Vencidos van los frayles,Vencidos van.Corridos van los lobos,Corridos van.
Vencidos van los frayles,Vencidos van.Corridos van los lobos,Corridos van.
Vencidos van los frayles,Vencidos van.Corridos van los lobos,Corridos van.
Montes adds that he persisted to the end, when, after the faggots were lighted, a fraile had his gag removed in hopes of his yieldingand, disgusted with his obduracy, cried “Kill him! kill him!” when the guards thrust their weapons into him. It may be hoped that he was spared the final agonies, but there are not wanting indications that, towards the close of his imprisonment, his resolution gave way and that he furnished evidence against his comrades.[1182]
The one acquittal was that of Doña Juana de Bohorques, wife of Don Francisco de Vargas and sister of the María de Bohorques who had perished in the previous auto. She died in prison and it was her fame and memory that were absolved. González de Montes says that her death was caused by atrocious torture and the case has, thanks to Llorente, served as a base for one of the severest accusations against the Inquisition. In the absence of the documents the truth of the story cannot be ascertained but, if true, it manifests more readiness to render a righteous judgment at the cost of self-condemnation than we are accustomed to attribute to the Inquisition.[1183]
SEVILLE AUTOS DE FE
Seville, as the chief commercial centre of Spain, naturally attracted many merchants and mariners, and this auto furnishes an illustration of inquisitorial methods in discouraging commerce. Among the relaxed there were three foreigners—a Frenchman named Bartolomé Fabreo and two Englishmen, William Bruq (Brooks) and Nicolas Bertoun (Burton or Britton). Of the two former we know only their fate, but of the latter we chance to have some details. Burton was a shipmaster or supercargo, who made no secret of the reformed faith in which he had been trained, wherefore he was arrested and all the merchandize in his charge was sequestrated. One of the owners, seeking to recover his property, sent a young man named John Frampton to reclaim it. After months of delay he was told that his papers were insufficient, when he went back to London and returned to Seville with what was needed. More delays ensued and then he was cast into the secret prison on the charge that a suspicious book had been found in his baggage—the book being an English translation of Cato. His trial was protracted, though he made no secret of his belief; he was tortured until he fainted and, when his endurance was exhausted, he consented to adopt Catholicism. Burton was morepersistent and was burnt. Frampton, after fourteen months of confinement, escaped with reconciliation, confiscation and a year of sanbenito and prison, with orders never to leave Spain. All the goods under Burton’s charge were confiscated; Frampton figured his own loss at £760 and the whole confiscations at the auto at the enormous sum of £50,000—doubtless an exaggeration, but the whole affair indicates that the profitable side of persecution was not lost to sight.[1184]
The next auto was celebrated April 26, 1562, and comprised forty-nine cases of Lutheranism. There were nine relaxed in person and, as none of them are described as obstinate, it may be assumed that all were garrotted. There was one effigy of the dead and fifteen of fugitives. Of the latter, nine were monks of San Isidro, among whom were Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina. That the native stock of heretics was becoming exhausted is seen in the fact that, of the thirty-three persons figuring in the auto, twenty-one were foreigners, mostly Frenchmen. This was followed by another auto, October 28th of the same year, in which there were thirty-nine cases of Lutheranism, of which nine were relaxations in person and three of fugitives in effigy, none of the culprits being described as impenitent. There were nine reconciliations, seventeen abjurationsde vehementiand onede levi. The number of ecclesiastics is a noteworthy feature of this auto for, besides the Prior of San Isidro, Maestro Garcí Arias Blanco, there were four priests burnt in person and one in effigy, and seven who abjuredde vehementi. They contributed largely to the fines levied, amounting to 5050 ducats and 50,000 maravedís, besides four confiscations of half the property. It may be remarked, moreover, that the officers and crew of the ship Angel seem to have fallen victims in a body, for three were burnt, six were reconciled and four abjuredde vehementi.[1185]Trading with Spain was becoming more and more perilous.
