undermined his faith. Next

to him among the converts might be ranked the Dominican Fray Domingo de

Rojas, whose reputation for learning and eloquence was of the highest.

He had been a fellow student of Pedro de Cazalla; he had accompanied

Carranza to Trent, in 1552, where he had encountered heretics, and since

then some of his utterances had led his brother Dominicans to entertain

suspicions, but, when Beatriz de Vivero first sought to convert him, he

was firm and even thought of denouncing her. In the autumn of 1557,

however, Agustin Cazalla and Carlos de Seso won him over to heresy and

he, in his turn, brought in his brother, Don Pedro Sarmiento and his

nephew Don Luis de Rojas, heir to the marquisate of Pozo. As in Seville,

the reformers thus included men of the highest consideration, socially

and ecclesiastically, as well as those of the lower classes. Still,

their numbers were few; the wild estimates of five hundred or six

thousand are baseless, for they did not exceed fifty-five or sixty,

wholly without organization, being scattered from Logroño to Zamora,

though the house of Doña Leonor de Vivero, the widowed mother of the

Cazallas, served occasionally as a meeting-place. Of her ten children,

four sons, Agustin and Pedro Cazalla, Francisco and Juan de Vivero, and

two daughters, Beatriz and Costanza, were involved; the rest seem to

have escaped. She herself, after the prosecutions commenced, was only

confined to her house; she speedily died and received Christian burial,

but her bones were subsequently exhumed and burnt. Notwithstanding this,

one of the sons, Gonzalo Pérez de Cazalla, obtained, May 12, 1560, a

dispensation from the _cosas arbitrarias_.[1151]

[Sidenote: _THE VALLADOLID GROUP_]

It was inevitable that such a propaganda should be discovered, and the

only source of surprise is that it should have been carried on for two

or three years without betrayal, but this came at last almost

simultaneously from several sources. In Zamora, Christóbal de Padilla,

steward of the Marchioness of Alcañizes, was unguarded in his talk;

towards Easter of 1558 the publication of the Edict of Faith led to two

denunciations, on which he was arrested by the bishop and thrown into

the public prison. As he was not _incomunicado_ he was able to send word

to his accomplices and Herrezuelo promptly advised Pedro de Cazalla,

with warning that no reliance could be placed on Padilla's reticence.

Even more threatening than this was the inconsiderate zeal of Francisco

de Vivero and his sister Beatriz, in seeking to convert two friends,

Doña Antonia de Branches and Doña Juana de Fonseca. Their confessors

refused absolution and Easter communion unless they would obtain full

information; this they did and the tribunal was speedily in possession

of the names of nearly all the converts, and made arrangements to seize

them all. Despite its profound secrecy, Dr. Cazalla chanced to hear it

said that there were heretics in Valladolid who had been denounced by

Juana de Fonseca. The purport of this was unmistakable and wild

confusion reigned among the little band. Desperate plans of escape were

projected, but the time was too short. Some sought mercy by surrendering

themselves and denouncing their accomplices; others silently awaited

arrest. Only three attempted flight. Fray Domingo de Rojas, disguised in

secular apparel, hastened to Logroño to Carlos de Seso and the two tried

to escape through Navarre; at Pampeluna they secured a pass from the

viceroy, but the agents of the Inquisition were in hot pursuit; they

were recognized and conducted back under guard of twelve familiars and

some mounted officials, which was rather for their protection than to

prevent escape for, wherever they passed, crowds assembled with

demonstrations of burning them. Fray Domingo was in mortal fear lest his

kinsmen should slay him on the road, and it was deemed necessary to

enter Valladolid at night to avoid lapidation by the mob. Of all

concerned, the only one who succeeded in leaving Spain was Juan Sánchez,

who found at Castro de Urdiales a vessel bound for Flanders and he, as

we have seen, was caught a year later and shared the fate of his

associates.[1152]

