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PROTESTANT ENDURANCE

UNDER

POPISH CRUELTY

A NAERATIYE OP

THE EEFOEMATION IN SPAIN.

J. C. M'COAN, ESQ.,

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE.

LONDON : BINNS AND GOODWIN, 44, FLEET STREET;

AND 19, CHEAP STREET, BATH. EDINBURGH : OLIVER AND BOYD. DUBLIN : J. m'gLASHAN.

LOAN STACK

bath: printed by binns and GOODV/1N.

PKEFAOE

The following pages require but little by way of preface. They were written nearly four years ago, , with a view to publication in another form ; but, although half the period fixed by Horatian prescript has thus nearly elapsed, they have undergone no alteration either in arrangement or substance. The object of the author was, to present a short but complete outline of the history of Protestantism in Spain; a subject on which, at that time, only one book — and that much more comprehensive in its purpose — was conveniently within the reach of the English readey. Since then, a translation of De

784

IV PREFACE.

Castro's Historia de hs Protestantes Espanoles has been published in London, and still more recently one of another work on the same subject and by the same author. In neither of them, however, has the writer of the present volume met with any new information which could ha.ve materially, if it all, improved it, had such been in existence at the time it was written. He need hardly acknowledge his great obligations to Dr. McCrie's History of the Reformation in Spain (the work above referred to), as nothing of any worth could be written on this

.subject, without being more or less indebted to that accurate and elegant work. The extent of these obligations is only partially indicated by the refer- ences made to it in the foot-notes. Its chief use, however, has been to guide to the original sources of information, which have been consulted and fol- lowed in nearly every instance referred to in the notes, and in many others where acknowledgment has not been deemed necessary. Whilst avoiding a

. lengthy parade of references, enough have been given to show that, whatever may be the ^ults or short-

PREFACE. V

comings of the book, they have not arisen from wilful avoidance of labour on the part of the writer. Fortunately, however, the facts contained in the nar- rative possess an intrinsic interest, which cannot be materially lessened by the other defects which belong to it, and of which few will discover more than himself.

London, Sept. 1853.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE.' HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SPAIN PREVIOUS TO THE COM- MENCEMENT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Earliest Inhabitants. Spain a Roman Province. The Visigoths. Saracenic Invasion. Pelago. Kingdoms of Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, and Castile. Moorish Kingdom of Granada. Peter the Cruel. Henry II. John I. Henry III. John II. Henry IV. Ferdi- nand and Isabella. Conquest of Granada. Colum- bus. Annexation of Naples to the Spanish Crown. Charles V. Civil Polity of Spain 1

CHAPTER II.

OUTLINE OF SPANISH ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY PREVIOUS TO THE REFORMATION.

The Gospel, when and by whom first preached in the Peninsula. The Early Spanish Church, its Doctrine, Government, and Worship. First acknowledgment of Romish Supremacy. The Vaudois. Corruption of the Spanish Clergy. Reforms attempted by Cardinal Ximenez 22

VUl CONTENTS.

CHAPTER III,

OBSTACLES TO THE SUCCESS OF THE REFOEMED DOCTRINES IN SPAIN.

The Inquisition, when and by whom founded. Its Reform. Its modes of proceeding. Persecution of the Jews. Establishment of the Holy Office in Cas- tile. Torquemada. The Bible forbidden. Unsuc- cessful efforts of the Cortes to suppress the Inquisition. Other obstacles to the Reformation 44

CHAPTER IV.

COMMENCEMENT OP THE REFORMATION.

Introduction of the Reformed Doctrines. Juan Valdes. Rodrigo de Valer, Egidio. Vargas. Constantino Ponce. Arrest and trial of Egidio. His imprison- ment, liberation, and death. The Reformed Doctrines in Valladolid. Francisco San Roman. Domingo de Roxas. Augustin Cazalla. Spanish divines abroad ... 70

CHAPTER V.

CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH FAVOURED THE REFORMATION IN SPAIN.

Spanish Protestants in Germany and the Netherlands. The brothers Enzinas. Martyrdom of Jayme in Rome. Tragedy of Juan Diaz. Translation of the New Testament by Francisco Enzinas. Juan Perez. Cassiodoro de Reyna. His translation of the Bible.

• Cypriano de Valera. Juan Lizzarago. Efforts of the Inquisition to prevent the circulation of the Scrip-

CONTENTS. IX

PAGE.

tures. Effects produced by their circulation. Valla- dolid and Seville the head-quarters of the Reformed Movement 101

CHAPTER VI.

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMED DOCTRINES.

Return of Constantine Ponce to Seville. He is ap- pointed Canon Magistral. His writings. Maria Gomez. The storm, for a time, warded off. Christo- bal Losada. Don Juan Ponce de Leon. Domingo de Guzman. Spread of the Reformed Doctrines amongst the monasteries. The Convent of St. Isidro del Campo. Garcia de Arias. Juan de Regla. Fran- cisco de Villalba. Reasons of Charles for opposing Protestantism. Extensive spread of the Lutheran Doctrines around Valladolid. Their progress in Granada, Murcia, Valencia. In the kingdom of Ara- gon. The inherent power of Christianity illustrated .. 120

CHAPTER VIL

DISCOVERY OF THE PROTESTANTS, AND SUPPRESSION OP THE REFORMATION.

Abdication of Charles V. Philip II. His character. Powers of the Inquisition increased. Papal bulls. Arrest of Juan Hernandez. The Protestants informed against in Valladolid and Seville. Preparations. Wholesale arrests. Misery of the victims. Discovery of Constantine Ponce's MSS. His sufferings and death. Family of Fernando Nugnez. Public protest against Inquisitorial injustice. First auto in Valla-

dohd. The second 137

b

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIIL

SUPPRESSIVE MEASURES CONTINUED AND COMPLETED.

Few recantations amongst the prisoners in Seville. The first auto. The second. Two Englishmen burned. Third auto in Seville. Autos in Toledo. In Saragossa, Logrono, and Barcelona. Huguenots. Heterodox horses. Autos in Granada. Protestantism extinct 168

CHAPTER IX.

SPAIN SINCE THE REFORMATION.

Few escapes. Philip III. The House of Bourbon. Ignorance and gloom. Don Miguel Solano. His imprisonment and death. Neglect of education and religion during the wars. Arrest of Ferdinand VII. at Bayonne. The Inquisition abolished by the Cortes. Return of Ferdinand, and re- establishment of the Holy Office, Death of Ferdinand, and final abolition of the Inquisition. A spirit of religious inquiry. The last death by fire. Private executions. Effects of Inquisitorial despotism. Mr. George Borrow. Print- ing of the New Testament. Difficulties met with in its circulation. Opposition from the clergy. Results of the effort. Spain in 1841. Smugglers. Strange evangelists. Eagerness for the Bible. Private im- portations. Conclusion 188

Appendix 209

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PKOTESTANT ENDUEANCE

UNDER

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dajto |trst.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OP SPAIN PREVIOUS TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

It may not be uninteresting or unprofitable to the general reader, if we introduce our short account of Protestantism in the Peninsula by a slight sketch of the history of the country down to the time of the Keformation, when Protestantism, strictly speaking, first showed itself in Spain.

At what time, or by whom, the Peninsula was first peopled, is a question on which modern his- torians profess themselves unable to throw any certain light. Various hypotheses have been put

B

2 TRADITIONAL ANTIQUITY OF SPAIN.

forward, but all equally unsupported by satisfactory evidence. With a few unimportant exceptions, Spanish writers have claimed for their nation an antiquity to which but few, if any, others have made the smallest pretensions. Taking for their authorities the scattered and hardly intelligible hints to be gleaned from the old poets and geogra- phers, and in some degree from the rich stores of traditionary fiction in the middle ages, they have at various times endeavoured to establish the exist- ence of a thriving, and, to a great degree, cultivated people in the Spanish peninsula, when all the rest of Europe was either a desert waste, or, at best, over- run here and there by migratory hordes of barba- rians. They have laboured hard to prove that Tubal, the grandson of Noah, colonized the country 2163 years before Christ; and that the patriarch himself visited the .founder, and helped him in the great work of building towns and cities, and in making laws for his people, whose posterity were governed by a long line of illustrious kings, ages before history began to record the actions of men. All this, of course, goes for nothing. We must look for information from some more reliable and trust- worthy sources. The Greek and Roman historians, our only authorities, mention the Iberians as the earliest inhabitants of Spain. These were disturbed

FIRST INHABITANTS. TRADE. 3

in their possessions* by the Celtae, a nation who crossed over the Pyrenees from Gaul, or, according to some, passed over the Straits of Gibraltar from the opposite coast of Africa. After a time, the two races amalgamated, and founded one nation, which we meet with in history under the name of Celtibe- rians. From the remotest ages, the rich produce of the mines and fertile soil of the Peninsula had attracted the attention of the Phoenicians. For a long time, however, these enterprising navigators and traders had only a few unimportant settlements along the coasts of Boetica. From these they bartered with the inhabitants, giving the rich fabrics and spices of Asia in exchange for the valuable mineral productions of Spain. They gradually pene- trated into the interior, and founded some strong towns, whence they carried on a still more profitable trade.

As might be expected, the mercantile success of the Phoenicians soon attracted the traders of the other nations of Asia and Eastern Europe. The Phoeni- cians were not long suffered to enjoy their profitable monopoly, but were obliged to share their trade with others whom their successful example stimulated to pursue the same advantages. Amongst the earliest

* According to the probably extravagant reckoning of Olcampo, about 1000 years b.c.

4 CARTHAGINIANS, ROMANS,

of these competitors were several from various parts of Greece, of whom the Ehodians and Phoceans were the most successful. The object of both Phoenicians and Greeks was purely commercial, and consequently they aimed at establishing no more permanent footing in the country than would enable them to trade profitably with the inhabitants. They were followed by the Carthaginians, who took Ghadir (the modern Cadiz) from the Phoenicians, and thence successively under their generals Hamilcar, his son- in-law Hasdrubal, and son Hannibal, penetrated into the interior with a view to the complete sub- jugation of the Peninsula. The last-mentioned general successfully made war against the Olcades, Vaccseans, and Carpetanians, by whose overthrow the Carthaginians became masters of Spain as far as the river Iberus (the modern Ebro), with the exception of the town of Sargentum, which was in alliance with Eome. The taking of this town, by Hannibal, led to the second Punic war between the two rival republics.

After a series of alternate victories and defeats, the Carthaginians were driven from the Peninsula by Scipio Africanus, and Spain became a Roman province. Several of the native tribes, however, refused to submit to the Roman yoke, and main- tained their independence for more than a century.

AND VISIGOTHS, IN SPAIN. 5

Tliey fouglit long and obstinately, but having no union amongst themselves, they were gradually subdued, and, by the time of Augustus, the whole country was brought under the dominion of Rome.

Early in the fifth century, after the colossal empire had fallen under the weight of its own greatness, and its sun had set for ever in sanguinary turbulence and gloom, Spain was overrun by hordes of Visigoths from the north-west of Europe, under their king Adolph, who established himself in Catalonia. It was not, however, till the latter part of the century that the whole of the Peninsula was brought com- pletely under the sway of a Gothic king. Its his- tory, under these monarchs, is a tissue of murders, usurpations, and all the evils attending an elective monarchy — as it became — among an uncivilized people.

About AD. 555, one of these sovereigns, who had climbed to the throne by the assassination of his predecessor, purchased the support of Justinian, the eastern emperor, by consenting to hold his dominions as a fief of the empire. This vassalage was not thrown oft' till the time of Leuvigild, one of the best and greatest of the Gothic kings. Under his sway, the country became, for a time, quiet and prosperous, but at his death it relapsed into its former condition ; the old scenes of bloodshed were

e MOSLEMS IN SPAIN.

re-enacted by the rival candidates for the throne, to such an extent that, within 117 years from the death of Leuvigild, Spain had seventeen successive monarchs. Such a state of things could not but enfeeble the internal condition of the country, and render it a ready prey to invaders from without. Having been free from foreign enemies for so long a time, military discipline had been neglected, and under the effeminating influence of the genial clime, and of the luxurious habits into which they had fallen, the once hardy and warlike descendants of Theodoric had become too weak to offer any pro- tracted or effectual resistance when invaded by the enthusiastic warriors of Mahomet. These brave and hardy denizens of the Arabian deserts had already brought Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, under the sway of the Prophet and his successors.

During the reign of Roderic, these proselyting warriors, whose only alternative to the vanquished was the faith of Islam or the sword, crossed over the Straits of Gibraltar, under the victorious Tarik Ibn Zeyad, who, with an army of 12,000 men, opposed to 80,000, under Roderic, gained the battle on the banks of the Guadalete, near Xeres, which decided the fate of the Gothic monarchy in Spain. The whole country speedily submitted to the conqueror. Toledo, the Gothic capital, opened

SPEEDY CONQUEST. 7

her gates, stipulating only for freedom of religion and internal government ; and within almost as short a time as a traveller could traverse Spain, the white tents of the victorious Moslems were planted on the shores of Biscay ; and Spain, after remaining for nearly three centuries in the possession of the Visigoths, fell under the yoke of the Saracens in the year 712. Only a valiant remnant of the Gothg maintained their independence in the rugged and inaccessible mountains of Asturia.

It has been well remarked, that the fervid and irresistible enthusiasm which distinguished the youthful period of Mahometanism might sufficiently account for so speedy and remarkable a conquest ; even if we could not assign as additional causes, the internal factious which divided the Goths, the resent- ment of disappointed aspirants after power, and the temerity which risked the fate of an empire on the chances of a single battle. The mind of him who looks to nothing higher than the mere political consequences of this overthrow of the Gothic mon- archy, may see in it nothing more than one of those falsely-called chance vicissitudes in a nation's history, of which the records of the past furnish so many examples; but the wise and impartial observer recognizes in it one of those fore-ordained events by which the designs of an all-wise Providence,

i THE MOORS BECOME LUXURIOUS,

in reference to His creatures, are accomplished The Moslems opened up to Spain the learning and civilization of the East, of which, till then, she liad been ignorant, and whose beneficial results spread, in time, over nearly the whole of Europe, Outliving the long and gloomy night of the middle ftges, and bursting forth, like the phoenix from her ashes, with renewed vigour at the revival of literature in the beginning of the l^th century, preparing men's minds for the glorious "light and liberty of the gospel," which Luther, under God, opened up to them two centuries later. The valiant remnant of the Goths, already mentioned, not only preserved their national liberty and name in the northern mountains, but waged for centuries a successful, and for the most part oflfensive, warfare against their conquerors, till the balance was turned in their favour, and the Moors were compelled, in their turn, to maintain almost as obstinate and protracted a struggle for a small portion of the Peninsula, and were at last driven from it entirely.

But not to anticipate ; the victors, having firmly established themselves in Spain, gradually, like their brethren in Syria, fell away from their simple and self-denying habits of the desert, and lapsed into luxurious indolence. In the enjoyment of the fruits of their conquest, they forgot their few but daring

I

AND ABE CONQUERED BY THE CHRISTIANS.

enemies in the mountainous districts of the north, and gave themselves up to the cultivation of science, and the erection of those magnificent mosques and palaces, the ruins of which have outlived the dynasty of their founders, and fill even yet the mind of the traveller with admiration and astonishment, as he wanders through the echoing halls of the Alhambra, or traverses the plains of Granada. Feuds soon broke out in the kingdom of Cordova, which was speedily dismembered by successful rebels. Taking advantage of these divisions, Pelago, a Gothic nobleman, began the attempt to rescue his country from the yoke of the infidel. He seized on some towns along the base of the mountains in which he and his countrymen had taken refuge, defeated the forces sent against him, and having gradually enlarged his dominions, founded the small kingdom of the Asturias, in which he was succeeded by his son Favila, in 737. This prince, dying shortly after, was followed by Alfonso, surnamed the Catholic, who made still more extensive encroach- ments on the Saracenic dominions.

But the limits to which we must necessarily confine ourselves in this introductory sketch, will prevent our tracing in detail the history of these early struggles for the liberation of their country from the Moslem yoke. We must content ourselves

10 SPAIN DIVIDED INTO KINGDOMS.

with mentioning the various small kingdoms into which the gradually recovered territory was divided. We shall notice them chronologically in the order of their foundation.

According to the best native historians, Garcia Ximenes, a Cantabrian noble, was proclaimed king in 758, by the inhabitants of Soprarbe, which became in time the foundation of the small kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre. Half a century later, Winfred, of the family of the dukes of Aquitaine, aided by the emperor Charlemagne, founded the county of Barcelona. For the next century and a half, still greater encroachments were made upon the territo- ries of the Cordovan monarchs. The kingdom of Oviedo, of which Leon became the capital in 914, was founded, and gradually extended its boundary to the Douro, and even to the mountains of the Guadarrama.

Again, in 1005, the province of Old Castile * was formed into a kingdom by Sancho of Navarre. This province had belonged to the kingdom of Leon, but its separation was only temporary, for by the death of Bermudo III., of Leon, Ferdinand (the son of Sancho) of Castile, became, in right of marriage with his sister, master of the united monarchy. Towards

* Or Castella, called so from the numerous castles erected for its defence by Alfonso I.

FOUK CHRISTIAN AND ONE MAHOMETAN. 11

ttie end of this century, Henry de Besanyon, a knight of the house of Burgundy, aided by Alfonso of Castile, whose daughter he had married, laid the foundation of the kingdom of Portugal, which was extended by his son and successor Alfonso I. Shortly before this time (in 1085), Toledo and the neighbouring districts had been taken from the Moors by Alfonso III. of Castile, under whom fought Roderigo de Vivar, the famous Cid, whose exploits have been so celebrated in the old ballad poetry of Spain.

During the next century and a half, the Christian princes continued their encroachments on the Moor- ish territory, till at last, after having lost Saragossa, Badajoz, Cordova, and Valencia, the Spanish Moslems were driven to the mountains of Granada, where a new kingdom was founded by Mahomet Ibnu-1-ahmar in 1248.

Having thus very briefly enumerated the several divisions which were made of the territory recovered from the Moors, we find the Peninsula divided into four Christian kingdoms : — Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, and one Mahometan, Granada. Of these, Castile and Aragon, though occasionally separated, became at last permanently united, and formed the chief power in the Peninsula. The little kingdom of Navarre passed continually by females

12 CIVIL DISSENSIONS.

to the Frencli houses of Bigorre, Champagne, Evereux, Foix, and Albret. Portugal remained distinct, and exercised but little influence beyond the limits of its own territory. For nearly two centuries, we almost lose sight of Granada. Its sovereigns, either too weak, or too much engaged by internal feuds, to make any aggressive attempts on the territory from which they had been driven, were compelled to content themselves with the undisturbed enjoyment of the finest province in the Peninsula.

The century of Spanish history immediately following the settlement of the Moors in Granada, was chiefly occupied by a series of civil dissensions, occurring too rapidly to be easily remembered, or even understood. The first, however, of importance that we meet with, was a rebellion headed by Henry, Count of Transtamara, against his brother Pedro IV. of Castile, justly surnamed the Cruel. Aided by a strong body of mercenary adventurers, under the command of Bertrand du Guesclin, Henry invaded Castile to avenge the murder of his brother Don Fadrique. Pedro was overpowered, and his rival proclaimed king at Burgos in 1366. The deposed monarch fled to Bordeaux, at that time the capital of the English possessions in France, and induced Edward, the Black Prince, by the promise of Biscay,

SUCCESSIVE MONARCHS. 13

to espouse his cause. Edward entered Spain, and, at the battle of JSTavarrette, defeated an army of 100,000 men with which Henry met him. Pedro was reinstated on the throne, and Henry fled over the Pyrenees ; but Pedro's ingratitude causing the Black Prince to return to Guienne, Henry again appeared, and Pedro lost his kingdom and life in a second contest in 1369.

During nearly the whole of the following half century, under Henry II., and his successors John I. and Henry III., the country was tranquil ; but this golden period ceased at the majority of John II. A series of conspiracies and civil dissensions, osten- sibly directed against his favourite Alvaro de Luna, distracted the kingdom during the latter part of this prince's reign. The weak and fickle monarch was easily induced to consent to the death of his minister, who had exercised an absolute sway over his feeble master for nearly five and thirty years. Alvaro de Luna has been compared, by a living historian, to ' our English Strafford, whom he seems to have strongly resembled in character.

In 1455, John was succeeded by his son Henry IV., one of the weakest princes, both in mind and body, that ever ascended a throne. His misrule soon renewed the disturbances of the last reign j and, after ten years spent in civil war, Henry wa?

14 ISABELLA AND JOANNA,

deposed by a powerful confederacy of his disaftected nobles, who placed Alfonso, the king's brother, upon the throne. On the death of this young prince three years after, his sister Isabella was proclaimed queen. She, however, to avoid the odium of a contest with her brother, agreed to a treaty, by which the succession would revert to her at his death. The next step taken by the malcontent nobility was to secure the marriage of Isabella, who was soon after betrothed to prince Ferdinand of Aragon. Henry readily seized upon this, as a fitting opportunity for revoking his forced dis- position of the crown, and restoring the direct line of succession in favour of his daughter Joanna, whose legitimacy was very generally doubted. On his death, which occurred five years after, Isabella was raised to the throne. Her claims were supported by the majority of the nobles and people, and by the powerful assistance of Aragon ; whilst those of Joanna, to whom the kingdom had been willed by the late king, were maintained by the rest of the nobles, and by Alfonso V., of Portugal, to whom she was betrothed. At the battle of Toro, fought in 1476, the Portuguese king and the partisans of Joanna were defeated, and her rival was placed in undisputed possession of the throne of Castile. Three years after, Ferdinand succeeded his father, John II.,

FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 15

and the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile became for ever united.

We now enter upon, politically speaking, one of the brightest pages in the history of Spain. Under the wise and vigorous government of Ferdinand and Isabella, she was raised into the foremost rank of European nations. With just laws impartially administered, and freed from the internal dis- turbances which had so long misdirected the ener- gies, swallowed up the resources, and opposed the industry, of her people, she rapidly rose to the dignity of a first-rate power. The lamp of learning, which had shone but feebly since the revival of letters, was now retrimmed, and a new impetus given to the study of literature and the arts. It is true that the authority of the crown was much more despotic than would harmonize with our more modern and enlightened ideas of liberty ; but it chiefly operated against the old feudal power of the nobles, and, in this respect, rather increased, than curtailed, the real liberties of the people at large.

Ferdinand and Isabella had no sooner quenched the flames of civil discord in their dominions, than they resolved to give Europe a proof of the .vigour which the Spanish monarchy should exhibit under their administration.

The political jealousies which had for more than

16 COJ^QUEST OF GRANADA.

three centuries counterbalanced the mutual zeal of the Christian princes for religion and conquest, had prevented any effective measures being taken for the overthrow of the only remaining Moorish power in the Peninsula. The civil wars which rent Granada at the time of Ferdinand's accession, favoured, if they did not suggest, his project for its invasion. But even in the last stage of the Moslem dominion, and enfeebled by the strife of its contending parties, one of which took part with the invaders, Granada, animated by the heroic though expiring spirit of its founders, held out for more than ten years against the overwhelming hosts of the foe. Inch by inch was its territory won ; town slowly followed town, till at last the city itself was taken in 1492; and with it fell for ever the Moorish power in Spain. The conquest of Granada raised the name of Ferdi- nand to high estimation throughout Europe.

The next important event in this reign, was the discovery of America by Columbus, who had in vain sought for aid in his enterprise from his native city Genoa, and afterwards from Don John of Portugal.

In addition to the kingdom of Granada, the dominions of Ferdinand and Isabella were increased by the counties of Kousillon and Cerdagne, ceded to them by Charles VIII. of France, who wished

CHARLES V. 17'

thereby to conciliate Ferdinand, and smootli every impediment to the expedition which he meditated against Italy. In this, however, he failed ; for Ferdinand, jealously alive to the ambition of the French king, sent an army to the aid of his relative and namesake, Ferdinand I., who at that time occupied the throne of Naples. Seeing, however, that Louis XII., who succeeded Charles, was bent on the conquest of Naples, Ferdinand, more ambi- tious than just, proposed, on a paltry plea, to divide that kingdom with the French monarch. This was done ; in 1501 Naples was conquered, and divided between the allies. Five years after, the Spanish general Gonsalvo de Cordova, surnamed El Gran Capitan, drove the French from Italy, and presented the Neapolitan crown to his wily master. At this time Isabella died, and was succeeded in the joint sovereignty with Ferdinand by their daughter Joanna, wife of Philip, Archduke of Austria ; and, on the death of the latter, by her son Charles V., afterwards Emperor of Germany. Ferdinand survived his queen only ten years, dying in 1516, having appointed Cardinal Ximenez regent till the arrival of Charles in Spain.

Having now reached the reign in which the history of Protestantism in the Peninsula properly begins, we shall conclude this introductory outline C

Id FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

of Spanish history by a very brief sketch of the civil polity of the country at this time.

The two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, though united, were still, in a sense, distinct. The union which had occasionally existed, and which the mar- riage of Ferdinand and Isabella had consolidated, did not so completely blend the two governments as to alter, in any material degree, the positive and distinctive prerogatives of their respective sovereigns. Against this the Castilians had jealously guarded. Ferdinand interfered but little in the internal affairs of Castile, and Isabella as little in those of Aragon. The two kingdoms stood to each other rather in the relation of allies, than of separate portions of the same monarchy. This distinction, however, ceased with the accession of Charles, the common heir of both sovereigns; and the connection then formed between them was closely analogous to that which now subsists politically between England and Scot- land. Indeed, the Spanish constitution at that time, and subsequently, very much resembled our own at the present day. The government consisted of the King and the Cortes, the former of whom exer- cised the executive, and the latter the legislative functions. For several ages the crown had been elective, within the limits of one royal family ; but as the choice, of course, generally fell upon the

IN ARAGON AND CASTILE. 19

nearest heir, this custom became in time virtually obsolete, and the crown descended, with a few exceptions, in regular order after the eleventh century, by which time a right of hereditary suc- cession had been clearly established. Strictly speak- ing, the monarchy was limited ; the prerogatives of the crown being explicitly determined by law ; these, however, would uselessly occupy space in their enumeration. The primary and most essential characteristic of such a monarchy, namely, that money cannot be levied from the people without the consent of their deputies, was thoroughly es- tablished.

The Cortes, or parliament, was composed of mem- bers returned by certain towns which had the right of representation. In this Aragon differed slightly from Castile, inasmuch as the nobility had a larger share in the legislation there than in the latter. Its civil polity still more closely resembled our own, and its analogous balance of power was attended by similarly beneficial results. Indeed, there was at that time no form of government, in any of the Continental monarchies, more interesting than that of Aragon, as a happy temperament of law and justice with the authority of the crown. In this respect it had the advantage of Castile in some degree; but in the main their constitutions were

2U THE ECCLESIASTICAL ELEMENT.

similar. Tn both, during the interval of the Cortes, the sovereigns acted by the advice of a smaller council, answering to the king's privy council in England. Civil and criminal justice was administered by judges appointed in some instances by the sove- reign, and in others by the towns in which they presided.

There is much doubt as to the exact extent to which the ecclesiastical element entered into the constitution of the Cortes. Down to the middle of the 13th century, the prelates seem to have exercised a considerable influence in its proceedings ; but at the end of the 15th century their rights, in this respect, would appear to have been no longer recognized. Indeed, so early as the year 1295, we find the Archbishop of Toledo publicly protesting against the acts of the Cortes, because the bishops were not regularly admitted to a share in its delibera- tions. In the following chapters, however, we shall see how largely and banefully the indirect influence which they exercised told upon the general govern- ment of the country, as the power of its priesthood always does wherever Popery is in the ascendant.

This necessarily rapid sketch of the history and polity of Spain, will enable the general reader to form some idea of a country which was destined to become the stage on which scenes of bloody

ITS EVIL EFFECTS. 21

persecution for the truth's sake were to be enacted in the name of Him " who came not to destroy, but to save," by the agents of that Abomination which degrades the intellect and ruins the souls of its deluded adherents — scenes which have rarely been equalled, and never surpassed, in barbarous cruelty, even in the annals of that blood-stained system.

22 THE SPANISH CHUBCH.

i^lmUx Sm\\)i.

OUTLINE OF SPANISH ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY PREVIOUS TO THE REFORMATION.

Before entering upon a detailed account of the introduction of the reformed doctrines into the Penin- sula, it will be proper, for the sake of having more accurate and extensive views of the state of religion in that country, to glance back to the history of the Spanish Church before the time of the Reformation. There has been much difference of opinion as to the time at which Christianity was first introduced into the Peninsula. The Spanish ecclesiastical his- torians, almost without a dissentient voice, have maintained that the gospel was first preached to their ancestors by the apostle James ; that he traversed the Peninsula, from Lusitania and Gallicia to the

THE APOSTLES IN SPAIN. Z6

heart of Aragon ; that while at Saragoza, he was honoured by a visit from the Virgin j and that by her express command he erected a church on the spot in her honour ; that after his martyrdom at Jerusalem, his body was brought from Syria to Iria Flavia (the modern El Padeon), in Gallicia, and was thence transferred to Compostella to be worshipped by the faithful throughout all time. All this, however, has no firmer foundation than tradition. But if we are to credit Athanasius, Jerome, and others of the early Fathers, there is good reason for believing that Paul visited Spain and preached the gospel to its idolatrous inhabitants. But whether or not the Apostles pro- pagated the gospel in the Peninsula, certain it is, that Spain can produce her martyrs as early as the second century, and had churches established through- out various parts of the country during the third. Of the early state of these churches but little is known. Coming down, however, to the end of the fourth century, we reach the period of authentic history, at which we have firm ground to stand upon in our efforts to know something of Spanish Christianity.