The little band of Seville Protestants was thus almost rooted out, and the succeeding autos show a constantly preponderating number of foreigners. That of April 19, 1564, only presentedsix relaxations in person and one in effigy, of which all the former were of Flemings, and two abjurationsde vehementi, both of foreigners.[1186]The next was celebrated May 13, 1565, in which there were six relaxations in effigy for Protestantism, the offenders having fled. Of these only two were Spaniards, one being the last inculpated monk of San Isidro. Of seven reconciliations, all were of foreigners, six being Flemish or Breton sailors. Of five abjurationsde vehementi, three were of Flemings. There was also a cruel warning against harboring and protecting these foreign heretics, for two Flemings of Puerto Real, for this offence, were visited, one with four hundred lashes and the other with two hundred, besides fines and banishment.[1187]
We have thus virtually reached the end of native Spanish Protestantism, but the impression produced by the Valladolid and Seville heretics was still profound. Philip II addressed, November 23, 1563, to the Spanish bishops, a letter enlarging upon the efforts of the Lutherans to spread their doctrines throughout Spain. In these perilous times, he says, the Inquisition must be aided by having everywhere those who will report to it all suspect of Lutheran or other errors. The bishop is to see to this and also that preachers shall confine themselves to setting forth Catholic belief, making no allusions to heresies, even to confute them. Confessors are to be instructed to charge their penitents to denounce to the Inquisition all whom they know to entertain these errors. No one is to be allowed to teach school without a preliminary examination, by both the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, who must be satisfied with his character and habits.[1188]It is evident that extraordinary precautions and universal vigilance were deemed necessary to exclude the obnoxious doctrines.
MISSIONARY EFFORTS
Yet these efforts were rewarded with no new discoveries, for Spanish Protestantism was a mere episode, of no practical moment save as its repression fortified the Inquisition and led to the segregation of Spain from the intellectual and industrial movement of the succeeding centuries. A few sporadic cases may be noted from time to time, but the persecution of Jew and Morisco had trained the nation too thoroughly in enthusiastic fanaticism, and the organization of monarchy and Church was too absolute forthere to be any real danger that Protestantism could obtain a foothold. Yet the danger was deemed so pressing that extreme measures were justified to protect the land from the intrusion of foreign ideas. Philip II had lost no time, after his return from Flanders, in issuing the pragmática of November 22, 1559, by which all Spanish youth studying abroad were ordered home within four months, and all Spanish subjects for the future were forbidden to seek foreign lands for study under penalty, for laymen, of confiscation and perpetual exile, and for clerics, of forfeiture of temporalities and loss of citizenship. The only exceptions allowed were the college of Albornoz in Bologna and those of Rome and Naples, for Spaniards residing in Italy and that of Coimbra for the professors there.[1189]It would be difficult to exaggerate the unfortunate influence of this in retarding Spanish development, yet it was but the first of a series of measures which, by isolating Spain, crippled its energies in every direction.
The spectre of active proselytism on the part of Protestants abroad was vigorously conjured up to stimulate vigilance and justify repression. Undoubtedly the refugees in the Rhinelands and Switzerland were earnestly desirous of evangelizing their native land, and they labored industriously to this end, but the difficulties in the way were too great and the reports as to their efforts were systematically exaggerated. Carranza, in his defence, dwelt on his exertions in Flanders to check this traffic, but though he was told of barrels full of a forged letter of Philip II and of a papal bull, at the Frankfort fair for shipment to Spain, and of shops in Medina del Campo and Málaga to which heretic books were sent, the net results of his energy show how little substratum of fact there was in all this.[1190]The career of Julian Hernández proves that men who took their lives in their hands might occasionally bring in a few books, but his fate was not encouraging. If some times a missionary undertook such work his mission was apt to be brief. Hughes Bernat of Grenoble landed at Lequeitio (Biscay) August 10, 1559, on such an errand. On the road to Guadalupe he fell in with a Minim named Fray Pedro, who pretended inclination to Lutheranism and led Bernat to unbosom himself as to his plans and hopes, resulting in his speedy arrest by the tribunal of Toledo, when he boldly confessed as to himself andwas tortured to discover his accomplices. He was sentenced to relaxation in the auto of September 25, 1560, and as he is not described as pertinacious, he probably professed conversion when, for some reason, his sentence was not executed.[1191]In the trial of Gilles Tibobil (or Bonneville), at Toledo, in 1564, we hear of Francisco Borgoñon, a French haberdasher who, in his trips from France, brought with him heretic books, but they were for the benefit of a little Huguenot colony in Toledo; the number of such Frenchmen and Flemings in Spain was large and this, rather than projects of evangelization, probably explains the greater part of the smuggling, attempted or performed.[1192]
MISSIONARY EFFORTS
