STATISTICS
Llorente explains the discrepancy between the accusations and the convictions by misconstruction put on the interrogations of confessors, leading simple-hearted nuns to imagine themselves solicited.[298]This implies eagerness on the part of women to bring such accusations when, as we have seen, the main difficulty was to induce them to denounce, by threats of excommunication and refusal of absolution; in the majority of cases it was done only by order of a subsequent confessor, and this frequently five, ten, or more years after the occurrence. The fact is that only a small portion of offenders were denounced, and of these but a fraction were brought to trial. So far moreover from the evidence being only the excited imaginations of young girls, it rarely happened that a case reached trial without resulting in conviction—the preliminaries were too carefully guarded, and the dread of scandaltoo vivid, to permit the arrest of a priest against whom the evidence was not conclusive.
The number of cases pushed to sentence was therefore not large. The Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, only furnishes fifty-two in a total of eleven hundred and thirty-four of all kinds.[299]In the later period, when the activity of the tribunals had greatly slackened, solicitation formed a much larger proportion of their business.[300]We have a record of all cases despatched in Toledo, from 1648 to 1794, in which those for solicitation amount to only sixty-eight. This seems but few and yet, when we compare this total with that of other offences, in which there were no special impediments to prosecution, it becomes surprisingly large, for there were but sixty-two cases of bigamy, thirty-seven of blasphemy, seventy-four of propositions and one hundred of sorcery and divination. Between 1705 and 1714, the whole number of sentences was but twenty-six and of these eight were for solicitation, while between 1757 and 1763 it contributed six cases out of a total of eight.[301]
When we turn to the number of accusations we find them unexpectedly large. The registers of solicitations, kept during the final century of the Inquisition, afford trustworthy statistics showing that, from 1723 to the final suppression in 1820, the total number of cases entered amounts to thirty-seven hundred and seventy-five. Of these, it is worthy of note that the secular clergy only furnished nine hundred and eighty-one, leaving for the regulars twenty-seven hundred and ninety-four, or nearly three-quarters. Partly this is explicable by the greater popularity of the regulars as confessors but, to a greater extent, by the opportunities of the beneficed priests, who were usually well off, to gratify their passions without incurring the dangers of polluting the confessional.[302]Onenoteworthy fact is the large proportion of those occupying prominent positions as Provincials, Guardians, Ministers, Priors, Comendadores, Visitadores, Superiors, Rectors, Lectors, and the like, whose titles appear in the registers with a frequency greater than their mere numbers would seem to justify.
STATISTICS
In 1797, Tavira, then Bishop of Osma and subsequently of Salamanca, assumed that the crime of solicitation had greatly increased and was increasing, which he attributed partly to the influence of Illuminism and Molinism, but still more to its cognizance having been taken from the bishops and the requirement by the Inquisition of two denunciations before prosecution.[303]That the latter provision conferred practical immunity on many culprits is self-evident, but this was probably less effective than would have been the habitual indifference and leniency of the spiritual courts, their dread of scandal and the inevitable disgrace which deterred women from appearing in their public proceedings. There is practically no reason for supposing that the crime waseither more or less prevalent, at the close of the eighteenth century, than it had been ever since, in the thirteenth, auricular confession was made obligatory, or than it has been since the nineteenth century opened. The strain of the confessional is too great for average human nature, and the most that the Church can do, in its most recent regulations, is to keep these lapses of the flesh from the knowledge of the faithful.[304]
DELATION HABITUAL
ALTHOUGHthe Spanish Inquisition was founded for the suppression of crypto-Judaism, it promptly vindicated its jurisdiction over all aberrations from the faith. There were, at the time, no other formal heresies in Spain, but the people at large were not universally versed in all the niceties of theology, and the supineness of the spiritual courts permitted a licence of speech in which the trained theologian could discern potentialities of error. All this the Inquisition undertook to correct and ultimately, under the general denomination of “Propositions,” there developed an extensive field of action, which towards the end became the principal function of the institution. Reckless or thoughtless expressions, uttered in anger or in jest, or through ignorance or carelessness, gave to pious zeal or to malice the opportunity of secret denunciation, which in time impressed upon every Spaniard the necessity of caution, and left its mark upon the national character. As we have seen, the closest family ties did not release from the obligation of accusation, and every individual lived in an atmosphere of suspicion, surrounded by possible spies of his own household.