The amount of our knowledge of its early state, may be conveniently arranged under three heads : — The Doctrine of the ancient Spanish Church — its Government — and its Worship.

24 DOCTRINES.

T. Shortly after .the planting of the first churches in the Peninsula, doctrinal sentiments which have been commonly regarded by all Christians as heretical, sprang up and widely prevailed in Spain. The earliest and most important of these, were those which were disseminated in the fourth century, by Priscillian, a native of Gallicia, and afterwards Bishop of Avila. Early in the century the doctrines of the ancient Gnostics had been introduced into Spain from Egypt, by one Mark, a native of Mem- phis. Out of these and the tenets of the Manichseans, Priscillian constructed a new system, which even in his own lifetime had many adherents, and subse- quently became the prevailing creed of the country for nearly the whole of the two centuries succeeding his death. Being accused by some bishops before the Emperor Gratian, Priscillian and his followers were banished from Spain, but he soon after returned. He was again accused in 384, and being condemned along with several of his associates, was executed at Treves, in Germany, in the year 385. This was the first instance of death for heresy. The chief char- acteristic of this system was Arianism.

Having returned to the common faith towards the close of the sixth century, the Spanish churches lapsed after a time into the adoption of Nestorianism, and some other erroneous doctrinal theories of less note.

1

ADOPTTONISM. — IMAGE WORSHIP. 25

These again were exchanged in the eighth century for the tenets of the adoptionists, who held that Christ, though " as God, was by nature and truly the Son of God, yet, as man, was the Son of God only in name and by adoption." This doctrine originated with Felix, Bishop of Urgel in Spain, from whom it was imbibed and widely disseminated by Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo. It maintained itself for a considerable time, in spite of the decision of several councils, supported by the learning of Alcuin, and the authority of his pupil the emperor Charlemagne, by whom Felix was banished to Lyons, where he died, in the beginning of the ninth century.

But amidst these errors which so widely prevailed, there were not wanting Spaniards who held some of the leading opinions afterwards advocated by the Protestant Keformers. The worship of images (which had begun as early as the fourth century), and the veneration paid to the relics and sepulchres of the saints, were loudly inveighed against by Claude, Bishop of Turin, but a Spaniard, who flourished in this century. Contemporary with Claude, was his countryman, Galindo Prudentio, Bishop of Troyes in France. This prelate, who died in 861, was a man of great piety and extensive learning. The sentiments which he advocated in the predestinarian controversy, in opposition to

26 GOVERNMENT.

Hincmar, Archbishop of Eheims, and the noted school-man, Joannes Scotus, bear a striking resem- blance to those which the Komish Church has since anathematized in the writings of the German Beformers.

Notwithstanding the occasional prevalence of doc- trinal errors such as those already mentioned, Spain is generally spoken of as, and may properly be con- sidered, a catholic country, from the time that she renounced the Priscillianist or Arian heresy, under Keccared, towards the end of the sixth century.

II. In the fourth century the Spanish Church was governed by no other officers than bishops, presbyters, and deacons. She had neither metro- politans nor archbishops, subdeacons nor lectors. A gradual relaxation of her discipline took place, how- ever, when the government, of the church came to be formed upon the model of the empire, after Constantine the Great embraced Christianity. This change, however, was more slowly introduced into Spain than into some other countries, for its bishops imitated the example of the neighbouring Church of Africa, with which the Spanish was closely allied, and which jealously guarded the balance of episcopal power against the encroachments of the metropoli- tans. The supremacy of the Bishops of Rome was not acknowledged, nor can it be proved that they

THE BISHOPS OF ROME. 27

exercised any authority in the internal government of the Spanish church, earlier than the ninth century. The title of Pope, which they subsequently arrogated, was at first given to all who were invested with the episcopal office ; and even when it came to be con- ferred less promiscuously, it was still given to a num- ber in common.'^ The chief causes to which we must trace the subsequent pre-eminence of the Roman bishops, are to be found in the antiquity of their see, and the more substantial reasons which, in the estimation of men, commonly give priority and greatness. The amplitude and splendour of their church, the magnitude of their revenues and posses- sions, the number of their clergy, the weight of their influence with the people at large, and the sumptuous- ness and magnificence of their style of living — all these combined to give them a superior importance to prelates of less extensive and wealthy sees. It was customary, in matters which concerned the cause of religion in general, or in difficult questions of internal discipline, to ask advice from foreign churches. On such occasions the bishops of Rome came to be regularly consulted, owing to the influ- ence which they gradually acquired from the causes

* In the eighth century the title of Pope, or Patriarch, was confined to the sees of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

28 NON-RECOGNITION

enumerated. But this was not to the exclusion of other prelates ; nor did they arrogate any right of supremacy earlier than the latter part of the ninth century. Gregory the Great, who was Bishop of Bome at the end of the sixth century, thus declaimed against the assumption of supremacy by the Bishop of Constantinople : — " Far from the hearts of Chris- tians be this name of blasphemy [^.e., Universal Patriarch], which takes away the honours of the whole priesthood, while it is madly arrogated by one ! None of my predecessors would ever consent to use this profane word, because, if one Patriarch is called universal, the rest are deprived of the name of Patriarchs."

In proof of the non-recognition of Roman supre- macy, we may mention, that a council held at Toledo in the year 655, determined that appeals in matters of discipline or doctrine should lie from a bishop to a metropolitan (or episcopal governor of a province), and from a metropolitan to the royal audience. Still further proof of their independence of Rome, is furnished by the proceedings and language of the Spanish bishops in 683. In that year, Leo ^11., Bishop of Rome, sent the acts, of the sixth ecumen- ical council, which had been held at Constantinople three years before, and which had condemned the

OF ROMISH SUPREMACY. 29

Monothellte heresy, to Spain, requesting the bishops to give them their sanction, and to secure their circu- lation amongst the Spanish churches. The Arch- bishop of Toledo was commissioned by his . brother prelates to transmit a rescript to Rome, intimating their general approbation of the decision submitted to them, and stating the sentiments of the Spanish church on the heresy in question. These- acts were formally considered at a council held in Toledo the following year, in such a manner as plainly evinced the determination of the bishops to maintain the independence of their church. Finding these acts of the council of Constantinople to be consonant with the decisions of the four preceding canonical councils, particularly that of Chalcedon, held in the middle of the sixth century, they said : — " Wherefore we agree that the acts of the said council be reverenced and received by us, inasmuch as they do not differ from the foresaid councils, or rather, as thej appear to coincide with them. We allot to them, therefore, that place in point of order to which their merit entitles them. Let them come after the council of Chalcedon, by whose light they shine." They next considered the rescript which the Archbishop had sent by their authority to Rome the year previously, and declared it to be, "a copious and lucid exposi-

30 THE MONOTHELITE HERESY.

tion of the truth concerning the double will and operation of Christ,"'^ adding, "wherefore, for the sake of general instruction, and the benefit of ecclesiastical discipline, we confirm and sanction it, as entitled to equal honour and reverence, and to have the same permanent authority, as the decretal epistles." When this rescript reached Eome, where Benedict II. had in the mean time succeeded Leo in the popedom, it gave much dissatisfaction to that prelate. Having drawn up certain objections to it, he transmitted them to Spain, where they were fully considered in a council held at Toledo in 688, a brief answer having been, as before, given by the Archbishop for the rest. In a lengthened vindica- tion of the opinions at which offence had been taken,t they replied : — " As we will not be ashamed to defend the truth, so there are, perhaps, some persons who will be ashamed at being found ignorant of the truth. For who knows not that in every man there are two substances, namely, soul and body?" After supporting their opinion by quota- tions from the Fathers, they added : " But if any one shall be so shameless as not to acquiesce in these

* Which the Monothelites denied.

+ The most objectionable were those in which they had asserted that there are three substances in Christ ; viz., his divine nature, human soul, and body.

WORSHIP. 31

sentiments, and acting the part of a haughty in- quirer, shall ask whence we drew such things, at least he will yield to the words of the gospel, in which Christ declares that he possesses three sub- stances." They then quoted and commented on such passages of the New Testament as they con- sidered confirmatory of their opinions, and thus concluded : " If, after this statement, and the senti- ments of the Fathers from which it has been taken, any person shall dissent from us in any thing, we will have no farther dispute with him, but keeping steadily in the plain path, and treading in the footsteps of our predecessors, we are persuaded that our answer will commend itself to the approbation of all lovers of truth who are capable of forming a divine judgment, though we may be charged with obstinacy by the ignorant and envious."

Thus plainly did a council of the Spanish Church address the Bishop of Rome towards the close of the seventh century.

III. The forms of its worship will still further illustrate the independence of the ancient Spanish church.

Throughout the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, the mode of worship was substantially the same in the whole Christian church. There were, how- ever, different liturgies, or forms, in use amongst the

32 VARIOUS LITURGIES.

individual churches composing it. Each bishop according to his own views, and as the circumstances of times, places, and persons suggested, prescribed to his own flock such a form of public worship as he judged best. The Ambrosian liturgy, used by the church of Milan, and named from St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, difiered considerably from the Roman, which was drawn up by Gregory the Great. In France it continued to be used, till superseded by the Roman in the time of Charlemagne. In England the ancient Britons had one liturgy, and the Anglo- Saxons subsequently another, which they received from Augustine their apostle, and which differed materially from that of Gregory. Indeed, not only were different forms of celebrating divine worship employed by different nations, but sometimes even in different parts of the same nation. That this was the case in Spain down to the year 633, is proved by the fact, that the fourth council of Toledo, held in that year, decreed that one uniform order should be observed in all the churches of the Peninsula. In consequence of this decree, the Gothic or Mozarabic liturgy was uniformly adopted. This liturgy is sometimes called the Isidorian or Ildefon- sian, from its being revised by Isidore and Ildefonso, Archbishops of Seville and Toledo, who succeeded to those sees respectively in the years 595 and 657.

ILDEFONSIAN AND GKEGORIAN. 33

The difference between this ritual and the Eoman is placed beyond doubt by their disagreement on the adoptionarian doctrines. During the controversy which raged in the eighth century on these tenets, their Spanish advocates appealed to their national ritual in support of the opinions which they defended. The opposing council of Frankfort replied : " It is better to believe the testimony of God the Father concerning his own Son, than that of your Ildefonso, who composed for you such prayers, in the solemn masses, as the universal and holy church of God knows not, and in which we do not think you will be heard. And if your Ildefonso in his prayers called Christ the adopted son of God, our Gregory, pontiff of the Koman see, and a doctor beloved by the whole world, does not hesitate in his prayers to call him always the only-begotten."

We might multiply instances in which the worship of the ancient Spanish church differed in its forms from those of the Koman ; but these will be sufficient to prove that the dissimilarity was considerable. We shall now proceed to state how she was led to adopt the usages and recognize the supremacy of the church of Rome.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter. Chris- tian Spain was divided, in the eleventh century, into the three kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre,

34 INTRODUCTION OP

the last of which was incorporated with the first two by Ferdinand in 1512. Alonso I. of Castile, having married Constance, a daughter of the royal house of France, towards the close of the eleventh century, was instigated by that princess to introduce into his dominions the Roman liturgy, to which she had been accustomed. This innovation was eagerly supported by the papal legate, and as warmly opposed by the Castilian clergy, nobility^ and people at large. After much controversy, a compromise was made, by which it was arranged that the old Gothic liturgy should be used in the six churches of Toledo, which the Christians had enjoyed under the Moors, whilst the Roman should be adopted in all the other churches of the kingdom. The people clung for a while to their old forms, but, discountenanced by the court and the superior ecclesiastics, they soon fell into disrepute, and the Roman were universally em- ployed.

In Aragon the introduction of the Roman liturgy had been attempted somewhat earlier than in Castile, though it was established in both kingdoms about the same time. The first mass, according to the Roman form, was celebrated in Aragon in the monastery of St. Juan de la Pena, on the 21st of March, 1071 j and in Castile, in the Grand Mosque of Toledo, on the 25th of October, 1086.

KOMISH AUTHORITY. 35

As was expected by the Bishop of Eome, the establishment of the Komaii liturgy was soon followed by the full recognition of his authority in Spain. Nor was this authority merely ecclesiastical ; it gradually led to the acknowledgment of the Pope's civil ownership of the kingdom. It is sufficient to refer in support of this statement to the subjuga- tion of the crown and kingdom of Aragon, in the reign of Don Ramiro I., who, for several years before his death, in 1063, held his kingdom as a fief of the Roman see. This vassalao;e was acknowledged again in 1204, by Don Pedro II., who, eight years after he had ascended the throne, went to Rome and did homage to Innocent III. as his sovereign lord. Against this submission the nobles and people loudly protested, but in vain ; the papal supremacy being once established could not be got rid of. The yoke then imposed, though vainly attempted to be thrown off by some subsequent monarchs, presses like a deadly incubus on the country still. The religious history of Spain during the period we are now reviewing, was intimately connected with that of Languedoc and Provence. These provinces were at that time more properly Aragonese than French. The viscounts of Narbonne, Beziers, and Carcassone, did homage to the king of Aragon as Count of Provence and Avignon, and other cities acknow-

36 THE VAUDOIS.

ledged him as their baronial superior. This close connection between these provinces and Spain, led many of the Vaudois to cross the Pyrenees and settle in the Peninsula, soon after their rise in the south of France. The history of the persecutions of this interesting people is too well known to need repeti- tion here, even if the plan of our sketch required it. But as their history was intimately connected for a time with that of evangelical religion in Spain, it may not be out of place to occupy a few lines in very briefly noticing it. Most of our readers are, perhaps, acquainted with the commonly received opinion that this sect sprung up early in the twelfth century, and rapidly multiplied in France, whence it spread into Lombardy and other parts of the Italian peninsula.* If space permitted, we might give an

* Such, as we have said, is the date commonly assigned to the rise of the Vaudois ; but there is abundant evidence to warrant our conviction that they existed at a period much earlier than the 12th century. There has long been, and still is, much difference of opinion, not only as to the time at which the sect originated, but likewise as to the exact parties to whom the term Vaudois properly belongs. Their orthodoxy has been the subject of similar dispute. But though the difficulty of satisfactorily determining these three questions has been very materially increased by re- garding the different names by which they w^ere known in different places, as indicating entirely distinct sects, there is good reason to believe that the term Vaudois (or Waldenses)

NUMEROUS DESIGNATIONS. 37

interestiDg enumeration of the probable causes to which their rapid spread may be attributed. The people amongst whom they [are said to have] origi- nated, had reached a very high state of civilization and refinement. Their rich and musical language had been finely cultivated both in prose and verse. The Troubadours poured forth in it their lays of love, and sentiments of a refined gallantry, which perished with the warrior-poets who gave them shape

included, as a general appellation, all the Christian churches of Europe who refused to acknowledge the Supremacy of Rome. Hallam, in his History of the Middle Ages, asserts, and supports his position by a lengthened but to some extent one-sided argument, that the Waldenses were essen- tially distinct, both in doctrine and locality, from the Albi- genses. The latter he charges with Manichseism, whilst the former, he admits, were free from it. But Dr. McCrie, in his lecture on the History of the Waldensian Church (see Lectures on the Foi^eign Churches, by various divines), main- tains their identity. He says : — " On the Italian side of the Alps, we meet with some of them called Berengerians, from Berenger of Louis, Cathari, Beghards, Paulicians, Paterins, Subalpines, and Vaudois. On the French side, we have them denominated Albigenses, from Albi, a town in the south of France, where they abounded for some time ; Waldenses, from Peter Waldo of Lyons," &c. The same opinion is advocated by Perrin, in his Histoire de Vaudois, and more strongly still by Faber, whpse Vallenses and Waldenses is a complete refutation of all the charges which have been brought, even by some Protestant divines, against the antiquity and orthodoxy of these churches.

38 PERSECUTION OF THE

in song. Mainly by them was instilled into the minds of the people that love for polite learning which so honourably distinguished the Provence from the other provinces of France. Such was not the most favourable soil for the growth of a blind faith in the arbitrary dogmas of a bigoted and igno- rant priesthood. The free and enlightened doctrines of the new sect were more in harmony with the genius and intellectual condition of such a people ; and hence the readiness with which they were received, and the stedfastness with which they were adhered to, when once embraced. But, however interesting the theme, we must not indulge in the digression.

Those of the Vaudois who had passed over into Spain, as we have remarked, were for a time per- mitted to remain undisturbed. But in 1194, Pope Celestin III. prevailed upon Alfonso II. of Aragon, to order their expulsion from his territories. This began their troubles. A similar edict, at the instance of the Pope, was unwillingly issued by Alfonso's successor, Peter 11. , three years afterwards^ but it was not enforced. So far, indeed, was Peter from being unfavourable to them, that he joined his brother-in-law. Count Raymond of Toulouse, in opposing the crusade which was raging against them in the territories of the latter, and fell fighting in

VAUDOIS IN SPAIN. 39

their defence, at the battle of Muret, in the year 1213.^ The sympathy thus practically expressed, induced great numbers of the persecuted Christians to take refuge in the territories of the Spanish king. In a few years their numbers were increased to such an extent by fresh immigrants, that they had churches in most parts of Aragon, Catalonia, Leon, and Castile. As might be expected, the settlement and spread of such heretics on the sacred soil of Spain were not unopposed by the Inquisition. In the year 1237, forty-five were condemned within the diocese of Urgel alone,* of whom fifteen perished in its fires, whilst the rest were doomed to perpetual imprison- ment or other painful penance. Some of them formed themselves into a religious brotherhood, to escape the persecution to which they were exposed, and having modified several of their doctrinal senti- ments, even received the sanction of Pope Innocent III., in 1207. But the respite from persecution which this compromise secured them, was only temporary. They were still looked upon by the bishops with a jealous eye, and considered to be heretics at heart, though outwardly professing con- siderable conformity to the papal church. The protection afforded by his Holiness was neither very practical nor sincere; and, as might be expected,

* Mc.Crie's Reformation in Spain, p. 34.

40 MONKISH ACTIVITY, SUCCESS,

a knowledge of this secured for his letters no better

obedience than he wished them to meet with. The

*

new order was speedily suppressed, and in a short time not one of its numerous convents was to be found on either side of the Pyrenees.

In the mean time, the fires of the Inquisition were fed by large numbers of the original Vaudois, and many of the native Spanish whom they had won over to their doctrines. But its most rigorous persecution could not drive them out of the country, or win them back to the orthodox faith. For two centuries they continued to increase, and successfully braved the storm everywhere raised against them by the agents of the Holy Office. But they were at last forced to seek refuge in the mountains of Biscay, and the higher districts of Old Castile, whence they were finally driven down by the troops of John II., and perished in the flames of the In- quisition at Valladolid and St. Domingo de la Calzado. Thus were the Vaudois exterminated in Spain. A few only escaped, who in after years supplied a straggling victim for the stake.

Whilst the Vaudois were being thus extirpated in the Peninsula, the agents of Rome were establish- ing her power in it with even more than their usual zeal. Foremost in activity and success were the Dominican and Franciscan monks. By the apparent

WEALTH, AND LICENTIOUSNESS. 41

self-denial and austerity of their lives, these mendi- cant friars had gained for themselves a character of peculiar sanctity, and the corresponding influence which such a reputation secured. Within a few years from the time of their institution, their con- vents were established over nearly the whole of Spain. But this increase of numbers and power brought with it many and glaring abuses. Falling off from the rigorous laws of their founders, and the habits by which their reputation and influence had been gained, vows of poverty were forgotten, and wealth and licentiousness went hand in hand. This corruption of the monastic institutions became so general and notorious, that the kings of Spain attempted their reform time after time, but in vain. Their efforts were always frustrated by the monks, and the evils which they strove to correct multiplied rather than decreased. So glaring had they become towards the close of the fifteenth century, that Ferdinand and Isabella, in again attempting their correction, were obliged to employ force, and even with its aid would have failed had they not secured the co-operation of Cardinal Ximenez, who was at that time Provincial of the Franciscans. This latter order resisted reform so obstinately, that an order for their expulsion from the kingdom was issued, though some time afterwards revoked. On leaving

42 POPISH SUPERSTITION AND ABSURDITY.

Toledo in solemn procession, they carried a crucifix before them, and chaunted the 114th Psalm, which begins, " WJwn Israel went out of Egypt,'' &c. Ximenez succeeded in effecting the reform of many- superstitious usages which had gradually crept into the Spanish Church during the dark ages which had just passed away. He printed an edition of the Mozarabic liturgy, and caused it to be used in several of the churches j but as he had incorporated in it many of the most objectionable peculiarities of the estab- lished Gregorian, it soon fell into disuse, and the Roman was again universally employed. From or shortly before this time, may be dated the reign of Popery in its worst and most degrading form in Spain. All the gross superstitions and doctrinal absurdities of the system were practised and believed. Legends and lives of saints supplied the place of the forbidden Bible to the devout, whilst miracles and other absurd monstrosities were plentifully retailed, and as readily •believed by the ignorant and credulous vulgar. Nowhere else in Europe was the true genius of Popery so thoroughly exemplified, and its practical tendency to fetter the intellect and debase the soul so clearly demonstrated. The garment of darkness in which Rome had robed the nations, was wrapped round Spain in multiplied and thickened folds. Nature had lavished its fairest gifts upon her, but

THEIR DEBASING INFLUENCE. 43

superstition and ignorance threw their blighting influence over the land ; the elements of permanent greatness which she possessed could not develope themselves in such an atmosphere, and Spain, comet- like, shot up, by the inherent force of her old chivalry, from the darkness of the middle ages into a temporary glory among the nations of Europe. But mere chivalry could not keep her there ; other and more divine forces were needed ; these were shut out from her, and she fell back almost into her pristine gloom.

44 THE REFORMATION

C^apte ®^itlr.

OBSTACLES TO THE SUCCESS OF THE REFORMED DOCTRINE IN SPAIN.

We shall now briefly notice some of the chief hin- drances which opposed the spread of the Lutheran doctrines in the Peninsula, and but for which we should not presently have to record the failure of a Reformation which, at one point in its brief but eventful history, bid fair to consume " the Inquisi- tion, the hierarchy, the papacy, and the despotism by which they had been reared and were upheld."

Foremost in the ranks of these opposing barriers stands the terrible institution just mentioned — the Inquisition. Had it not been, chiefly, for the fearful efficiency with which this no less than infernal engine of papal despotism accomplished its work,

AND THE INQUISITION. 45

the thick clouds of religious gloom which even yet envelope Spain would, long ere now, have been swept away, and the full light of Gospel blessings have risen on her enthralled and benighted people. This dreadful tribunal calls for more than a passing notice, not merely on account of its intrinsic character and constitution, but more particularly because of the fatal influence which it, above all other causes, has exercised upon the destinies of Spain.

There has been much difference of opinion, both as to the founder of the Inquisition, and to the exact date of its institution. Some go back so far as the times of the Emperor Theodosius, who lived in the fourth century, and find, in the laws which he enacted against the Manichseans, the germ which subsequently developed itself into the terrible organ- ization of the Holy Office. But though death was the penalty attached to the heresy just mentioned, the crime was still considered a civil offence, to be dealt with by the civil magistrate, and not by any ecclesiastical authority whatever. Hence the essen- tial difference between such a provision against heresy, and that which was made by the Inquisition many centuries afterwards. Nor should it be forgotten, that the laws of the early emperors, which made heresy a capital offence, contemplated heretics

46 INQUISITORIAL FUNCTIONS

as political factions, which rebelled against the State and disturbed its peace. Such^ in reality, many of them were, as may be seen by the letters of Augustin. In no such light, however, did the Inquisition primarily regard apostates from the faith of Kome. The fundamental principle of that odious institution was not thoroughly recognized sooner than the twelfth century, towards the end of which, a commission was sent by Innocent III., consisting of two legates and some subordinate priests and officers, to extirpate the Albigensian heresy in the South of France. One of the most zealous agents of this commission was Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Dominican order of monks. This, however, was only a temporary and local commis- sion, which the negligence of the bishops in hunting out heretics had called for ; and it had no judicial power to pronounce a definitive sentence on the accused. But the efficiency with which it performed the duties assigned to it speedily led to the institu- tion of similar commissions in all suspected localities. It was not, however, till the year 1233, that the Inquisition was erected as a distinct tribunal, armed with judicial and executive power. In that year, Pope Gregory IX. committed the task of discovering and judging heretics to the Dominican friars, who erected permanent courts, first at Toulouse, and next

COMMITTED TO THE DOMINICANS. 47

at Carcassone and other places, before which were arraigned not only heretics and those suspected of heresy, but all who were accused of Judaism, magic, soothsaying, and similar oflfences. These courts were gradually extended to every city in which there were Dominican convents.

No sooner had it received the sanction of the Pope, and been thus thoroughly organized, than measures were taken for introducing the Inquisition into Spain. It was first established in the kingdom of Aragou, and thence extended to Navarre, but not, there is reason to believe, to Castile, For though a papal bull was issued as early as the year ] 236, authorizing its introduction into that kingdom, there is no evidence that it ever existed there under its old form. The law of Las Patridas (which is still the fundamental code in Spain), promulgated in 1258, favours this view, by the lenient treatment which it prescribes for heretics.

The method of proceeding in the courts of the Inquisition was at first simple, and differed but slightly from that adopted in the ordinary courts. But the Dominicans gradually rendered it more complex. Being wholly ignorant of judicial pro- ceedings, they regulated their own after the model of what is called, in the Roman Church, the Tribunal of Penance, whose usages were entirely different

48 TORTURES m THE INQUISITION.

from those of secular courts. Hence arose that nefarious system of inquisitorial jurisprudence, whose principles were founded in the most cruel injustice and deceit. False witnesses, delusory promises of pardon to the accused, if they confessed, and a tortuous course of examination, if they did not, which were exchanged for bodily tortures of the most refined cruelty, were the means employed to ensnare the unhappy objects of their suspicion.*

After this terrible tribunal had existed for two

* The following description of the tortures to which the unfortunate victims were usually exposed, may well account for the occasional instances to be met with of their sufferings leading to recantation :

" Having fixed the day when he is to undergo the tortures, he, when that dismal day comes, if he does not prevent it, by such a confession as is expected from him, is led to the place where the rack is, attended by an inquisitor and a public notary, who is to write down the answers the prisoner gives to the questions which shall be put to him by the inquisitor while he is upon the rack. During the time the executioner is preparing that engine of unspeakable cruelty, and is taking off the prisoner's clothes, to his shirt and drawers, the inquisitor is still exhorting the prisoner to have compassion both on his body and soul, and, by making a true and full confession of all his heresies, to prevent his being tortured. But if the prisoner saith that he will suffer any- thing, rather than accuse himself or others falsely, the inquisitor commands the executioner to do his duty, and to begin the torture; which in the Inquisition is given by twisting a small cord hard about the prisoner's naked arms,

MODERN OR SPANISH INQUISITION. 49

centuries and a half, it underwent what its defenders have termed a reform, by which the barbarity and injustice of its old constitution were very greatly increased, making it a still more atrocious engine of persecution than before. After this period, it is known by the name of the modern, or, more properly, the Spanish Inquisition, for this develop- ment originated in Spain, and was subsequently confined to the Peninsula and its dependencies. We have already remarked that the first employ-

and hoisting him up from the ground, by an engine to which the cord is fastened. And, as if the miserable prisoner's hanging in the air by his arms were not enough, he has several quassations or shakes given him, which is done by screwing his body up high, and letting it down again with a jerk, which disjoints his arms ; and, after that, the torture is much more exquisite than it was before.

" When the prisoner is first hoisted from the ground, an hour-glass is turned up, and which, if he does not prevent it by making such a confession of his heresies as the inquisitor, that is present all the while, and is continually asking him questions, expects from him, must run out before he is taken down ; to promise to make such a confession, if they will take him off the rack, not being sufficient to procure him that mercy, no more than his crying out that he shall expire immediately, if they do not give him some ease ; that, as the inquisitors tell us, being no more than all that are upon the rack do think they are ready to do.

