THE ACCUSED SENT TO ROME
If Torquemada failed in obtaining the desired jurisdiction over the Spanish episcopate, he could at least strike terror by accusing some of them to the Holy See, where their condemnation would be followed by that of their ancestors and large confiscations would result. Two of those of Jewish blood, Dávila of Segovia and Aranda of Calahorra, were selected for attack. In the existing popular temper it could not have been difficult to collect evidence that they were regarded as suspect and were defamed for heresy. Presumably this was sent to Rome and the matter was regarded as of sufficient moment to induce the despatch of Antoniotto Pallavicini, then Bishop of Tournay, as a special nuncio to confer with Torquemada.[122]He returned to Rome with evidence deemed sufficient to justify their summons thither. In 1490, Dávila went to Rome, in his eightieth year. Since 1461 he had been Bishop of Segovia and, in spite of Jewish descent, his family was one of the most influential in Castile, intermarried with its noblest blood.[123]He had given ample proof of pitiless orthodoxy, in 1468, when, at Sepúlveda, the rabbi, Solomon Pico and the leaders of the synagogue were accused of crucifying a Christian boy during Holy Week. Bishop Dávila promptly arrested sixteen of those most deeply implicated, of whom seven were burnt and the rest were hanged, except a boy who begged to be baptized—although this did not satisfy the pious Sepúlvedans, who slew some of the remaining Jews and drove the rest away.[124]He had given cause of offence, however, for, when the Inquisition was introduced in Segovia, he drove the inquisitors from his diocese and remonstrated boldly with the sovereigns and, when this proved fruitless, it was in evidence that he dug up at night, from the cemetery of the convent of la Merced, the bones of his ancestors and concealed them, in order to destroy the proof of their interment in the Jewish fashion.[125]In Rome he seems to have found favor with Alexander VI who, in 1494, sent him to Naples in company with his nephew, the Cardinal of Monreale. His case was protracted and he died in Rome, October28, 1497; the result is not positively known, but it must have been favorable as otherwise his pious legacies would have been fruitless and Colmenares, the historian of Segovia, would not have dared to call him one of the most useful prelates that the see had enjoyed, nor would Galindez de Carvajal have said that his errand to Rome was merely to defend the bones of his father.[126]
Pedro de Aranda of Calahorra was a man of equal mark who, in 1482, acquired the high position of President of the Council of Castile. His father, Gonzalo Alonso, had been baptized with the famous Pablo de Santa María and had been ennobled. The Valladolid tribunal prosecuted his memory, with the result of adiscordia, or disagreement, and the bishop went to Rome in 1493, where he gained papal favor and procured a brief transferring the case to the Bishop of Córdova and the Benedictine Prior of Valladolid. He remained in Rome, when Alexander VI, in 1494, sent him to Venice as ambassador and subsequently made him Master of the Sacred Palace. Since 1488, however, Torquemada had been collecting evidence against him. It was sent to Rome and, on the night of April 21, 1498, he was ordered to keep his room in the palace as a prison; on the 26th he was brought before the pope and had a hearing, after which he was taken to other rooms and kept under guard until September. Meanwhile Alexander seized his property and Sanuto intimates that his real crime was his abundance of ready money, while Burchard tells us that he was accused of heresy andmarraniaand that he had many enemies. Three bishops of the curia were commissioned as his judges; they heard many witnesses presented by the fiscal and a hundred and one by the accused, but all of these testified against him. The points against him were that he said the Mosaic Law had one principle, the Christian three; in praying he saidGloria Patri, omittingFilio et Spiritui Sancto; he celebrated mass after eating; he ate meat on Good Friday and other prohibited days; he declared that indulgences were useless and had been invented by the Fathers for gain; that there was neither hell nor purgatory but only paradise, and much more of the same nature. On November 16th the judges laid the evidence before the pope in secret consistory when, by the advice of the cardinals, Aranda was deposed and degraded from Orders; he was confinedin the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, where he was given a good room and he died there, apparently in 1500.[127]
Pope Alexander seems to have felt that it was necessary to guard his jurisdiction against the encroaching tendencies of the Spanish Inquisition, for in granting to the Bishop of Avila appellate powers, in his brief of November 4, 1594 (Vol. I, p. 179), he was careful to except the venerable brethren, the archbishops and bishops, whose cases by law were reserved to the Holy See.[128]It was well understood by this time, however and, in the case of Archbishop Talavera of Granada, it will be remembered that Lucero made no attempt to do more than gather evidence to be sent to Rome and, when papal authority was obtained, it was granted not to the Inquisition but to prelates specially commissioned.[129]
TEMPORARY JURISDICTION GRANTED