[305]Men of the highest standing for learning or piety, moreover, were exposed to the torture of prolonged prosecution and possible ruin, for words spoken or written to which an heretical intent could be ascribed, in relation to the obscurest points of theology, and thus the development of the Spanish intellect was arrested at the time when it promised to become dominant in Europe. From every point of view, therefore, the miscellaneous offences, grouped underthe general term of Propositions, was by no means the least noteworthy subject of inquisitorial activity.[306]
How soon began the espionage, which eventually brought every man under its baneful influence, is seen in the case of Juan de Zamora, condemned in the Saragossa auto of February 10, 1488, to perpetual prison, because at Medina, in chatting with some casual aquaintances, he was said to have spoken disrespectfully of the Eucharist and to have denied the real presence, while, in the auto of May 10, 1489, Juan de Enbun, a notary, was penanced for saying that he cared more for ten florins than for God.[307]Even more significant of the danger overhanging every man was the case of Diego de Uceda, before the Toledo tribunal, in 1494, on the very serious charges of having said that the Eucharist was only bread, that so villanous a crew as the Jews could not have put Christ to death, and that he ate meat on fast-days. He explained that, some six or eight years before, at Fuensalida, a priest in celebrating found the wafer broken and angrily cast it on the floor, ordering the sacristan to bring him another; the people were scandalized and Diego sought to quiet them by explaining that the wafer before consecration was only bread. The nextcharge arose from a remark in a discussion on an exuberant sermon on the Passion. As for the third, he proved that he was a devout Catholic, punctual in all observance, with a special devotion to St. Gregory, to whose intercession he attributed his relief from a chronic trouble of stomach and liver, that had forced him at one time to eat meat on fast-days. He lay in the secret prison for six months, with sequestration of property, and was finally sentenced to compurgation, which he performed with the Count of Fuensalida and two priests as his compurgators, but had he not been a man of standing and influence he might have been burnt as an impenitent heretic.[308]There was no prescription of time for heresy, and trivial matters occurring years before might thus at any moment be brought up, when they had faded from the memory of all but those who had a grudge to satisfy.
The ever-present danger impending over every man is well illustrated by the case of Alvaro de Montalvan, a septuagenarian, in 1525. Returning to Madrid, after a day’s pleasure excursion in the country, Alonso Rúiz, a priest, who was of the party, took occasion to moralize on the troubles of life, in comparison with the prospects of future bliss. Alvaro (who subsequently pleaded that he was in his cups) remarked that we know what we have here but know nothing of the future. Some six months later, one of the party, in his Easter confession, chanced to mention this, and was instructed to denounce Alvaro. He was arrested and, on searching the records, it was found that, nearly forty years before, in 1486, during a term of grace, he had confessed to some Jewish observances without intention, and was discharged without reconciliation or penance. On this new charge he was made to confess intention and was sentenced, October 18, 1525, to reconciliation, confiscation and perpetual prison, the latter being commuted, November 27, 1527, to confinement in his own house.[309]
TRIVIALITIES
There was scarce anything, however innocently spoken, that might not be tortured into a censurable sense and as, in so wide and vague a region, no formal rules could be enunciated to restrain inquisitorial zeal, it afforded ample opportunity for oppression and cruelty, especially before the tribunals were thoroughly subordinated to the Suprema. The occasional visitations by aninspector might reveal abuses but could not prevent them. That of de Soto Salazar at Barcelona affords ample evidence of the recklessness with which inquisitors exercised their power. In 1564 we hear of a physician, Maestre Pla, prosecuted for saying that his wife was so exhausted that she looked like a crucifix dead with hunger. Juan Garaver, a swineherd, was forced to appear in an auto with a mitre, followed by scourging, for saying that if he had money and enough to eat, the devil might take his soul—which the Suprema decided to belong to episcopal and not to inquisitorial cognizance. It rebuked the tribunal sharply for relaxing Guillen Berberia Guacho for a single proposition, without calling in learned men to persuade and advise him, especially as one of the witnesses stated that he uttered the words in French. Clemensa Paresa was fined ten ducats and penanced for saying “You see me well enough off in this world and you will not see me punished in the other,” and Juana Seralvis, for the same utterance was condemned to public penance. Badia, priest of Falset, was fined twenty ducats, with spiritual penances, for saying that he would not forgive God. Juan Canalvero was fined six ducats and penanced for saying that he would cheat his father or God in buying or selling. There were many other similar cases, in some of which the Suprema ordered the fines to be returned and the names to be stricken from the registers.[310]