There were constant rumors, however, of propagandism on a larger scale which served to magnify the importance of the Inquisition and to justify interference with commerce. In 1566, Don Francisco de Alava, a Spanish envoy to France, was busy in Montpellier endeavoring to trace the agency by which heretic books were conveyed to Catalonia, where the number of Frenchmen was large,[1193]and, in the same year, Margaret of Parma, from the Netherlands, sent to Philip the absurd statement that thirty thousand of Calvin’s books had been transmitted through Seville, whereupon the Suprema issued vigorous orders for their seizure.[1194]In January, 1572, it announced to all the tribunals that the Princess of Béarn (Jeanne d’Albret) had recently held an assembly of Lutherans, in which it was resolved to send some of their ministers in disguise to Spain as missionaries. The utmost vigilance was enjoined to counteract this effort; all the commissioners were to be warned and prelates be asked to order all priests and preachers to be on the watch.[1195]In June, 1578, it sent letters to a number of tribunals, stating that advices from Valladolid showed that the heretics had printed a New Testament in Spanish, with a Venetianimprint, and were flooding the land with copies, and also that the heretic ministers had correspondents in Spain. Great watchfulness was therefore commanded at all sea-ports and frontier towns, and all persons found in possession of the prohibited volume were to be sent to Madrid for trial. A month later, this scare was renewed on the strength of information from Flanders, but the records of the Toledo tribunal at this period do not indicate that these efforts were rewarded with any captures.[1196]
Whatever proselyting zeal Protestantism may have had passed away with the early years of the seventeenth century. The latest work of the kind of which we hear is that, in 1603, the Prince of Anhalt introduced into Seville a number of copies of the Bible of Cipriano de Valera and, when Catherine, Duchess of Bar, sister of Henry IV, heard of this, she ordered six hundred copies printed and sent a Huguenot gentleman, named Hierosme de Taride, to the Duke of la Force at Pau, to learn how to transmit them to Saragossa, when la Force gave him the names of parties there who could be trusted to handle them, but the death of the duchess in 1604 put an end to the project.[1197]The Thirty Years’ War gave the German Protestants ample occupation at home and, after the Peace of Westphalia, proselytism was out of fashion.
Yet it was a curious episode of the War of Succession that when, in 1706, the Archduke Charles and his English allies seemed for a brief space to be at the point of success, when all the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon had acknowledged him and he even for a time occupied Madrid, the opportunity was seized to circulate a catechism of Anglican doctrine in Spanish and other books prejudicial to the faith. The energetic measures adopted by the Inquisition to meet this assault show the strength of its apprehension. It ordered the most careful watch to be kept at all ports and frontier towns. Edicts were to be published forbidding these and all other works of evil doctrine introduced by heretics, and inquisitors were told to be energetic in punishing the guilty, enforcing their sentences by censures, interdicts and cessatio a divinis when, if these proved futile they were to abandon, in solemn procession, the disobedient cities, even at the risk of their lives.[1198]The rising of the Spanish people, in this same year, soon limited the territory occupied by the Allies; we hear nothing more of thisattempt at conversion under the shadow of the sword and, taken as a whole, the efforts to evangelize Spain have attracted vastly more attention than their intrinsic importance deserves.
OCCASIONAL VICTIMS
Unsuccessful as were the endeavors to introduce the new doctrines in Spain, there continued to be occasional cases of Spaniards embracing them partially or wholly, of which a few examples may be cited. There was arrested and brought to the Toledo tribunal, December 24, 1562, Hernando Díaz, a cowherd of San Roman, near Talavera. He was a simple-minded creature, who had been at timesmelancolico. In the Sierra Morena there had been much talk among the shepherds of the Lutheran doctrines made known in the Seville autos. While working there he had heard of them, they fixed themselves in his wandering mind and, when the fit was on him, he could not help talking of hisimaginacionesas he called them, although his wife and daughter and his neighbors, cautioned him against it. At his first audience he freely admitted having denied the power of pope and priest and asserted that salvation came by faith and love of God and charity and love of one’s neighbor, and not by the laws of the Church or by indulgences and images and pilgrimages. The inquisitors treated him kindly, exhorting him to cast aside these fancies, which he professed willingness to do but could not control them. Physicians were called in who bled and purged him; he begged for mercy, but could not conquer his beliefs. This went on for a couple of months when he announced his conversion through the teaching of his cell-companion, a priest named Juan Ramírez, who confirmed it, stating that Díaz had talked like a Lutheran until the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, when he had read to him from his breviary the services of the day and had urged his conversion; Díaz had wept and professed his belief in the Church and Ramírez held him to be sincere. Thus far the conduct of the case had been eminently humane and considerate, but when the consulta de fe met, May 17th, two of the consultors voted for relaxation, while the two inquisitors, the Ordinary and two others voted for reconciliation, confiscation and irremissible perpetual prison and sanbenito. At an auto held, September 19th, this sentence was duly pronounced and, when the city of Toledo was assigned to him for a prison, he was thrust into the streets to take his chance of starvation.[1199]The case is not without interest as showing that thesentences read at the autos might be as effective as the dreaded missionaries.