Half a century was to elapse before there was another case involving the episcopal Order. It has been sometimes thought that the Inquisition was concerned in the trial and execution of Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, but such was not the fact, although the case illustrates the difficulty of holding a bishop accountable for his misdeeds. That turbulent prelate, somewhat absurdly styled a second Luther by Leo X, was an active leader in the Comunidades, who, after the defeat at Villalar, April 21, 1521, fled in disguise but was caught at Villamediana, on the Castilian border. Episcopal immunity rendered him a doubtful prize; Charles V was resolved on his death, but there was considerable doubt as to how he was to be punished. The Inquisition was not brought into play but, after some negotiation, Leo X was induced to issue a commission to Cardinal Adrian and the nuncio to take testimony and forward it for judgement by thepope in consistory. On Adrian’s accession to the papacy he transferred the commission to the Archbishop of Granada and the Bishop of Ciudad-Rodrigo, but gave no authority to employ torture. Then Clement VII, by a brief of March 27, 1524, granted faculties to proceed to extremities, under which the trial went on, but apparently died out when carried to Rome. Wearied with five years’ confinement in the castle of Simancas, Acuña made a fruitless attempt to escape, in which he killed the alcaide, Mendo Noguerol. Charles then sent to Simancas his alcalde de casa y corte, Rodrigo Ronquillo, with instructions to torture Acuña and put him to death—instructions faithfully executed, March 23, 1526. This violation of the immunities of the Church caused no little scandal. Charles speedily obtained for himself, from Clement, absolution from theipso factoexcommunication incurred, but that which he had promised to procure for his subordinates was granted with difficulty and only after delay of more than a year, the final ceremony not taking place until September 8, 1527. At Valladolid a tradition was long current that Ronquillo came to an evil end, being carried off by demons.[130]
As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening and the dread of its extending to Spain increased, a certain limited jurisdiction over bishops was conferred on Cardinal Manrique by a brief of Clement VII, July 15, 1531. He was empowered to inquire against them if suspected of favoring Lutheran doctrines or of aiding those who held them; he was not permitted, however, to arrest and imprison, although he could punish them according to the canons and he was granted the fullest faculties of absolving and rehabilitating those who abandoned their errors and asked for forgiveness.[131]It is not likely that any occasion arose for the exercise of these faculties, but if there was it has left no trace.
This evidently was a personal delegation, expiring with Manrique, for no reference to it was made in the next case—that of Bartolomé de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo. This was, perhaps, the most important affair during the career of the Inquisition. It attracted the attention of all Catholic Europe and illustratesin so many ways, not only inquisitorial methods but the conflict between orthodoxy and reform that it merits consideration in some detail.[132]
VALDÉS OUT OF FAVOR
Inquisitor-general Valdés, who was also Archbishop of Seville and whose name often comes before us, was perilously near disgrace in 1557. Philip II was in desperate straits for money; the glories of Saint-Quentin and Gravelines were not acquired cheaply and the war forced upon him by Paul IV was exhausting his Italian possessions. From Flanders he sent Count Melito to Spain with orders to raise forced loans from nobles and prelates, and the Princess Juana, then Governor, called among others on Valdés for a hundred and fifty thousand ducats. The Bishop of Córdova when approached, promptly furnished a hundred thousand and promised more if he could raise it: the Archbishop of Saragossa, who was asked for a hundred thousand, only gave twenty thousand. Valdés was even more niggardly, and supplied nothing, although it was observed about this time that six loads of money reached Valladolid for him. Charles V, from his retirement of Yuste, wrote to him, May 18th, expressing surprise that he, the creature of imperial favor, should hesitate to repay the benefits conferred, especially as he could have what security he desired for the loan. This letter, with one from Juana, was conveyed to him by Hernando de Ochoa, whose report to Charles, May 28th, of the interview, showed how little respect was felt for the man. Ochoa reproached him with having promised to see what he could do, in place of which he had gone into hiding at San Martin de la Fuente, fourteen leagues from the court at Valladolid, where he had lain for two months, hoping that the matter would blow over. “He said to me, before a consecrated host, that the devils could fly away with him if ever he had 100,000 or 80,000, or 60,000, or 30,000 ducats, for he had always spent muchin charities and had made dotations amounting to 150,000.” Ochoa pressed him hard; he admitted that his archbishopric, which he had held since 1546, was worth 60,000 ducats a year and Ochoa showed that, admitting his claims for charities and expenses, he had laid aside at least 30,000 a year “which you cannot possibly have spent, for you never have any one to dine in your house and you do not accumulate silver plate, like other gentlemen; all this is notorious, and the whole court knows it.... This embarrassed him, but he repeated with great oaths that he had no money, that it was not well thus to oppress prelates, nor would money thus obtained be lucky for war; God would help the king and what would Christendom say about it.” The honest Ochoa still urged him to return to the court and save his honor, intimating that the king might take action that would be highly unpleasant, but it was to no purpose. Valdés was obdurate and clung resolutely to his shekels.[133]