The very triviality of these cases illustrates the atmosphere of suspense and distrust in which the Spanish population existed, nor can their full import be realized unless we remember that, slight as the penalties may seem, they were the least part of the punishment, for penancing by the Inquisition was fatal to limpieza. How readily a man’s career could thus be ruined by rivals or enemies is seen in the case of the Dominican Alonso de los Raelos in the Canaries. In 1568 some assertions of his respecting purgatory attracted attention, but led to no formal trial, because he did not deny its existence, and theologians are not agreed as to its exact locality and character. Some years later, there were feuds in the Order, due to an attempt to erect the Canaries into a separate province, when the prior, Blas de Merino,who hoped to become provincial, and who regarded Fray Alonso as a possible rival, accused him to the tribunal for this proposition. He was thrown into prison and, in 1572, was sentenced to penance and reclusion, thus rendering him ineligible.[311]
We have seen in the previous chapter the penalties regarded as sufficient for the crime of seduction in the confessional, and a comparison between these and the punishments inflicted for utterances in the heat of discussion and indicative of no settled tendency to heresy, reveal the very curious standard of ethics prevalent at the period. In 1571, a priest named Miguel Lidueña de Osorio was accused in Valencia of having said that the bishops at the Council of Trent deserved to be burnt, because they assumed to be popes, and moreover that St. Anne was deserving of higher honor than St. Joaquin. For this he was required to abjurede vehementi, he was suspended from orders, recluded for six years and banished perpetually from Valencia.[312]It was not often that flagrant cases of solicitation were visited with such severity.
RULES OF PROCEDURE
The infinite varieties and intangible nature of the offence rendered impossible the formulation of hard and fast rules for the tribunals, which were thus left to their discretion in a matter which was constantly forming a larger portion of inquisitorial business. The space devoted to it by Rojas, in his little book, indicates its growing importance, and he tells us that he was led to treat it thus at length because so many of the accused admit the facts, while denying belief and intention, and he had seen such diametrically opposite modes of treatment and punishment adopted in different tribunals. He is emphatic in insisting on the allowance to be made for the ignorance and rusticity of most of the culprits, and he points out that, in view of the restrictions on the defence, the inquisitor should be especially careful to give weight to whatever could be alleged in favor of the accused, whether he were ignorant and rude, or learned and subtle. The manner and occasion of the utterance ought to be carefully considered, as well as the nativity of the speaker, if he comes from lands where heresy flourishes. How much depended on the temper of the tribunal is exhibited in a case in which a man, going to hear mass and finding that it was over, said “faith alone suffices” and was prosecuted for the remark. Rojas decided that he was not to be held as asserting that faith without works suffices, which would be heretical, fordoubtful words are to be interpreted according to circumstances, but a more zealous or less conscientious inquisitor could readily have convicted him. For ordinary cases, he tells us, the accused should rarely be confined in the secret prison; the abjuration may bede leviorde vehementiaccording to circumstances, and the extraordinary punishment should be scourging or fines.[313]
As the Suprema gradually assumed control over the tribunals, there grew up certain more or less recognized rules of procedure. Thus, if there was evidence of heretical utterances, and the accused confessed them but denied intention, he was to be tortured; if this brought confession of intention, he was to be reconciled with confiscation in a public auto as a formal heretic; if he overcame the torture he had to abjurede vehementiin an auto, with scourging, vergüenza, exile etc., according to his station and the character of the propositions. This, we are told, was merciful, for the common opinion of the doctors was that, if the propositions were formally heretical, the offender should be relaxed, in spite of his denying intention. Mercy was carried even further for, if ignorance was alleged with probable justification, the accused was not tortured nor condemned as a heretic, but abjuredde levi, with discretional penalties. There was moreover, as we have seen, a vast range of propositions in which heresy was only inferential, characterized as scandalous, offensive to pious ears etc., for which abjurationde leviwas considered sufficient, with spiritual penances.[314]