" If the prisoner endures the rack without confessing any- thing, which few, or none, though never so innocent, are able to do, as soon as the hour-glass is out, he is taken down, and E

50 TORTURE ON THE RACK.

ment of the Inquisition was against the Albigenses ; the reform, or augmentation, of its powers was demanded on the plea of its previous inefficiency to prevent the increasing relapses of the converted Jews, or New Christians, as they were termed. This people had settled early in the Peninsula, and, by means of their characteristic industry, had, in the fourteenth century, engrossed the wealth of the nation, and risen to great influence, both in Aragon and Castile. Their prosperity had excited the envy

carried back to his prison, where there is a chirurgeon, ready to put his bones in joint. And though, in all other courts, the prisoners having endured the rack without confessing the crimes for which they were tortured, clears them, yet in the Inquisition, where whatsoever humanity and right reason have established in favour of the prisoner is left to the discretion of the judge, it is commonly otherwise; the prisoner that will not confess anything being usually racked twice, and if they stand it out, though few of them can do that, thrice. But if the prisoner makes the confession the inquisitor expects he should on the rack, it is writ down word for word by the notary, and is, after the prisoner has had a day or two's rest, carried to the prisoner, to set his hand to it, which, if the prisoner does, it puts an end to his process, the want of suf&cient evidence to have convicted him being abundantly supplied by this extorted confession, thus signed by him ; and in case the prisoner, when it is brought to him, refuseth to sign it, affirming it to be false, and to have been extorted fx-om him by the extremity of the tor- ture, he is carried back to the rack a second time, to oblige him to repeat and sign the same confession." — Qeddes' Tracts.

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 51

of the populace, who were not slow to gratify their religious prejudices, when the property of their victims was the reward of their zeal. In the year 1391, more than 5000 Jews are said to have been thus massacred, in different cities throughout Spain. Such was the terror with which these wholesale butcheries inspired these persecuted people, that vast crowds of those who escaped purchased their personal safety at the expense of their religion, and submitted to baptism. Under the force of such compulsory influences, it is calculated that nearly a million, in the course of a few years, outwardly renounced Judaism, and made profession of the Catholic faith.*" When the storm of popular persecution had sub- sided, as might be expected, the greater part of these forced converts relapsed into the religion of their fathers, and secretly practised its rites, while publicly professing Christianity. As their sense of safety grew stronger, their precautions diminished, and many were, consequently, discovered by the watchful familiars of the Inquisition, and visited by its weightiest penalties. In one year (1481), more than three hundred relapsed Jews thus perished at the stake j besides whom, seventy-nine were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, t All these victims were

* Mc. Crie, p. 87.

+ Stebbing's History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 281.

52 THE SO-CALLED REFORM

drawn from the single city of Seville, where the fires of the Inquisition were kept so constantly at work, that the prefect was obliged to construct a solid scaffold of stoDC, in a field outside the city walls. Besides these, 2000 underwent a similar fate in various parts of Andalusia, whilst no less than 17,000 were subjected to less extreme penalties. To prevent the entire relapse of these New Christians, a more effective agency was called for ; and hence the reforTn we have mentioned. But the jurisdiction of the modern Inquisition was extended over the Old Christians, as well as the New j and thus to them, likewise, it became a more terrible instrument than before for discovering and punishing waverers in, or wanderers from, the faith.

This remodelling of the Inquisition occurred in the reign of Ferdinand, under whom, as we have already seen, the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile had been finally united. The establishment of the Holy Office in this new and more consolidated and per- manent form, in the latter kingdom, was first sug- gested by Alfonso de Hoycda, prior of the Dominican convent of Seville, and friar Philip de Barberis, Inquisitor of the kingdom of Sicily, which was at that time subject to the crown of Aragon. Ferdi- nand eagerly caught at the suggestion of a plan by which his cofiers would be filled by the confiscated

OP THE SPANISH INQUISITION. 53

property of the condemned, and his power rendered still more despotic ; but Isabella, a princess of a mild and humane character, at first opposed the introduction of so terrible an engine of injustice and cruelty. Means, however, were employed to alarm her conscience, and convince her that the interests of religion imperatively required her acquiescence in the proposed scheme.

The superstitious queen yielded, and authorized her ambassador at Rome to solicit the bull for the establishment of the Inquisition in her kingdom of Castile. The bull for this purpose was readily granted in November, 1478. Isabella, however, suspended its operations for two years, wishing to try gentle measures with the relapsed, before having recourse to the fearful logic of the Holy Ofiice to convince and win back wanderers from the fold of the Roman Church. A catechism was expressly drawn up for their use, embodying the chief argu- ments against Judaism, but to no purpose ; the relapses continued, and increased in number. Ac- cordingly, the powers of the Inquisition were called into action to stem the torrent which milder agencies had opposed in vain. In September, 1480, Ferdi- nand and Isabella, who were then staying at Medina del Campo, appointed two Dominicans as the first inquisitors in the kingdom of Castile, with an assessor

54 EFFICIENCY OF THE INQUISITION

and a fiscal attorney, who established their court in the Dominican convent of St. Paul at Seville, on the 2nd of January, 1481.

In 1483, the two Dominicans were superseded by the famous Thomas de Torquemada, a friar of the same order, and prior of Santa Cruz, in Segovia, a man whose soul was destitute of pity, and who, in cruelty, might almost pass for an incarnation of the evil principle.* He was the first Inquisitor- General of the united kingdoms of Aragon and Castile and their dependencies, with discretionary powers which rendered him in a measure independent both of the . pope and the king. He could refuse obedience to the papal bulls and decretals of which he did not approve, alleging, as his excuse, their infringement on the rights of the Spanish monarchy, whilst he "might in a similar manner evade the authority of the king, by falling back upon the ordinances of the pope, which, under pain of excommunication, forbade his interference with the secular power.

Shortly after his appointment, Torquemada revised the laws of the Inquisition, and framed a new code consisting of twenty-eight articles, based chiefly on the older Guide foi' Inquisitors, of Eymeric. These laws, which were promulgated at Seville in 1484,

* History of Spain cmd Portugal (Lardner's Cyclo.), vol. ii. p. 272.

UNDER TORQUEMADA. 55

are given by Llorente, in the 6th chapter of his History of the Inquisition, a work of peculiar au- thority in all that relates to that tribunal, from the official situation of secretary, held by the author before the compilation of his book.

Under Torquemada and his successor Valdes, the Inquisition was brought to the highest pitch of efficiency, as an instrument for detecting and punish- ing the smallest religious innovation. Spreading like one vast net-work over the land, it embraced all ranks within its terrible web, repressing every effiart at reformation in matters of faith, and shack- ling all the powers of the human mind. Its lynx- eyed familiars were empowered to violate the sanctity of the domestic circle, and intrude at all hours on the privacy of every dwelling in the kingdom, from the baronial castle to the peasant's hut. The feeblest whisper of a thought that overstepped the prescribed boundaries of religious doctrine or practice was caught up, and its incautious author hurried off to expiate his treason against Eome in a dungeon or at the stake. And not only was the actual guilt of heresy visited by such punishment, but failure to give information of its existence wherever known or suspected, was considered of equal enormity, and visited by the heaviest of its penal thunders. On two Sundays during Lent in each year, an edict was

56 MODES OF procedure;

published, branding concealment as a mortal sin, worthy of excommunication or death. The father was commanded to inform against his child, and the wife against her husband. Private malice and selfish fears were alike enlisted to secure information, how- ever false, on which a process could be founded and a victim ensnared.

With such an organization spreading, like a great upas-tree, its deadly branches over every corner of the land, paralyzing its energies and crushing its feeblest attempt at liberty of thought or ac- tion, the Avonder is, not that the light of truth with all its inherent power did not pour its full tide on that benighted country, but that it ever dawned at all. That it did so, in spite of such obstacles as opposed it, is enough to satisfy every one who is acquainted with the character and opera- tions of this tribunal, that but for it Spain would have been behind none of the other nations of Europe in her adoption of, and adherence to, the doctrines of the Reformation. But for it, the thick clouds of error and superstition which blacken her spiritual sky, had long since been dissipated by the true Light of Heaven, and her people been en- lightened and elevated by the saving knowledge which it reveals to our fallen world. Its repressive influence on every aspiration after religious know-

FALSE WITNESSES AND TORTURE. 57

ledge, might be still further illustrated and proved by a passing reference to the mode of process observed by that dread tribunal. We have already said that its method of procedure differed widely from that of the ordinary courts of justice. This will be at once seen. When the Inquisition dis- covered a transgressor of their laws, either by report, by their spies, or by an informer, he was cited three times to appear before them, and if he did not appear he was forthwith condemned by default. The number and watchfulness of their spies rendered absconding all but impossible. When once in their hands, the accused was permitted to have no inter- course with any of his friends. The charges brought against him, and the parties by whom they had been preferred, were both concealed from him. He was allowed to adduce no evidence of his innocence which the ingenuity of his judges could keep back, whilst witnesses of the vilest character, and, it might be, animated by the bitterest enmity towards the prisoner, were listened to, and their evidence against him fully and gladly received. If, after the evidence had been closed, the guilt of the accused were not made out, even to the satisfaction of tlieir laws, torture endeavoured to wring forth a confession that would afford a shade of justification for his consign- ment to the scaffold or the stake. Of this we have

58 TESTIMONY OF HISTORIANS

already spoken, but hear Llorente, the historian lately referred to : — " I do not stop," he says, " to describe the several kinds of torture inflicted on the accused by order of the Inquisition ; this task having been executed with sufficient exactness by a great many historians. On this head, I declare that none of them can be accused of exaggeration, I have read many processes which have struck and pierced me with horror, and I could regard the Inquisitors who had recourse to such methods in no other light than that of cold-blooded barbarians. Suffice it to add, that the council of the Supreme has often been obliged to forbid the repetition of the torture in the same process ; but the inquisitors, by an abominable sophism, have found means to render this prohibition almost useless, by giving the name of suspension to that cessation from torture which is imperiously demanded by the imminent danger to which the victim is exposed of dying among their hands. My pen refuses to trace the picture of these horrors, for I know nothing more opposed to the spirit of charity and compassion, which Jesus Christ inculcates in the Gospel, than this conduct of the inquisitors."

During the first thirty-five years of its existence, from its erection in Castile till the appearance of Luther in Germany, Llorente reckons that, according to the most moderate computation, 13,000 persons

BESPECTING THE INQUISITION. 59

were burned alive, 8700 were burned in effigy, and 169,700 were condemned to various penances; making, in all, 191,400 persons who were condemned by the Inquisition in Spain during that period. This estimate is probably below the truth, for other writers make the numbers much larger. Puigblanch* reckons that, between 1480 and 1520, the number of the condemned in Andalusia was 100,000; whilst in the archbishopric of Seville alone, 45,000 perished at the stake. It was not, however, merely out of the actual cruelties of the Inquisition that its terrible power to arrest the progress of knowledge, and rivet the chains of religious bondage, arose, but from the social degradation which gradually attached to the objects of its condemnation or even suspicion. Instances of escape, when once within its grasp, did not average more than one in a thousand ; and that solitary exception, whom want of evidence might have saved, returned to society lost for ever in public opinion, and branded by a conventional infamy, heavier and blacker than that of the pardoned murderer, and attaching to his remotest posterity. Fear of incurring this, operated more crushingly on the Spanish mind, than dread of the most terrible physical sufferings which the Inquisition could inflict. No doubt, at first, these filled the nation

* Inquisition Unmasked, vol. ii. p. 180.

60 THE BIBLE FOEBIDDEN.

with a sense of insecurity and terror ; but, after a time, such feelings became blunted, and it settled down upon the country as a great moral nightmare, that paralyzed every faculty of the mind, and ex- tinguished every other feeling, but one of crushing and hopeless oppression.

Under the rigorous administration of Torquemada, the Holy Office soon extended its operations against the persons of the heterodox, to the means by which heresy was promulgated. Animated by the true genius of Popery, the Bible speedily became the especial object of its hostility. Not only were translations into the vernacular penally denounced, but the study of the original was forbidden, as heretical and dangerous. In 1490, many copies of the Hebrew text were burned at Seville, by order of Torquemada ; and Llorente tells us that, in an auto-da-fe celebrated about the same time, at Sala- manca, six thousand volumes were condemned, as containing Judaism and magic, and, as such, were committed to the flames. The course thus begun by Torquem.ada was worthily pursued by his suc- cessors. The writings of Lebrixa, a learned gram- marian, were seized by order of Deza, Archbishop of Seville, who was at that time Inquisitor-General, and condemned as heretical, because they contained some grammatical corrections of errors that had crept

LEBRJXA AND THE AECHBISHOP. 61

into the text of the Vulgate. In an apology, subse- quently drawn up by Lebrixa, in his own defence, he says : — " The Archbishop's object was to deter me from writing. He wished to extinguish the know- ledge of the two languages on which our religion depends ; and I was condemned for impiety, because, being no divine, but a mere grammarian, I presumed to treat of theological subjects. If a person en- deavour to restore the purity of the sacred text, and point out the mistakes which have vitiated it, unless he will retract his opinions, he must be loaded with infamy, excommunicated, and doomed to an igno- minious punishment ! Is it not enough that I submit my judgment to the will of Christ in the Scriptures ? Must I also reject as false what is as clear and evident as the light of truth itself? What tyranny ! To hinder a man, under the most cruel pains, from saying what he thinks, though he express himself with the utmost respect for religion — to forbid him to write in his closet or in the solitude of a prison, to speak to himself, or even think ! On what subject shall we employ our thoughts, if we are prohibited from directing them to those sacred oracles which have been the delight of the pious in every age, and on which they have meditated by day and by night r'

The quickness with which the Inquisition became

62 NATIONAL OPPOSITION.

thus formidably organized, must not lead the reader to suppose that its establishment was unopposed by the nation at large. In Aragon, where it had existed in its old and less oppressive form for two centuries and a half before its reform and introduction into Castile, its tyrannical and iniquitous character had been but slowly developed, and consequently had not startled public feeling by any immediate exhibi- tion of its execrable character and tendencies ; but in the latter kingdom, both were at once evident, as the tribunal was first presented to the unprepared Castilians in its remodelled and more terrible form. The cortes of Castile joined with those of Catalonia and Aragon, in representing to Ferdinand the miseries it would be the means of inflicting on the country, and prayed for its suppression. Failing in this, they urged for a radical reform in its cruel and tyrannic laws, but equally in vain. The crafty policy of that monarch would not readily surrender an instrument of so much power in crushing the liberties of his subjects, and firmly establishing his own despotism on the ruins of Spanish freedom. Though far from being a tyrant, his ideas of the kingly prerogative were such as freed him from all scruples in availing himself of its nefarious aid ; and to this end he resisted all inducements held forth to procure even a modification of its oppressive

BRANCH OFFICES. 63

character. In the year 1512, an offer of 600,000 crowns was made by the New Christians, to help him in carrying on the war in which he subjugated Navarre, merely on condition that the evidence given in the Inquisitorial courts should be published ; but his wily Minister, Cardinal Ximenez, prevented even this concession, by placing a counter-sum at the disposal of his wavering master„ And four years later, when a similar offer was made to Charles V., on similar conditions, the Cardinal again interfered, and saved his favourite organization from suffering any curtailment of its iniquitous powers.

Not satisfied with this, he extended its benefits to the colonial dependencies of Spain. Branch tribu- nals were established in Cuba in America, and in Oran in Africa, modelled after their blood-stained original at home. After repeated but abortive attempts to free themselves from this oppressive yoke, the people submitted, and in time became reconciled, by habit, to its proceedings, — not only so, indeed, but, harmo- nizing as it did ostensibly with the orthodox faith, the maintenance of whose purity was the avowed object of its existence, the Inquisition, which had at first filled every breast with fear, became eventually the object of the nation's warmest veneration. Yet this resulted from no good feature which its practical working brought to light. It was still the same

64 THE SOLITARY DUNGEON.

huge monument of fanaticism, treacliery, and cruelty — an engine of priestly tyranny charged with destruc- tion to the religious and civil well-being of Spain.

As we look back on the crimsoned pages of its history, from the stand-point of light and liberty which we enjoy, we can but very imperfectly realize the idea of its essentially atrocious character and tendencies. The mind may sicken as it pictures to itself huge buildings, on whose black and furrowed walls the sun rose and set for long ages, without the wretched inmates of the damp and noisome dungeons within receiving one ray of light or comfort from his beams. The imagination may carry us back, and enable us to penetrate those sable piles, on which whole generations looked with terror and dismay, and show us, in the darkness and pestilential atmo- sphere of their cells, a husband torn from his wife, a mother from her agonized children, an only and beloved child from his heart-broken parents, or a priest of exemplary piety from his widowed and attached flock. There, alone and helpless in the solitary dungeon, more like a huge grave than a prison, year after year, it might be, passed away ; the monotony of their confinement being broken in upon only by the efforts of their tormentors to extort self- accusation, by the hellish applications of the pulley, the chafing-dish, or the rack. Hope, like the light

FURTHER OBSTACLES TO THE REFORMATION. 65

of heaven, was shut out ; and the wretched victims^ cut off from all the endearments and companionships of life^ dragged out their gloomy existence in silence and despair. Yet to this tremendous empire of terror was given the superintendence and guardianship of a religion whose Author was the very incarnation of meekness, charity, forbearance, and love ! By the practice of cruelties, at the thoughts of which the blood almost freezes in one's veins, it professed to defend and joropagate that Gospel which He exhorted his disciples to diffuse by inculcating and practising the precepts which they had learnt from Him, and seen exemplified in his spotless life. To us it may seem a wonder, that it was not levelled to the ground by the rude hand of popular indignation, long cen- turies before its suppression ; but we forget how completely it had paralyzed the nation, and deprived it of all power of resistance.

But the Holy Office, though the chief was not the only obstacle to the spread of the reformed doctrines in the Peninsula. Other causes, to which it mainly ' gave birth, contributed to perpetuate the religious bondage which it had effectually imposed on the minds of the people. In acceding to its establish- ment, the crafty Ferdinand had well foreseen how thoroughly it would crush the civil liberties of the nation, and place the whole powers of government, P

66 ORTHODOXY, NATIONAL HONOUR,

without limitation or control, in his own hands. Tliis it did. The old jealousies, too, existing between the nobles and the people, were made use of in es- tablishing the royal despotism over both. The independent domains of the former had long afforded secure asylums to the persecuted ; but these privi- leged enclosures were invaded by Cardinal Ximenez, when, by flattering the commons, without adding to their real consequence, he deprived the nobility of many of their most important immunities. They, in their turn, sided with the King in his attack on the liberties of the people, and thus helped to consummate a despotism which was equally fatal to the civil and religious freedom of the nation at large.

The prominence in the defence and propagation of Catholicism, thus forced upon Spain by the Inqui- sition and its allied agencies, gradually implanted in the Spanish mind the notion, that any deviation from the orthodox faith was a stain upon the nation's honour. Hence the national pride became enlisted on the anti-reformation side. A people who looked upon their contests with Jews, Moors, and Moriscoes, in their efforts to banish every blemish from their own cherished orthodoxy, as the noblest achieve- ments in the annals of their nation's glories, were not the most likely to embrace doctrines banned by

AND NATIONAL AMBITION. 67

the oracles of their faith as the most damnable of all heresies. Hence, too, the religious fanaticism which led to, and in their eyes justified, the cruelties which they inflicted on the natives of the New World. Then, as now, with Popery, the end was considered to sanctify the means. The spread of the Catholic faith was, in their opinion, the high and holy commission which their honoured nation had been chosen to execute ; and so as that was accom- plished, they were little scrupulous about means. We cannot doubt that Columbus himself was animated, to some extent, by such an ambition. He was too much permeated by the religious zeal of his time, to be influenced by a passion for nautical discovery alone, in braving the discouragements and dangers against which his indomitable spirit so heroically and successfully contended. Still more evident was the influence of his proselyting zeal on the conduct of those who followed him in establishing the Spanish authority in the New World. But with this they associated baser motives, from which he had been free. How unlikely, then, was a nation, that gloried in its championship of the faith, to permit its own sacred soil to be polluted by the seeds of heresy !

In addition to these causes which operated against the success of Protestantism in Spain, it must not be forgotten how much it was the interest of Charles V.,

6S OPPOSITION OF CHARLES V.

in whose reign the great struggle for emancipation from reh'gious thraldom began, to cultivate the friendship of Kome. " The Emperor Charles," said Luther, a few days after the landing of this prince at Genoa, "has determined, to show himself more cruel against us than the Turk himself ; and he has already uttered the most horrible threats. Behold the haur of Christ's agony and weakness. Let us pray for all those who will soon have to endure captivity and death." Nor were the Reformer's anticipations groundless. The political interests of the Emperor, no less than his personal attachment to the Catholic faith, helped to keep him faithful to his coronation oath, before Clement VII., at Bologna : — " I swear to be, with all my powers and resources, the perpetual defender of the pontifical dignity, and of the Church of Rome." The spirit of deadly antipathy to the reformed doctrines, which animated himself and his soldiers in their wars in Germany, was transmitted to Spain, and there intensified by the causes to which reference has been made, as well as by the subsequent triumph of the Reformation in the German empire and elsewhere. But it required the combined operation of all these opposing causes, to shut out the rays of that sun which had arisen on Europe with healing on his wings. But for their united antagonism, the beams of light which forced

TO THE REFORMATION. 69

their way over the Pyrenees, through the ungenial atmosphere of France, would have dispelled for ever the spiritual darkness that hung, and still hangs, like a great plague-cloud, shutting out " life and immor- tality in the Gospel" from Spain. But even her thick mists of superstition and ignorance shall yet be penetrated by its brightness, for the word of our covenant- keeping God is pledged, that "the know- ledge of the Lord shall cover the earthy as the waters cover the sea."

70 HOW THE LUTHERAN DOCTKINES

i,\K^tix imtt\.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE REFORMATION IN SPAIN.

Having in the previous chapters glanced at the state of Spain, political and ecclesiastical, down to the time of the Eeformation, and at the chief obsta- cles against which the reformed doctrines had to contend, we pass on to notice the means by which they were introduced into the Peninsula. . We have seen how unfavourably Spain was situated for the reception and spread of the doctrines which Luther and his followers were disseminating so widely through Germany, at the beginning of the 16th century. A powerful priesthood, with scaffolds and treasures at its disposal, held the country bound hand and foot. The least indication of disaffection asfainst the established faith was visited with its

WERE INTRODUCED INTO SPAIN. 71

speedy and terrible vengeance. The general atten- tion, too, of the nation was engrossed by the treasures which Columbus had revealed in the far west, and heeded not the more enduring and nobler riches which Luther was bringing to light, and holding up to men in all their heavenly brightness, freed from the incrustations of error and superstition with which Rome had overlaid them. But at the bottom the Spanish were a religiously disposed race. In the early ages of the Church's history they had clung stedfastly to the simple faith of the Gospel, and Popery, with all its debasing and stupefying in- fluences, cojild not destroy the essential nobility in their national character. Now and then it showed that it still lived, fettered and partially corrupted though it had been.

The introduction of the reformed opinions into Spain might be looked for as a natural consequence of the intimate connection between that country and Germany at the time when the Reformation began. This connection produced a frequency of communica- tion, for political purposes, which opened up an easy way for the extension of the Lutheran doctrines to the Peninsula. Several of the Reformers' works were, at an early period of the religious movement in Germany, transmitted to Spain, and were there translated into the vernacular and extensively cir-

72 BELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

culated amongst the common people. The corres- pondence with their friends at home of many men of ability and learning, who had crossed the Pyrenees and gone to the Netherlands or Germany, for pur- poses of commerce or as attendants of the imperial court, served to make the proceedings in the latter country still more generally known, and to excite amongst the Spaniards a spirit of inquiry as to the nature and progress of the dispute in which Luther was then engaged with the Church of Rome. But, besides curiosity, there were other and more weighty reasons why they should feel a deep interest in the Reformation. Suffering as they were from the odious tyranny of the Inquisition, they would eagerly catch at any chance of emancipation from its thraldom ; and any information, consequently, which was given them respecting the daring attack on the domination of the Romish hierarchy, would inspire all who were possessed of any freedom of thought with a wish to join in the struggle for religious liberty. Spain could boast of many such persons at the time we write of — men who were anxious to enlighten their ignorant and deluded countrymen, and, if need be, to do battle for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.

Foremost in this honourable band of men who became acquainted with the truth, and laboured to

JUAN VALDES. 73

make it known in Spain, stands the name of Juan Valdes.

There is reason to believe that this good man and true patriot was the first convert to the Protestant doctrines in the Peninsula. Some have thought that they were embraced first by some members of the order of Franciscans, because the General of that brotherhood obtained from the Pope (Clement VII.) in 1526, power to absolve such of the brethren as had imbibed the reformed opinions, and were willing to recant. This, however, must be con- sidered rather as a prospective privilege, exempting the Franciscans from the authority of the Inquisi- tion, whose officers belonged to the rival order of Dominicans.

Valdes was descended from a good family, and had received a liberal education at the University of Alcala. Having attached himself to the imperial court, he left Spain in the year 1535, in company with the Emperor, by whom he was sent to act as secretary to the Viceroy of Naples, which kingdom, as we have already noticed in the first chapter, belonged at that time to Spain. Before leaving his native land, however, Valdes had embraced many of the Lutheran doctrines, from the books which, as we have remarked, had been largely though privately circulated in the Peninsula. He had been one of

74 HERETICAL PROPOSITIONS.

the earliest of those into whose hands these books had fallen, and had no sooner become a convert to the doctrines which they inculcated, than he laboured hard, and not unsuccessfully, to promote their circulation amongst his countrymen. That he had been thus early imbued with the reformed opinions, appears from a treatise drawn up by him, and called Advice on the Interpreters of Sacred Scripture. This tract was originally written in the form of a letter to his friend Bartolom6 Carranza, afterwards Archbishop of Toledo, and subsequently the victim of a painful and protracted persecution by the Inquisition for the freedom of his opinions.* Being found amongst his papers, this treatise formed one of the heaviest articles of charge against him. It contained, amongst others, the following proposi- tions : — First, " that in order to understand the Sacred Scriptures, we must not rely on the interpretation of the Fathers." Second, "that we are justified by a lively faith in the sufferings and death of our Sa- viour." And third, " that we may attain to certainty concerning our justification." But this " advice," though containing most of the essential doctrines of the Protestant creed, is not without traces of the transcendental divinity of John Tauler, a distin- guished German ecclesiastic of the Hth century.

* See the Appendix.

HODRIGO DE VALER. 75

Tauler belonged to the class of divines usually called Mystics, who, disgusted with the dry and abstruse theology of the scholastic divines, ran into the oppo- site extreme, and resolved religion into contempla- tion and meditation, and dwelt mainly on the love of God and the sufferings of Christ, without incul- cating the necessity of clear and distinct views of divine truth. Luther himself, at an early period of his life, had been greatly attached to the writings of Tauler, and had republished part of them under the title of German Theology,

Though absent from Spain, Valdes contributed greatly to the spread of the reformed doctrines by his writings, which were published in Spanish, and widely circulated amongst his countrymen. He published a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and another on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, both of which did good service as testimonies to the truth in Spain.

But it required a more daring spirit than that of Yaldes to unfurl and defend the banner of the Cross in the land of the Inquisition, and that spirit was raised up. The seed which the writings of Juan Valdes had sown, bore fruit under the fearless and unflinching culture of Rodrigo de Valer. Like Valdes, De Valer had sprung from a noble family. He was born at Lebrixa, about thirty miles from the city

76 "the entrance of thy word

of Seville, and, like others of his rank, had been reared amid the gaieties and dissipations which pre- vailed amongst the wealthy and luxurious grandees of Spain. In Seville, where he chiefly resided, he was foremost in every scene of fashionable amuse- ment and gallantry, outvying his companions in the splendour of his equipage and the costly extrava- gance of his dress. But a change came over the spirit of his mind, as complete as it was sudden. His usual haunts of pleasure were abandoned, and his dissipated companions forsaken for ever. The leader of fashion was found no longer in his former place. Shut up in the retirement of his closet, he had withdrawn himself for a time from the outward world, to give himself up to meditation and prayer. By some happy accident, he had fallen in with and perused some of the Lutheran books which Valdes and others had introduced into Spain ; led by them to view religion as he had never done before, he procured a copy of the Scriptures, and studied it prayerfully in the retirement of his home. The only copy he could procure was the Vulgate ; he studied Latin, with which he had been previously slightly acquainted, and mastered its contents, and was led by the knowledge thus given him, to see the vile superstitions and soul-destroying character of Popery. And when this grand revelation had been made to

GIVETH LIGHT." 77

his mind, he did not selfishly conceal it in the privacy of his own bosom, but in the true spirit of every one who has felt its regenerating powers, sought to make known to others that truth which had sav- ingly dawned upon his own mind. He returned to society, but another spirit was upon him. He was a new man. His life had a high and holy purpose, and manfully he wrought it out. Seeking the society of the monks and friars, he set before them, at first gently and afterwards more severely, the sad corruption of the Church, both in faith and practice ; he exhorted them to attempt its reform, and to set before the people, both by precept and example, a living picture of pure and primitive Christianity. Amongst his friends and acquaintances he intro- duced similar topics, and appealed to the sacred writings as the only rule of life and conduct for man. The efforts thus made to spread a knowledge of the truth, were not without their beneficial effects. His hearers became more numerous and attentive. The Lutheran books, which he scrupled not openly to recommend, were eagerly sought for and carefully studied, and thus many were brought to the know- ledge of salvation.