Philip had sent instructions as to the treatment of recalcitrants—probably relegating bishops to their sees and nobles to their estates—but there was hesitation felt as to banishing Valdés from the court, although the continued pressure of Charles and Juana only extorted a promise of fifty thousand ducats. Yet it was desired to remove him and plans were tried to offer him a pretext for going. In March, 1588, Juana ordered him to accompany the body of Queen Juana la loca to Granada for interment, from which place he could visit his Seville church; he made excuses but promised to go shortly. Then, when she repeated the order, he offered many reasons for evading it, including the heresies recently discovered in Seville and Murcia; the translation of the body could wait until September and everybody, he said, was trying to drive him from the court. She referred the matter to the Royal Council, which decided that his excuses were insufficient and that, even if the interment were postponed he could properly be ordered to reside in his see.[134]
It was evident to Valdés that something was necessary to strengthen his position and he skilfully utilized the discovery of a few Protestants in Valladolid, of whom some were eminent clerics, like Augustin Cazalla and Fray Domingo de Rojas, and others were persons of quality, like Luis de Rojas and Doña Ana Enríquez. We shall have occasion to note hereafter the extraordinaryexcitement caused by the revelation that Protestantism was making inroads in court circles, the extent of which was readily exaggerated, and it was stimulated and exploited by Valdés, who magnified his zeal in combating the danger and conjured, at least for the moment, the storm that was brewing. Philip wrote from Flanders, June 5, 1558, to send him to his see without delay; if he still made excuses he was to be excluded from the Council of State and this would answer until his approaching return to Spain, when he would take whatever action was necessary. Ten days later, on receiving letters from Valdés enumerating the prisoners and describing the efforts made to avert the danger, he countermanded the orders.[135]Still, this was only a respite; we chance to hear of a meeting of the Council of State, in August or September, in which Juan de Vega characterized as a great scandal the disobedience of a vassal to the royal commands, in a matter so just as residence in his see, and he suggested that, when the court moved, no quarters should be assigned to Valdés, to which Archbishop Carranza replied that it was no wonder that the orders of the king were unable to effect what the commandments of God and the Church could not accomplish.[136]
Something further was necessary to render him indispensable—something that could be prolonged indefinitely and if, at the same time, it would afford substantial relief to the treasury, he might be forgiven the niggardness that had resisted the appeals of the sovereign. He had for some time been preparing a scheme for this, which was nothing less than the prosecution of the Primate of the Spanish Church, the income of whose see was rated at from 150,000 to 200,000 ducats. To measure the full audacity of this it is necessary to appreciate the standing of Archbishop Carranza.
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
Bartolomé de Carranza y Miranda was born in 1503. At the age of 12 he entered the university of Alcalá; at 18 he took the final vows of the Dominican Order and was sent to study theology in the college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where, in 1530, he was made professor of arts, in 1533 junior professor of theology and, in 1534, chief professor as well as consultor of the tribunal of Valladolid. In 1540 he was sent as representative of his Order to the General Chapter held in Rome, where he distinguishedhimself and was honored with the doctorate, while Paul III granted him a licence to read prohibited heretic books. On his return to Spain his reputation was national; he was largely employed by the Suprema in the censorship of books, especially of foreign Bibles, while the Councils of Indies and Castile frequently submitted intricate questions for his judgement. In 1542 he was offered the see of Cuzco, esteemed the wealthiest in the colonies, when he replied that he would willingly go to the Indies on the emperor’s service but not to undertake the cure of souls.[137]On the convocation of the Council of Trent, in 1545, Charles V selected him as one of the delegates and, during his three years’ service there, he earned the reputation throughout Christendom of a profound theologian. When, in 1548, Prince Philip went to join his father in Flanders, they both offered him the position of confessor which he declined, as he did the see of Canaries which was tendered to him in 1550. In this latter year he was elected provincial of his Order for Castile and, in 1551, he was sent to the second convocation of the Council of Trent by Charles and also as the representative of Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo. As usual, he played a prominent part in the Council and, after its hasty dissolution, he remained there for some time employed in the duty of examining and condemning heretical books. In 1553 he returned to his professorship at Valladolid and when, in 1554, Prince Philip sailed for England to marry Queen Mary and restore the island to the unity of the Church, he took Carranza with him as the fittest instrument for the work.[138]
Carranza subsequently boasted that, during his three years’ stay in England, he had burnt, reconciled, or driven from the land thirty thousand heretics and had brought two million souls back to the Church. If we may believe his admiring biographers he was the heart and soul of the Marian persecution and Philip did nothing in religious matters without his advice. When, in September, 1555, Philip rejoined his father in Flanders, he left Carranza as Mary’s religious adviser, in which capacity heremained until 1557. Regarded by the heretics as the chief cause of their sufferings he barely escaped from repeated attempts on his life by poison or violence.[139]It is true that English authorities of the period make little mention of him, but the continued confidence of Philip is ample evidence that his persecuting zeal was sufficient to satisfy that exacting monarch.