Inquisitor-general Valdés, whose disgrace was imminent, promptly took

advantage of the situation to save himself. It is easy for us now to

recognize the absurdity of the fear that a couple of hundred more or

less zealous Protestants, in Seville and Valladolid, could constitute

any real danger to the faith so firmly intrenched and so powerfully

organized in Spain, but, at the moment, no man could know how far the

infection had spread. There was reasonable cause for alarm at the

simultaneous discovery, in places so far apart, of heresy numbering

among its disciples those of high rank in the world and of distinguished

position in the Church. This alarm it was the business of Valdés to

intensify, in order to render himself indispensable, and the most

exaggerated rumors were industriously spread. Abbot Illescas, who was an

eye-witness, treats it as a most terrible conspiracy which, if the

discovery had been postponed for two or three months, would have set all

Spain aflame, resulting in the gravest misfortune that had ever befallen

the land. That hideous stories were circulated is shown by his assertion

that matters too horrible to mention were proved; in the Cazalla house

nocturnal conventicles were held, abominable and Satanic gatherings, in

which Lutheran doctrines were preached.[1153] The legend was

industriously maintained. The Venetian envoy, Leonardo Donato, referring

to the matter, in 1573, says that if it had not been remedied with

speedy punishment, every one believes that the evil weed would have

grown apace and would have infected all Spain, and this, perhaps, was

not one of the least causes that induced Philip II to make peace with

France and return home.[1154] So Inquisitor Páramo, towards the close of

the century, tells us that no one doubts but that a great conflagration

would have resulted had it not been for the vigilance of the Holy Office

and that, in the nocturnal conventicles held in the Cazalla house, the

heretics polluted themselves with horrid wickedness.[1155]

[Sidenote: _EXPLOITATION BY VALDES_]

That the government should feel keen anxiety at the unknown proportions

of the portentous discovery was natural. Charles V was nearing his end

in the retirement of Yuste, and Philip was in Flanders, engrossed in

the war with France. His sister, the Infanta Juana, the temporary ruler,

was a woman of very moderate capacity and she and her advisers, in view

of the religious disquiet in France and Germany, might reasonably view

with dread the prospect of civil dissension which in that age was the

usual result of dissidence in faith. The outbreak in Seville had not

excited much attention, but now this one at the court, involving such

personages, portended unknown evils and came just in time to save Valdés

from disgrace, as we have seen above (Vol. II, p. 47). On March 23, 1558

the Princess Juana had written to her father that when he had ordered

the body of his mother Juana to be transferred to Granada, she had

commanded Valdés to accompany it and then to visit his diocese of

Seville; he had endeavored to excuse himself at the moment but promised

to arrange so as to obey shortly. Then, when urged to do so some days

later he raised further difficulties; it made no difference whether the

body was buried then or in September; everybody was endeavoring to drive

him away; troubles with his chapter required his presence at the court

or in Rome; besides, he was occupied with some heresies which had arisen

in Seville and in Murcia, and was busy in endeavoring to get a subsidy

from the Moriscos of Granada. Evidently he was belittling the Seville

heresies, lest they should serve as an excuse for sending him thither

and, when Juana referred his letter to the Council of State, it insisted

that he could be properly obliged to reside in his diocese.[1156]

It can therefore be easily conceived how eagerly he grasped the

opportune explosion in Valladolid and how it was magnified so as to

produce on the court a vastly greater impression than the more dangerous

one in Seville. In a letter of May 12th to Philip, the Suprema briefly

announced the discovery; the heretics were so numerous and the time had

been so short that it could give no details, but it suggestively

insisted on the necessity of the presence of Valdés to urge the matter

forward and it hoped that, with the royal favor, action would be taken

for the salvation of the delinquents and the example and restraint of

others.[1157] As we have seen this produced immediate effect, for

Philip, who had written June 5th that he must be relegated to his see,

on the 14th countermanded the order. Charles had already been induced to

take the same position. As early as April 27th, Juan Vázquez reported to

him the arrest of Dr. Cazalla and the alarming outlook, adding that the

remedy should be speedy and that the inquisitor-general and Suprema were

actively at work.[1158] Charles was thoroughly aroused. He had spent his

strength and his life in combating heresy; it had baffled his policies

and frustrated his ambitions; it had been a thorn in the flesh, rankling

and crippling him at every turn. It had fairly worn him out and driven

him to abdication, and now its spectre broke in upon the repose for

which his wearied soul and exhausted body had longed. He was appalled by

the prospect of a renewal of the struggle, in the only land as yet

preserved from its influence, and his religious zeal was enkindled with

the conviction that only by the enforcement of unity of faith could

public order and even the monarchy itself be maintained.