But the [nquisition was not unobservant of his proceedings. The results which we have mentioned were accomplished in a very short space of time.

78 CONFISCATION AND IMPRISONMENT.

The ever-watchful familiars soon cut short his in- structions. He was brought before the Inquisitors, and at his examination openly avowed and defended the doctrines which he had publicly taught. His fate would have been sure and speedy, had it not been for the influence of some powerful individuals, who had secretly imbibed his doctrines, and exerted themselves on his behalf. This, joined to the purity of his descent and the exalted rank of his family, procured for him on the ground of reported insanity, a milder sentence than so open and dangerous a heretic would otherwise have received ; his property was confiscated and himself set at liberty.

But the dauntless Valer was not to be deterred. He felt that he had received a commission, and he was resolved to fulfil it. Neither loss of property nor threats of severer punishment, could induce him to be silent on his great theme. Again was his voice raised to denounce the errors of Popery, and make known to a people perishing for lack of knowledge, the pure and simple truths of the ever- lasting Gospel. But it was soon silenced in the dungeons of the Inquisition, whence he was speedily transferred, in the year 1541, as a prisoner for life, to a monastery belonging to San Lucar, a town near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, where he died about the age of fifty. The sanbenito, or cloak of infamy,

DR. EGIDIO. 79

which he had been compelled to wear, was hung up in the Cathedral of Seville, with this inscription : — Eodrigo Valer, a citizen of Lebrixa and Seville, an apostate and false apostle, who pretended to be sent of God."

De Valer had not worked in vain. He left behind him followers able and willing to carry on the work which he had begun. The man whom we next meet with labouring in the same cause was Juan Gil, usually called Dr. Egidio. This worthy disciple and successor of De Valer, was born at Olvera, a Town in Aragon, and educated at the same univer- sity as Valdes, where he gained great distinctioya for his profound acquaintance with scholastic theology. On leaving Alcala, he was appointed to the chair of divinity at Siguenza, and soon after was chosen Canon Magistral in the metropolitan church of Seville. But, though a profound theologian, he proved an unpopular preacher, and soon felt the consciousness of this so keenly that he became anxious to resign his office. At this juncture he became acquainted with De Valer. The secret of his unpopularity was soon discovered, and the de- fect which had rendered his discourses so dry and unprofitable, was remedied by a diligent and prayer- ful perusal of the word of God. Henceforth a new spirit animated his sermons ; no longer cold

80 CAUTION OF EGIDTO.

and abstruse, he tenderly but powerfully appealed to the hearts and consciences of his hearers, and became as popular as he had been previously dis- liked. But this change in his preaching had higher and more valuable results than mere empty fame. He opened up to his audience the grand truths of the Gospel, showed them its complete adaptation to meet all the wants and longings of the human heart, and warned them to place no confi- dence in mere rites and ceremonies, but in the method of salvation made known in the Gospel. But, thoroughly alive to the perilous position which he occupied, he made known these truths with such prudential caution as screened him from the dan- gerous notice which would otherwise have been taken of his teaching. By this watchful and neces- sary prudence, he was enabled to continue undis- turbed and unsuspected his work of enlightenment in Seville. De Montes, one of his own converts, thus describes the character and effect of his instruc- tions : — "Among the other gifts divinely bestowed on this holy man, was the singular faculty which he had of kindling in the breast of those who listened to his teaching a sacred flame which ani- mated them in all the exercises of piety, internal and external, and made them not only willing to take up the Cross, but cheerful, in the prospect of

VARGAS AND CONST ANTINE. 81

the sufferings of which they stood in jeopardy every hour ; a clear proof that the Master whom he served was present with him, by His Spirit, engraving the doctrine which he taught on the hearts of his hearers." *

But Egidio was not alone in his efforts to spread abroad a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Besides those who, like himself, had been brought to it by the instructions of De Valer, he was him- self honoured to make converts who should carry on the work of God in benighted Spain. The most distinguished of these were Doctor Vargas and Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, who had been his fellow-students at Alcala. In concert with these friends, Egidio carried on the dissemination of the reformed doctrines more widely than his own un- aided efforts enabled him previously to effect. Still, the same wise caution was observed, and nothing so said or done that could fairly expose them to the suspicion of heresy. Their zeal, however, had the effect of calling forth the counter-diligence of the clergy, who inculcated with renewed energy the necessity of all the religious observances, prayers, fastings, and penances, which the church of Rome insists on as necessary to salvation. For a time their long acknowledged authority swayed the great

* Inquidtionis Hispanicce Artes Detects, p. 231. G

8'2 CONSTANCY OF EGIDIO

mass of the people, but the perseverance of Egidio and his friends, added to their prudence, acknow- ledged piety, and purity of life, gradually subdued the prejudices which their opponents had succeeded in raising against them. During the day, their time was profitably occupied in the public discharge of their clerical duties, and their evenings were gene- rally spent in planning those measures which would be most conducive to the furtherance of the great work in which they were engaged. By this means they soon obtained large and attentive audiences, to whom they made known the glad tidings which the Gospel reveals to man. From Seville, as a centre, these salutary influences spread into the surrounding country, and there rested, as bread cast upon the waters, which was to appear after many days. Their increasing popularity at length aroused the sus- picions of the Holy Office, whose detective agencies were soon put into operation. At this juncture the friends were separated ; Vargas died, and Constan- tine was removed to the Low Countries. Thus stripped of his allies, the noble Egidio was left to bear the weight of the gathering storm. But he quailed not ; his trust was in Him whose glory he was endeavouring to promote, and he feared not what man could do unto him. The resentment of his enemies was still further inflamed at this time

WHEN SEIZED BY THE INQUISITION. 83

by his nomination, by the Emperor, to the vacant bishopric of Tortosa, one of the richest sees in Spain. They resolved to prevent his obtaining it, and, to this end, at once denounced him as a heretic to the Inquisition. He was seized and thrown into its dungeons, notwithstanding the influence which Charles exerted on his behalf. He was charged with maintaining and publicly teaching the doctrine of salvation by faith, and condemning the Popish doc- trines of the sufficiency of good works, purgatory, auricular confession, and the worship of images and saints. The defence which he drew up, contained a full statement of his views on justification, and the grounds on which he held them. The frankness which this document displayed, gave a handle to his foes, which they were not slow in making use of. His situation now became eminently dangerous, and justly excited the alarm of his friends. All their influence was employed on his behalf. The Emperor wrote in his favour to the Inquisitor-General, whose clemency was likewise supplicated by the Chapter of Seville, with whom Egidio had been unusually popular. This, added to the exertions of many of the nobility on behalf of their favourite preacher, led the Inquisitors to adopt a more moderate course than they would otherwise have pursued. The charges against him were allowed to be submitted

84 TREACHERY OF SOTO.

to two special arbiters, chosen, one by the accused, and the other by the Holy Office. Egidio chose Domingo de Soto, a Dominican friar, and professor at Salamanca, who was his professed friend, and had privately declared his attachment to the reformed doctrine. It was agreed between the prisoner and his arbiter, that both should draw up a paper con- taining his own views on the disputed doctrine of justification, and that these should be read before the Inquisitors. On the day of trial, Egidio and Soto were placed at considerable distance from each other, in the cathedral of Seville, where, by a special deviation from the usual custom, the arguments were to be heard, Soto read first, and, at the end of each proposition, looked to Egidio for approval of what he had advanced. In full reliance on the honesty of his supposed friend, this was given ; though the dis- tance prevented his distinctly making out what was being read. This was in direct contradiction of what Egidio next gave forth as his sentiments on the doc- trines at issue. The two declarations thus clashing, judgment was at once pronounced on the accused, as guilty of the Lutheran heresy. The influence already exerted on his behalf saved him from the stake, but he was condemned "to abjure the pro- positions imputed to him, to be imprisoned for three years, to abstain from writing or teaching for ten

CONSEQUENT CONDEMNATION OF EGIDIO. 85

years, and not to leave the kingdom during that period, under pain of being punished as a formal or relapsed lieretic," in other words, of being burned alive. It was not till after his return to prison, that he learned the baseness of the treacherous Soto.

This account of the trial is given by De Montes, who received his information from Egidio himself in prison. The condemnation of the bishop-elect was the signal for a rush of hungry candidates for the rich see of Tortosa. The most fulsome flattery was poured in, from all side3, on Cardinal Granville, who was at that time bishop of Anas, and prime minister of Spain. A specimen or two of the appli- cations will give the reader an idea of the disin- terested zeal with which the holy fathers urged their respective claims and fitness for the office sought for. One writes to the Cardinal thus : — " I shall be in- finitely obliged to you to think of me — the least of your servants — provided his lordship of Elna shall be translated to the bishopric of Tortosa, now vacant." This applicant was a modest monk, who desired promotion "only for the good of the Church." " His lordship of Elna," referred to, in seeking for translation, surpassed his less exalted rival in the humility of his application. Addressing the Car- dinal, without at first mentioning his object, he begs him, as a preparative, to command him "as the

86 SAMPLES OF SPANISH CLERGY

meanest domestic of his household," and then en- larging on the many and rare excellencies of his eminence, which had everywhere gained him such profound affection and respect, he winds up by as- suring the Cardinal, that he constantly remembered him "in his poor sacrifices, the fittest time to make mention of one's master." Waxing more courageous in his second letter, the disinterested bishop, fully conscious of his own imperfections, acknowledges that the duties of the Tortosan see were " too heavy a burden for his weak shoulders," but declares that his pious exercises would be less interrupted in it than in Roussillon, where he was constantly dis- turbed by the din of war, which opposed his " strong desire to end his days in tending his infirm sheep in the peace of God." Failing in his application, the persevering prelate renewed it during the following year, and tried another line of argument. He re- minded the Cardinal, that his majesty had certain dues in Valencia which were largely in arrear, as would be seen by the lists which he, having the king's interests deeply at heart, had drawn up and now sent to the premier, whom he disinterestedly 'assured that he would see that these arrears should be paid up if he were installed in the vacant see, as he should then "have it in his power to serve God and the king at the same time." His lordship of

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 87

Algerl, in Sardinia, which then belonged to Spain, in wishing to be transferred to the peninsular bishopric, " was not influenced by avarice in making his request," but was only anxious to be in a posi- tion in which he would be " at more liberty to serve God, and pray for the life of the king and his minister" the Cardinal.* Ah his disce omnes.

Such were the Spanish clergy in the 16th cen- tury. With such guardians, religion might well degenerate into superstition, even had they not brought to bear upon it, in addition, the corrupting influences of full-blown Popery. Well might the broad shadows of spiritual night hang thick and heavy over the most magnificent country in the world — the fertile land of the vine and olive !

After lingering for some months in the dungeons of the Inquisition, Egidio was brought forth amongst the criminals who were condemned to penance, in an auto-da-fe (act of faith) celebrated in Seville in the year 1552.t Having fulfilled the term of his

* Geddes' Miscellaneoits Tracts, p. 461.

i- The interest of the following description of an auto-da- fe, by an eye-witness, will excuse the length of the quota- tion : —

" In the morning of the day, the prisoners are all brought into a great hall, where they have the habits put on they are to wear in the procession, which begins to come out of the Inquisition about 9 o'clock in the morning. The first

88 GEDDES' DESCRIPTION

imprisonment, he was liberated in 15 5 (\. But the damp dungeons, and other cruelties to which he had

in the procession are the Dominicans, who carry the standard of the Inquisition, wiiich on one side hath their founder Dominick's picture, and on the other side the cross, betwixt an olive tree and a sword, with this motto, Justitia et Mis- ericordia [Justice and Mercy]. Next after the Dominicans come the penitents, some with benitoes and some without, according to the nature of their crime. They are all in black coats without sleeves, and barefooted, with a wax candle in their hands. Next come the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burned, who over their black coats have flames painted, with their points turned downwards, to signify their having been saved, but so as by fire ; this habit is called by the Portuguese feugo revolto. Next come the negative and the relapsed, that are to be burnt, with flames on their habits pointing upwards. Next come those who profess doctrines contrary to the faith of the Roman Church, and who, besides flames on their habits pointing upward, have their picture, which is drawn two or three days before, upon their breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all with open mouths, painted about it. Pregna, a famous Spanish Inquisitor, calls this procession, ' Horren- dum ac tremendum spectaculum' [a horrid and frightful sight] ; and so it is in truth, there being something in the looks of all the prisoners, besides those that are to be burnt, that is ghastly and disconsolate beyond what can be imagined; and in the eyes and countenances of those that are to be burnt, there is something that looks fierce and eager. The prisoners that are to be burnt alive, besides a familiar which all the rest have, have a Jesuit on each side of them, who are continually preaching them to abjure their heresies ; but if they offer to speak anything in defence

OF AN AUTO-DA-FE. 89

been subjected, had ruined his constitution, and rendered him unfit even to attempt a renewal of

of the doctrines they are going to suffer death for professing, they are immediately gagged, and not suffered to speak a word more. This I saw done to a prisoner presently after he came out of the gates of the Inquisition, upon his having looked up to the sun, which he had not seen before in several years, and cried out in rapture, ' How is it possible for people that behold that glorious body to worship any being but Him that created if?' After the prisoners comes a troop of familiars on horseback, and after them the In- quisitors and other officers of the court upon mules ; and last of all comes the Inquisitor-General, upon a white horse led by two men, with a black hat and a green hatband, and attended by all the nobles that are not employed as familiars in the procession. In the Zimeiro de Paco, which may be as far from the Inquisition as Whitehall is from Temple Bar, there is a scaffold erected, which may hold 2000 or 8000 people ; at the one end sit the Inquisitors, and at the other end the prisoners, and in the same order as they walked in the procession, those that are to be burnt being seated on the highest benches behind the rest, which may be ten feet above the floor of the scaffold.

"The prisoners are no sooner in the hands of the civil magistrate, than they are loaded with chains before the eyes of the Inquisitors, and being carried first to the secular gaol, are, within an hour or two, brought from thence before the Lord Chief Justice, who, without knowing anything of their particular crimes, or of the evidence that was against them, asks them one by one in what religion they do intend to die. If they answer that they will die in the communion of the Church of Rome, they are condemned by him to be carried forthwith to the place of execution, and there to

90 PRIESTLY CONSOLATION

his labour in the cause of truth The hand of death was upon him. But he had "fought a good fight," and looked forward with a well-grounded confidence to the " cro wn of righteousness " which was laid up as his reward. He visited Valladolid, and found

be strangled, and afterwards burnt to ashes. But if they say they will die in the Protestant or in any other faith that is contrary to the Roman, they are then sentenced to be carried forthwith to the place of execution and there to be burnt alive. At the place of execution, which at Lisbon is the Ribera, there are so many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a good quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, as the Inquisitors call them, may be about four yards high, and have a small board, whereon the prisoner is to be seated, within half a yard of the top. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed go up a ladder betwixt the two Jesuits which have attended them all day; and when they have come even with the forementioned board, they turn about to the people, and the Jesuits spend a quarter of an hour in exhorting the professed to be reconciled to the Church of Rome; which if they refuse to be, the Jesuits come down, and the executioner ascends ; and having turned the professed off the ladder upon the seat, and chained their bodies close to the stake, he leaves them; and the Jesuits go up to them a second time to renew their exhortation to them; and at parting tell them that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him into the flames of hell-fire, so soon as they are out of their bodies. Upon this there is a great shout, and as soon as the Jesuits are off the ladder, the cry is, " Let the dogs' beards, let the

AT THE STAKE. 91

that the good work had been begun there too. On his return to Seville he was seized with a fever, which cut him off in a few days, but not till the cause, which his imprisonment had greatly tended to discourage, had been revived by the return of his old friend Constantino from the Netherlands. After

dogs' beards be made;" wbich is done by thrusting flaming furze, fastened to a pole, against their faces. And this inhumanity is commonly continued till their faces are burnt to a coal, and is always accompanied with such loud ac- clamations of joy as are not to be heard on any other occasion; a bull-feast or a farce being dull entertainments to the using a professed heretic thus inhumanly. The professed beards being thus made or trimmed, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the furze, which are at the bottom of the stake, and above which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they rest on ; and if there happens to be a wind, to which that place is much exposed, it seldom reaches so high as their knees; so that though if there be a calm, the professed are commonly dead in about half an hour after the furze is set on fire ; yet, if the weather prove windy, they are not dead after that in an hour and a half or two hours, and so are really roasted and not burnt to death. But though out of hell, there cannot possibly be a more lamentable spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers' crying out (so long as they are able to speak), " Misericordia por amour de Dios" [Mercy for the love of God], yet it is beheld by people of both sexes and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction as are not on any other occasion to be met with." — Geddes' Miscellaneous Tracts.

92 THE REFORMED DOCTRINES

his death, Montanus tells us the bones of Egidio were taken from the grave and burned, and his memory declared infamous by a sentence of the Inquisition, when they found he had died in the Lutheran faith. *

Next to Seville, the reformed doctrines had made more progress in Valladolid than in any other city in Spain. The circumstances attending their in- troduction were hardly less extraordinary than those which led to their reception in Seville. A painfully interesting account of the persecution to which the adherents to the truth were there and elsewhere exposed, is given in Clarke's Martyrology, a book which furnishes, perhaps, the AiUest historical account to be met with of the persecution of Protestants throughout all the countries of Europe. From it we take, substantially, the following episode in the history of the reformed religion in Valladolid. t In 1540, a young merchant, named Francisco San- Roman, a native of Burgos, in Spain, was sent by his employers from Antwerp, where he conducted their affairs, to Bremen, to transact some mercantile business. Some time before this, the Lutheran doctrines had been introduced into Bremen, and

* For further particulars of his life and persecution, see Cla/rke's Mwrtyrology, p. 167. t Page 159.

IN VALLADOLID. 93

the youDg merchant, anxious to know something about opinions which had been so much decried and anathematized in Spain, went into one of the re- formed churches to hear them for himself. The preacher was James Spreng, formerly an Augustan monk, and one of the first who had embraced the reformed religion in the Low Countries. The young Spaniard was so much impressed with what he heard, that he called on the preacher after the sermon to converse upon the disputed doctrines of the Romish and Reformed creeds. Spreng was much pleased with the candour and earnestness of the inquirer, and introduced him to several of his friends. Under the influence of their instructions, he soon became a zealous convert to the truth, and longed to make it known in all its fulness and purity to his be- nighted countrymen at home. Spreng, alive to the danger of such an attempt, counselled his enthusiastic convert not to expose himself to peril, but his burn- ing zeal could not be controlled. He wrote to Antwerp to his employers, and informed them of his conversion to the Lutheran faith, stating at the same time his determination to return to Spain to proclaim its doctrines there. As might be expected, he was seized and thrown into prison on his return to Antwerp, when once more within the jurisdiction of Rome.

94 FRANCISCO SAN-ROM AN'S

After an imprisonment of eight months, he was released through the influence of his friends, who engaged that he should be sent to Spain, and there carefully watched. At Louvain he met with Francisco Enzinas, likewise a native of Burgos, and whom we shall again meet with, who advised him to exercise a prudential caution, as any rash or indiscreet expression of his opinions would efiectually deprive him of all power to promote the cause he had at heart. This he promised to observe, but having gone to the diet of Eatisbon, at which the Reformers and their opponents were then discussing the doctrines at issue between them, San-Roman forgot his prudent resolves. Having obtained an introduction to the Emperor, who was present at the diet, he implored him to put an end to the Inquisition, and encourage the introduction of the reformed religion into Spain. The crafty Charles, who was then anxious to conciliate the Protestants of Germany, with a view of securing their aid in an anticipated war with France, as well as against the Turks in Hungary, gave apparent encouragement to San-Roman to begin the work of enlightening his countrymen. Emboldened by this, he renewed his application, but with worse success. At the command of Charles, he was quietly confined in chains, and reserved for trial before the Inquisition of Valladolid.

HEROIC LIFE AND DEATH. 95

After the return of the Emperor to Spain, San- Eoman was delivered over to the Holy Office. At his trial he openly avowed his adherence to the reformed religion, and entire rejection of all the errors of Popery. No promises of pardon could induce him to recant. A long and painful imprison- ment failed to break down his dauntless spirit or overcome his unbending resolution. Finding him proof alike against threats and promises, the In- quisitors doomed him to the stake as an obstinate heretic. At the place of execution, the offer of pardon was again renewed, but rejected on the proposed conditions of recantation. The pile was lighted, and his spirit mounted up on its chariot of fire to the reward of its faithfulness above. This occurred in 1544.

Instead of suppressing the new doctrines, as was expected, the martyrdom of San- Roman imparted a fresh energy to the infant cause in Valladolid, and helped to bind together its adherents in a firmer and closer alliance for the propagation of the truth. Up to this time they had concealed their attach- ment to the reformed religion, but now the most timid became brave, and prepared themselves, if need be, to evince a zeal and magnanimity on its behalf equal to that which had been displayed by San- Roman. Hitherto they had been scattered over

96 DOMINGO DE ROXAS.

Valladolid, in many instances unknown to eacli other, but they now formed themselves into a church, and met regularly for the purposes of mutual instruction and of worship, according to the rites of the Lutheran Church.

Their first pastor was Domingo de Roxas, son of Don Juan, first Marquis de Poza. He had been edu- cated under Bartolom^ de Carranza for the church, and at an early age had entered into the order of Dominicans. From Carranza he had imbibed reli- gious opinions much more liberal than those which were commonly current amongst the Spanish clergy ; and, less timid than his instructor, Roxas was bolder in his speculations, and less reserved in avowing them. Yet whilst openly advocating doctrines closely allied to those against which the ban of his church had been conderaningly set, he cautiously accom- panied his innovations with explanatory remarks in- tended to preserve his reputed orthodoxy. By such a prudential course he was enabled to instil a large amount of evangelical truth into the minds of his hearers, and undermine their belief in most of the peculiar heresies of Rome. He managed to circulate the works of the German Reformers, and published several of his own, better fitted as initiatives for the prejudiced and ignorant minds of his country- men. In this way he gradually increased the num-

DR. AUGUSTIN CAZALLA. 97

ler of adherents to the reformed faith, and largely added to the church in Valladolid.

About the year 1555, Roxas obtained a valuable coadjutor in Doctor Augustin Cazalla. Less coura- geous in the avowal of his opinions, this learned man surpassed Koxas in talents and reputation. Educated, likewise, by Carranza, he had been ad- mitted a canon of Salamanca about the year 1535, and soon gave promise of unusual abilities as a preacher.

In 1545 he was chosen preacher and almoner to the Emperor, whom he accompanied in the following year to Germany. Whilst opposing Lutheranism in that country, he became himself a convert to its doctrines, but for prudential reasons concealed his change of opinions. His case was not a solitary one ; many of the most learned divines of the Spanish Church became similarly converted to the new doctrines which they had left Spain to confute in Germany. Indeed, to this circumstance the tem- porary success of the reformed religion in Spain was in no small degree owing. To this Illescas bears witness in his Pontifical History,* w^iere he says : — "Formerly, such Lutheran heretics as were appre- hended and committed to the flames, were almost all either strangers, — Germans, Flemings, and English, * Vol. ii. f. 337, b. H

98 ADVOCATES OF ROMANISM

or, if Spaniards, they were mean people and of a bad race ; but in these late years we have seen the prisons, scaffolds, and stakes, crowded with persons of noble birth, and, what is still more to be de- plored, with persons illustrious, in the opinion of the world, for letters and piety. The cause of this and many other evils was the affection which our Catholic princes cherished for Germany, England, and other countries without the pale of the Church, which induced them to send learned men and preachers from Spain to these places, in the hope that by their sermons they would be brought back to the path of truth. But, unhappily, this measure was productive of little good fruit ; for of those who went abroad to give light to others, some returned home blind themselves, and, being deceived, or puffed up with ambition or a desire to be thought vastly learned and improved by their residence in foreign countries, they followed the example of the heretics with whom they had disputed." This fact is further confirmed in reference to the Spanish clergy who accompanied Philip II. to England on the occasion of his marriage with Mary. Bishop Pilkington says : — " It is much more notable that we have seen come to pass in our days, that the Spaniards sent into the realm [of England] on purpose to suppress the Gospel, as soon as they were returned home,

CONVERTED TO PROTESTANTISM. 99

replenished many parts of their country with the same truth of religion to which before they were utter enemies." * Such were the cases in Germany of Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, already men- tioned, and Cazalla, of whom we are now treating.

In 1552 he returned to Spain, and settled in Salamanca for three years, during which he carried on a correspondence with the Protestants of Seville. The caution with which he acted, however, preserved his orthodoxy from suspicion, and enabled him to continue in his office of royal chaplain. It was in the discharge of its duties that he visited Valladolid, and became acquainted with Roxas and his fellow Protestants there. He was induced to remove from Salamanca and settle in Valladolid, where he soon became a firm and valuable adherent to the reformed Church. His position gave him many and peculiar opportunities of intercourse with those who could not otherwise have been readily reached by the Lutheran doctrines, and on such he very judiciously brought his influence to bear in giving them correct notions of divine truth. But for a time, as we shall see, he cautiously concealed his sentiments in the discharge of his public duties, wisely avoiding what- ever would have subjected him to suspicion. By proceeding thus wisely he was enabled to be of

* See Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, p. 246.

100 LUTHERAN DOCTRINES FAIRLY INTRODUCED.

essential benefit to the reformed faith, and save him- self from the fate which would speedily have fallen upon so distinguished an apostate from the Romish Church.

By means of the individuals now mentioned, and of some of whom we shall make mention in the following chapter, the introduction of the Lutheran doctrines was now fairly, though secretly, accom- plished, and they were left to work their silent way in the minds of the people. How they did so, and how they were suppressed, would require a volume larger than ours to describe, but we shall in the succeeding pages take a sufficiently extensive glance at their brief but interesting history to give the reader a tolerably correct idea of the life-struggles of Protestantism in Spain.

SPANISH PKOTESTANTS ABROAD. 101

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CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH FAVOURED THE REFOEMATION IN SPAIN.

Whilst the friends of Protestantism were thus suc- cessfully labouring in Spain, they were not without valuable aid from Germany and the Low Countries. Many of their countrymen, whom commerce or other business had brought to the home of the Eeforma- tion, had embraced its doctrines, and were labouring hard to aid their reception and establishment in their fatherland. We shall occupy this chapter with a cursory account of the most active of these Spanish Protestants abroad, and of the means which they employed to promote the spread of the reformed doctrine at home.

In the same year (1540) in which San-Roman left Antwerp for Bremen, three of his fellow-townsmen

102 THE THREE BROTHERS ENZINAS.

left Burgos to study at the University of Louvain in the Netherlands. Louvain was at that time a favourite place of education for Spanish youths ; elegant literature and freedom of religious opinion had been cultivated in it to a greater extent than in almost any other of the continental universities, not excepting even the famed University of Paris. The young men whom we are now to follow thither were brothers, and their family name was Enzinas ; their Christian names being respectively, Jayme, Fran- cisco, and Juan. Whilst at Louvain they became intimate with the celebrated Cassander,"' from whom they acquired a knowledge of the Lutheran doc- trines. They were not satisfied, however, in resting in the compromises of this learned divine, but en- tirely renounced the authority and creed of the Eomish Church, and gave themselves up to the faith of the Reformation. In all three the change was complete.

Having gone through the usual period of study at Louvain, the eldest and youngest of the three bro- thers left j Jayme for Paris, and Juan for Marburg in Germany, where he became a professor of medi-

* George Cassander was a native of Cassand, near Bruges. He was a modest and ingenuous Roman Catholic divine, who vainly endeavoured to reconcile the popish and re- formed churches, and gained the ill-will of both. He died in 1566.

JAYME IN PARIS. 103

cine in the university, and wrote several eminent treatises on medicine and astronomy, which gained him a very honourable reputation. In Paris Jayme became confirmed in his attachment to the reformed faith, and laboured successfully in commending its doctrines to several of his countrymen who were then studying at the university in that city. The persecutions,* however^ to which the Protestants were even then subjected, filled him with the deepest horror, and induced him to leave a place where bigotry and barbarism prevailed, and return to rejoin his brother Francisco at Louvain. Eemaining there for a time, he occupied himself busily in compiling a catechism of the reformed doctrines, which he had drawn up in Spanish for the use of his countrymen, and which he subsequently printed at Antwerp. Whilst there he received orders from his father, de- siring him to go to Rome, for the purpose of study- ing theology, as he was intended for the Church. Much against his inclination, and contrary to the advice of his Protestant friends, he obeyed the behest of his father, and left the Netherlands, as the result proved, never to visit them again. On reach-

* Before being burned, condemned heretics were subjected to the most cruel tortures. Their tongues were torn out by the executioner, with pincers, and the victims beaten with them in the face. — See Histolre des Martyrs.

104 MARTYRDOM OF JAYME ENZINAS.

iiig Italy he soon found how dangerous was his position.