In this enumeration of penalties there is no allusion to fines, which, however, were by no means neglected. In 1579, for instance, the Bachiller Montesinos, in defending an adultress, put in an argument of cynical ingenuity to prove that she had committed no sin. This was transmitted to the Toledo tribunal, whose calificadores found in it four heretical propositions besides a citation from St. Paul amounting to heretical blasphemy. Montesinos threw himself on the mercy of the tribunal, wept and wrung his hands, protested that he must have been out of his senses, owing to old age, and offered every excuse that he could suggest. He escaped with abjurationde levi, six months’ suspension from his functions as an advocate, and a fine of eight thousand maravedís. Many similar cases could be cited from the Toledo record, but two more will suffice. In 1582, the Bachiller Pablo Hernández denounced himself for having, in the heat of discussion, been led onto say that in canonizations the pope had to rely upon witnesses who might be false and therefore it was not necessary to believe that all so canonized were saints. He was sentenced to abjurede levi, to pay six thousand maravedís, and to have his sentence read in his parish church while he heard mass. From this he appealed to the Suprema, which remitted the humiliation in church, but thriftily increased the fine to twenty thousand maravedís. In 1604 the tribunal had a richer prize, in an old German named Giraldo Paris, a resident of Madrid who seems to have been a dabbler in alchemy. He was accused of saying that the Old Testament was a fable, that St. Job was an alchemist, the Christian faith was a matter of opinion and much more of the same kind. The evidence must have been flimsy for, serious as were these charges, there wasdiscordiaon the question of arresting him, and it required an order from the Suprema before he was confined in the secret prison. He gradually confessed the truth of the charges, but was not sentenced to reconciliation, escaping with absolutionde vehementi, a year’s reclusion in a monastery, the surrender of all books and papers dealing with alchemy and quintessences, and a fine of three thousand ducats. The general impression produced by a group of these cases is that scourging was reserved for those too poor to pay a moderate fine, and that fines were scaled rather upon the ability of the culprit than on the degree of his guilt.[315]In determining penalties, however, it was advised that considerable weight in extenuation should be allowed for drunkenness, and for the readiness and frankness of the culprit in confessing, as well as for his ignorance or simplicity.[316]
MARRIAGE BETTER THAN CELIBACY
There were two special propositions, which were so widely held and came so repeatedly before the tribunals that they almost form a special class. One of these was the assertion that the married state is as good as or better than that of celibacy as prescribed for clerics and religious. That this was plainly heretical could not be doubted after the anathema of the Council of Trent in 1563, and its prevalence is a noteworthy fact.[317]In the Toledo record, from1575 to 1610, there are thirty cases of this: in strictness, as the assertion of a doctrine contrary to the teachings of the Church, and condemned as heretical, it should have been visited with reconciliation, or at least with abjurationde vehementiand heavy penalties, but, as the heresy was one of Tridentine definition and a novelty, it was mercifully treated with abjurationde leviand usually with a moderate fine or vergüenza, or even with less. Extreme leniency was shown to Sebastian Vallejo, in 1581, who had declared that if he had a hundred daughters he would not make nuns of them, in view of the licentiousness of the frailes, for those in the convents were as lecherous as those outside; no parent should put his children in religion until they were of full age and, as to marriage, he advanced the customary argument that it was established by God, while monachism was the work of the saints. He came to denounce himself and pleaded drunkenness in extenuation, which probably explains his escape with a reprimand. Soon after this María de Orduña was treated with equal mercy, on denouncing herself for the same offence, the reason alleged being that she was a very simple-minded woman.[318]As the offence was thus lightly regarded, it follows that torture was not permitted in the prosecution.[319]The error was difficult of eradication. In 1623 a writer calls attention to the number of cases still coming before the tribunals, and suggests for its repression that the sentences be read in the churches of the offenders, so that a knowledge of the erroneous character of the assertion should be disseminated.[320]Some twenty years later it still was sufficiently frequent to be treated as a separate class, though we are told that it was visited with less severity than of old, as it presumably arose from ignorance and was not to be considered as a heresy.[321]This is remarkable in view of the ease with which it might have been regarded as Lutheran.