When, in 1557, Carranza rejoined Philip in Flanders he was probably engrossed in the preparation and printing of his large work on the Catechism, of which more hereafter, but he still found time to investigate and impede the clandestine trade of sending heretic books to Spain.[140]That he had completely won Philip’s esteem and confidence was seen when Siliceo of Toledo died, May 1, 1557, and Philip appointed him as successor in the archbishopric. He refused the splendid prize and suggested three men as better fitted for the place. Philip persisted; he was going to a neighboring convent to confess and commune prior to the opening of the campaign and ordered Carranza to obey on his return. When he came back he sent the presentation written in his own hand; Carranza yielded, but on condition that, as the war with the pope would delay the issue of the bulls, the king in the interval could make another selection. This effort to avoid the fatal gift was fruitless. On his return from the campaign, Philip in an autograph letter summoned him to fulfil his promise and made the appointment public. So high was Carranza’s reputation that, when the presentation was laid before the consistory in Rome, on December 6th, it was at once confirmed, without observing the preconization, or the customary inquiry into the fitness of the appointee, or a constitution which prohibited final action on the same day.[141]
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
The elevation of a simple friar to the highest place in the Spanish Church was a blow to numerous ambitions that could scarce fail to arouse hostility. Valdés himself was said to have aspirations for the position and to be bitterly disappointed. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, had also cherished hopes and was eager for revenge. Carranza, moreover, was not popular with the hierarchy. He was that unwelcome character, a reformer within the Church and, while everyone acknowledged the necessity of reform, no one looked with favor on a reformer who assailedhis profitable abuses. As far back as 1547, while in attendance on the Council of Trent, Carranza had preached a sermon on one of the most crying evils of the time, the non-residence of bishops and beneficiaries, and had embodied his views in a tractate as severe as a Lutheran would have written on this abuse and the kindred one of pluralities, to which possibly the stringent Tridentine provisions on the subject may be attributed.[142]Such an outburst was not calculated to win favor, seeing that the splendor of the curia was largely supported by the prelacies and benefices showered upon its members and that in Spain there was scarce an inquisitor or a fiscal who was not a non-resident beneficiary of some preferment.
Carranza had, moreover, a peculiarly dangerous enemy in a brother Dominican, Melchor Cano, perhaps the leading Spanish theologian of the time when Spanish theology was beginning to dominate the Church. Learned, able, keen-witted and not particularly scrupulous, he was in intellect vastly superior to Carranza; there had been early rivalry, when both were professors of theology, and causes of strife in the internal politics of the Order had arisen, so that Cano could scarce view without bitterness the sudden elevation of his brother fraile.[143]His position at the time was somewhat precarious. When, in 1556, Paul IV forced war on Philip II, that pious prince sought the advice of theologians as to the propriety of engaging in hostilities with the Vicegerent of God, and theparecer, or opinion which Cano drew up, was an able state paper that attracted wide attention. He defended uncompromisingly the royal prerogatives, he virtually justified the German revolt when theCentum Gravaminaof the Diet of Nürnberg, in 1522, were unredressed and he described the corruption of Rome as a disease of such long standing as to be incurable.[144]This hardy defiance irritated Paul in the highest degree. April 21, 1556 he issued a brief summoning that son of perdition, Melchor Cano, to appear before him within sixty days for trial and sentence, but the brief was suppressed by the RoyalCouncil and Cano was ordered not to leave the kingdom. The Spanish Dominicans rallied to his defence; in the chapter of 1558 he was elected provincial and deputy to the general chapter to be held in Rome, but Paul ordered the election to be annulled and Cano to be deprived of his priorate of San Esteban. Cano complained of lukewarmness in his defence on the part of both Philip and Carranza and it is easy to understand that, feeling keenly the disgrace inflicted on him, he was in a temper to attack any one more fortunate than himself.[145]
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