The jealous watchfulness of the priests had been keenly excited by their recent discovery that the Lutheran doctrines had penetrated even to the eternal city, and prevailed extensively throughout many parts of Italy. Seeing that no good end could be answered by the avowal of his sentiments, but on the contrary much useless danger incurred, Jayme Enzinas managed to save himself from sus- picion for a few years in Eome, at the end of which he resolved, though in opposition to the wishes of his father, to return to Germany. But he was never to look on it again. On the eve of setting out from Rome he was denounced to the Inquisition by one of his own countrymen, whom he had laboured hard, and as he thought successfully, to win over to the reformed faith. His process was short. When brought to trial, at which most of the chief bishops attended, he openly avowed his attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, and challenged his judges to refute them. He was at once condemned to the stake, though a subsequent offer of pardon, on conditions of recantation and penance, was made, but rejected on such terms. The sentence was carried into execution, and he died a martyr to the truth in 1546. Thus perished Jayme Enzinas,

JUAN DIAZ. 105

the first Spanish martyr in Italy of whom we have any account.

About the time of his death, a still more fearful tragedy occurred in Germany, of which one of his converts there was the victim. This man was Juan Diaz, likewise a Spaniard, who had studied in the University of Paris, and whilst there had become the intimate friend of Enzinas, whose opinions he soon embraced. After the departure of the latter from Paris, Diaz left it too, for a similar reason, in company with two Protestants, named John Crespin and Matthew Bude, and settled for a time at Geneva. From thence he removed, in 1546, to Strasburg, where he cultivated the acquaintance of Martin Bucer, with whom he subsequently went as a deputation in defence of the reformed doctrines to a conference at Ratisbon. Whilst there, he met with his countryman Pedro Malvenda, who was to defend the doctrines of the Bomish Church. En- raged at finding Diaz a convert to the Lutheran faith, Malvenda, after endeavouring in vain to re- claim him, consulted with, the chaplain of the Emperor, who was then at Batisbon. The result of the consultation was, that a messenger was dis- patched to Bome to acquaint Dr. Alfonso Diaz with his brother's apostasy. The bigoted advocate in the sacred Bota no sooner received this galling in-

106 A SNARE FOR A BROTHER'S LIFE.

formation, than he set out for Germany, accom- panied by a ready instrument of his pleasure, and resolved to wipe off or avenge the stain which had been cast on the honour of his family, by such a defection from the faith of Kome. On reaching Germany, Alfonso followed his brother to Neuburg, a town in Bavaria, whither he had gone by the advice of Bucer and his other Protestant friends. Finding him irreclaimable, Alfonso at length pre- tended that his brother's arguments in favour of the new doctrines had wrought a change in his own sentiments. The bait took. His delighted brother was thrown off his guard, and agreed to accompany Alfonso back to Italy, for the purpose of propagating them in that country, if his friends on being con- sulted should acquiesce in the plan. They at once saw through the snare, and strongly urged Juan to remain where he was. Foiled in this, Alfonso endeavoured to persuade his brother to accompany him as far as Augsburg, which he would have done but for the timely arrival of Bucer and two other friends. The cunning .doctor concealed his chagrin, and parted from his brother with many expressions of affectionate regret, and thanks for the spiritual benefit which he professed to have received from his instructions. He went as far as Augsburg, but returned secretly next day, followed by the man

DIAZ MURDERED BY HIS BROTHER. 107

who had accompanied him, and passed the night in a small village near Neuburg. Before sunrise next morning, they went to the house in which his brother lodged, and knocked loudly at the gate. The man entered, leaving his master outside, and requested to see Juan, with a letter from his brother. He was shown into his bedroom. Juan had not risen, but hearing of a letter from his brother, he leaped out of bed and went to the window to read it, when the assassin, creeping behind his unsuspect- ing victim, clove his scull with an axe which he had hid for the purpose beneath his cloak. Leaving the murdered man weltering in his blood, he rejoined the inhuman brother, who stood below ready to give assistance if needed. The murder was soon dis- covered, and its perpetrators hotly pursued. They were overtaken in Inspruck, and lodged in prison. As the crime had been committed in Bavaria, Otho Henry, Count-palatine of the Bhine and Duke of Bavaria, speedily arranged for the trial. The rent and bloody night-cap of the murdered man, together with the axe and letter of Alfonso, were sent from Neuburg; but, through the influence of the Cardinals of Trent and Augsburg, the trial was suspended from time to time, till at length the Emperor forbad the judges to proceed with the process, and ordered the matter to be reserved for the judgment of his

108 CRIME SANCTIONED BY KOME.

brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, as nominal sovereign of the accused. At the subsequent diet of Ratisbon, the Protestant princes in vain demanded of Charles, and afterward of Ferdinand, that justice should be done. Evasions of various kinds were employed, and, in the long run, the murderers escaped untried and unpunished, through the influ- ence of Rome, to which place they were welcomed back and honoured, as having performed a meritorious deed. Such was the spirit of Popery, and such it remains unaltered still. In all ages of its history, the service of the church has led its votaries to outrage the tenderest affections of the human breast, and perpetrate deeds at which humanity shudders. The blind fanatical zeal which it inculcates and fosters, stops short at no enormity, however black, which will promote its interests, while the church approves and sanctifies the crime !

Such, substantially, is the account given of this tragedy by Claude Senarcle, who was a personal friend of Juan Diaz, had accompanied him since he left Paris, and slept in the same bed with him the night before his death. Its accuracy has not been called in question ; on the contrary, the Roman Catholics applauded the deed, and, as we remarked already, heaped honour on its perpetrators. It is, then, a true exemplification of the spirit of Popery ;

FRANCISCO ENZINAS. 109

only one, however, and not the greatest of her many atrocities, performed under the outraged name of religion.

As we have before observed, Francisco Enzinas, the second of the three, had continued to reside at Louvain, after his brothers had gone to Paris and Marburg. His situation, however, was far from being either pleasant or safe. He was surrounded on all hands by those who would gladly have seized on anything that savoured of a leaning to the reformed doctrines, and consigned the ofiender to the dun- geons of the Inquisition, and thence to the stake. But he was in some degree compensated for the irksomeness of his position, by an intimate corre- spondence with Albert Hardenberg, a friend of Melanchthon, and preacher to the Cistercian monas- tery of Adwert. By him he was introduced to John ^ Lasco, one of the most eminent of the reformed clergy of Poland. In a letter to the latter, Enzinas says, in reference to the course he intended to pursue : — " All the world will, I know, be in arms against me on account of the resolution which, in opposition to the advice of some worthy men, I have now formed, to devote myself to literary pur- suits. * But I will not suffer myself, from respect to the favour of men, to hold the truth in un-

* He had been intended by his parents for the army.

110 ENZINAS' TRANSLATION

righteousness, or to treat unbecomingly those gifts which God in His free mercy has been pleased to confer on me, unworthy as T am. On the contrary, it shall be my endeavour, according to my ability, to propagate divine truth. That I may do this by the grace of God, I find that it will be necessary for me, in the first place, to fly from the Babylonian captivity, and to retire to a place in which I shall be at liberty to cultivate undefiled religion and true Christianity, along with liberal studies. Tt is, there- fore, my purpose to repair to Wittenberg, because that city contains an abundance of learned professors in all the sciences ; and I entertain so high an es- teem for the learning, judgment, and dexterity in teaching, possessed by Philip Melanchthon in par- ticular, that I would go to the end of the world to enjoy the company and instruction of such men. I, therefore, earnestly beg that, as your name has great weight, you will have the goodness to favour me with letters of introduction to Luther, Philip [Melanchthon], and other learned men in that city." After going, in accordance with this resolution, to Wittenberg, he remained there but a short time, being encouraged by the Eeformers to return to the Low Countries, and engage in a work which had long occupied his thoughts — the translation of the New Testament into Spanish, for the use of his

OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 ] 1

countrymen at home. Like many of these at the time, and since, he seems to have been ignorant that such a translation had ever been made before. As early, however, as the 12th or 1 3th century, various parts of the Old and New Testament had been translated into the 8panish language ; for we find Juan I. of Aragon, as early as 1233, publicly pro- hibiting the use of the Scriptures in the vernacular, and ordering all copies of them to be given up to the clergy to be burned, on pain of their holders being suspected of heresy. Some years later, how- ever, Alfonso X. of Castile caused a translation to be made into the Castilian dialect for the use of his subjects. Other versions were subsequently made by various translators, but they were all suppressed and gradually destroyed by the Inquisition ; so that for more than half a century before the time of Enzinas, Spain was entirely destitute of the Scrip- tures in the vulgar tongue. The translation which he now undertook was that of the New Testament into the dialect of Castile. On its completion, he submitted the work to the Divines of Louvain. They refrained from either censuring or approving it, on the grounds of their ignorance of Spanish, but expressed their general opinion that such a work would tend to promote heresy, by introducing the vulgar and unlearned to a knowledge of doctrines

112 THE TESTAMENT DECLARED DANGEROUS.

which it was the especial province of the church to explain. For such discouragement, however, he was prepared, and he did not, therefore, allow it to prevent the carrying out of his design. It was printed in 1543 at Antwerp, under the title of "The New Testament, that is, the New Covenant of our only Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ, translated from Greek into the Castilian language."'' The short-sighted censors to whom it had to be sub- mitted, objected to the introduction of "the new covenant," as savouring of Lutheranism, and accord- ingly insisted on the title-page being cancelled, and a new one, free from the obnoxious sentence, being substituted in its stead. The next phrase to which objection was taken were the words "our only Redeemer." The particle was expunged, and the work of pruning went on. But finding that the objections of his critics would amount to a virtual veto upon his book, Enzinas, on his own re- sponsibility, proceeded with its publication.

Soon after this, the Emperor visited Brussels, and was presented with a copy of the work by the translator, who requested permission to circulate it in Spain. This was granted, on condition that it was found, on further examination, to contain nothing contrary to the faith. The royal chaplain, to whom it was submitted for examination, speedily

IMPBISONMENT AND ESCAPE OP ENZINAS. 113

condemned it as dangerous in the highest degree, and upbraided Enzinas as a double-dyed heretic.

He was at once denounced to the Inquisition, and charged with the additional crimes of having translated one of Luther's works, and of having lived on terms of intimacy with the " arch-heretic " Melanchthon. As no charge of heresy, however, could be substantiated, his escape, after an imprison- ment of fifteen months, was connived at, and he fled to Wittenberg to his old friends. After his escape, he was formally condemned by default, and sentence registered against him, as we learn from a letter of Melanchthon to a friend.* After men- tioning this, the Reformer goes on to say : — " He sets out for your town to ascertain the fact, and to learn if there are any letters for him from that quarter. I have given him a letter to you, both that I may acquaint you of the cause of his journey, and because I know you feel for the calamities of all good men. He evinces great fortitude, though he evidently sees that his return to his parents and native country is now cut off. The thought of the anguish which this will give to his parents distresses him. These Inquisitors are as cruel to us as the thirty tyrants were of old to their fellow-citizens at Athens ; but God will preserve the remnant of his

* Melanchihonis Epis., col. 858 ; cited by Dr. Mc Crie.

I

114 VARIOUS TRANSLATIONS

church, and provide an asylum for the truth some- where."

In 1548 Francisco came to England, where he was warmly received by Edward VI. and Cranmer ; " but returning soon after to the Continent, he resided sometimes at Strasburg and sometimes at Basle, where he spent his time in literary pursuits, and in the society of the wise and good."

Besides Enzinas' translation of the New Testa- ment, other versions of various parts of the Old were made shortly after his work appeared. They were printed in the Low Countries, and smuggled into Spain. Amongst these detached portions of the Bible, were the seven penitential Psalms, the Song of Solomon, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the book of Job. In addition to these, the Jews appear to have had early translations of the Old Testament in the Spanish language. Two editions were printed at Venice, soon after the appearance of Enzinas' New Testament. This latter, however, was one of the chief aids to the spread of the reformed religion in the Peninsula.

But, besides Enzinas, there were other Spanish Protestants abroad, who did much to disseminate a knowledge of the Scriptures and the Lutheran doc- trines amongst their countrymen at home. Among these truly patriotic men were Juan Perez, Cassiodoro

OF THE SCRIPTURES. 11^

de Eeyna, and Cypriano de Valera. The first of these was a native of Montilla, in Andalusia. In Id 27 he was sent to Eome as envoy by the Emperor, and succeeded in procuring a suspension of the de- cree by which the writings of Erasmus had been condemned by the Spanish divines. On his return, he became head of the College of Doctrine at Seville, where he first became acquainted with Egidio and the other Protestants of that city. His orthodoxy soon became suspected, and he was obliged to leave Spain to escape the fangs of the Inquisition. Whilst abroad, in Geneva and various parts of Germany, he translated the New Testament and the Psalms into Spanish, in addition to which he drew up a catechism and summary of Christian doctrine in the same language, all of which appeared about the year 1557, and were printed at Venice. He died at Paris not long after, and bequeathed the whole of his for- tune to the printing of the Bible, for the use of his countrymen, in their own language. After his death, Cassiodoro de Keyna finished the translation of the whole Bible, and had it printed at Basle in 1569. This version was revised and corrected by Cypriano de Valera, who published an edition of the New Testament in London in 15D6, and one of the whole at Amsterdam in 1602. Besides these, the New Testament was translated into Basque by Juan Liz-

116 EFFORTS OF THE INQUISITION

zarago, in 1571. Though these three versions last mentioned did not appear till after the suppression of the Eeformation in Spain, they were of much service to many who still clung privately to its doc- trines, and a re- issue of De Val era's edition at a recent period led the Spanish clergy to make a translation of their own — a step which they would have been the last to take, if not forced to it by the extensive circulation of these more faithful ver- sions.

Enzinas' version of the New Testament had been suppressed in the Netherlands soon after its publica- tion, but a large number of copies of it had been already conveyed into Spain, and extensively cir- culated. But for the help given to the Eeformation in Spain by the translations of the Scriptures by Perez and Enzinas, its doctrines would have made but little progress in that country merely by the efforts of individual teachers. Introduced at once to the fountain-head of religious knowledge, those amongst whom the Bible was circulated soon discovered the glaring contradiction of the Eomish tenets to the pure and simple doctrines of Scripture, and were thus prepared to profit by the instructions of De la Fuente and his fellow-labourers in the cause of truth.

If the Inquisition had had to contend only with

TO SUPPRESS THE SCRIPTURES. Il7

these single heralds of the reformed faith, its ter- rible machinery would have speedily crushed every effort they could have put forth ; but, secret and wide-spread as was the agency it employed, the silent but powerful pioneers of Protestantism, sent forth by these translators to do their enlightening work amongst the benighted population, set at nought its all but omnipotent powers of detection, and prepared the way for the teachers of the Lutheran faith. The Inquisitors were more than suspicious that such books were in circulation and extensively read, but were unable to crush an agency so much dreaded. In vain did they enjoin upon all con- fessors to threaten their penitents with the most terrible thunders of the Church, if they read thje Bible in the vulgar tongue, or knew of its being read, or even possessed, without giving information to the clergy. To no purpose did they issue pro- clamations, declaring that such as did so would, if discovered, be held suspected of heresy, and treated accordingly. The Bible was read, and the Reforma- tion prospered, in spite of all their efforts to prevent it. Those who, like De la Fuente, conducted the Protestant movement, knew well the dangers to which they were exposed, and the kind of enemies with whom they had to contend, and, accordingly, proceeded with all possible caution. In this way

118 THIRST FOR RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

they baffled the efforts of their opponents^ and con- tinued to labour successfully in spreading amongst the people that knowledge which makes wise unto salvation. In Spain it would not have been possible to print translations of the Scriptures, even if they could have been safely made ; but abroad, in coun- tries where the Reformation was befriended by the public authorities, as in many of the German States, it was easily accomplished. This once done, the im- portation of these, and of other books written by the Reformers, was the chief difficulty to be overcome. , But, animated by a zeal which no superable obsta- cles could resist, the Spanish Protestants abroad managed to have them largely circulated amongst their countrymen at home, and thus promoted the great cause of truth more effectually than they could have done had they been present to aid it by their individual efforts. The thirst for religious know- ledge which the introduction of the Bible produced was irresistible. Valladolid and Seville, the two most important cities in the kingdom, were the great fountains whence flowed to the country, through the surrounding towns and villages, as so many branch streams, the instruction sought for. The churches in them were centres, from which all action primarily emanated, and to which the scattered friends of the reformed faith looked for direction

HOW SUPPLIED. 119

and support. To them were the books, imported from Germany and the Low Countries, consigned, and by them were they circulated far and wide through the country. At all the seaports of the kingdom, and at the land-passes of the Pyrenees, officers were placed, to examine every traveller and every package entering the Peninsula ; but to little purpose. Notwithstanding their utmost vigilance, the prohibited works were introduced, and thus the work of the Reformation went silently but steadily on.

120 CONST ANTINE PONCE.

€\n^ttt Bk%

PROGRESS OF THE REFORMED DOCTRINES.

CoNSTANTiNE PoNCE had returned from the Low Countries,* and occupied the post left vacant by the condemnation and death of Egidio, at the period at which we digressed in our narrative of the progress of the reformed doctrines in Seville. Under his fostering care and wise superintendence, the drooping cause recovered from the shock which it had received, and put forth fresh effort for the spread of evangelical religion in the surrounding country. In his office of divinity professor in the College of Doctrine, to which he had been appointed

* He had been previously appointed one of the royal chaplains, and had been sent to the Netherlands to accom- pany prince Philip.

CANON MAGISTRAL. 121

on his return from Flanders in 1555, he delivered a course of lectures on the Scriptures, which had the effect of opening the minds of many of the young men who heard him to the truth. He was appointed, about the same time, to preach every alternate day during Lent in the Cathedral Church, where his fervid eloquence gathered overflowing congregations, to whom he imparted much valuable scriptural in- struction, given, however, so judiciously as to excite no suspicion as to his soundness in the Eomish faith. His growing popularity as a preacher had led the Chapter to fix their eyes upon him as the person best fitted for the place of Canon Magistral, which was then vacant through the death of Egidio, its last possessor. For these canonries, of which there are three in every episcopal church in Spain, it was necessary that the candidates should go through literary trials. From this competition Egidio had been exempted, but his great un- popularity immediately after his induction, and before the change in his preaching, which we have attributed to the influence exerted by De Valer, had led the Canons to record a resolution that for the future it should be gone through in the case of every candidate for the office.

Constantine refused to submit to the trial, ridiculing such tests as absurd and puerile ; but

122 PREACHER

at last, when the day was fixed on which it was to be held, he yielded to the solicitations of his friends, and consented to offer himself as a candidate on the usual conditions. The knowledge of this prevented the appearance of any but two rivals, one of whom afterwards declined to enter the lists with an opponent of such profound and varied learning ; but the other, spurred on by the enemies of Con- stantine, engaged in the literary battle. Failing to overthrow his competitor by polemical skill, he altered his tactics, and fell back upon personal charges and insinuations, in which he accused his rival of having been married before he had taken orders, and of other irregularities of conduct sub- sequently. To these were added an unsupported and unsuccessful charge of heresy, which Constantine triumphantly repelled to the satisfaction of all but his defeated and chagrined enemies. He carried the election, and entered upon the duties of his new and influential office with increased popularity and use- fulness.

To his labours in the pulpit, Constantine super- added effort to disseminate scriptural knowledge throughout the country by means of the press. His writings were characterized by great simplicity and earnestness of style, and were thus fitted for impart- ing instruction to minds of the humblest capacity.

AND AUTHOR. 123

Among tliese were a catecliisin of elementary in- struction on scriptural subjects j a treatise on Chris- tian doctrine, drawn up in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and his pupil ; an exposition of the first Psalm, in four sermons j the confession of a sinner, in which the simple doctrines of the Gospel, "poured forth from a contrite and humbled spirit, assume the form of the most edifying and devotional piety." In his summary of Christian doctrine, which was printed at Antwerp, and to which was appended " the Sermon of Christ our Eedeemer on the Mount, translated, with explanations, by the same author," he employed a style more fitted for educated readers than he had done in his other writings, without, however, rendering the work above the easy compre- hension of all. It was divided into two parts, in the first of which he discussed the articles of faith, proposing to reserve the more peculiar doctrines of Catholicism for examination in the second. This last, however, he thought it neither prudent nor safe to publish at the time, preferring to reserve it for a time when there would be less certainty of its own suppression and of its author's condemnation. That period he never lived to see, and consequently the second part of his treatise was never given to the world. The opinions which he broached in the first part, though expressed with all the caution

124 NARROW ESCAPE

which the time and circumstances called for, and relating only to the cardinal truths of the Gospel, without touching upon any of the distinctive tenets of the Reformers, were sufficiently obnoxious to the ruling clergy to have very nearly led to his being denounced to the Inquisition. From this, however, his great popularity for a time preserved him.

De Montes* relates an incident which occurred shortly after the return of Constantine from Flanders, and which nearly brought about the discovery and apprehension of the adherents of the reformed faith in and around Seville. As an illustration of the precarious tenure of their safety, we may transcribe it. One Maria Gomez, a domestic of Francisco Zafra, a doctor of laws, and who, though vicar of the church of San Vincente, was secretly attached to the Protestant doctrine, became deranged in mind. Like her master, she had been, prior to her insanity, a constant and devoted attendant on the private meetings of the Protestants, and had in this way become well acquainted with them all. No sooner had her intellect become disordered, than she con- ceived a most violent antipathy to her former fellow- worshippers, and called out in her ravings for vengeance upon them as heretics. Escaping from the confinement to which it had been found necessary

* Inquu. Ei»p. Artes. Detec, pp. 294, 295.

OF THE REFORMERS. 125

to subject her, she sought out the Inquisitors, and upbraided them with criminal negligence in defend- ing the purity of the faith against heretics, of whom she declared Seville to be full. Though her derange- ment was evident, the Inquisitors fancied that her charges had, at least, some foundation, and therefore readily took down the names of those whom she denounced as converts to the reformed faith. Zafra, her master, was sent for, and very wisely obeyed the summons. With much presence of mind, he ridi- culed her accusation against himself, and requested the judges to pay no attention to the ravings of an insane woman. Having succeeded in convincing them of her lunacy, he allayed the supicions which her statements had at first excited, and satisfied them that the charges which she had made were merely the visionary workings of her disordered brain. She was given up to her master, and placed in closer con- finement than before. Thus, by the prudent cool- ness of Zafra — or rather, by the watchful providence of Him who warded off the blow which had nearly fallen on His infant Church — the danger was averted, and the Protestants saved.

Shortly before this narrow escape, the friends of the reformed faith in Seville had formed themselves into a Church, and chosen Christobal Losada, a doctor of medicine, for their pastor. They met

126 REFORM IN THE CONVENTS.

regularly for worship, in the house of Isabella de Baena, a lady of distinguished rank. Besides her, many of the Sevillian nobility had secretly joined themselves with the Church, and laboured zealously to promote its interests. Amongst the most distin- guished were Don Juan Ponce de Leon and Domingo de Guzman. Don Juan was a younger son of Don Rodrigo, Count de Baylen, cousin-german of the Duke d'Arcos, and closely allied to many of the chief nobility of Spain. Domingo de Guzman was a son of the Duke de Medina Sidonia, and belonged to the order of the Dominicans. Both he and Don Juan laboured hard to disseminate a knowledge of the Lutheran doctrines. Besides these, many of the clergy had become secretly attached t-o the cause of truth, and successfully endeavoured to introduce the Protestant tenets into several of the religious insti- tutions in Seville. Of these, we may mention the Dominican Monastery of St. Paul j the convent of St. Elizabeth ; and more particularly still, the Hieronymite Convent of St. Isidro del Campo, about two miles from Seville. In this last, the new doctrines had especially progressed. The man by whom they had been introduced was Garcia de Arias — from the whiteness of his hair, commonly called Dr. Blanco. This singular individual deserves a passing notice. He has been well described as

DR. BLANCO. 127

having possessed " an acute mind and extensive information ; but he was undecided and vacillating in his conduct, partly from timidity, and partly from caution and excess of refinement. He belonged to that class of subtle politicians, who, without being destitute of conscience, are wary in committing themselves, forfeit the good opinion of both parties, by failing to yield a consistent support to either, and trusting to their address and dexterity to extricate themselves from difficulties, are sometimes caught in the toils of their own intricate management."

Though secretly attached to the reformed cause, he was the public champion of the orthodox faith, and was looked to by the clergy as an authority in all matters of disputed doctrine or discipline in the Church. Soon after his reception of the Lutheran tenets, he began to introduce them gradually, but with characteristic caution, into the convent to which he belonged, by impressing on his brother-monks, in his sermons and private conversations, that true religion did not consist in chanting vespers and matins, or in the performance of any of the empty ceremonies with which their time was generally occupied, but in the devotional study of the word of God, and in the discharge of the duties which it inculcates. He thus, by degrees, instilled into their minds a longing for a purer and more spiritual piety,

128 DISCONTINUANCE OF INDULGENCES.

than the monotonous devotions to which they had been accustomed. But, true to the description of his vacillating character, which we have quoted, he suddenly changed, and became as zealous in recom- mending, as he had been previously in deprecating, the bodily mortifications and other monastic observ- ances of his order. This sudden and unaccountable change in one to whom they had looked up as their example and guide, led the monks to suspect the soundness of his judgment, or the sincerity of his purpose in thus altering his course. In their per- plexity, they consulted Egidio, and by his instruc- tions and advice, were confirmed in their attachment to the doctrines against which Arias now so zealously inveighed. In 1557, they received a large supply of the Scriptures in the Spanish language, the study of which contributed to build them up still more strongly in the faith of the GospeJ. A complete reformation of the internal policy of the convent was effected ; the absurd practices which had long been established were abandoned ; papal indulgences and pardons, which had previously been a source of much profit, were discontinued j and the debasing habits of monachism were superseded by strict attention to the duties of a spiritual religion. Though compelled to shield themselves, by continu- ing to use the monastic dress, and to celebrate mass,

JUAN DE REGLA. 129

everything else was changed, and the convent re- sembled a Christian family, more than a fraternity of superstitious monks.

Nor were the effects of this salutary change con- fined to the monastery of St. Isidro. The monks became industrious propagators of the reformed doctrines in the surrounding country, and succeeded in introducing them into other monasteries of their own order, several of whose most distinguished members incurred the suspicion of heresy. Of these, we may mention Juan de Eegla, prior of Santa Fe, and provincial of the Hieronymite order in Spain. This eminent scholar and divine had taken part in the proceedings of the Council of Trent, at its second meeting, where he was a strenuous defender of the Romish Church. But havincr subse- quently embraced some of the reformed doctrines, he was denounced to the Inquisition of Saragossa, and condemned to do penance, and abjure the doctrines against which objection had been taken. After his recantation, he became one of the most violent opponents of Lutheranism in Spain, and was subse- quently appointed chaplain to the Emperor, and, after his abdication, to Philip II. Besides De Regla, another distinguished Hieronymite, Francisco de Villalba, was charged with adoption of Lutheran doctrines, and tried before the Inquisition of Toledo.

130 REASONS WHY THE EMPEBOR

Failing to establish the charge at first, they remanded him, till further evidence could be obtained to justify a conviction ; but before that could be procured, he sunk under the hardships of his imprisonment, and escaped a more cruel though less lingering death.

From these facts, the reader will be able to form some idea of the extent to which Protestantism had spread in this part of the Peninsula. Its adherents, it will have been seen, were not confined to the lower ranks, but numbered amongst them not a few of the most distinguished of the nobility and clergy. In spite of the jealous vigilance of the Inquisition, the new doctrines were gradually leavening the popu- lation, and preparing for themselves such a general adoption, as would speedily have constituted a power that might successfully have braved even its formid- able hostility. Charles, though devotedly attached to the Romish Church, and a bitter enemy of the reformed doctrines, was engaged in that series of brilliant campaigns, which had established his power over Milan, NapleSj Sicily, and the Netherlands ; and though doing his utmost to crush the Reformation in the land of its birth, he paid but little attention to the spread of its doctrines in his paternal domin- ions, trusting to the Inquisition to protect Spain from the contamination of heresy. He had enough of the religious element in his character to make

OPPOSED THE REFORMATION. 131

him zealous in the service of the Church ; but political ambition was too preponderating a feature, to allow spiritual affairs to hold any but a secondary- place in his thoughts. He opposed Luther and the Protestant princes of Germany, not so much because they opposed Eome, but because they were erecting a barrier against the accomplishment of his own cherished designs of universal dominion in Europe. By the aid of the Papacy, he had succeeded in crushing the liberties of Spain, and substituting in their stead an iron despotism ; and by the help of the same power, he sought to establish his absolute sway, not only over the States of Germany, but over nearly all the nations of the Continent. His first objection to Protestantism in his home dominions would have arisen out of its tendency to indispose the people to submit to the despotic authority which he exercised ; and then, doubtless, his educational attachment to Popery would have led him to maintain its rule unimpaired, and to oppose everything calcu- lated to weaken its power over the minds of his people. His absence, however, in Germany, relieved the Spanish Protestants from the additional obstacles which his presence would have thrown in the way of the spread of their doctrines ; and they were not slow in making the most of the prolonged opportunity.