A still more frequent proposition, which gave much trouble to eradicate, was that fornication between unmarried folk is not a mortal sin. Although the theologians held that this assertion in itself was a mortal sin,[322]there was really in it nothing that savored of heresy, and its cognizance by the Inquisition was an arbitraryextension of jurisdiction without justification. Perhaps there was some confused conception that it was derived from the Moors whose sexual laxity was well known, but the usual argument offered in its defence, by those who entertained it, was the toleration by the State of public women and of brothels, whence the inference was natural that it could not be a mortal sin.
FORNICATION NOT SINFUL
It seems to have been between 1550 and 1560 that the Inquisition commenced its efforts to suppress this popular error. The earliest record of its action that I have met occurs in the great Seville auto of September 24, 1559, where there were no less than twelve cases, of whom eight abjuredde levi, onede vehementi, six were paraded in vergüenza, four were scourged with a hundred lashes (of whom one was a woman) and two heard mass as penitents.[323]The requirement of abjuration shows that suspicion of heresy was already attributed to the proposition, but this as yet was not universally accepted for, in 1561, the Suprema wrote to the tribunal of Calahorra that Pedro Cestero, whom it had penanced for this offence, ought to have been prosecuted as a heretic, for it would seem to be heresy.[324]Thus heresy was injected into it and we speedily find it to be a leading source of business in the Castilian tribunals. Seville was notably active. In the auto of October 28, 1562, there were nineteen cases.[325]In that of May 13, 1565, out of seventy-five penitents, twenty-five were for this proposition. The punishments were severe. All abjuredde leviand appeared in their shirts with halter and candle; all but one were gagged; fourteen were scourged with an aggregate of nineteen hundred lashes; five were paraded in vergüenza, two were fined in two hundred ducats apiece, and two others in a thousand maravedís each; six were exiled and one was forbidden to leave Seville without permission. Besides these there was one man who had a hundred lashes for saying that there was no sin in keeping a mistress, and three women were penanced for saying the same of living in concubinage, of whom two had a hundred lashes apiece and the third was paraded in vergüenza. Two men appeared for saying that keeping a mistress was better than marriage, of whom one had the infliction of the gag. To these we may add two who held that marriage was better than the celibacy of the frailes, and wehave a total of thirty-three cases, or nearly one-half of all in the auto, for errors concerning the relations of the sexes.[326]
Active as was this work it did not satisfy the Suprema which, in a carta acordada of November 23, 1573, speaks of the prevalence of the offence as indicated in the reports of autos, and the little progress thus far made in its suppression; greater vigor was therefore ordered and, in future, all delinquents were to be prosecuted as heretics. This was followed by another, October 2, 1574, ordering the proposition to be included in the Edict of Faith, and yet another December 2d, of the same year, repeating the complaint of its frequency and the little improvement accomplished. It was apparently an error of ignorance and, to remedy this, a special edict was ordered to be published everywhere, declaring it to be a heresy condemned by the Church, and that all uttering and believing it would be punished as heretics; all preachers moreover were to be instructed to warn and admonish the people from the pulpits.[327]