At this inauspicious moment Carranza presented himself as a fair object of attack by all who, from different motives, might desire to assail him. If we may judge from his writings, he must have been impulsive and inconsiderate in his speech, given to uttering extreme views which made an impression and then qualifying them with restrictions that were forgotten. He was earnestly desirous of restoring the Church to its ancient purity and by no means reticent in exposing its weaknesses and corruption. He had been trained at a time before the Tridentine definitions had settled points of faith which, since the twelfth century, had been the subjects of debate in the schools, and even in his maturity the Council of Trent had not yet been clothed with the awful authority subsequently accorded to it, for the inglorious exit of its first two convocations, in 1547 and 1552, gave little promise of what lay in the future. The echo of the fierce Lutheran controversies had scarce penetrated into Spain and comparatively little was there known of the debates which were shaking to its centre the venerable structure of the Church. Carranza’s very labors in condemning heretic books and converting heretics had acquainted him with their doctrines and modes of expression; he was a confused thinker and his impulsive utterances were liable to be construed in a sense which he did not anticipate. As early as 1530 he had been denounced to the Inquisition by Fray Juan de Villamartin as a defender of Erasmus, especially in the matter of confession and the authorship of the Apocalypse and, during his persecuting career in England, he more than once gave opportunity, in his sermons, to unfavorable comment.[146]It was also in evidence that when in Rome, in 1539, he had written to Juan de Valdés in Naples, asking what authors should be studied forunderstanding Scripture, as he would have to teach that subject, and that Valdés replied in a letter which Carranza circulated among his students in Valladolid—a letter highly heretical in its teachings which Valdés subsequently included in his “One hundred and ten Divine Considerations.”[147]It is true that, in 1539, Juan de Valdés was not reckoned a heretic, but, if the letter was correctly identified with the “Consideration” in question its circulation was highly imprudent, for it asserted that the guides for the study of Scripture are prayer inspired by God and meditation based on spiritual experience, thus discarding tradition for private interpretation, and it further dwelt upon the confidence which the soul should feel in justification through Christ. In the death-struggle with Protestantism the time had passed for easy-going latitude of opinion and, in the intricate mazes of scholastic theology, it was necessary to walk warily, for acute censorship could discover heresy in any unguarded expression. The great services rendered by Cardinal Morone and Cardinal Pole did not save them from the prosecuting zeal of Paul IV and Contarini and Sadoleto were both suspect of heresy.[148]Under such conditions a rambling inconsequential thinker like Carranza was peculiarly open to attack.
He had unquestionably been more or less intimate with some of the prominent personages whose arrest for Lutheranism, in the spring of 1558, produced so immense a sensation. It was not unnatural that, on their trials, they should seek to shield themselves behind his honored name, but the detached fragments of conversation which were cited in support of vague general assertions, even if correctly reported, amount to nothing in the face of the emphatic testimony by Fray Domingo de Rojas, for the discharge of his conscience, a few hours before his execution, that he had never seen in Carranza anything that was not Catholic in regard to the Roman Church and all its councils, definitions andlaws and that when Lutherans were alluded to he said their opinions were crafty and deceiving; they had sprung from hell and the incautious could easily be deceived by them.[149]The credence due to the evidence of the Lutherans, on which so much stress was laid, can be gauged by a subsequent case illustrative of the tendency to render Carranza responsible for all aberrations of belief. A certain Gil Tibobil (de Bonneville) on trial in 1564 for Lutheranism, in Toledo, sought to palliate his guilt by asserting that he had heard Carranza preach, in the church of San Agustin, against candles and images and that confession was to be made to God and not to the priest. This was too crude to be accepted and he was sternly told that it cast doubt on the rest of his confession for, if Carranza had thus preached publicly, it would have come to the knowledge of the Inquisition and he would have been punished.[150]
Whether the testimony acquired in the trials of the Lutherans was important or not, Inquisitor-general Valdés lost no time in using it to discredit Carranza in the opinion of the sovereigns. As early as May 12, 1588, in a report to Charles V at Yuste, his assistance is asked in obtaining the arrest of a fugitive, whose capture would be exceedingly important; he had been traced to Castro de Urdiales, where he was to embark for Flanders to find refuge with Carranza or with his companion Fray Juan de Villagarcia, where he was sure of being well received. That the real motive was to injure Carranza with Charles appears from Valdés repeating the story to him in a report of June 2, adding that the fugitive had escaped and that information had been sent to Philip in order that he might be captured.[151]It is reasonable to assume that whatever incriminating evidence could be obtained from the prisoners was promptly brought to the notice of the sovereigns and that inferences were unscrupulously asserted as facts.