132 EXTENSION OF THE REFORMATION

Whilst Protestantism was spreading as we have seen, in and around Seville, its adherents in Valla- dolid were neither idle nor unsuccessful in propa- gating the reformed doctrines in the city and the adjacent country. The Church, under Domingo de Koxas, had largely increased, and reckoned amongst its members, as in Seville, several of the clergy and nobility. Not a few of the monasteries were leavened by the Lutheran tenets, and had secretly abandoned many of the peculiar institutions of Popery. From Valladolid the new doctrines spread widely through the ancient kingdom of Leon. In the cities of Toro, Zamora, Aldea del Palo, and Pedeosa, and throughout the diocese of Palencia, it had many converts, and amongst them not a small number of the resident clergy. Spreading further through Old Castile to Soria, in the diocese of Osma, it reached Logrono, on the borders of Navarre, in which last-named town its adherents were very numerous. This extensive diffusion of the reformed opinions was largely owing to the efforts of Don Carlos de Soso, a nobleman of distinguished learning and rank. In Toro, of which he was mayor, in Zamora, and the episcopal city of Palencia, he afforded valuable aid to the reformed cause, by circu- lating Lutheran books, and by his personal instruc- tions. In New Castile, the Reformation was less

FAVOURED IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 133

successful, although it had many friends in Toledo, and other parts of that country. In the provinces of Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, it had made con- siderable progress ; but in the kingdom of Aragon it had been especially prosperous. In Saragossa, Huesca, Balbastro, and in many other towns, churches had been formed, and a vigorous agency organized, for the diffusion of the new doctrines in the sur- rounding districts.

How powerfully does this success of the Protestant opinions, in such a country as Spain, illustrate the inherent excellence and energy of Christianity ! In the face of the unparalleled diflBculties against which the Reformation had to contend, it spread and gained ground rapidly. In no other country had it such obstacles to overcome. In Germany, many of the princes had embraced its doctrines, and were exerting their influence on its behalf. Its adherents were protected and favoured ; the Bible was freely circulated in the vernacular tongue, and its doctrines explained and enforced from almost every pulpit. In Scotland, its advantages were almost equally great. In England, the quarrel which led Henry VIII. to throw off submission to the Pope, resulted in similar blessings to the people, as regarded their religious liberty. And even in France, and several of the Italian States, there were many checks

134 PECULIAR OBSTACLES

on persecution, which afforded a kind of protection to those who embraced the reformed doctrines. But in Spain, not one of these advantages existed. Everything that could fetter the intellect, and crush the earliest tendency to dissent from the faith of Rome, was brought to bear upon the people. The Inquisition had its police in every corner of the land ; the feeblest expression of sympathy with the forbidden doctrines marked its author as their lawful prey, and secured for him a dungeon or the stake. National prejudice was fostered and intensified ; social disgrace was attached to the crime of apostasy, not only, as we have elsewhere remarked, to the party condemned, but to his latest posterity. To them the heirloom of infamy descended, without losing a particle of its original blackness. How great must have been the essential power of the Gospel, to surmount such difficulties, and gain for itself so wide a reception ! Nothing short of " the power of God " could have borne down such opposing barriers, and have subdued so many enemies, by its gentle yet powerful influence, exerted silently and without parade, on the minds of a people so unlikely to embrace and hold fast its truths. It would have spread like sunlight through the darkened land, had these obstacles to its progress been removed. One of its bitterest enemies admits, that "had not the

IN SPAIN. 135

Inquisition taken care in time to put a stop to tbese preachers, the Protestant religion would have spread throughout Spain like wild-fire ; people of all ranks, and of both sexes, having been wonderfully disposed to receive it."* Another of its enemies makes a similar confession : — " All the prisoners in the In- quisitions of Valladolid, Seville, and Toledo, were persons abundantly well qualified. I shall here pass over their names in silence, that I may not, by their bad fame, stain the honour of their ancestors, and the nobility of the several illustrious families which were infected with this poison. And as these pri- soners were persons thus qualified, so their number was so great, that had the stop put to that evil been delayed two or three months longer, I am persuaded all Spain would have been set in a flame of fire by them." t A late Protestant writer (already quoted) on this period of Spanish ecclesiastical history says to the same effect. " So powerful," remarks Dr. Geddes, " were the doctrines of the Keformation in those days, that no prejudices nor interests were any- where strong enough to hinder piously- disposed minds, after they became thoroughly to understand them, from embracing them. And that the same doctrines have not still the same divine force, is

* Paramo, His. Inquisitionis. + lUescas, His. Pontifical, torn. ii. f. 451, a.

136 THREE GREAT DOCTRINES.

neither owing to their being grown older, nor to Popery's not being so gross, nor to any change in people's natural dispositions, but is owing purely to the want of the same zeal for those doctrines in their professors, and especially for the three great doctrines of the Reformation, which the following martyrs sealed with their blood ; which were, that the Pope is Antichrist j that the worship of the Church of Rome is idolatrous ; and that a sinner is justified in the sight of God by faith, and through Christ's, and not through his own, merits."*

Amongst a people so disposed to embrace and hold fast the pure doctrines of the Gospel, it needed re- pressive measures of no common violence to put down the Reformation.

* Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i. p. 450 [preface to Spanish Martyrology].

CHANGE OF SOVEREIGNS, 137

^^ttt Mm%

DISCOVERT OF THE PRO PEST ANTS, AND SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORMATION.

Whilst the Eeformation was thus gradually pro- gressing, Spain had changed sovereigns. In 1556, the Emperor Charles, vt^orn out by military toils and the ravages of the gout, carried into execution his long- meditated project of retiring from the world? to spend the last years of his life in monastic devo- tions. Having assembled the States of the How Countries at Brussels, he seated himself for the last time in the chair of state, and there, surrounded by a splendid retinue of the princes of the empire and grandees of Spain, amidst the most imposing solem- nity ever witnessed since the days of the Eoman

13S EESIGNATION OF EOYAL POWER

Caesars, he surrendered to his son Philip all his territories, jurisdiction, and authority, in the Nether- lauds.

In his address to the kneeling prince, he said, — "It is in your power, by a wise and virtuous ad- ministration, to justify the extraordinary proof which I give this day of my paternal affection, and to demonstrate that you are worthy of the extraordinary confidence which I repose in you. Preserve an in- violable regard for religion ; maintain the Catholic faith in its purity ; let the laws of your country be sacred in your eyes ; encroach not on the rights of your people ; and, if the time should ever come when you shall wish to enjoy the tranquillity of private life, may you have a son to whom you can resign your sceptre with as much satisfaction as I give up mine to you." In recounting to his deeply affected audience the many great schemes which he had planned and carried out, he observed — " Either in a hostile or pacific manner, I have visited Germany nine times, Spain six times, France four times, Italy seven times, the Low Countries ten times, England twice, Africa as often j and while my health per- mitted me to discharge the duty of sovereign, and the vigour of my constitution was equal in any degree to the arduous office of governing such ex- tensive dominions, I never shunned labour nor

BY CHARLES V. 139

repined under fatigue ; but now, when my health is broken, and my vigour exhausted by the rage of an incurable distemper, my growing infirmities ad- monish me to retire ; nor am I so fond of reigning, as to retain the sceptre in an impotent hand which is no longer able to protect my subjects. Instead of a sovereign, worn out with diseases and scarce half alive, I give you one in the prime of life, already accustomed to govern,* and who adds to the vigour of youth all the attention and sagacity of maturer years."

In a few weeks afterwards, he resigned with equal solemnity, and in an assembly no less splendid, the crown of Spain and its dependent territories, re- serving only a pension of 100,000 crowns, to defray the expense of his few attendants, and afford him a small sum for acts of benevolence and charity. The place which he chose for his retreat was the monas- tery of St. Juste, one of the most secluded and delightful situations in the province of Estremadura. There, in silence and solitude, burying the vast schemes of military glory and political dominion, which, for half a century, had filled with terror all the nations of Europe, he spent the evening of his life in practising the most rigid and self-denying

* He had already resigned his Italian dominions to Philip, on the occasion of his marriage.

140 PHILIP, THE NEW SOVEREIGN,

devotions of his religion, and died on the 21st of September, 1558. Thus ended the life of the most powerful sovereign Europe had seen since the days of Charlemagne and the Empire of the West;

Philip differed much from his father. A gloomy, cruel, and vindictive bigot from his youth, he proved himself the determined and unrelenting enemy both of civil and religious freedom. The blind tool of Rome, he stopped short at no injustice or cruelty to establish its authority and promote its most nefa- rious designs, as well amongst his own subjects as wherever else his influence extended. From such a sovereign the Spanish Protestants had little mercy to expect. The history of Protestantism in the Peninsula, from the beginning of his reign till the suppression of the Reformation, is little more than a martyrology of its adherents. With this painful subject this and the following chapter will be mainly taken up.

Shortly after the accession of Philip, he applied to Pope Paul IV, for the increase of the powers of the Inquisition. The request was readily complied with by the Pontijff, and bulls, ad lihitum, were issued, enlarging the authority of the Holy Office to any required extent. All the decisions of previous coun- cils and popes, against heretics and schismatics, were renewed, and Valdes, the Inquisitor-General, was

EXTENDS THE INQUISITION. 141

charged to put forth increased effort for the dis- covery and punishment of all such offenders, " whether they were bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals or legates, barons, counts, marquises, dukes, princes, kings, or emperors." Agreeably to these instructions, Valdes issued orders to all the tribu- nals of the Inquisition throughout the country, to search for heretical books, and to make a public auto-da-fe of all such as they should discover, and at the same time to make increased effort for the discovery of heretics themselves.

Simultaneously with these directions from the Inquisitor-General, Philip published a law by which death, with confiscation of property, was the punish- ment to be inflicted on all who sold, bought, read, or possessed any of the forbidden books. In the following year the Pope issued a bull, enjoining all confessors to examine their penitents on this point, and to charge them, under pain of excommunication, to denounce all whom they knew, or had solid reason to suspect, to be guilty of this offence ; by the same bull, neglect of this duty by the confessors subjected themselves to the pains and penalties threatened against their penitents. The Pontiff further autho- rized the Inquisitor-General to hold, during two years from the day on which the order was given, an investigation into the orthodoxy of all bishops,

142 INCREASED POWER OF THE INQUISITION,

archbishops, patriarchs, and primates in Spain ; inas- much as he had reason to suspect that not a few of these dignitaries were favourably inclined to the reformed faith.

In addition to these measures, a further stimulus was given to informers by a renewal of the royal ordinance, which had fallen into disuse, and by which a fourth of the property of those condemned for heresy should be given to the individuals by whom they had been denounced. But even these barbarous and unjust decrees were not considered sufficient to accomplish the extinction of the dreaded Reforma- tion. And in 1559, the Pope issued another brief, by which the Inquisitors were ordered to deliver over to the secular arm — in other words, to execu- tion— all who had been, or should be, convicted of having taught the reformed opinions, even though they had not relapsed and should be willing to abjure their errors. What magnified the atrocious injustice of this law was, that it was intended to operate against those who had offended prior to its enactment, and thus apply to the prisoners who were then within the dungeons of the Holy Office.

The publication of these and other similar pontifi- cal ordinances so increased the functions of the In- quisition, that it was thought necessary to appoint additional agents. To support these, the Pope

HOW SUPPORTED. 143

authorized the Inquisitors to appropriate certain ecclesiastical revenues ; besides which, they were empowered to raise an extraordinary subsidy of a hundred thousand ducats of gold to be paid by the clergy. This heavy tax upon the income of the holy fathers tested the sincerity of their zeal against heresy. The wisdom and justice of the other pon- tifical decrees had not been questioned ; but, on the contrary, every injunction they contained, however iniquitous, had met with their ready obedience. Not so with this last, however ; it required the exercise of the secular power to enforce compliance with its provisions.

The Council of the Supreme had been led to apply for these additional powers from the king and Pope, by information which they received at the close of the year 1557, of the importation of a large quantity of Bibles and Lutheran books from Germany and the Netherlands, and likewise of the fact that the adherents to the Protestant doctrines were rapidly multiplying throughout the country, not- withstanding all the efforts which had been made for the suppression of heresy. Koused by this in- formation, they resolved to call into action more prompt and vigorous instruments than they had yet employed. They reorganised the Inquisitorial police, and adopted an improved system of detective

144 FAITHFULNESS AND TREACHERY.

agencies, which speedily resulted in the wished-for discoveries. The first of these led to the arrest of Julian Hernandez, a native of Villaverda in the district of Campos, and the man by whom the proscribed books had been introduced into Spain. Hernandez had shown a copy of the New Testament to a smith, who denounced him to the Inquisition as a zealous propagator of the new doctrines. Having at the first examination before the Inquisi- torial tribunal refused to inform against his associates, he was put to the torture. He endured it heroically, and refused to give any clue by which his fellow- Protestants could be discovered ; at the same time openly confessing his own attachment to the re- formed cause, and glorying in having been the instrument in supplying his ignorant and misguided countrymen with such treasures as Bibles in their own tongue. Promises, threats, and tortures, were alike useless j he would inculpate none.

Failing to elicit any information from Hernandez, they had recourse to other and more successful measures. By means of the confessional, they in- duced the wife of one Juan Garcia, a member of the Protestant church in Valladolid, to inform against her husband, and to disclose the place in which the friends of the reformed faith were accustomed to meet for worship. Her treachery was rewarded by

AN INQUISITORIAL COUP-DE-MAIN. 14o

a pension for life, paid from the public funds. Just about the same time at which the Inquisitors made this discovery in Valladolid, the members of the Holy Office in Seville succeeded in obtaining similar information about the members of the Lutheran church in that city.

Thus furnished with the knowledge which they had so long endeavoured to procure, the Inquisitors determined " at once to crush the viper's nest " by simultaneous action of all their tribunals throughout the country. Instructions were sent to all their agents to be ready to co-operate with the chief institutions in Valladolid and Seville, when the signal for action should be given. Having made these arrangements, and taken care to provide against the escape of the victims from the meshes of the net spread for them, they began the arrests on the same day throughout the various localities about which information had been received. In one day two hundred were seized in Seville, a number which speedily increased to eight hundred. In Valladolid eighty were apprehended, whilst the number of arrests by the other tribunals throughout the country was proportionate.

This unexpected coup-de-main of the Inquisition filled the panic-stricken Protestants with the wildest alarm, and deprived them for the time of the cool

146 WHOLESALE ARRESTS

self-possession on which alone their safety depended. Thrown into disorder by the apprehension of those who could control and advise them, many brought upon themselves, by their imprudent precipitancy, the fate from which they were endeavouring to escape. Under the influence of the sudden terror which the unsuspected blow had inspired, some surrendered themselves to the Inquisition, and confessed their connection with the reformed church, vainly hoping to purchase clemency by self-accusa- tion j whilst others attempted to cross the Pyrenees or escape by sea, but were followed and overtaken. Others, again, who succeeded in reaching a Protes- tant country, were entrapped by the agents of the Inquisition, and brought back into Spain, to expiate their heresy and flight by the endurance of multiplied cruelties. The number of the arrested was so great in Seville, that all the prisons and convents, besides several private houses, were crowded with the objects of Inquisitorial vengeance.

Amongst those who succeeded in making good their retreat, were twelve of the Hieronymite monks of the Convent of San Isidro del Campo, already mentioned. They left Spain separately, and by difierent routes, and met in Geneva, after wander- ing through various parts of the Continent for twelve months. Their flight was speedily known

AND PROLONGED IMPRISONMENTS. 147

by the Inquisition, and drew down its most violent persecution on those of their order who remained behind. This death-blow to Protestantism in Spain was given in the beginning of the year 1558.

Having thus secured their victims, the next object with the Inquisition was to dispose of them in such a manner as would most effectually strike terror into the minds of the whole nation. They were anxious to render the closing scene in the terrible tragedy which they contemplated, as great a triumph to their church as possible ; and, for this purpose, delayed the vengeance which they had in store for the imprisoned Protestants for nearly two years. During that period they endeavoured to secure as many recantations as false promises of mercy, which they inwardly resolved to extend to none, could induce their captives to make. But, though lavish in assurances of pardon to all who would abjure their heresies, or inform against any who had not been denounced, they succeeded in gaining but few penitents out of the vast numbers arrested.

In the mean time the unhappy victims, subjected to every hardship and cruelty which Inquisitorial ingenuity could invent, endured all the misery which the severity of their imprisonment, and the uncer- tainty of the fate which awaited them, could not fail to produce. Amongst those whose health broke

148 SUFFERINGS OF CONSTANTINE.

down under these protracted sufferings, was Con- stantine Ponce de la Fuente. He had been one of the first whom the eager Inquisitors had pounced upon. They had long suspected his attachment to the reformed faith, but had failed, through the extreme caution with which he acted and spoke, in procuring any evidence of his heresy that could justify the arrest of a man so much in favour with the Emperor, and so universally beloved by the people. It was not to be expected, however, that want of satisfactory evidence would save a man whose popularity they had so long viewed with a jealous eye, when they were vested with the power of almost indiscriminate arrest. When brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition, he maintained his innocence, and repelled the charges which had been brought against him, so successfully as to baffle all their efforts to convict him of holding any opinions opposed to the established creed. As there had been little beyond suspicion of heresy to justify his arrest at the first, he would, in all probability, have succeeded in escaping, had not an unforeseen occurrence given them proof of his heterodoxy which it was useless to attempt to disprove.

Amongst those who had been apprehended at the same time as himself, was Dona Isabella Martinia, a widow lady of high respectability. Before the

DISCOVERY OF MSS. 149

usual inventory of the property of tlie accused had been taken, her son, Francisco Bertran, had managed to conceal his mother's jewels from the agents of the Holy Office. A treacherous servant, however, had watched him, and some time after gave information to the Inquisitors. An alguazil was immediately despatched to demand the surrender of the hidden valuables. As soon as the officer reached the house, the alarmed youth, without waiting to hear the object of his visit, declared his readiness to deliver up what the alguazil had come for. Leading him to a concealed recess, separated from the main chamber by a thin panelling, Bertran disclosed a large number of Lutheran books and several works in manuscript, which Constantine had entrusted to his mother for greater security a short time before the storm had burst upon the reformed cause in Seville. The surprised alguazil concealed his delight at this unexpected discovery, and intimated his desire to have the concealed jewels likewise given up. Valuable as were the latter, the Inquisitors prized the books even more highly, since they fur- nished the evidence which the holy fathers had so long sought for in vain. Amongst the manuscripts was the second part of Constantine's Suinmary of Christian Doctrine, already noticed, in which he treated of the main points in dispute between the

150 CONVICTION OF DE LA FUENTE,

Romish and Reformed Churches ; discussing at great length the doctrines of justification by faith, good works, the sacraments, purgatory, and other questions at issue between the contending parties. Constantine at once acknowledged himself to be the author of the volume, and declared his firm belief in all the sentiments it contained, adding, " It is unnecessary for you to produce further evidence ; you have there a candid and full confession of my belief. I am in your hands ; do with me as seemeth to you good."

Having convicted Constantine, they next en- deavoured to elicit from him information against his friends, but in vain ; no means which they could employ could induce him to disclose anything by which any of his fellow- prisoners might be injured. After the death of the Emperor, he was removed from the apartment in which he had been till then confined, to a damp and noisome dungeon, to which neither air nor light had access. This increase to the previous rigours of his imprisonment in a short time brought on dysentery, of which he died, after having been confined for nearly two years. So great were the cruelties to which he had been exposed, that he was heard to exclaim, a short time before his death : — " O my God ! are there no Scythians in the world, no cannibals, more fierce

AND PROHIBITION OF HIS WORKS. 151

and cruel than Scythians, into whose hands thou canst throw me, so that I may but escape the talons of these wretches ? " Having thus been spared the fate his enemies had in store for him, they endea- voured to compensate themselves for the loss by circulating the report that he had committed suicide in his prison. This calumny, though repeated by some subsequent Romish historians, was abundantly disproved by the evidence of a young monk of San Isidro, who had been confined in the same dungeon with Constantine, and attended him in his last moments.

It was customary after the condemnation of any one who had written books, to prohibit them. In the case of Constantine's works there was a peculiar difficulty which presented itself, inasmuch as they had been already published with the approbation of the Inquisitors, who were now thoroughly puzzled as to how they should act in the matter. After much consideration, they at last resolved to forbid their circulation ; " not," they said, " because they had found anything in them worthy of condemnation, but because it was not fit that any honourable memo- rial of a man doomed to infamy should be transmitted to posterity."

Besides Constantine, Olmedo, a man almost equally distinguished for his learning and piety,

152 UNPARALLELED CRUELTY AND PERJURY

sunk under the horrors to which the captive Protes- tants were subjected in the dungeons of the Inquisi- tion. Nor was he the only additional victim ; many whose names have not come down to us, perished either on the rack or amid the poisoned atmosphere and filth of their overcrowded cells. Of the vast numbers imprisoned, one only had recourse to the fearful remedy of suicide. The unhappy being who thus, in a fit of distraction, put an end to her life, was one Juana Sanchez, a heata, or kind of secular nun. Havinor obtained the knowledo^e of her con- demnation, she anticipated the dreadful consequence by cutting her throat with a pair of scissors, and after lingering a few days, died of the wound. The wonder is that more of her fellow-prisoners were not driven to end their sufferings by the same desperate means.

Not the least of the cruelties to which they were exposed, were those practised by the Inquisitors for the purpose of obtaining evidence from some of the prisoners by which others of their number might be convicted. One instance will be sufficient to give the reader an idea of the means employed for this purpose. Amongst those who had been arrested in Seville on suspicion of heresy, were the widow and three daughters of Fernando Nugnez, a native of Lepe. They were all put to the torture to elicit

TO EXTORT CONFESSION. 153

a confession, but in vain. Failing in this, one of the Inquisitors sent for the youngest daughter, and pretending to sympathize with her and pity her sufferings, bound himself by an oath not to betray her if she would confess to him, and that he would save her mother, her sisters, and herself. Trusting to his oath, and ensnared by the specious promises of liberty which he held out, she revealed all the tenets which they had embraced ; whereupon the perjured wretch, having thus atrociously gained his end, immediately ordered her to be put to the rack a second time. She was at once brought back to the torture-chamber, and then, in presence of the judges, was compelled tO repeat the confession which she had made in reliance upon the oath of her deceiver. Under this second infliction of the torture, she let fall expressions which supplemented her previous admissions, and led to the arrest and ultimate condemnation of several of the other ad- herents to the reformed faith.

So notoriously cruel and unjust were the means employed to extort evidence from the prisoners against each other, during this period, that a public investigation into the Inquisitorial proceedings was called for, and to some extent obtained, by several individuals of high rank in the church. Puigblanch tells us that about the year 1560, Senor Enriquez,

154 A CHARGE LAID AGAINST THE INQUISITION.

Abbot of the then Collegiate Church of Valladolid, laid a remonstrance before Philip II. against the Inquisition of that city, in which he speaks of the arbitrariness and avarice of its ministers, and how extremely advisable it would be for magistrates of the Crown to take part in its trials. In proof of its designing conduct, he asserts that in the cause of Canon Cazalla, the officers had allowed the nuns, who, like him, were imprisoned on the plea of Lutheranism, to converse with each other, in order that by confirming themselves the stronger in their errors, they might be enabled to condemn them. As an additional proof of this, and of the vice having extended to other tribunals, he adds that, having himself entered, in company with the Bishop of Palencia, into the prisons of the Inquisition of Toledo, and reduced a Flemish prisoner to penance who had not relapsed, the Inquisitors refused to grant him the pardon of his life, owing to the Auto of the faith being already proclaimed, whereas, according to practice, he had not lost his right to receive pardon till his sentence was read on the platform. As a testimony of their avarice, he affirms that the Inquisitors of Valladolid had a shameful dispute among themselves respecting the distribu- tion of the confiscated money belonging to the unfortunate Cazalla.*

* Inquisition Unmasked, vol. ii. pp. 273, 274.

A GRAND AUTO ON TEINITY SUNDAY. 155

Having now spent nearly two years in hunting out victims, and in torturing those whom they had taken, for the purposes we have mentioned, the Holy Office resolved to signalize its triumphs by the celebration of autos-da-fe throughout the kingdom.

The first of these dreadful exhibitions occurred at Valladolid, on Trinity Sunday, May 21, 1559. To render the occasion more solemn, and to increase the dignity of the Inquisition in the eyes of the people, Don Carlos, the heir apparent, and his aunt Juana, queen dowager of Portugal, and regent of the kingdom during the absence of Philip in the Netherlands, made their appearance in the midst of the assembly, seated on a throne erected for them on one side of the grand Square between the Church of St. Francis and the house of the Consistory, where the execution was to take place.

Before the ceremony began, an oath was ad- ministered to them, in which they pledged them- selves to support the Inquisition, and to reveal faithfully and promptly whatever they might discover which threatened any danger to the faith. Don Carlos, who was at that time only fourteen years of age, is said to have inwardly vowed from that moment an eternal enmity to the infamous insti- tution which thus sought to fetter his understanding, and establish a power of control over his future

156 PENITENTS OF NOTE,

course. Besides the prince and his aunt, most of the principal nobility of Spain were present to witness the performance of the fearful tragedy.

The execution, and the various ceremonies attend- ing it, lasted from six o'clock in the morning till two in the afternoon, a period which was hardly long enough to satiate the morbid curiosity of the assembled crowds. When the usual sermon had been preached at the commencement of the pro- ceedings, by Melchior Cano, Bishop of the Canaries and one of the most celebrated of the divines present, the prisoners were brought forward to undergo their respective sentences. They were thirty in number, of whom sixteen were penitents ; of the remaining fourteen, two were burnt alive, whilst the rest were first strangled and then com- mitted to the flames.

Amongst the penitents who appeared at this auto, were several individuals of high rank. Of these we may mention Don Pedro Sarmiento de Rojas, son of the first Marquis de Poza. This nobleman was stripped of his decorations as chevalier of the order of St. James, and condemned to wear a perpetual sanbenito, to be imprisoned for life, and at death to have his memory declared infamous. Dona Maria de Figueroa, his wife, was likewise sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and to wear

PUNISHED AT THE AUTO-DA-FE. 157

the sanbenito and coroza.* His nepliew, Don Luis de Rojas, eldest son of the second Marquis de Poza, and grandson of the Marquis d' Alcaguizes, was banished from Madrid, Yalladolid, and Palencia, yet forbidden to leave the kingdom ; and deprived of his right of succession to the titles and estates of his father. Don Luis' aunt, Dona Ana Henriquez de Eojas,t wife of Don Juan Alonso de Fonesca Merxia, appeared in the sanbenito, and was con- demned to be separated from her husband, and to be confined for the remainder of her life in a monastery. Don Juan de Ulloa Pereira, brother of the Marquis de la Mota, was Hkewise sentenced to wear the sanbenito and to be imprisoned for life, with loss of all his honours as Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem ; but, having subsequently appealed to the Pope, he was restored to his rank, and exempted from the punishment to which he had been condemned. Juan de Vibero Cazalla, an inhabitant of Valladolid, his wife, Dona Silva de Bibera, his sister. Dona Constanza, widow of an officer in the royal household, Maria de Saavedra, widow of Juan Cisueros de Soto, and Leonora de

* A coronet made of pasteboard, and worn by those upon whom any punishment was inflicted by the Inquisition.

+ Llorente calls this lady a nun of the convent of St. Cataline, in Valladolid.

158 TIMIDITY OF CAZALLA.

Cisneros* (whose husband, Antonio Herezuelo, an advocate, was burned alive) together with four other individuals of inferior rank, were condemned to wear the sanbenito, have their property confiscated, and be imprisoned for life.

Of the fourteen who suffered death on this occasion, the greater part were persons of high respectability, and some of them held offices of importance in the Church. Amongst the latter was Dr. Augustin Cazalla, whose zeal for the re- formed faith we have already noticed, t When the storm burst upon the Protestants, he and his mother. Dona Leonora de Vivera, his three brothers, and two sisters, were amongst the first of those who were consigned to the dungeons of the Inquisition. Though equally attached to the Lutheran doctrines, this divine, whom a Popish historian J acknowledges to have been "a most eloquent preacher," was inferior in courage to many of his fellow-prisoners. When brought before the judges, he denied most explicitly that he had ever preached the reformed doctrines, though he confessed that he had privately embraced them. He expected by this declaration, and by the submission with which he received the

*She was subsequently burnt, after several years' im- prisonment.

t Supra, p. 62. Ij: Paramo.