A heretic of different calibre was Don Caspar Centellas of Valencia, a gentleman of birth and culture. During his trial, he evaded the accusation with skill but, when his counsel drew up for him a defence in which he was made to recognize the Roman Church and pope as the Church of God, in which he wished to live and die, he refused to sign it. He renounced all defence and was obdurate to the arguments of the theologians, who were repeatedly summoned to convert him; there was nothing to do but to burn him, which was executed accordingly, September 17, 1564.[1200]His brother, Don Miguel Centellas, Comendador of Montesa, was likewise exposed to a prolonged trial, but was acquitted in 1567.[1201]Connected with Don Gaspar was Doctor Sigismondo Arquer who, though not a Spaniard, was a Spanish subject, being from Cagliari. His trial at Toledo occupied nine years; he was unrepentant to the last and when, in the auto of June 4, 1571, he was delivered to the secular arm, a curious debate arose. The official entrusted with the execution of the sentences declared that, under the law in other offences, there was no burning alive and he ordered Arquer to be garroted. The pious zeal of the populace could not endure this ill-timed mercy; a riot occurred in which Arquer was pierced with halberds and other weapons; fire was finally set and so, half dead already, he was burnt.[1202]
By this time it was rare to find a native Spaniard tried for Protestantism, and women virtually disappear as culprits. Moreover, the cases which are classed in the records as cosas de Luteranos are nearly all those in which some trifling aberration or careless speech was qualified by the calificadores as savoring of Lutheranism, so that the statistics unconsciously exaggerate greatly the prevalence of Protestantism. Such cases were mostly treated with leniency, as that of Mosen Monserrat, a beneficed priest of the church of San Salvador, accused in 1567 of Calvinism, to the Valencia tribunal, for saying that extreme unction was not as efficacious as formerly, that it was mortal sin to administer the sacraments in mortal sin, and that the religious Orders were not as strong as they had been. He escaped with having to revoke his utterances in presence of the chapter of San Salvador and withcelebrating nine masses.[1203]So, in 1581, Juan de Aragon, a peasant, was tried at Toledo, on a charge of saying that masses for the dead were absurd, for the priest was a sinner who could do nothing with God, and that it sufficed to recommend oneself to God and the saints. He denied the accusation, the consulta de fe voted in discordia and the Suprema merely sentenced him to abjurede levi, to hear mass as a penitent and to pay a fine of twelve ducats.[1204]
While such trivial matters form the bulk of the cases of so-called Lutheranism there were occasionally more serious ones, such as that of Juan López de Baltuena of Calatayud in 1564, at Saragossa. In his written defence there were sundry heresies, qualified as Lutheran, for which he was condemned to abjurede vehementi, to serve in the galleys for life and never to read, write or talk about theology.[1205]Nor were there altogether lacking cases, like those of Centellas and Arquer, in which conscientious conviction carried the delinquent to the stake, as that of Pedro Mantilla, a student of Vezerril in Old Castile, who, in 1585, was relaxed at Saragossa as a pertinacious heretic, who was Arian in denying the Trinity and Lutheran in rejecting papal authority.[1206]
OCCASIONAL VICTIMS
The last relic of the movement of 1558 was the Catalan, Pedro Galés, reckoned as one of the most learned Spaniards of the age, and highly valued as a correspondent by such scholars as Isaac Casaubon, Cujas and Arias Montano. As early as 1558 he had commenced to reject some of the Catholic dogmas, but he escaped suspicion and enjoyed intimate relations with Archbishop Antonio Agustin, who made him one of the interlocutors in his celebratedDialogi de Emendatione Gratiani—the first assault on the authority of the False Decretals. About 1563 he left Spain for Italy, where he made progress in heresy, leading to his prosecution by the Roman Inquisition and the loss of an eye under torture. Abjuration saved him and, in 1580, he returned to Spain, where Don Juan de Idiaquez sought to secure him as tutor to his son Alonso. In 1582 he passed through Italy to Geneva, where he married and occupied the chair of philosophy until 1586. He rejected some of the Calvinist doctrines and, leaving Geneva, he taught in Nîmes,Orange and Castres, holding frequent disputes with Huguenot preachers. Accompanied by his wife and two little daughters, he was on his way to Bordeaux, in August, 1593, when the Leaguers at Marmande arrested him as a Huguenot, with his precious accumulation of MSS. and books in ten bales. He was delivered to the Capitan Pedro Saravía, who had been placed by Philip II at the service of the Marquis of Villars, Governor of Guyenne. He made no secret of his belief and Sarravía was impressed with the extreme importance of the information which the Inquisition could extract from him as to his co-religionists, but the Governor of Marmande refused to convey him across the border and, when Villars was applied to, he obligingly offered to hang or drown the heretic, but shrunk from the responsibility of extraditing him. The distracted wife was imploring the officials to liberate her husband and Sarravía was consumed with anxiety lest she should succeed while he was seeking the intervention of Philip. In this he succeeded; Galés was surrendered to the tribunal of Saragossa, where he freely admitted his faith and stubbornly refused conversion, but his endurance was mercifully spared by sickness and death after his third audience and, as an impenitent, his bones and effigy were burnt in the auto of April 17, 1597.[1207]
In all, the cases of so-called Lutheranism, collected by Dr. Schäfer, up to 1600, amount to 1995, of which 1640 are of foreigners and 355 of Spaniards, and he estimates that he has succeeded in finding about two-fifths of the autos de fe of the thirteen tribunals of the mainland.[1208]This probably conveys a reasonably accurate impression as to the comparative numbers of the two classes, but it would be a gross error to regard all the Spaniards as real Protestants, for the great majority may be assumed to have been Protestant only in the imagination of the calificadores.