All this was wholesome, and yet it is difficult to understand this ardent zeal for the morals of the laity, when compared with the slackness as to solicitation. Be this as it may, the activity of the tribunals under this stimulus was rewarded with an abundant harvest of culprits. We chance to hear of eight cases in the auto of 1579 at Llerena and of five at Cuenca in 1585.[328]A more effective showing is that of the Toledo record from 1575 to 1610, in which the number of cases is two hundred and sixty-four—by far the largest aggregate of any one offence, the Judaizers only amounting to a hundred and seventy-four and the Moriscos to a hundred and ninety.[329]These statistics comprehend only the tribunals of the crown of Castile; those at hand for the kingdoms of Aragon are scanty but, from such as are accessible, it would appear probable either that there was less energy or a much smaller number of culprits. The only cases that I have happened to meet are two in a Saragossa auto of June 6, 1585, while, in a Valencia list for the five years 1598-1602, comprising in all three hundred andninety-two cases, there are but four of this offence and not a single one in the reports for the three years 1604-6.[330]
Notwithstanding the characterization of the offence as heresy, torture was not to be employed in the trial, although confinement in the secret prison and sequestration were permitted.[331]The energy and severity with which it was prosecuted virtually suppressed it in time. In 1623 a writer speaks of it as less common than formerly and, in a list of the cases tried at Toledo, commencing in 1648, the first one of this offence occurs in 1650, the next in 1665 and the third in 1693. Thenceforth it may be said practically to disappear from the tribunals, although as late as 1792, Don Ambrosio Pérez, beneficed priest of Candamas was tried for it in Saragossa and in 1818 there was a case in Valencia.[332]Thus the Inquisition succeeded in suppressing the expression of the opinion though, as it took no action against the sin, its influence on the side of morality was inappreciable.
INTELLECTUAL REPRESSION
A reference to the cases of propositions tried by the Toledo tribunal between 1575 and 1610 (see Vol. II, p. 552) will indicate the very miscellaneous character of the utterances for which its interposition was invoked. These involved culprits of all classes of society and as, for the most part, they concerned theological questions of more or less obscurity, this method of enforcing purity of faith frequently brought under animadversion the foremost intellects of Spain and rendered the Inquisition the instrument through which rivals or enemies could mar the careers of those in whom lay the only hope of intellectual progress and development. What between its censorship and the minute supervision, which exposed to prosecution every thought or expression in which theological malevolence could detect lurking tendencies to error, the Spanish thinker found his path beset with danger. Safety lay only in the well-beaten track of accepted conventionality and, while Europe, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was passing through a period of evolution, Spanish intellect became atrophied. The splendid promise of thesixteenth century was blasted by the steady repression of all originality and progress, and Spain, from the foremost of the nations, became the last.
The minuteness of the captious criticism which exposed the most eminent men to the horrors of inquisitorial prosecution can best be understood by two or three cases. Of these perhaps the most notable is that of the Augustinian Fray Luis de Leon, who was not only one of the most eminent theologians of his day, and who was unsurpassed as a preacher, but who ranks as a Castilian classic in both prose and poetry.[333]It is so suggestive of inquisitorial procedure in such matters that it is worthy of examination in some detail.
To a brilliant intellect Luis de Leon united a personal activity which led him to take a prominent part in the feverish life of the schools, not only in disputations but in the frequent rivalries and competitions, through which professorial vacancies were filled, for in Salamanca the professors were elected for terms of four years by the students of the faculty to which the chair belonged, after a disputation between the candidates. In these he had abundant opportunities of making enemies for, at the age of 34, he had been elected to the chair of Thomas Aquinas, from which he passed to that of Durandus. These opportunities he largely improved, if we may trust his characterizations of the numerous opponentswhom he sought to disable as witnesses in the course of his trial. Even in his own Order he had enemies, owing to his active and influential participation in its internal politics.