[Sidenote: _ALARM OF CHARLES V_]

Accordingly, on May 3d, he wrote to Juana asking her most earnestly to

order that Valdés should not leave the court, where his presence was so

necessary. She must give him and the Suprema all the support requisite

to enable them to suppress so great an evil by the rigorous punishment

of the guilty. Had he the bodily strength, he would himself come and

share the labor. Juana sent for Valdés and showed him the letter, which

assured him that he had regained his position, and the work went on of

arresting the heretics, reports of which were duly sent to Charles. The

more he pondered over the situation, the more excited he grew. On May

25th, in a long letter to Juana, he magnified the danger and the urgency

of stern measures. "I do not know," he said, "that in these cases it

will suffice to follow the common law that the guilty of a first offence

can secure pardon by begging mercy and professing conversion for, when

at liberty, they will be free to repeat the offence.... The admission to

mercy was not provided for cases like these for, in addition to their

enormity, from what you write to me, it appears that in another year, if

unchecked, they would have dared to preach in public, thus inferring

their dangerous designs, for it is clear that they could not do so

without organization and armed leaders. It must therefore be seen

whether they can be prosecuted for sedition and disturbance of the

republic, thus incurring the penalty of rebellion without mercy." He

goes on to instance his own cruel edicts in the Netherlands, under which

the pertinacious were burnt alive and the repentant were beheaded, a

policy which he urged Philip to continue and which the latter practised

in England, as though he were its natural king, leading to so many and

such pitiless executions, even of bishops. "There must" he concluded "be

no competencias of jurisdiction over this, for believe me, my daughter,

if this evil be not suppressed at the beginning, I cannot promise that

there will be a king hereafter to do it. So I entreat you, as earnestly

as I can, to do everything possible, for the nature of the case demands

it and, that the necessary action be taken in my name, I order Luis

Quijada to go to you and to talk to such persons as you may

direct."[1159]

Not satisfied with this, Charles, on the same day, sent to Philip a copy

of this letter and begged him to give orders for the unsparing

punishment of the guilty, for the service of God and the preservation of

the kingdom were at stake. Philip's marginal note on this was to thank

him for what he had done, to ask him to press the matter, and to assure

him that the same would be done from Flanders.[1160] We shall see that

Charles's cruel desire was fulfilled, though it was done

ecclesiastically and not by distorting the secular law.

There followed a brisk correspondence between Valladolid and San Yuste,

Charles burning with impatience and urging speedy action, and Valdés

assuring him that all possible effort was making by the Inquisition in

its crippled condition for want of funds. Philip was kept advised and

wrote to Juana, from his camp near Dourlens, September 6th, expressing

his satisfaction with what had been done; they were not to delay by

communicating with him, who was busy with the war, but were to take

orders from the emperor to whom he had written, asking him to take

charge of the affair.[1161]

Valdés was now master of the situation, both in this and the affair of

Carranza, which hinged upon it to a large extent. To exploit it to the

utmost he addressed, September 9th, to Paul IV a letter in which he

gave a brief account of the development of Lutheranism in Valladolid and

Seville; he dwelt upon the dangers impending, the labors of the

Inquisition and the poverty which crippled its efforts. Adopting the

argument of Charles V, he pointed out that this Lutheranism was a kind

of sedition or tumult, occurring as it did among persons of importance

by birth, religion and wealth, so that there was peril of greater evils

if they were treated with the same benignity as the converts from Islam

and Judaism, who were mostly of low estate and not to be feared.