In the seventeenth century scattering cases continue to occur from time to time among Spaniards, but their treatment indicates that there was no longer felt the necessity of making examples. Fray Juan González de Carvajal, a Benedictine who had been expelled from his Order for repeated escapes, embraced Calvinism, which he confessed in France and obtained absolution; again he confessed it judicially in the Roman Inquisition, and yet again in the Toledo tribunal and was reconciled. Then, in 1622, he wastried in Valladolid, where he told all this freely, but with such signs of repentance that the consulta de fe voted only to reconcile him in a public auto, with ten years of galley-service and perpetual prison. While waiting an auto he sought an audience and confessed that he had again relapsed; there was no choice now but to sentence him to degradation and relaxation, but the Suprema mercifully modified this to reading his sentence in the audience-chamber, where his sanbenito was to be removed, perpetual deprivation of his functions as deacon and life-long imprisonment.[1209]There was less disposition to mercy, in 1630, in the case of María González, widow of Pedro Merino of Canaca, one of the exceedingly rare instances of a Spanish female Protestant. To the Valladolid tribunal she freely confessed her belief and persisted in it, despite earnest and prolonged efforts to undeceive her. There was no escape from condemning her to relaxation and the Suprema confirmed the sentence, but whether it would have been executed cannot be told for persistent labors were crowned with success; she was finally converted and the sentence was changed to reconciliation.[1210]There may have been subsequent cases of Spaniards relaxed for Protestantism, but I have not met with them. In 1678, Thomas Castillanos was kindly sent to an insane hospital by the tribunal of Toledo. In 1718, Pedro Ortiz of Valencia was reconciled with perpetual prison in the Córdova auto of April 24th, and, in that of November 30, 1722, at Seville, Joseph Sánchez of Cádiz appeared as a “Calvinist and Lutheran” and was reconciled with irremissible prison.[1211]
FOREIGNERS
The Augustinian Fray Manuel Santos de San Juan, better known as Berrocosa, would, in the sixteenth century, have been burnt as an undoubted Lutheran, although when arrested, in 1756, it was merely as aregalistaor upholder of the supremacy of the State. HisEnsayo de el Theatro de Roma, circulated in MS., was an essay to prove this, in a manner highly offensive to the hierarchy, and for this he was relegated for ten years to the strict convent of Risco. During his confinement he wrote tracts to prove that Rome was Babylon, that the existing Church in no way resembled that of the Apostles, that there should be no Order higher than the priesthood, that capital punishment for heresywas in itself a heresy, and other doctrines which no calificador could help qualifying as the rankest Lutheranism, but Berrocosa was not relaxed, although he found associates to copy these heretical documents and circulate them. When his ten years’ confinement ended, in 1767, he was again strictly secluded in a cell, from which, in 1768, he managed to escape, eluding pursuit until, in January, 1770, he was recaptured and delivered to the Toledo tribunal. Here he underwent a second trial, resulting in a sentence of confinement for life in the convent of Sarria (Galicia), where he was to be keptincomunicado.[1212]
This case illustrates why, during the decadence of the Inquisition, we hear little or nothing of Protestantism among Spaniards, although the spirit of persecution was unabated. Revolt against Ultramontanism was no longer styled Lutheranism but Regalism or Jansenism. With those whose dissidence went beyond discipline to dogma, it took the shape of the fashionable philosophy of the period and became Naturalism or Philosophism, Deism or Atheism, as the case might be. The Inquisition still did its work with more or less rigor, but the arena had shifted.