VICTIMS STRANGLED AND BURNED. 159

rebukes of the Inquisitors, to escape any further punishment than that which was usually inflicted on reconciled penitents. But on the evening before the auto-da-fe, he was visited by one of the fathers, who acquainted him with his sentence. At the place of execution he was granted the poor favour of being strangled before he was thrown into the flames. Though this was the boon usually granted to relapsed penitents, there is no reason to believe that he became reconciled to the Church of Kome before his death. This report was spread by the Inquisitors, but if he had done so, " why," says the author of the Miscellaneous Tracts, "did they burn him, having never relapsed 1 And would it not have been more for their interest to have suffered him to live, and to have obliged him to have preached to his converts to follow his example, than to have burnt him out of the way ? "

The same fate was shared by Cazalla's sister. Dona Beatrice de Yibero ; by Dr. Alonso Perez, " a priest of great learning and exemplary piety, and a most fervent preacher ;" by Don Christobal de Olcampo, chevalier of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and almoner to the grand prior of Castile ; by Don Chris- tobal de Padilla ; Dona Catalina de Ortega, daughter- in-law to the fiscal of the royal council of Castile ; and six others, all of whom were Protestants, ex-

160 BURNED ALIVE,

cept Gonzales Baez, a relapsed Jew. Cazalla's mother, Dona Leonora de Vivera, having died be- fore the celebration of this auto, her bones were dug up, and, together with her effigy, were committed to the same flames which destroyed the bodies of her children. Her house, in which the Protestants had been accustomed to meet for worship, was razed to the ground, its site was sown with salt, and a pillar was erected on the spot, with an inscription, stating the cause of its demolition. This last monument of Inquisitorial fanaticism and impotent revenge re- mained standing till removed by the French, during their temporary occupation of Spain in 1800.

The two individuals who were burned alive on this occasion, were Francisco de Yibero Cazalla, brother of Dr. Augustin, and parish priest of Hor- migos, in the bishopric of Palencia, and Antonio Herezuelo, the advocate. Llorente inclines to the opinion, that the former when under the torture recanted, and begged to be reconciled to the com- munion of the Romish Church ; but whether this be the case or not, it is certain that he manifested no such wishes on the day of his execution, but heroically refused to purchase strangulation on the usual terms. Herezuelo endured his fate with a courage worthy of the cause for which he suffered. The only thing that affected him was, the sight of

FORTITUDE OF HEREZUELO. 161

his wife amongst the penitents instead of being at the stake. Kefusing to pay attention to the two monks who accompanied him to the place of execu- tion, he was addressed by Dr. Cazalla, who sought thus unworthily to purchase clemency for himself.

In his account of this auto-da-fe, the popish his- torian, Illescas, thus describes the admirable courage with which he endured the horrors of the stake : — "The bachelor Herezuelo suffered himself to be burned alive with unparalleled hardihood. I stood so near him, that I had a complete view of his per- son, and observed all his motions and gestures. He could not speak, for his mouth was gagged, on account of the blasphemies which he had uttered j but his whole behaviour showed him to be a most resolute and hardened person, who, rather than yield to believe with his companions, was determined to die in the flames. Though I marked him narrowly, I could not observe the least symptom of fear, or expression of pain ; only there was a sadness on his countenance beyond anything I had ever seen. It was frightful to look on his face, when one considered that in a moment he would be in hell, with his associate and master, Luther." "He perished in silence," says Llorente.

On the return of Philip from the Netherlands, where he had left the Duchess of Parma as regent M

162 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE

during his absence, the Holy Office, on the 8th of October in the same year, again led its victims to the grand square of the city of Valladolid. Philip attended, in company with his son, his sister Juana, the prince of Parma, three ambassadors from France, and a large and brilliant assemblage of the nobility and clergy of the kingdom.

This second batch of victims consisted of twenty- nine persons, sixteen of whom were penitents, the remaining thirteen being destined for the flames. The case of one of the former affords a striking illustration of the indifference of the Inquisitors to the worst of crimes, so as they tended to further the accomplishment of their own designs.

Amongst the penitents was one Antonio Sanchez, a native of Salamanca, who had been found guilty of falsely accusing a Jewish Christian of circumcising a child, for which supposed violation of the law, the accused convert was condemned to be burnt to death. The perjury of Sanchez was clearly proved, and though not merely natural justice, but the circum- stances under which the Holy Office acted, demanded that such crimes should be visited with the weightiest penalties, as an example to others ; he was sentenced to endure no more severe punishment than 200 lashes of the whip, and to be condemned to the galleys for five years ; while, on the very same occa-

OF CRIME. 163

sion, they condemned a poor barber — one Pedro d'Aguilar — to receive 400 lashes, and to be sent to the galleys yor life, for no greater offence than playing some tricks in the assumed character of a familiar of the Inquisition ! Such was the comparative esti- mate formed by the holy fathers of meditated mur- der and the personation of one of their own alguazils. The most distinguished of the other penitents were three nuns of the order of Belen, Dona Francisca Zuniga de Baeza, a heata of Valladolid, Dona Isabella de Castilla, wife of Don Carlos de Soso, and her niece^ Dona Catalina. Don Carlos himself was amongst those who perished in the flames. He had been arrested in Logrono, in which city and the surrounding districts we have seen how zealously and successfully he laboured in the cause of evan- gelical truth. During a long and painful imprison- ment, he bore with unshaken firmness and constancy the cruelties to which he was subjected, and resisted equally every effort of his tormentors to induce him to inform against others, or to abjure the faith which he had embraced. Instead of seeking to secure his own safety by any compromise, he boldly avowed, when brought before the judges, his devoted attach- ment to the doctrines of the reformed creed, and denounced the Romish Church as alike fatal to the temporal and spiritual well-being of men. When

164 HEROIC DEATHS

informed of his sentence on the evening before his execution, he asked for writing materials, and wrote out a confession of his faith, which was entirely Lutheran ; he said that this doctrine, and not that taught by the Romish Church, which had been cor- rupted for several centuries, was the true faith of the Gospel ; that he would die in that belief, and that he offered himself to God in memory of the passion of Jesus Christ. "It would be difficult," says the secretary of the Inquisition, "to express the vigour and energy of his writing, which filled two sheets of paper." On the morning of his execu- tion he was gagged, to prevent his addressing the other prisoners; when he arrived at the stake the gag was removed, and the attendant friars renewed their efforts to induce him to recant, but in vain. His reply was, "If I had time, I would convince you that you are lost, by not following my example. Hasten to light the wood which is to consume me." He died without a struggle or a groan.

Pedro de Cazalla, a second brother of Dr. Augustin Cazalla, was another of the victims on this occasion. He was arrested on the 23rd of April, 1558, and, on being brought before the tribunal of the Holy Office, admitted his attachment to the Lutheran faith. Some time after, he expressed his willing- ness to return to the communion of the Romish

OF VARIOUS MARTYRS. 165

Church, but his request was not complied with, because he had preached the heretical doctrines. On the day preceding the auto, he was asked to confess, but refused ; the horrors of the stake, however, over- came him. As the flames were about to be lighted, he asked for a confessor, after which he was strangled and then cast into the flames.

Dominic Sanchez, a priest of Villamediana, who had been converted by De Soso, shared the same fate as Cazalla.

Domingo de Roxas, son of the Marquis de Poza, had been arrested in the garb of a layman at Cala- horra, on his way to Flanders. He made his first declaration before the Inquisition, on the 13th of May, 1558, on which and some subsequent appear- ances, he let fall some expressions which led the judges to order him to be tortured, with a view to elicit fuller information. Having entreated that he might be spared the horrors of the question, as he dreaded it more than death, the order was re- voked, on condition that he would reveal all he knew. He then begged to be reconciled, but refused to give any information that could injure his fellow- prisoners. On the night before his death, he seems to have recovered his firmness, for he refused the services of the priest who had been sent to confess him, and declared his determination to die in the

166 DONA MAKINA DE GUEVARA.

reformed faith. TKis declaration he renewed in presence of the king on the following day, but coupled it with an appeal to the royal mercy on behalf of himself and his fellow-sufferers. Philip, sternly ordering the guards to move him on to the stake, replied, "I would carry wood to burn my own son, were he such a wretch as thou." When fastened to the stake, his courage again failed j he demanded a confessor, received absolution, was strangled, and then burned.

Juan Sanchez, a servant of Pedro de Cazalla, had been arrested at Turlingen and sent back to Valla- dolid, whence he had endeavoured to escape, under the assumed name of Juan de Vibar, when the storm first broke out. He resisted all attempts to induce him to recant, both during his confinement and at the stake. When the cords which bound him were burned through, he darted to the top of the scaffold, seeing from whence the firmness with which Don Carlos de Soso endured his sufferings, he returned to the stake, and, calling for more fuel, perished without a struggle.

Dona Euphrosyne Rios, a nun of the order of St. Clara, had been convicted of heresy by twenty- two witnesses ; when fastened to the stake, she called for a confessor, and having received absolution was strangled and afterwards burned.

HER CONSTANCY. 167

Of the others who suffered death on this occasion, we shall mention only Dona Marina de Guevara, a nun of St. Helen, in Valladolid. When arrested, she had at first confessed her defection from the established faith, and expressed her willingness to recant. This, however, did not save her ; she was condemned to expiate her heresy at the stake. Her cousin; Valdes, the Inquisitor-General, used all his influence on her behalf, but the ordinary judges resisted his interference as an encroachment upon their authority, and refused to revoke their sentence. He then commissioned Don Alphonso Tellez Giron and the Duke of Osma to visit the accused, and try to obtain such a recantation as would save her life. The attempt failed. Instead of complying, she expressed her regret at the partial recantation which she had already made, and declared her entire belief of the Lutheran tenets. Don Alphonso was sent a second time, accompanied by one of the Inquisitors, but with no better success than at first. The only favour Valdes could obtain for her was that she should be strangled before being committed to the flames.

Such were the two famous autos-da-fe of Valla- dolid. In the next chapter we shall give an account of those which were celebrated in Seville and other parts of the kingdom.

168 THE FIRST AITTO

€|iifto iig^t|.

SUPPRESSIVE MEASURES CONTINUED AND COMPLETED.

The reader will have noticed how comparatively large a proportion of the Protestant captives in Valladolid had purchased life, or a less protracted kind of death, by a profession of penitence. It was for this reason that Valladolid was preferred to Seville, as the scene on which the Holy Office was to celebrate its first triumphs over heresy; for, although Seville contained by far the greatest num- ber of prisoners, the efforts of the Inquisitors in that city had been much less successful in gaining back converts to the faith than in Valladolid. A tolerably correct estimate of the probable sincerity of these recantations may be formed from what has been said j yet they afforded the holy fathers an

AT SEVILLE. 169

opportunity, which they highly prized, of exhibiting, before the sovereign and the people at large, an array of triumphs which they could not boast of in any other city in the kingdom.

The fires of the Inquisition in Seville were lighted for the first time on the 24th of September, 1559. The place chosen for the celebration of this auto was the square of St. Francis, in which was a large and brilliant assemblage of the nobility and superior clergy, besides vast crowds of the populace, whom the same bigotry and morbid curiosity had brought together. Four bishops were present, the coadjutor of Seville, those of Largo, the Canaries, and Tarra- zona, the last-mentioned prelate being the resident Vice-Inquisitor- General in Seville.

One hundred and one prisoners appeared on this occasion, of whom twenty- one suffered death, and eighty were condemned to various kinds of severe penance. The most distinguished person amongst the former was Don Juan Ponce de Leon, cousin to the Duke d'Arcos, and related to the Duchess de Bejar, both of whom were present at his execu- tion. A short time after his arrest, he had been induced by the false promises of liberty for himself and his friends, which had been as plentifully given in Seville as in Yalladolid, to plead guilty to the indictment which had been drawn up against him ;

170 GONZALEZ AND HIS SISTERS.

but hardly had he done so, when he perceived the deception which had been practised, and recalled the partial expression of penitence with which his con- fession had been accompanied. From that time till the day of his execution, he stedfastly adhered to his declaration of attachment to the Lutheran faith, and refused to purchase his life at the expense of his religion. At the stake he maintained the same unwavering resolution, and proved his constancy by his death as he had done by his life.

The same dignified and resolute demeanour was exhibited by Don Juan Gonzalez and his two sisters, who perished with him. Don Juan was a priest of Seville, and one of the most celebrated preachers in Andalusia. At twelve years of age he had been imprisoned on suspicion of Mahometanism, because he was descended of Moorish ancestors, but was afterwards liberated. When urged to recant his Lutheran errors, he refused, affirming that his opinions were founded on the holy Scriptures, and therefore could not be erroneous. As he entered the square of St. Francis, he sung the 109th Psalm, and then turned to encourage his sisters, whom the awfulness of the scene was beginning to depress. At the stake, the attendant friars urged his sisters, in repeating the creed, to insert the word Roman in the clause relating to the " CathoUc Church," but

GARCIA DE ARIAS. 171

they professed their resolution strictly to imitate the example of their brother, and Juan persisting in his refusal to alter the confession which he had already made, they were strangled, and he hurled alive into the flames.

It would be impossible to record, in the space at our disposal, all the instances of constancy on the one side, and barbarity on the other, to be met with in the history of this auto-da-fe; but these martyrs of Seville exhibited, almost without an exception, a heroism worthy of the cause for which they died, and such as was equalled only in in- dividual cases by those who suffered elsewhere.

Thus did the once wavering and inconstant Garcia de Arias meet his fate. A thorough revolution had gradually taken place in his character, some time before the flight of his brother monks of San Isidro and the arrest of the Protestants in Seville. He had laid aside the equivocal caution by which his leanings towards Lutheranism had been concealed, and was amongst the earliest of those who were consigned to the dungeons of the Triana. During his imprisonment, he manifested a firmness of at- tachment to the reformed cause, which neither torture nor promises of life and liberty could shake. He ascended the scaffold, leaning on his staff", but went to the stake manifesting a spirit of unflinching

172 MARIA DE BOHORQUES.

fortitude, and rejoicing that God had thought him worthy to suffer for so good a cause. Three of his brother-monks suffered with him.

Another conspicuous sufferer was Christobal de Losada, pastor of the Protestant church in Seville. When he arrived at the stake, the friars who attended the ceremony importuned him to renounce his errors, but he replied by entering into a connected and well-sustained argument in defence of the Lutheran doctrines ; when the friars, perceiving that the spectators listened eagerly to what he advanced, began to speak in Latin, in which language he continued his defence with the same ease and ele- gance as he had done in Spanish.

In addition to these instances of constancy and fortitude which have been noticed, we must not omit to mention the case of Maria de Bohorques.. She was one of those remarkable women who some- times become distinguished for proficiency in branches of learning which are without the usual circle of female studies. The natural daughter of one of the highest grandees in the kingdom, she had been educated under the most celebrated masters, and at an early age could read the Latin version of the Scriptures and the Commentators. Whilst a pupil of Dr. Egidio, she had received from him the elements of a sound scriptural education, which pre-

HER TALENTS AND HEROISM. 173

disposed her the more to that freedom of thought upon matters of doctrine which subsequently led her to examine and embrace the Lutheran opinions. Egidio used to say that " none could discourse with her of Divine matters (and she did not care to talk of any other) without being made both wiser and better by her." She was not twenty-one years of age when arrested as a Lutheran ; and when brought before the Inquisitors, she avowed her entire belief in the doctrines of the reformed religion, and de- clared them to be the truths of the Bible which Luther and his associates had freed from the in- crustments of error and superstition. On being put to the torture, she let fall some expressions which were soon after made the foundation of a charge against her sister Juana, but refused to abjure any of the opinions she had embraced. In vain was it that deputation after deputation was sent to per- suade her to recant ; they returned each time with increased admiration of the extraordinary learning and talents which she displayed in defence of the reformed doctrines. On the night before her exe- cution, a last effort was made to induce her to return to the Romish Communion, but she told the friars by whom it was made, that any previous doubts which she might have had about the Lutheran doc- trines were now removed, since their opponents had

^174 OTHER LADIES OF DISTINCTION.

been able to advance no argument for which she had not been prepared with a solid and conclusive answer. She appeared at the stake with a cheerful countenance, and exhorted her fellow -sufferers to bear their trial with hope and resignation. When importuned by the friars to confess and be recon- ciled, she turned away, remarking that the time for disputation was past, and that the few minutes she had to live would be spent in meditating on the passion and death of Christ, to reanimate the faith by which she was to be justified and saved. Pity for her youth, and admiration of her surprising talents, led some of the monks who stood by to make one more effort to save her ; they begged her to repeat the creed, which she did without hesitation, but immediately began to explain its articles accord- ing to the Lutheran sense. Her exposition was cut short by a signal to the executioner, who placed the fatal collar upon her neck, and in an instant she had ceased to breathe. Her body was then thrown into the flames.

Besides Maria de Bohorques, three other ladies of distinction suffered death on this occasion : Dona Isabella de Baena, at whose house the Protestants of Seville had been accustomed to meet for worship; Dona Maria de Vinces, and Dona Maria Cornel. After describing the death-scenes of some of those whom

SECOND AUTO AT SEVILLE. 175

we have now mentioned, Dr. Geddes says, "The blessed saints I have here named, though they were the leaders, were for numbers but a small part of that glorious army of Spanish Protestant Martyrs burnt at this time by the Inquisition ; and who, for the exemplary piety of their lives, and the admirable patience and courage wherewith they triumphed over death, in the most terrible of all its shapes, were nothing inferior to the martyrs of any other nation or age." *

Little more than a year was suffered to elapse before the Inquisitors of Seville thought another auto necessary to clear the religious atmosphere of the noxious vapours of heresy, and for this purpose once more prepared the machinery of death. This second grand auto-da-fe took place on the 22nd of December, 1560. Fourteen individuals were burned in person, and three in eflSgy ; thirty-four were sub- jected to penances, and the reconciliation of three others was read before the commencement of the ceremonies. The effigies were those of Egidio, Con- stantine Ponce, and Juan Perez.

Julian Hernandez, who had advanced the reformed cause so much by importing Bibles into the Penin- sula, was one of those who sealed their fidelity by their death. During his imprisonment he bore the * Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i. p. 473.

176 TWO ENGLISHMEN BURNED.

torture, to which he was frequently subjected, with a fortitude far above his physical strength, and remained faithful to the cause which he had espoused. When brought to the place of execution, he turned to his fellow-prisoners, and exhorted them not to give way, saying, "this is the hour in which we must show ourselves valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ. Let us now bear faithful testimony to his truth before men, and within a few hours we shall receive the testimony of his approbation before angels, and triumph with him in heaven." When the pile was lighted, he showed no symptoms of fear, but called upon the executioners to heap up the wood around him. The guards cut short his sufferings by plunging their lances into his half-burnt body.

Three foreigners, of whom two were Englishmen, were amongst the sufferers on this occasion^ One of the Englishmen was named William Burton ; he was a London merchant, and had visited Spain with a vessel laden with goods, with which he intended trading at various Spanish ports. The only offence of which he had been guilty, was that of speaking too freely of the Inquisition and the superstitions of the country. On the case of this sufferer the late secretary of the Holy Office remarks, — "Let it be granted, that Burton was guilty of an imprudence, by posting up his religious sentiments at San Lucar

THE CASE OF WILLIAM BURTON. 177

de Barrameda, and at Seville, in contempt of the faith of the Spaniards ; it is no less true that both charity and justice required, that in the case of a stranger who had not fixed his abode in Spain, they should have contented themselves with warning him to abstain from all marks of disrespect to the religion and laws of the country, and threatening him with punishment if he repeated the offence. The Holy Office had nothing to do with his private sentiments ; having been established, not for strangers, but solely for the people of Spain."

Not content with the condemnation of Burton, they seized his vessel, and were about to appropriate its valuable cargo. Information, however, had been privately sent to England respecting the arrest of Burton, and the other merchants, to whom the ship in part belonged, immediately despatched a person named John Frampton, to demand the restitution of their property. Finding that the documents which he bore furnished unanswerable proofs of the justice of his claims, they managed to delay the process as long as possible, but at last, when they could no longer equivocate, they had recourse to a charge of heresy, on which Frampton was arrested, and thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition. He appeared at this auto-da-fe amongst the penitents, and was

N

178 MAEIA GOMEZ.

subsequently imprisoned for a year, with loss of the property which he had been sent to recover.

On this additional act of cruelty and gross in- justice, Llorente remarks : — " This is a remarkable proof of the mischief produced by the secresy of the Inquisitorial proceedings. If the affair of John Fronton [Frampton] had been made public, any lawyer would have shown the nullity and falsehood of the inst't'uction. Yet there are Englishmen who defend the tribunal of the Holy Office as a useful institution, and I have heard an English Catholic priest speak in its defence."

Two other foreigners shared the fate of Burton. One of them was William Brook, a Southampton sailor, who had been condemned for an offence similar to that alleged against his countryman ; the other was a Frenchman, of Bayonne, named Fabi- anne, who was likewise a merchant.

The reader will remember the case of Maria Gomez, whose denunciation of her fellow-Protestants during an attack of mental derangement, had nearly brought ruin upon the reformed cause in Seville. After her recovery, she had been received back into Protestant fellowship, and continued till the time of the general arrest, a consistent and useful member of the Lutheran church. At the period mentioned, she and four female relatives fell into the hands of

GASPARD DE BENAVICES. 179

the Inquisition: a three years' imprisonment was unable to shake her constancy, and she now appeared on the scaffold, in company with her relatives, evincing a composure of mind which proved the sincerity and earnestness of her religious convic- tions.

Amongst the penitents was one Gaspard de Bena- vides, an alcalde of the Inquisition at Seville. There was hardly any species of cruelty or injustice of which this wretch had not been guilty towards the prisoners. He had kept up a system of pecu- lation, by which he had deprived them of part of their scanty allowance of provisions, which he after- wards sold them at an exorbitant price. If any of them ventured to complain, he removed them to a dark and filthy dungeon, where he confined them for a fortnight at a time, to punish them for murmur- ing. His cruelties at last led to a riot, which ended in the discovery of his guilt. Yet, he was merely charged with "having failed in zeal and attention to his charge ; " and was deprived of his situation, condemned to appear at the auto with a torch in his hand, and to be banished from Seville j whilst Maria Gonzalez, his servant, was condemned to receive two hundred stripes, and to be banished for ten years, because she had treated the prisoners with kindness, and permitted them occasionally to see

180 JUANA DE BOHORQUES.

and converse with each other. Such was another specimen of Inquisitorial justice !

The case of Dona Juana de Bohorques affords another striking illustration of their cold and reck- less barbarity. She was the daughter of Don Pedro Garcia de Xeres y Bohorques, and wife of Don Francisco de Vargas, the lord Higuera. The words which had fallen from her sister Maria while under torture, had been sufficient to cause her arrest. She was at that time in the sixth month of her preg- nancy, and was consequently treated with somewhat less severity than usual, though subjected to all the trying examinations of an ordinary heretic. The partial forbearance which had been exercised towards her, ceased immediately after her delivery. Only eight days were allowed to pass, till her infant was taken from her, and she was subjected to all the horrors of the torture-chamber. The cords that bound her to the wheel cut her feeble limbs to the bone, and in the convulsions brought on by the dreadful agonies which she endured, her whole frame was bruised and lacerated. Thus mutilated, she was carried back to her dungeon in a dying state, and expired a few days after. But the worst is hardly told. This martyred victim of Inquisitorial injustice and barbarity was publicly declared, at this auto-da-fe., to have been innocent of the charges for

TWELVE AUTOS ANNUALLY. 181

which she had suffered such inhuman treatment ! "Well might the author of the Annals — himself a Catholic — exclaim, "Under what an overwhelming responsibility will these monsters appear before the tribunal of the Almighty ! "

Such is a brief description of the two autos-da-fe which were celebrated in Seville. A third was solemnized in the same city on the 10th of July, 1563, but it was inferior to the two former, both as regarded the number of prisoners brought for- ward, and in the pomp attending its celebration. Six individuals only perished on that occasion.

But Valladolid and Seville were not the only cities whose prisons sent forth sufferers for the truth. One aiuto, at least, took place annually in each of the twelve provincial cities in which tribunals of the Inquisition were established, from 1560 to 1570. On the 25th of February, 1560, the Inquisitors of Toledo celebrated an auto-da-fe for the entertain- ment of their young queen, Elizabeth de Valois, daughter of Henry II. of France. To enhance the solemnity of the occasion, a general assembly of the Cortes of the kingdom was held there at the same time, to take the oath of allegiance to Don Carlos, the heir-apparent ; so that this auto, with the ex- ception of the number of victims, was as solemn as any of those in Valladolid. Amongst those who

183 AUTOS AT TOLEDO.

suffered death was one of the servants of the Duke of Brunswick, whom his master had delivered up to the Inquisition, to testify his hatred of the reformed cause, and to strike terror into the minds of the Germans, Flemings, and French, who were present, and were strongly suspected of being favourable to the reformed religion.

In 1561 another auto-(ia-/e was celebrated in the same city : four Lutherans were burned, and eigh- teen reconciled ; amongst the latter was one of the king's pages, a native of Brussels, named Don Charles Estrect, but the young queen Elizabeth procured his exemption from the penance to which he was con- demned.

On the 17th of June, 1565, an auto of forty-five persons was celebrated by the same Inquisition : eleven were burned, and thirty-four condemned to penances. The greater number of the prisoners on this occasion were Jews : amongst those designated as Protestants, some were called Lutherans, others the faithful, whilst a third class were termed ffu- guenaos, or Huguenots.

It was not, however, till 1571 that any person of distinction suffered at Toledo. In that year an auto- da-fe was celebrated, in which two individuals were burned alive, and three in effigy, whilst thirty-one were condemned to undergo severe penances. One

DR. SIGISMOND ARCHEL. 183

of the two who perished in the flames was Doctor Sigismond Archel, a native of Cagliari, in Sardinia. He had been arrested in Madrid in 1562, as a dog- matizing Lutheran, and after remaining for several years in the prisons of Toledo, contrived to make liis escape ; but descriptions of his person having been sent to all parts of the frontier, he was again arrested, and delivered once more into the hands of his judges. At his trial he persisted in denying the facts imputed, until the publication of the evidence, when he confessed, but maintained, that so far from being a heretic, he was a better Catholic than the Papists. He derided the ignorance of the priests who were sent to convert him, in consequence of which he was gagged until fastened to the stake ; and the archefs, enraged by the firmness with which he endured the flames, pierced his body with their lances whilst the executioners were piling up fresh wood around the stake.

But those of the provincial tribunals which took the most prominent part in the suppression of the Reformation were the Inquisitions of Saragossa, Logrono, and Barcelona. The greater part of the victims who perished in the first-mentioned of these cities were Huguenots, who had quitted Beam, and settled as merchants in Saragossa, Huesca, Barbastro, and other cities. The progress which their Cal-

184 EXPORTATION OP HORSES

vinistic doctrines had made in the Peninsula is proved by an ordinance of the Supreme Council, which says, that " Don Luis de Benegas, the Spanish ambassador at Vienna, informed the Inquisitor-Gene- ral, on the 14th of April, 1568, that he had learned from particular reports that the Calvinists congra- tulated each other on the peace signed between France and Spain, and that they hoped that their religion would make as much progress in Spain as in England, Flanders, and other countries, because the great numbers of Spaniards who had secretly adopted it might easily hold communication with the Protestants of Beam, through Aragon." *

These, and other reports, induced the Council to recommend additional vigilance to the Inquisitors in the eastern provinces, especially in .searching for and seizing heretical books, of which large numbers were smuggled through the passes of the Pyrenees. In addition to these duties, it was made the duty of these eastern tribunals to prevent the exportation of horses from Spain. Since the reign of Alphonso XI., in the fourteenth century, this had been pro- hibited, on pain of death and confiscation ; but for a long time the law had become practically obsolete. But when the civil wars broke out between the Catholics and Protestants in France, Philip, finding * Llorente, His. Inquis. p. 271.

FORBIDDEN BY PHILIP. 185

that Spanish horses were largely employed by the latter, obtained a bull from the Pope, which de- clared all to be suspected of heresy who should furnish horses, arms, or other instruments of war, to the heretics. By the provisions of the bull, he was authorized to commission the Inquisitions of Logrono, Saragossa, and Barcelona, to take cogni- zance of all such offences. Besides this, in 1569, the Council of the Supreme added a clause to the annual edict of denunciations, which obliged every Spanish Catholic Christian to denounce any who should violate the revived law.

At Logrono the agents of the Holy Office were not less active than those in Saragossa, in their efforts to suppress the new doctrines. The labours of De Soso had been productive of much good ; he had left many behind him who carried on the work with vigour and success, notwithstanding the utmost vigilance of the Inquisitors. Being in- formed of this, the Council of the Supreme wrote to its agents in Logrono, in 1568, enjoining them to redouble their watchfulness, inasmuch as Don Diego de Guzman, the ambassador to England, had written that the Protestants of that country boasted that their doctrines were gaining ground in Spain, especially in Navarre.

The largest number of prisoners brought forward

186 EXTINCTION OF PROTESTANTISM

at this tribunal, appeared at the annual auto-da-fe in 1593, when forty-nine persons were condemned, five to be burned alive, and the rest to undergo various kinds of penance.