Lutheranism promised relief from Church burdens, which bore hardly on

the people who would welcome liberation, while tribunals might scruple

to relax persons of quality who would not patiently endure penance and

imprisonment and, from their rank and the influence of their kindred,

great evils might arise, both to religion and the peace of the kingdom.

A papal brief would be highly desirable, therefore, under which the

tribunals, without scruple or fear of irregularity, could and should

relax the guilty from whom danger to the republic might be feared, no

matter what their dignity in Church or State, giving to the inquisitors

full power to employ the rigor required by the situation, even if it

went beyond the limits of the law.[1162] We have seen (Vol. II p. 426)

how successful was this appeal in establishing on a firm basis the

finances of the Inquisition, nor was it less so in obtaining the cruel

power for which Charles V aspired, and also a faculty which enabled

Valdés to destroy Carranza. Allusion has already been made (Vol. II, p.

61; Vol. III, p. 201) to the briefs of January 4 and 7, 1559 by which

Paul IV granted a limited jurisdiction over the episcopal order and

authorized the relaxation of penitents who begged for mercy, when it was

believed that their conversion was not sincere. In both these

directions, as was customary with the Inquisition, the limitation was

disregarded and the grant of power was freely exercised.[1163]

[Sidenote: _VALLADOLID AUTO DE FE_]

Having obtained authority to set aside the law, the Inquisition was

prepared to impress the people with a sense of the danger of wandering

from the faith. Nothing was spared to enhance the effect of the auto de

fe of Trinity Sunday, May 21, 1559, in which the first portion of the

Valladolid prisoners were to suffer. It was solemnly proclaimed fifteen

days in advance, during which the buildings of the Inquisition were

incessantly patrolled, day and night, by a hundred armed men, and guards

were stationed at the stagings in the Plaza Mayor, for there were rumors

that the prison was to be blown up and that the stagings were to be

fired. Along the line of the procession, palings were set in the middle

of the street, forming an unobstructed path for three to march abreast,

intrusion on which was forbidden under heavy penalties, but this and the

numerous guards were powerless to keep it clear. Every house-front along

the line and around the plaza had its stagings; people flocked in from

thirty and forty leagues around and encamped in the fields; except the

familiars, no one was allowed to ride on horseback or to bear arms,

under pain of death and confiscation.

The procession was headed by the effigy of Leonor de Vivero, who had

died during trial, clad in widow's weeds and bearing a mitre with flames

and appropriate inscription, and followed by a coffin containing her

remains to be duly burnt. Those who were to be relaxed in person

numbered fourteen, of whom one, Gonzalo Baez, was a Portuguese convicted

of Judaism. Those admitted to reconciliation, with penance more or less

severe, were sixteen in number, including an Englishman variously styled

Anthony Graso or Bagor--probably Baker--punished for Protestantism,

like all the rest, excepting Baez. When the procession reached the

plaza, Agustin Cazalla was placed in the highest seat, as the

conspicuous chief of the heresy, and next to him his brother, Francisco

de Vivero. Melchor Cano at once commenced the sermon, which occupied an

hour, and then Valdés and the bishops approached the Princess Juana and

Prince Carlos, who were present, and administered to them the oath to

protect and aid the Inquisition, to which the multitude responded in a

mighty roar, "To the death!" Cazalla, his brother and Alonso Pérez, who

were in orders, were duly degraded from the priesthood, the sentences

were read, those admitted to reconciliation made the necessary

abjurations and those condemned to relaxation were handed over to the

secular arm. Mounted on asses, they were carried to the Plaza de la

Puerta del Campo, where the requisite stakes had been erected, and there

they met their end.[1164] With one exception they were not martyrs in

any true sense of the word, for all but one had recanted, had professed

repentance, had begged for mercy, and had given full information as to

their friends and associates. Under the law, with perhaps two or three

exceptions, who might be regarded as dogmatizers, they would have been

entitled to reconciliation, but the brief of January 4th had placed them

at the mercy of the Inquisition and an example was desired.

[Sidenote: _AGUSTIN CAZALLA_]