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
At this critical juncture, Carranza delivered himself into the hands of his enemies. In England and Flanders he had employed the intervals of persecution in composing a work which shouldset forth the irrefragable truths of the Catholic faith and guard the people from the insidious poison of heretical doctrine. This was a task for which, at such a time, he was peculiarly unfitted. He was not only a loose thinker but a looser writer, diffuse, rambling and discursive, setting down whatever idea chanced to occur to him and wandering off to whatever subjects the idea might suggest. Moreover he was earnest as a reformer within the Church, realizing abuses and exposing them fearlessly—in fact, he declared in the Prologue that his object was to restore the purity and soundness of the primitive Church, which was precisely what the heretics professed as their aim and precisely what the ruling hierarchy most dreaded.[152]Worst of all, he did this in the vulgar tongue, unmindful of the extreme reserve which sought to keep from the people all knowledge of the errors and arguments of the heretics and of the contrast between apostolic simplicity and the splendid sacerdotalism of a wealthy and worldly establishment.[153]This he cast into the form of Commentaries on the Catechism, occupying a folio of nine hundred pages, full of impulsive assertions which, taken by themselves, were of dangerous import, but which were qualified or limited, or contradicted in the next sentence, or the next page, or, perhaps, in the following section.
No one, I think, can dispassionately examine the Commentaries without reaching the conviction that Carranza was a sincere and zealous Catholic, however reckless may seem many of his isolated utterances. Nor was his orthodoxy merely academic. He belonged to the Church Militant and his hatred of heresy and heretics breaks out continually, in season and out of season, whether apposite or not to his immediate subject. Heretic arguments are not worthy of confutation—it is enough to say that a doctrine is condemned by the Church and therefore it is heretical. The first duty of the king is to preserve his dominions in the truefaith and to chastise those who sin against it. Even if heretics should perform miracles, their disorderly lives and corrupted morals would be sufficient to guard the people from listening to them or believing them. If they do not admit their errors they are to be condemned to death; this is the best theology that a Christian can learn and it was not more necessary in the time of Moses than it is at present.[154]
Even in that age, when theology was so favorite a topic, few could be expected to wade through so enormous a mass of confused thinking and disjointed writing, and it was easy for Carranza’s enemies to garble isolated sentences by which he could be represented to the sovereigns as being at least suspect in the faith, and suspicion of heresy was quite sufficient to require prosecution. Carranza himself, after his book was printed, seems to have felt apprehension and to have proceeded cautiously in giving it to the public. A set of the sheets was sent to the Marchioness of Alcañizes and a dozen or more copies were allowed to reach Spain, where they were received in March, 1558. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, obtained one and speedily wrote to Valdés, denouncing the writer as guilty of heretical opinions. Valdés grasped the opportunity and ordered Melchor Cano to examine the work. Cano took as a colleague Fray Domingo de Cuevas and had no difficulty in discovering a hundred and one passages of heretical import. The preliminaries to a formal trial were now fairly under way, the result of which could scarce be doubtful under inquisitorial methods, if the royal and papal assent could be obtained, necessary even to the Inquisition before it could openly attack the Primate of the Spanish Church.
Despite the profound secrecy enveloping the operations of the Inquisition, it was impossible that, in an affair of such moment, there should not be indiscretions and Carranza in Flanders was advised of what was on foot. His friends urged him not to return to Spain but to take refuge in Rome under papal protection, but he knew that this would irrevocably cost him the favor of Philip, for exaggerated jealousy of papal interference with the Inquisition was traditional since the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and he virtually surrendered his case at once by instructing his printer, Martin Nucio, not to sell copies of the Commentaries without his express orders, thus withdrawing it from circulation.[155]
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
But little adverse impression seems as yet to have been made on Philip. When Carranza was about to leave Flanders, the king gave him detailed instructions which manifest unbounded confidence. He was to go directly to Valladolid and represent the extreme need of money; then he was to see Queen Mary of Hungary, Charles’ sister, and persuade her to come to Flanders; then he was to hasten to Yuste where Philip, through him, unbosomed himself to his father, revealing all his necessities and desires in family as well as in state affairs. In short, Carranza was still one whom he could safely entrust with his most secret thoughts.[156]