In Granada and Valencia, several Protestants suffered death, although the majority of those who appeared at the autos in those cities were Jews or Mahometans. At the grand auto-da-fe which was celebrated in Granada on the 27th of May, 1593, five individuals were burned in person, and five in effigy, whilst eighty-seven were condemned to pen- ances. The only Protestant of distinction amongst these was Dona Inez Alvarez, the wife of Thomas Martinez, alguazil to the Royal Chancery. But the suppression of Protestantism in Spain had been virtually accomplished long before this. The av^s which were celebrated by the various tribunals throughout the country from 1560 to 1570, had removed all the friends of the Reformation, whose influence or personal effort had been attended by such hopeful results, and left only a few unimpor- tant and secret adherents to the Lutheran faith. Enough, however, has been shown to prove that the extinction of Spanish Protestantism was not caused by the imprudence or cowardice of its leading friends. The painful history of the cruelties in- flicted on the friends of the reformed cause in the

AND OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 187

Peninsula, furnishes instances of Christian en- lightenment and heroism hardly surpassed by any to be met with in the annals of the Christian Church. If ardent love for the truth, and patient endurance of suffering in its defence, had been able to accomplish the religious emancipation of Spain, the thick and pestilential vapours of Popery would, long ere now, have been swept away, and the bless- ings of religious and civil liberty, which the Re- formation brought to other lands, would now be enjoyed by her people.

188 TRIUMPH OF THE INQUISITION.

^^tt^ $ird\.

SPAIN, SINCE THE REFORMATION.

With the ten years' persecutions, from 1560 to 1570, which we have briefly noticed in the last two chapters, the history of Spanish Protestantism, strictly speaking, ends. Only a few scattered ad- herents to the reformed faith escaped ; and they either quietly lapsed back into the Eomish com- munion, or cherished in secret sentiments which it would have been death openly to maintain.

This triumph of the Inquisition, and its conse- quent suppression of the Keformation, may be dated from the year 1570. But few Protestants, and the majority of those foreigners, appeared at the autos which were celebrated subsequently to that time. Thus, in the grand auto-da-fe, which was held in

SUBSEQUENT AUTOS. 189

Cuenga, in 1654, only one was charged with Lutheranism, whilst fifty-seven persons were con- demned to various punishments. Again, in that which was celebrated twenty-six years later, in 1680, in Madrid, in honour of the marriage of Don Carlos II. with Marie Louise de Bourbon, niece of Louis XIV. of France, the name of but one Pro- testant appeared on the list of the prisoners who were present. It was that of Marcos de Legura, a native of Villa de Ubrique, in Granada, who had formerly been arrested on suspicion of heresy, and been reconciled by the Inquisitors of Llerena, but having subsequently embraced his former opinions, he was again thrown into prison, where he died in the Lutheran faith. His effigy and tones were publicly burned on this occasion.

In the cmtos solemnized subsequently to the sup- pression of the reformed doctrines, the victims were, with the exceptions mentioned, and a few others, persons charged with Judaism, witchcraft, bigamy, blasphemy, and some other offences, in no way con- nected with Lutheranism. The Inquisition had done its diabolic work too thoroughly, to leave much, if any, of the heretical seed in the orthodox soil of Spain, and (in the words of a writer already quoted), " cursed with success in its war against the truth, had from thenceforward to content itself with the

190 DEATH OF PHILIP.

meaner triumphs of iniquity, and to be satisfied with the ruin and misery of men whom it could never so cordially hate as the promoters of religious freedom."*

These persecutions, however, require no record here; we have seen enough of its atrocities in connection with our own subject. It had effectually answered the design of its institution, and in doing so, established for itself a claim upon the undying abhorrence of all future ages. It had trampled in the dust the civil and religious liberties of the Spanish nation, and set up a despotism, whose effects are yet visible in the spiritual ignorance and political degradation of a country whose natural advantages fit her for the first rank of European nations. Spain was thrown back into her former gloom, and com- pelled to submit to the priestly usurpation which was then more firmly established than before.

For the following two centuries and a half, her religious history presents nothing but a painful picture of abject submission to the irrational dogmas and debasing Superstitions of the Church of Ronie — a long night of darkness, broken in upon by no ray of light.

Philip II. died on the 13th of September, 1598, and left the crown to his son, Philip III., whose

* Stebbing's History of the Keformation.

DON MIGUEL SOLANO. 191

education had fitted him more for the mummeries of a monkish cell, than the government of a great kingdom. As the passive tool of the priests, he followed up, at their bidding, the measure's of his father, by others which were calculated effectually to prevent the resuscitation of the reforming spirit ; and thus consummated the spiritual bondage of his people. The administration of his successors tended still further to reduce the nation to its present powerless and degraded condition. Nor did the accession of the house of Bourbon, in the person of the fifth Philip, in 1700, bring with it any increase to the liberties of the Spanish people. The same old incubus of Popery, with all its resultant evils, hung smotheringly upon them still.

The beginning of the nineteenth century brought with it one more instance of Inquisitorial intolerance and cruelty — the last we have to record in its crim- soned history. Don Miguel Juan Antonio Solano was a native of Verdun, in Aragon, and vicar of Esco, in the diocese of Jaca. He was a man of great inventive powers of mind, and had acquired an ex- tensive knowledge of mathematics. His mechanical inventions were chiefly employed for the benefit of his parishioners, by draining their land and improving their agricultural implements. A tedious and pain- ful illness, however, forced him to withdraw from his

192 AN ARREST IN THE PRESENT CENTURY,

active and benevolent pursuits, and led him to devote more of his time to the study of theology. In his retirement, the Bible was his chief text-book, and by a careful and impartial study of its contents, he was led to form for himself a system of doctrine which agreed in all its main points with the Lutheran creed. Having thus embraced doctrinal views opposed to the established faith, his candid and honest mind would not permit him to conceal the change. He drew up a lengthened statement of his new opinions, and submitted them to his diocesan ; but, receiving no answer, he laid them before the theological faculty of Saragossa. His speedy arrest was the first indi- cation which he received, of what was to follow the avowal of his heterodox sentiments. Escaping, by the help of some friends, from the Inquisitorial dun- geons of Saragossa, he succeeded in reaching Oleron, a town on the French border ; but an overweening sense of duty soon led him to return, and surrender himself into the hands of the Inquisition. When brought before the judges, he openly avowed the sentiments which he had embraced, and denied that they were unsound, inasmuch as they were the plain teachings of the inspired volume. Such a defence weighed but little before such a tribunal. The Inquisitor-General, Arce, was unwilling that his period of office should be signalized by an execu-

AND DEATH OF THE VICTIM. 193

tion ; but there was no alternative ; for the offence of which Solano confessed himself guilty, the Inqui- sitorial statutes provided no punishment but death. Every effort was employed to induce the prisoner to recant, but in vain. A second examination of the witnesses was held, but nothing could be elicited which would justify the infliction of a lighter punish- ment. A last effort was made to save him, by endeavouring to establish his insanity, but no posi- tive evidence could be obtained. But a fever, brought on by his confinement, spared the Holy Office a com- promise or the infliction of a punishment which had become so unusual. During his illness, every effort was redoubled to procure a recantation of the ob- noxious views, but with no better result than before. A short time before his death, the attendant phy- sician warned him of his danger, and exhorted him to be reconciled to the Church before it was too late. His dying words, in reply, were, " I am in the hands of God, and have nothing more to do." Thus died the vicar of Esco, in 1805. His body was refused ecclesiastical burial, and was privately interred within the grounds of the Inquisition, near the banks of the Ebro. His death stopped all further proceedings, and saved the Council of the Supreme the unwelcome necessity of burning him in eSigj.

During the long series of wars in which Spain o

194 ABOLITION OF THE INQUISITION,

was engaged, during the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, alternately with England and France, the national attention was too much occupied by military affairs to allow education or religion to be much thought of. The Holy Office was alike the censor of both ; and under its wither- ing administration the national literature, once so rich, languished and declined ; whilst religion sunk into the grossest superstition, or gave place to the indifference of infidelity, followed by an almost universal corruption of the nation's morals. In 1813, after Ferdinand YII. had been entrapped at Bayonne by Bonaparte, the Cortes refused to ac- knowledge his forced transfer of the Spanish crown, and assumed the supreme government. During their shortlived power, the Inquisition was abolished, many important ecclesiastical reforms were accom- plished, the monastic orders were suppressed, and their revenues appropriated by the State.

Whatever beneficial results these measures might have led to, were prevented by the return of Fer- dinand to the throne in the following year. The Holy Office was restored, and the old regime, with all its inherent evils, was once more established. During the remainder of his reign, till 1833, Spain continued to enjoy the unenviable distinction, which has long been her own, of presenting to the world

AND COMING EMANCIPATION OF SPAIN. 195

an exemplification of the worst forms and most fatal results of dominant Popery.

But the days of the Inquisition were numbered. The offspring of a semi-barbarous age, it could no longer resist those influences which had emancipated most of the other nations of Europe from the thraldom of ignorance and superstition, which priestcraft had managed to set up during the dreary night of the Middle Ages. They could no longer be shut out from Spain.

Human progress and modern enlightenment were stronger than the Inquisition ; the unequal contest at last came to an end. Buttressed round, though it was, by the memories of its former power, that bulwark of Popish domination in Spain, reared on the ashes of its myriad victims, was swept away, in 1834, by the onward and resistless tide j and the minor barriers against light and knowledge with which its place had been vainly supplied, are already crumbling before the same mighty power. Since then, symptoms of Spain's coming emancipation — civil and religious — are growing both in clearness and in number. The fabric of papal tyranny totters on its narrowing base. The spirit of a long- oppressed nation is showing signs of revival, and already is the herald-star of Spanish liberty appear- ing on the dark horizon. Vainly will the thick

196 PUBLIC AUTOS SUCCEEDED BY

clouds of Popery combine their blackness to shut out the messenger of hope ; a mightier power sends it forth, and will consummate the freedom whose advent it tells of.

Since the abolition of the Holy Office, a spirit of religious inquiry, as yet but badly provided for, has been gradually showing itself, from which the Christian philanthropist may confidently augur the happiest results. So long as that diabolical engine of civil and religious tyranny continued to exist, it had exerted the same repressive influence upon the national mind, almost as badly during the last years of its reign, as whilst immolating its victims on its blazing pyres, in the time of the second Philip. For though the last victim whom it consigned to the flames perished in 1781,* we must not infer from that fact that the practice of its secret barbarities had been proportionately lessened. Its dungeons were peopled with the wretched objects of its vengeance to the last, and its torture-chambers echoed the groans of the agonized and the dying up till the

* " I myself," says Blanco White, " saw the pile on which the last victim was sacrificed to Roman infallibility. It was an unhappy woman, whom the Inquisition of Seville com- mitted to the flames, under the charge of heresy, about forty years ago. She perished on the spot where thousands had met the same fate." — Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism, p. 122.

SECRET MURDER. 197

time of its suppression. If the fires of the auto had ceased to be fed with human fuel, their work was done by the secret machinery of death.* It did not suffer the terror which its early cruelties had inspired to grow less, but ever and anon, for the long ages we have mentioned, maintained, with unabated vigour, the spiritual bondage of the Spanish people ; till an indignant nation, roused and strengthened by

* "The following fact," says Llorente, "shows that the Inquisitors of our own days do not fall below the standard

of those who followed the fanatic Torquemada. was

present when the Inquisition was thrown open, in 1820, by the orders of the Cortes of Madrid. Twenty-one prisoners were found in it, not one of whom knew the city in which he was : some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered on the following day. His punishment was to be death by the pendulum. The method of thus destroying the victim we.s as follows : — The condemned is fastened in a groove, upon a table, on his back; suspended above him is a pendulum, the edge of which is sharp, and is so constructed, as to become longer with every movement. The wretch sees this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer. At length, it cuts the skin of his nose, and gradually cuts on, until life is extinct. It may be doubted if the Holy Office, in its mercy, ever invented a more humane and rapid method of exterminating heresy, or ensuring confiscation. This, let it be remembered, was a punishment of the Secret Tribunal, A.D. 1820 ! ! ! "—Preface to Us History, pp. 19, 20.

198 GEORGE BORROW,

influences from without, burst from the iron bands which swathed it, and would submit to the crushing yoke no longer. But that long despotism had paralyzed the Spanish mind, and deadened that regard for religion which had characterized Spain above most of the other Continental nations. From that paralysis, however, it has begun to show signs of recovery. Light, though feeble as yet, has dawned upon the Peninsula : some effort has been put forth by this country to open up to it the springs of eternal truth.

In 1835, Mr. George Borrow went to Spain, as the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for the purpose of printing and circulating the Scrip- tures. After some difficulty, he gained the necessary permission from Isturitz, who was then at the head of affairs, and printed, at Madrid, an edition of five thousand New Testaments. The version thus pub- lished was that made many years before, by Filipe Scio, confessor of Ferdinand the Seventh. The only edition of it which had been previously printed was so encumbered by notes and commentaries, as to be unfitted for general circulation. In the reprint, these were omitted, and the inspired word was sent forth, without note or comment, to disseminate its saving truths through the darkened land.

The measures adopted by Mr. Borrow to secure

AND THE BIBLE IN SPAIN. 199

the circulation, may be best described in his own words : — " I had determined," he says, " after de- positing a certain number of copies in the shops of the booksellers of Madrid, to ride forth, Testament in hand, and endeavour to circulate the word of God amongst the Spaniards^ not only of the towns, but of the villages — amongst the children, not only of the plains, but of the hills and mountains. I intended to visit Old Castile, and to traverse the whole of Galicia and the Asturias, — to establish Scripture depots in the principal towns, and to visit the peo- ple in secret and secluded spots, — to talk to them of Christ, to explain to them the nature of his book, and to place that book in the hands of those whom I should deem capable of deriving benefit from it. I was aware that such a journey would be attended with considerable danger, and very possibly the fate of St. Stephen might overtake me ; but does the man deserve the name of a follower of Christ, who would shrink from danger of any kind in the cause of Him whom he calls Master 1 ^ He who loses his life for my sake, shall find it,' are the words which the Lord himself uttered. These words were fraught with consolation to me, as they doubtless are to every one engaged in propagating the Gospel, in sincerity of heart, in savage and barbarian lands."*

* The Bible in Spain, pp. 109, 110.

200 THE CLERGY THE ENEMIES

As might be expected, the circulation of the Scrip- tures in the vernacular tongue met with violent opposition from the Komish priests. In the then unsettled state of Spain, the Government passed and repassed, at short intervals, into various hands. Isturitz had been superseded in office by the Count Ofalia, a warm partizan of the clergy, and, conse- quently, an enemy to any measures calculated to interfere with their influence. On his accession to power, a peremptory prohibition was issued against the sale of the obnoxious books, notwithstanding the efforts of the British ambassador to prevent it. Many of the Testaments were seized at the various depots throughout the country, and Mr. Borrow himself was arrested and thrown into prison in Madrid. A strong remonstrance, however, from the British minister, procured his liberation, and an apology for the in- dignity which had been offered him. But the violent opposition of the priests was continued, and greatly counteracted his efforts in the cause of truth. "Throughout my residence in Spain," he remarks, " the clergy were the party from which I experienced the strongest opposition ; and it was at their instiga- tion that the Government originally adopted those measures which prevented any extensive circulation of the sacred volume through the land. I shall not detain the course of my narrative with reflections on

OF THE BIBLE IN SPAIN. 201

the state of a Church, which, though it pretends to he founded on Scripture, would yet keep the light of Scripture from all mankind, if possible. * * * Her agents and minions throughout Spain exerted them- selves to the utmost to render my labours abortive, and to vilify the work which I was attempting to disseminate." *

The efforts thus made for the spiritual enlighten- ment of Spain, were not without encouraging results. Comparatively small as was the number of copies circulated, they served to awaken an interest which has continued to increase, and which is at this moment one of those active influences from which the friend of Spain hopefully predicts, at no distant period, the dawn of brighter and more prosperous days for a fallen, but still glorious, nation. An important change in the religious views and character of the people has commenced. Misgovernment has, to a great extent, given way to a more liberal and enlightened policy, under which the influence of superstition. and its agents is fast decaying.

The following testimony of a traveller who visited the Peninsula in 1841, is full of encouragement to the philanthropist and the Christian, and will furnish some idea of the religious condition of the country at that time : — " No one can enter Spain without

* The Bible m Spain, p. 243.

202 PRESENT CONDITION OF SPAIN.

being struck with the discrepancy betwixt his pre- conceived notions of the superstitious reverence of the Spanish lower orders for the mummeries of Komanism, and the actual state of the fact. I am not acquainted with any part of Europe, in which Popery is acknowledged, where less reverence or devotion is to be observed among the common people in their religious ceremonies ; and it is notorious that many superstitious observances have now quite disappeared. Am I gratified with this ? I acknowledge that I am. Not that I am prepared to maintain that no religion at all is in itself better than Popery, but because, while the influence of the priesthood over the minds of the people remained unimpaired, the introduction of the Bible generally into Spain was almost hopeless. A new era in the religious history of the Peninsula has begun. Spirit- ual despotism, the most dangerous enemy which the truth has to encounter, is no more ; and civil despotism is quite incapable of excluding the Bible entirely from the land. Now that the anathemas of the priesthood are disregarded, the people are eager to receive the Word of God ; and experience everywhere proves, that where a people are desirous of welcoming the light, not all the most stringent regulations of the most bigotted and tyrannical of despotisms can keep them altogether in darkness.

BIBLES SUPPLIED BY SMUGGLERS. 203

Bibles are at this moment pouring into Spain, in spite of corregidor, alcalde, and aduanero. The channel of illumination is indeed a strange one, but God often employs strange agents for his holy purposes ; and we observe the worst passions of men, yea, the very devices of the devil, invented for very different ends, directly, though unintentionally, work- ing to promote the glory of the Most High, and to advance the Redeemer's kingdom. The fierce and reckless smuggler is at present the instrument in the hands of the Lord employed for blessing the coasts of Spain with God's precious Word! A strange evangelist, but a successful one ! The very fact that he finds the illicit trade in Bibles a profit- able one, and capable of repaying the toils and dangers incident to his desperate profession, is a fact which speaks volumes for the desire of the Spanish people to receive the hated and forbidden book — hated by priests, and forbidden by tyrants — but, God be thanked, beloved and cherished by all who know its value, and earnestly sought after by thousands more, who have a faint and indefinite conception of the infinite worth and priceless treasure which they seek. Bless, O Lord, thy holy Word, even from such unholy hands !" * After a few

* Rev. Wm. Robertson's Journal of a Clergyman during a visit to the Peninsula in 1841, pp. 186, 187.

204 THE PEOPLE OF SPAIN

remarks upon the then political state of the country, Mr. Robertson continues : " In this state of things, and in the present condition of the public mind in the Peninsula, there is a glorious field for missionary enterprise opening before us. There can be little doubt that the people of Spain would gladly receive the messengers of the truth. This has been sufficiently proved in the only instance where it has been attempted, viz., as before men- tioned, in the case of Mr. Rule at Cadiz.* It is also a fact worthy of observation that, in various parts of Spain, vast numbers are strongly prepossessed in favour of Protestantism, without so much as know- ing what it is. Many even go so far as to call themselves Protestants, though all they know of that name is that it implies something hostile to Popery. Wherefore, if the eye of the Christian tactician carefully examines the hitherto impregnable defences of the *man of sin' in Spain, he will not fail to perceive that a wide and practicable breach is already made."

The prohibition complained of in the former of these extracts, has not yet been repealed, although

* This gentleman had been labouring zealously as a Wesleyan minister in Gibraltar, whence he went to Cadiz, and there preached the Gospel, for a time, to crowds of willing and attentive hearers.

PREPARED FOR PROTESTANTISM. 205

its violation is conuived at by the Spanish Govern- ment.* Besides those which continue to be im- ported by the smugglers, large numbers of Bibles and Testaments are introduced, chiefly from England, by the liberality and Christian enterprise of private individuals ; and the eagerness with which they were received and perused in 1841, has in no wise diminished; but as for open and tolerated Pro- testantism, as yet, there is none in Spain, the only places in which the celebration of Protestant worship is permitted, being the houses of the foreign Pro- testant ambassadors and consuls. <

Such is a brief, and, from our limits, necessarily imperfect sketch of the history of Protestantism in Spain — imperfect, yet, we trust, copious enough to give the general reader a sufiiciently extensive and accurate knowledge of this painful but interesting subject. Within the brief compass of these pages, there was room only to narrate facts, and not to indulge in reflections to which they were calculated to give rise. But without such reflections, the facts themselves will sufficiently illustrate the essential and unchanging spirit of that system of iniquity which is alike destructive of the temporal and spi-

* The author makes this statement on the authority of a friend who has lately returned from a lengthened residence in Spain.

206 POPERY ESSENTIALLY THE SAME,

ritual well-being of man. Yet they form but a small part of the black catalogue of its crimes which history has chronicled, and which demonstrate, far more convincingly than human reasoning or elo- quence could do, its ruinous tendencies and infernal origin. Though disarmed of many of its stings, by the increase of sound and enlightened education amongst many of the subjects of its former tyranny, Popery has neither lost nor modified one feature of its essential wickedness. The history of its past persecutions, spreading over the long ages since it first jisurped the government of human consciences, furnishes the best illustration of its unchanging character. Victims are no longer immolated on its blazing shambles; but this proves only the want of power, and not the extinction of its old per- secuting spirit. Its principles remain unaltered. In the words of one who suffered from its intoler- ance, "The cruel deeds of the Romish Church are nothing but a republication, in blood, of the articles of her Faith, stamped in every copy of the decrees of Trent." * The spirit which consigned the Spanish martyrs in the sixteenth century to the flames in Valladolid and Seville, is the same which, if it dared, would now wreak a similar vengeance on

* Blanco WMte's Poor MmCs Preservative against Popery, p. 166.

BUT HASTENING TO ITS FALL. 207

the Madiai and their fellow-sufferers for the truth in the Italian States. But its palmy days of power have gone by for ever, and its ultimate doom is accelerated, and predicted anew, by every fresh un- folding in the world's progressive enlightenment.

APPENDIX

In the preceding pages, the cases of two of the most distinguished individuals prosecuted by the Spanish Inquisition, in the 16th century, were omitted, as having only a collateral, and not a direct, connection with the narrative of the Reformation — the latter especially. It would be wrong, however, to pass them by unnoticed, since the first will furnish to the reader another instance of proof that the friends of the reformed doctrines, amongst the Spanish clergy, were not confined to the lower or middle ranks ; whilst the second will afford a striking example of the cruelty and injustice of the Holy Ofiice, as the unholy instrument of the private vengeance and malignant enmity of Philip II.

The first case was that of Don Bartolom^ Carranza p

210 APPENDIX.

de Miranda, Archbishop of Toledo, and one of the most illustrious victims of the Inquisition, during the period of its history which has occupied our attention. He was born at Miranda de Arga, a small town in the kingdom of Navarre, in the year 1503. At twelve years of age, he was received into the College of St. Eugenius, an institution dependent upon the University of Alcala. In 1520, he took the habit of a Dominican, in the convent of Venalec, in the Alcarria, whence he removed to the College of St. Stephen of Salamanca, and soon after to that of St. Gregory of Valladolid. In 1539, he went to Rome, to attend a general chapter of his order, and, whilst there, obtained the degree of Doctor in Theology, from Pope Paul III. On his return to Spain, in the following year, he was appointed Bishop of Cuzco j and in 1545, was sent by the Emperor Charles Y. to the Council of Trent, where he re- mained for three years. In 1651, the Council was again convened, and Carranza was sent to attend it, furnished with full powers by the Archbishop of Toledo.

In 1554, the alliance between Philip II. and Mary of England being settled, Carranza came to this country, to aid Cardinal Pole in preparing the kingdom to return to the Eomish faith. During his residence in England, he took a prominent part

APPENDIX. 211

in the prosecution of those who adhered to the Pro- testant religion, the most distinguished of those against whom his hostility was directed being Arch- bishop Cranmer and Martin Bucer. In 1557, he left England for the Netherlands, where he was one of the most violent opponents of the reformed opinions. .On the death of Cardinal Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo, in 1558, Carranza succeeded to the vacant see. His doctrinal sentiments, however, had been secretly undergoing a change, the earliest indication of which was gladly made use of by those whom envy and jealousy had made his enemies, A few months after his exaltation to the archiepiscopal throne, he was denounced to the Inquisition, as secretly holding the Lutheran doctrines. Besides many objectionable sentiments in the Christian Catechism, which he had previously published, the fact that so many of the leading men amongst the Spanish Protestants had been educated by him, was taken as strong proof of his unsoundness in the faith. His accusers, more- over, alleged that, during his residence in England, he had publicly taught most dangerous views of the doctrine of justification, one of them declaring that "Carranza had preached like Philip Me- lanchthon."

After a long series of tedious examinations and intentional delays, spreading over seven years, during

212 APPENDIX.

whicli time the Archbishop was kept a close prisoner in Valladolid, the cause was transferred to Kome, whither the accused was sent at the same time. Pius v., who then occupied the Papal chair, treated Carranza with much kindness, and examined the documents which had been sent from Spain with great fairness, and anxiety to ascertain the truth. After considerable delay, Pius prepared the definitive sentence, in which he declared that the accusation had not been proved, and accordingly acquitted the prelate. He ordered that the passages in the Catechismy to which objection had been taken, should be altered by the author, who was at the same time enjoined to revise his other works, and to expunge from them anything that could be considered as favourable to the Lutheran heresy.

This judgment was alike displeasing to Philip and to the Inquisitors ; the latter were even suspected of having poisoned Pius, who died soon after his sentence had reached Spain. The new Pope was Gregory XIII. — a man after their own heart The trial was resumed, and the judgment of the former Pontiff reversed. Carranza was found violently suspected of heresy ; the prohibition of his Catechism was confirmed, and he himself was ordered to abjure all heresy in general, and sixteen Lutheran proposi- tions in particular. In addition to this, he was

APPENDIX. 213

sentenced to be suspended for five years from the exercise of his archiepiscopal functions, and to be confined during that time in the Dominican convent of Orvietta, in Tuscany. But death came to his relief. A few days after the sentence was passed, he sickened and died, worn out by the hardships and anxieties of eighteen years' imprisonment, and was buried in the choir of the convent of Minerva, in Kome. Comparatively severe as had been the sentence, it had not satisfied the Inquisitors, who, had he lived to undergo it, had prepared a fresh persecution !

The prosecution of Carranza gave rise to several others. Eight bishops, and several doctors of theology, many of whom had taken part, as the champions of orthodoxy, at the Council of Trent, were compromised by some of the evidence which had been adduced at the trial of the primate. They escaped, however, with humiliating recantations, and the performance of slight penances.

The other case to which we referred was the cele- brated trial of Antonio Perez, Minister and First Secretary of State to Philip IP In 1578, Juan de Escovedo, secretary to Don John of Austria, was assassinated in Madrid, whither he had been sent to transact some business for his master. The circum- stances attending the murder are wrapt in much

214 APPENDIX.

mystery ; but enough is known to brand Philip as its instigator. Soon after the death of Escovedo, Perez was arrested, by order of the King, on the ostensible ground of having hired the assassins. The real cause of the arrest seems to have been the im- prudence of Perez, in hinting the implication of PhiHp in the death of the secretary. This in itself had been enough to call forth the dark resentment of the Spanish Nero, had there not been the additional fact of Antonio's being looked upon with a favour- able eye by the Princess of Evoli — the object of the royal affections — to excite his vengeful jealousy. Some other charges, of slight importance, were urged against him at the same time, to make the royal pretext more complete. An investigation was held, which resulted in his being sentenced to two years' imprisonment, eight years' exile from the court, and a heavy fine. Having escaped from the prison, he succeeded in reaching Aragon, the consti- tution of which kingdom would afford him, at least, an impartial trial. Philip issued an order for his arrest, which took place at Calatayud, whence he was sent to the royal prison of Saragossa ; notwithstand- ing his claim, in virtue of the Aragonese laws, to be confined in the prison of the manifestadoes, and be tried by the Chief Justice of Aragon. Failing to procure a conviction, even by the unconstitutional

APPENDIX. 215

means which he adopted, of sending a commission of his own to try the prisoner, Philip had recourse to his never-failing ally — the Inquisition. On the pretext that Perez had corresponded with Catherine, sister to Henry lY. of France, and a Protestant, the Inquisitors of Aragon founded a prosecution for heresy, and had the prisoner transferred to their own dungeons. Enraged at this breach of privilege and infraction of the Aragonese constitution, the people rose, and released Perez by force from the Inquisi- torial prison. Several lives were lost in the fray. No sooner did the news of the rescue reach Madrid, than Philip despatched an army into Aragon, under Don Alphonso de Vargas. At this second and greater violation of the national privileges, the Chief Justice called upon the Aragonese to arm in defence of their violated constitution ; but the call being only partially obeyed, the hasty and ill-provided levies were driven before the royal troops, and the Chief Justice himself taken and executed. In the midst of these disturbances, Perez succeeded in escaping over the Pyrenees, into Bearne. Foiled of their prey, the Inquisitors gratified their impotent re- venge, by confiscating his property, devoting his children and grand-children to infamy, and con- demning himself to death, as " a formal heretic, a convicted Huguenot, and an obstinate impenitent,

216 APPENDIX.

to be relaxed [i. e., executed] in person, when he could be taken, and in the mean time to suffer that punishment in effigy, with the mitre and sanbehito." He subsequently visited London, but ultimately settled in Paris, where he died, in 1611, after a long series of fruitless efforts to procure the revocation of his sentence.

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