While thus there had been little tendency to Protestantism among natives, since the inconsiderable outbreaks of 1558, foreigners furnished an ample field of labor. Spain had a reputation for wealth which rendered it attractive to the stranger; its people held in contempt the arts and crafts in which Frenchmen and Flemings and Italians were adepts, and its internal peace seemed to offer a refuge to those whose industries were precarious in the incessant clash of arms through which the old order of things gave way to the new. Consequently every city in Spain had a considerable population of foreigners, intent on earning a livelihood without much thought of spiritual matters. Some trials in the Toledo tribunal, about 1570, allude to French and Flemish printers then under arrest in Toledo, Barcelona, Alcalá, Salamanca, Valladolid and Granada.[1213]In 1600, the Count of Benavente, Viceroy of Valencia, estimated the number of Frenchmen there at fourteen or fifteen thousand and added that there were vast numbers in Aragon.[1214]While many of these were undoubtedly Calvinists, sedulously concealing their faith, the majority wereCatholics, more or less sincere, but even their orthodoxy was not of a quality to suit the Spanish standard. They had been accustomed to live in contact with heretics; they had no such fanatical horror of heresy as was universal in Spain, and they were apt to be careless in the observances which the Spaniard regarded as indispensable. All foreigners were thus objects of suspicion, and the Catholic was as liable to arrest as the Calvinist. Jacques Zacharie, a dealer in rosaries and images in Burgos, in 1637, chanced to be relating his adventures with the heretics in France who, in examining his baggage, had said “Let him take these wares to Spain and bring us back good money,” when one of his hearers expressed surprise that the Most Christian king would let heretics dwell in his land. This led Jacques patriotically to defend them as good baptized Christians, who lived righteously according to their law. He was asked how they could be Christians when they did not go to mass and confess to priests, when, in the heat of discussion, he replied that there was not scriptural command of sacramental confession. For this he was denounced to the Valladolid tribunal; he was arrested and tried and all his property was sequestrated.[1215]
FOREIGNERS
It is no wonder therefore that the tribunals were kept busy with these cases and that the records are full of them, especially under the crown of Aragon, owing to the propinquity of south-western France, where Huguenotism was in the ascendant. In Saragossa the relaxations for Lutheranism, from 1546 to 1574, though amounting to only seven, were all of Frenchmen.[1216]Barcelona was more active. In an auto of May 16, 1561, there appeared for Lutheranism, eleven Frenchmen, one Piedmontese and one Maltese. In that of July 11, 1563, there were thirty-four Frenchmen, two Italians and two Catalans, of whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in person and three in effigy. In that of March 5, 1564, there were twenty-eight Frenchmen, two Catalans and one Swiss, of whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in person and two in effigy.[1217]From a report by Dr. Zurita of his visitation in the summer of 1564, we obtain a glimpse of how these autos were fed. At Perpignan, for Lutheranism, five persons were arrested with sequestration, of whom four, and possibly all five, were French. At Castellon de Ampurias, Maestre Macian, a Frenchman, was sentto Barcelona for trial. Jean de Adin, a Frenchman of Aldas, escaped arrest by flight, and the arrest was ordered of Pere Bayrach, a Frenchman of Flasa.[1218]When, simultaneously with this, the ambassador Saint-Sulpice complained to Philip II of the cruelty exercised on his fellow-countrymen, who were peaceably plying their industries, without creating scandal, the king coolly replied that the Inquisition acted without regard to persons, but nevertheless he would speak with the inquisitor-general.[1219]
The complaint of cruelty was justified. In the rebuke which the Suprema administered to the tribunal of Barcelona, in 1568, as the result of de Soto Salazar’s visitation, allusion is made to a case, in 1565, of a Frenchman named Antoine Aymeric, arrested without evidence; his first audience was held at his own request February 23d, the second on July 27th, when, without more ado, he was tortured and sentenced to reconciliation and confiscation. In another case of a Frenchman, Armand Jacobat, he was tortured without confession, but subsequently admitted some Lutheran errors, begged for mercy and desired to be converted, in spite of which he was relaxed and burnt, for which the Suprema held the tribunal to be gravely in fault.