Carranza, with his customary lack of worldly wisdom, threw away all the advantages of his position. Landing at Laredo on August 1st, he passed through Burgos, where he was involved in an unseemly squabble with the archbishop over his assumed right to carry his archiepiscopal cross in public. He did not reach Valladolid until the 13th and there he tarried, busied ostensibly with a suit between his see and the Marquis of Camarasa over the valuable Adelantamiento of Cazorla, but doubtless occupied also with efforts to counteract the intrigues of Valdés. Then he performed his mission to Mary of Hungary and it was not until the middle of September that he set out on a leisurely journey to Yuste. Valdés had taken care to forestall his visit. An autograph letter of the Princess Juana to Charles, August 8th, says that Valdés had asked her to warn him to be cautious in dealing with Carranza, for he had been implicated by the Lutheran prisoners and would already have been arrested had he been anyone else. Charles was naturally impatient to see him, not only to obtain explanations as to this, but also to receive the messages expected from Philip, for which he was waiting before writing to Flanders. Carranza’s delay, in spite of repeated urgency from Yuste, could not but create a sinister impression and all chance of justification was lost, for Charles was prostrated by his fatal illness before Carranza left Valladolid and the end was near when he reached Yuste about noon on September 20th. Charles expired the next morning at half-past two, Carranza administering to him the last consolations, his method in which formed one of the charges against him on his trial. He had thrown away his last chance and the unexpected death ofCharles deprived him of one who might possibly have stood between him and his fate.[157]
The plans of Valdés were now sufficiently advanced for him to seek the papal authorization which alone was lacking, and his method to obtain this was characteristically insidious. The Suprema addressed, September 9th, to Paul IV a relation of its labors in discovering and prosecuting the Lutheran heretics. There was skilful exaggeration of the danger impending from a movement, the extent of which could not be known, and it was pointed out that sympathy with the sectaries might be entertained by officials of the Inquisition itself, by the Ordinaries and the consultors; so that extraordinary powers were asked to arrest and judge and relax those suspected or guilty, even though they were persons holding a secular or pontifical and ecclesiastical dignity or belonging to any religious or other Order.[158]As the Inquisition already had jurisdiction over all but bishops (it had not hesitated to arrest and try the Dominican Fray Domingo de Rojas) the self-evident object of this was to obtain surreptitiously, under cover of the word “pontifical,” some general expression that might be used to deprive Carranza of his right to trial by the pope. The Dean of Oviedo, a nephew of Valdés, was sent to Rome as a special agent to procure the desired brief; whether royal sanction for this application was obtained does not appear, but it probably was not, at least at this stage.
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
Carranza meanwhile had been vainly endeavoring to get copies of the censures on his book in order to answer them. He appealed earnestly to his friends in Philip’s court and in Rome but, without awaiting their replies, he pursued his policy of submission and, on September 21st, the day of Charles’s death, he wrote to Sancho López de Otálora, a member of the Suprema, that he consented to the prohibition of his work, provided this was confined to Spain and that his name was not mentioned.[159]In this and what followed he has been accused of weakness, but it is difficult to see what other course lay open to him. He doubtless still consideredhis episcopal consecration a guarantee for his personal safety, while his reputation for orthodoxy could best be conserved by not entering into a fruitless contest with a power irresistible in its chosen field of action—a contest, moreover, which would have cost him the royal favor that was his main reliance.
In pursuance of this policy he even descended to attempting to propitiate Melchor Cano by offering to do whatever he would recommend. Cano subsequently asserted, with customary mendacity, that Carranza would have averted his fate had he adopted any of the means which he devised and advised to save him, but it is difficult to imagine what more he could have done.[160]Towards the close of November he wrote to Valdés and the Suprema and to other influential persons professing his submission. He explained the reasons which had led him to write his book in the vernacular after commencing it in Latin; it could readily be suppressed for, on reaching Valladolid, he had withdrawn the edition from the printer; there were no copies in the bookshops and what he had brought with him he would surrender, while the dozen or so that had been sent to Spain could easily be called in as the recipients were all known. Then, on December 9th, he proposed to the Suprema that the book should be prohibited in Spanish and be returned to him for correction and translation into Latin.[161]Had the real object of Valdés been the ostensible one of preserving the faith, this would have amply sufficed; the book would have been suppressed and the public humiliation of the Archbishop of Toledo, so distinguished for his services to religion, would have been an amply deterrent warning to all indiscreet theologians. It was a not unnatural burst of indignation when, in a letter to Domingo de Soto, November 14th, he bitterly pointed out how the heretics would rejoice to know that Fray Bartolomé de Miranda was treated in Spain as he had treated them in England and Flanders and that, after he had burnt them to enforce the doctrines of his book, it was pronounced in Spain unfit to be read.[162]Carranza’s submission brought no result save to encourage his enemies, who put him off with vague replies while awaiting the success of their application to the pope.
Meanwhile he had reached Toledo, October 13th, and had applied himself actively to his duties. He was rigid in the performanceof divine service, he visited prisons, hospitals and convents, he put an end to the sale of offices and charging fees for licences, he revised the fee-bill of his court, he enforced the residence of parish priests and was especially careful in the distribution of preferment—in short he was a practical as well as theoretical reformer. His charity also was boundless, for he used to say that all he needed was a Dominican habit and that whatever God gave him was for the poor. Thus during his ten months of incumbency, he distributed more than eighty thousand ducats in marrying orphans, redeeming captives, supporting widows, sending students to universities and in gifts to hospitals.[163]He was a model bishop, and the resolute fidelity with which the chapter of Toledo supported his cause to the end shows the impression made on a body which, in Spanish churches, was usually at odds with its prelate.