Theological disputes are rarely wanting in rancor, no matter how minute may be the points at issue. In Salamanca, not only were there frequent disputations but, as the leading school of theology, questions were frequently submitted to it by the Suprema on which conferences and congregations were held, leading to interminable wrangles. Azpilcueta tells us that this disputatious mania led the participants to uphold what was false, for the purpose of exhibiting their dexterity, not only misleading their auditors but often blinding themselves to the truth, and Luis de Leon himself says that the warmth of debate sometimes carried them beyond the bounds of reason, and so confused them that they could scarce recall what they themselves had said. One of his witnesses, Fray Juan de Guevara, corroborates this with the remark that Maestro Leon de Castro (Luis de Leon’s chief accuser) sometimes might not understand what was said, but this happened to all theologians when heated in the disputations.[334]
A fairer field for inquisitorial intervention could scarce be devised and, from one point of view, its restraint of this dialectic ardor might not be amiss, but its influence on intellectual development was deplorable, when it made every man feel that he stood on the brink of an abyss into which, at any moment, he might be precipitated. Nor was such dread uncalled for; while Luis de Leon was on trial, three other Salamanca professors were in the same predicament—Antonio Gudiel, Gaspar de Grajal and Martin Martínez, while yet another, Dr. Barrientos, was released just prior to the arrest of Luis. Denunciation was an easy recourse for a defeated disputant; an incautious utterance in heated debate, imperfectly understood, or distorted in remembrance, furnished the means. Even lectures in the ordinary courses contributed their share, when zealous students disagreed with their teachers or made mistakes in their hasty notes.
LUIS DE LEON
The two prime movers in the prosecution of Fray Luis were Leon de Castro and Bartolomé de Medina. De Castro was an elderly man, ajubiladoprofessor of Grammar, who had frequent wordy encounters with Fray Luis, usually to his discomfiture.
He had based great hopes on a Commentary on Isaiah, the publication of which was delayed by the Suprema requiring him to submit it to examination; he had to spend some months at the court before he could obtain permission for its sale, and then it proved a failure, entailing on him a loss of a thousand ducats—all of which he attributed to Fray Luis, who happened at the time to be in Madrid. Bartolomé de Medina was a younger man, ambitiously working his way upward, and meeting several rebuffs from Fray Luis, which accentuated the traditional hostility between the Dominicans and Augustinians, to which they respectively belonged. They were habitually opposed in the disputations, but it seems somewhat eccentric to find Medina accusing Luis and his friends Grajal and Martínez of introducing novelties and innovations, seeing that his own reputation is chiefly based on his invention of the greatest novelty of the period—the Probabilism which revolutionized the ethical teaching of the Church and gave rise to the new science of Moral Theology.[335]
It was not difficult for these enmities to find means of gratification. Robert Stephen’s edition of the Latin Bible, with the notes of François Vatable, had involved that printer in endless disputes with the Sorbonne, which accused him of having hereticated the comments of the thoroughly orthodox editor. In 1555, the University of Salamanca undertook its correction, but the result did not satisfy the sensitiveness of Spanish theology, and the edition was forbidden in the Index of 1559. Yet the work was wanted in Spain and, at command of the Suprema, in 1569, the university undertook the task anew. Numerous congregations were held, in which every point was hotly disputed. Medina, who had not yet attained his master’s degree, took no part in the meetings, but Leon de Castro and Fray Luis had many passages at arms. De Castro accused him of scant respect for the Vulgate text of the Bible, and of preferring the authority of the Hebrew and Greek originals. He stigmatized Luis, who was of converso descent, of being a Jew and a Judaizer and, on one occasion, declared that he ought to be burnt. In truth the question of the Vulgate was one of importance. The new heresies were largely based on the assumption of its imperfection, and sought to prove this by reference to the originals. Scholastic theology rested on the Vulgate and, in self-defence, the Council of Trent, in 1546,had declared that it was to be received as authentic in all public lectures, disputations, preaching and expositions, and that no one should dare to reject it under any pretext.[336]Yet it was notorious that, in the course of ages, the text had become corrupt; the Tridentine fathers included in their decree a demand for a perfected edition, but the labor was great and was not concluded until 1592, when the Clementine text was issued, with thousands of emendations. Meanwhile to question its accuracy was to venture on dangerous ground and to invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one of the calificadores, during Fray Luis’s trial, asserted “Catholic doctors affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate, as the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew and Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the means of confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free interpretation.”[337]Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a lecture on the subject four years before, he had maintained the accuracy of the Hebrew text, contending that St. Jerome the translator was not inspired, nor were the words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover that the Tridentine decree in no way affirmed such verbal inspiration.[338]
On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously, at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy, which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon.