[1220]What became of those not burnt is seen in a report of December, 1566, to Charles IX, by his ambassador M. de Fourquevaux, that seventy poor Frenchmen, prisoners of the Barcelona tribunal, had been condemned to the galleys and had been delivered, in November, to Don Alvar de Bazan, who had taken the fleet to winter near Cádiz. In February, 1567, he writes that, on complaint to the Duke of Alva, the latter had assured him on his honor that they were all dogmatizing Huguenots; that Frenchmen were never arrested for Protestantism if they had not said or done something scandalous. This was as mendacious as the repeated promises to release the galley-slaves, which were always evaded until Fourquevaux recommended the seizure as a hostage, at Narbonne, of Andrea Doria, the naval commander-in-chief. At last, on December 20th, he reported the sending of royal letters to Doria to release them, but it is fairly questionable whether the order was obeyed. Again, in a list of complaints made by Charles IX to Philip, there was one concerning five of his subjects arrested in Havana and sent toSeville for trial, to which Philip replied that he was not accustomed and did not desire to interfere in such affairs, but nevertheless he would have the inquisitor-general requested to order the tribunal to despatch these cases with all speed.[1221]
A more pleasing international episode is connected with the case of Robert Fitzwilliam, an Englishman, condemned by the Seville tribunal to ten years of galleys and perpetual prison. He was received on board, February 25, 1578 and, in November 1582, his wife Ellen presented herself in the court of Madrid, with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to Philip II, representing that the poor woman had beseeched her interposition, and that the liberation of the husband would be a favor which she would be glad to reciprocate. Under any other jurisdiction, the granting of such a royal request would have been a matter of course, but the assent of the Holy Office had to be secured. The existing papers fail to inform us of the result, but that it was favorable can scarce be doubted, for the devotion of the faithful wife made a strong impression even on the hardened officials, whose correspondence alludes to her in terms of respect and admiration.[1222]More summary was the process when, in 1572, the Barcelona tribunal sent a commissioner into French territory on some duty, and he was seized and held as a hostage for a Frenchman arrested by the tribunal, leading to an exchange of prisoners.[1223]
The Val d’Andorra furnished another source of international questions, for the Barcelona tribunal claimed jurisdiction over it, while Jeanne d’Albret, as Queen of Navarre, held that it was her fief. In 1572, she put a French veguer there to administer justice, whereupon the inquisitors commenced to gather information about him, as a presumable Huguenot, and the Suprema ordered them to arrest him if sufficient evidence could be found, but, as the attempt was likely to prove dangerous, it need not be made unless the viceroy would furnish a sufficient guard, which apparently he declined to do.[1224]
DIMINISHING NUMBERS
All foreigners thus were objects of suspicion, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was stretched to the utmost to prevent their infecting the faithful. In 1572, the Suprema ordered thetribunals of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to see that no Frenchmen were employed as teachers of reading and writing anywhere within their districts, experience having shown the dangers thence arising.[1225]Intercourse with foreigners was dangerous and was discouraged. In 1568, Inquisitor Moral, in reporting a visit to San Sebastian, expressed a desire to punish those who received and entertained and had particular friendship and dealings with French and English strangers, sometimes even giving them information enabling them to escape arrest, on all of which the Suprema commented by characterizing these as grave cases, which should have been sent to Logroño for trial.[1226]The Spaniard, too, who went abroad was an object of suspicion, and was held to strict accountability for his acts during absence. In the Barcelona auto of June 21, 1627, there appeared a merchant of Manresa who, while in France, had listened to Huguenot preaching and had eaten flesh on Friday, for which he was penanced in a thousand ducats and was recluded in a convent for three years.[1227]
That, under these influences, coupled with the growing poverty of Spain and the curse of its debased currency, the number of resident foreigners diminished greatly after the opening of the seventeenth century, may be assumed from the reduction in the cases of Protestantism in the records. Those of Toledo, from 1575 to 1610, show a total of forty-seven, of which the last one occurred in 1601, while those from 1648 to 1794 contain only eleven.[1228]In Valladolid, the reports of twenty-nine years, between 1622 and 1662, show only eighteen cases.[1229]In the Madrid tribunal, from 1703 to 1751, there is only a single case of a “Huguenot.”[1230]In the sixty-four autos celebrated by all the tribunals between 1721 and 1727, there are only three cases.[1231]In Valencia, between 1705 and 1726, there was but a single case—a Calvinist who spontaneously denounced himself.[1232]Scattering and imperfect as are these statistics, they suffice to indicate how rapidly the numberof foreign delinquents fell off, after the year 1600, and that this was not the result of progress in enlightenment and toleration we shall see hereafter. It was simply that the Inquisition had succeeded in its efforts to limit intercourse between Spain and its neighbors, and to isolate it from European civilization.