He had likewise not been idle in obtaining favorable opinions of his book from theologians of distinction. In view of the rumors of inquisitorial action, there was risk in praising it, yet nearly all those prominent in Spanish theology bore testimony in its favor. The general view accorded virtually with that of Pedro Guerrero, Archbishop of Granada, than whom no one in the Spanish hierarchy stood higher for learning and piety. The book, he said, was without error and, being in Castilian, was especially useful for parish priests unfamiliar with Latin, wherefore it should be extensively circulated. It was true that there were occasional expressions which, taken by themselves, might on their face seem to be erroneous, but elsewhere it was seen that they must be construed in a Catholic sense. To this effect recorded themselves Domingo and Pedro de Soto, men of the highest reputation, Garrionero Bishop of Almería, Blanco of Orense, Cuesta of Leon, Delgado of Lugo and numerous others.[164]If some of these men belied themselves subsequently and aided in giving the finishing blow to their persecuted brother, we can estimate the pressure brought to bear on them.
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
Valdés speedily utilized the power of the Inquisition to check these appreciations of the Commentaries. When, at the University of Alcalá, the rector, the chancellor, and twenty-two doctors united in declaring the work to be without error or suspicion of error, save that some incautious expressions, disconnected fromthe context, might be mistaken by hasty readers, Valdés muzzled it and all other learned bodies and individuals by a letter saying that it had come to his notice that learned men of the university had been examining books and giving their opinions. As this produced confusion and contradiction respecting the Index which the Inquisition was preparing, all persons, colleges and universities were forbidden to censure or give an opinion concerning any book without first submitting it to the Suprema, and this under pain of excommunication and a fine of two hundred ducats on each and every one concerned.[165]It was impossible to contend with an adversary armed with such weapons. Not content with this, the rector of the university, Diego Sobaños, was prosecuted by the tribunal of Valladolid for the part he had taken in the matter; he was reprimanded, fined and absolvedad cautelam. Similar action was taken against the more prominent of those who had expressed themselves favorably and who, for the most part, were forced to retract.[166]The Inquisition played with loaded dice.
Dean Valdés of Oviedo meanwhile had succeeded in his mission to Rome, aided, as Raynaldus assures us, by the express request of Philip, though this is more than doubtful. The brief was dated January 7, 1559; it was addressed to Valdés and recited that, as there were in Spain some prelates suspected of Lutheranism, he was empowered for two years from the receipt of the brief, with the advice of the Suprema, to make investigation and, if sufficient proof were found against any one and there was good reason to apprehend his flight, to arrest and keep him in safe custody, but as soon as possible the pope was to be informed of it and the prisoner was to be sent to him with all the evidence and papers in the case.[167]With the exception of the provision against expected flight, this was merely in accordance with the received practice in the case of bishops, but it was the entering wedge and we shall see how its limitations were disregarded.
The brief was received April 8th. In place of complying with it and sending Carranza to Rome with the evidence that had been collecting for nearly a year, a formal trial was secretly commenced. The fiscal presented aclamosaor indictment, on May 6th, asking for Carranza’s arrest and the sequestration of his property, “for having preached, written and dogmatized many errors of Luther.” The evidence was duly laid beforecalificadores, or censors, who reported accordingly and, on the 13th, there was drawn up a summons to appear and answer to the demand of the fiscal. Before proceeding further, in an affair of such magnitude, it was felt that the assent was required of Philip, who was still in Flanders.[168]As recently as April 4th he had replied encouragingly to an appeal from the persecuted prelate. “I have not wanted to go forward in the matter of your book, about which you wrote to me, until the person whom you were sending should arrive; he has spoken with me today. I had already done something of what is proper in this business. Not to detain the courier who goes with the good news of the conclusion of peace, I do not wish to enlarge in replying to you, but I shall do so shortly and meanwhile I earnestly ask you to make no change in what you have done hitherto and to have recourse to no one but to me, for it would be in the highest degree disadvantageous.”[169]Philip evidently thought that only Carranza’s book and not his person was concerned, that the affair was of no great importance and his solicitude was chiefly to prevent any appeal to Rome, a matter in which he fully shared the intense feeling of his predecessors. When Carranza ordered his envoy to Flanders, Fray Hernando de San Ambrosio, to proceed to Rome and secure an approbation of the Commentaries, he replied, April 19th, that all his friends at the court earnestly counselled against; it had been necessary to assure Philip of the falsity of the reports that he had done so, whereupon the king had expressed his satisfaction and had said that any other course would have displeased him.[170]