LUIS DE LEON
In December 1571, de Castro and Medina presented formal denunciations of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez, to the Salamanca commissioner of the Valladolid tribunal, charging them with denying the authority of the Vulgate and preferring the interpretations of the rabbis to those of the fathers, while the circulation of Canticles in the vernacular was not forgotten. Other accusers,including students, joined in the attack, making thirteen in all, with a formidable body of denunciations. Grajal was soon afterwards arrested and Fray Luis, warned of the impending danger, presented himself, March 6, 1572, to Diego González, the former inquisitor of Carranza, then on a visitation at Salamanca, with a copy of his lecture on the Vulgate and the propositions drawn from it, and also his work on Canticles. He asked to have them examined and professed entire submission to the Church, with readiness to withdraw or revoke anything that might be found in the slightest degree objectionable.[339]
In any other land, this would have sufficed. The inculpated works would have been expurgated or forbidden, if necessary. Luis would have retracted any expressions regarded as erroneous, and the matter would have ended without damage to the faith. Under the Inquisition, however, the utterance of objectionable propositions was a crime to be punished, and the submission of the criminal only saved him from the penalties of pertinacious heresy. On March 26th the warrant for the arrest of Fray Luis was issued and, on the 27th he was receipted for by the alcaide of the secret prison of Valladolid. He was treated with unusual consideration, in view of his infirmities and delicate health for, on his petition, he was allowed a scourge, a pointless knife to cut his food, a candle and snuffers and some books.[340]The trial proceeded at first with unusual speed. By May 15th the fiscal presented the formal accusation, in which Fray Luis was charged with asserting that the Vulgate contained many falsities and that a better version could be made; with decrying the Septuagint and preferring Vatable and rabbis and Jews to the saints as expositors of Scripture; with stating that the Council of Trent had not made the Vulgate a matter of faith and that, in the Old Testament, there was no promise of eternal life; with approving a doctrine that inferred justification by faith, and that mere mortal sin destroyed faith; with circulating an exposition of Canticles explaining them as a love-poem from Solomon to his wife—all of which was legitimately based on the miscellaneous evidence of the adverse witnesses.[341]This, as required, Fray Luis answered on the spot, article by article, attributing the charges to the malice of his enemies, denying some and explaining others clearly and frankly.
It was a special favor that he was at once provided with counseland allowed to arrange his defence—a favor which brought upon the tribunal a rebuke from the Suprema, January 13, 1573, as contrary to theestilo, which must be followed, no matter what might be the supplications of the accused. Fray Luis identified many of the witnesses—out of nineteen he recognized eight—and he drew up six series of interrogatories, mostly designed to prove his allegations of mortal enmity. Of these the inquisitors threw out three as “impertinent” and the answers to the others were, to a considerable extent, unsatisfactory, as was almost inevitable under a system which made the accused grope blindly in seeking evidence. As time wore on in this necessarily dilatory business, Fray Luis grew impatient at the stagnation which seemed to preclude all progress, not being aware that in reality it had been expedited irregularly.[342]
It would be wearisome to follow in detail the proceedings which dragged their slow length along. Additional witnesses came forward, whose depositions had to go through the usual formalities; Fray Luis presented numberless papers as points occurred to him; he defended himself brilliantly and, through the course of the trial there were few of the customary prolonged intervals, for his nervous impatience kept him constantly plying the tribunal with arguments and appeals which it received with its habitual impassiveness. At length, after two years, early in March, 1574, it decided that there was no ground for suspicion against him in the thirty articles drawn from the testimony of the witnesses, while he could not be prosecuted criminally on the seventeen propositions extracted from his lecture on the Vulgate, seeing that he had spontaneously presented them and submitted himself to the Church. The fiscal, however, appealed from this to the Suprema and his appeal must have been successful, for the trial took a fresh start.[343]