FOREIGN HERETICS
If this was the case in regard to nations presumably Catholic, we can readily conceive how much greater vigilance was exercised towards those which had lapsed into heresy. Commercial intercourse with them was unavoidable, but it was a necessary evil, to be restricted within the narrowest limits by deterrent regulations. For awhile, indeed, the heretic trader took his life and fortune in his hands when he ventured to make a Spanish harbor, as we have seen in the case of the good ship Angel. Even castaways were the legitimate prey of the Inquisition, as was experienced by seventeen English sailors of a fishing-boat, who were captured by a French vessel and were thrown on shore on Fuerte Ventura, one of the Canaries. They were tried and escaped burning by conversion, after which four of them, Richard Newman, Edward Stephens, John Ware, and Edward Stride managed to escape. As this showed them to be impenitent, they were prosecuted in absentia for relapse, and their effigies were solemnly burnt in an auto of July 22, 1587.[1233]The number of merchant vessels touching at the Canaries, in fact, furnished to the tribunal at one time the major portion of its work. A record of prisoners entered in its secret prison, during six months of 1593, shows thirteen belonging to the German ship San Pedro, seventeen to the Flemish ship La Rosa, and fifteen to the Flemish ship El Leon Colorado, besides a dozen English sailors whose vessel is not specified. These comprise all hands, officers and crews, merchants and passengers, and presumably, if the cargoes were not confiscated, they were effectually looted in the absence of their guardians.[1234]That such was the motive, rather than the protection of Spain from the infection of heresy, is inferable from a sentence of the Granada tribunal, in 1574, condemning to reconciliation and life-long galley-service Jean Moreno, a Frenchman, resident in Málaga, because he had warned some Protestant sailors not to enter the port of Almería.[1235]When there was prospectof a fat confiscation, indeed, the Inquisition paid little respect to the justice of the case or to the parties who might suffer. There was a long dispute between Rome and Madrid over two cargoes of alum, which the papal camera was sending to England, when the ships were seized and the cargoes sequestrated by the tribunal of Seville, on the ground that the English crews were heretics.[1236]
This barbarous policy necessarily made itself felt in the cost of foreign commodities, especially after the troubles in the Netherlands had cut off or reduced that portion of the carrying trade. Under this pressure, in 1597, an exception was made in favor of the Hansa. Instructions were issued by the Suprema that, when its ships arrived with merchandise, the persons in them were not to be interrogated about their religion, nor on that account were the ships or cargoes to be sequestrated or confiscated, unless while in port they had offended against the Catholic faith and, in such case, only the property of delinquents was to be seized; search, however, for prohibited books was to be made, as was customary with Catholic vessels.[1237]There was also an approach to admitting the Dutch, in a royal order of February 27, 1603, providing that Holland vessels and crews, bearing passports from the Archdukes of the Netherlands, were to be allowed entrance to Spanish ports, and their persons and property were to be secure, but this was revoked, December 11, 1604, subject to the twelve months’ notice provided in the order.[1238]
A treaty of peace with England, covering this matter, was ratified by James I, August29/19, 1604 and by Philip III, June 16, 1605. During this interval, in November, 1604, an English ship, with a crew of twenty men, coming for a load of corn, touched at Messina and then at Palermo. In the latter port it was visited by the officials of the Inquisition, when the men admitted that they were Protestants and wished to live in that faith. They were all arrested and appealed to the viceroy, the Duke of Feria. He was powerless save to write a private letter in which he declared that the arrest was a disservice to the king and tended to destroy the treaty agreed upon, wherefore the Inquisition ought to dissembleand treat the heretics well, for the public good. The inquisitors thereupon assembled ten consultors, reaching the conclusion that the Englishmen could be liberated only on condition of giving ample security that they would go to Spain and present themselves before the inquisitor-general. For strangers this was a virtual impossibility, and it doubtless proved to be so for, in 1605, we hear of certain Englishmen, who had been admitted to penance with the sanbenito and required to live for two years in certain monasteries for instruction in the faith; they had contrived to escape, but were tracked and found on board a French ship, without their sanbenitos. As the tribunal did not care to support them, they were ordered to be distributed separately to monasteries in the mountains, far from the sea, where they were, for ten years, to perform labor without pay.[1239]
When such irrational cruelty was habitual, international comity and commercial interests alike demanded that a curb should be placed on the irresponsibility of the Inquisition. Accordingly, in the English treaty of 1604, Article 21 provided that the vassals of King James, coming to or residing in the Netherlands or Spain, should not be molested or disturbed on account of matters of conscience, so long as they gave no occasion for scandal, and that corresponding instructions should be issued by the king. This Philip did, under the same date of June 15, 1605, ordering that English subjects should not be held accountable for acts prior to their coming to Spain. While in Spain they were not to be compelled to enter churches but, if entering voluntarily, due respect must be paid to the Venerable Sacrament and, if it was met on the street, they must kneel, or take another street or enter a house. If any one were prosecuted for contravention of these rules, only his own property was to be seized, and not a vessel or cargo, or the goods of others in his charge, and to the observance of all this the king pledged his royal faith and word. The Suprema had previously, December 11, 1604, issued instructions similar to those of 1597 for the Hansa; on July 14, 1605, it transmitted to the tribunals the articles of the treaty, but it seems to have objected to the royal declaration, for it delayed until October 8th embodying its provisions in a carta acordada.[1240]