Protestantism and Catholicity

At the time of the greatest rigor against the Judaizing Christians, there is a fact worthy of attention. Persons accused, or threatened with the pursuit of the Inquisition, took every means to escape the action of that tribunal: they left the soil of Spain and went to Rome. Would those who imagine that Rome has always been the hotbed of intolerance, the firebrand of persecution, have imagined this? The number of causes commenced by the Inquisition, and summoned from Spain to Rome, is countless, during the first fifty years of the existence of that tribunal; and it must be added, that Rome always inclined to the side of indulgence. I do not know that it would be possible to cite one accused person who, by appealing to Rome, did not ameliorate his condition. The history of the Inquisition at that time is full of contests between the Kings and Popes; and we constantly find, on the part of the Holy See, a desire to restrain the Inquisition within the bounds of justice and humanity. The line of conduct prescribed by the court of Rome was not always followed as it ought to have been; thus we see the Popes compelled to receive a multitude of appeals, and mitigate the lot that would have befallen the appellants, if their cause had been definitely decided in Spain. We also see the Pope name the judge of appeal, at the solicitation of the Catholic sovereigns, who desired that causes should be finally decided in Spain: the first of these judges was Dr. Inigo Manrique, Archbishop of Seville. Nevertheless, at the end of a short time, the same Pope, in a Bull of the 2d of August, 1483, said that he had received new appeals, made by a great number of the Spaniards of Seville, who had not dared to address themselves to the judge of appeal for fear of being arrested. Such was then the excitement of the public mind; such was, at that time, the necessity of preventing injustice, or measures of undue severity. The Pope added, that some of those who had had recourse to his justice had already received the absolution of the Apostolical Penitentiary, and that others were about to receive it; he afterwards complained that indulgences granted to divers accused persons had not been sufficiently respected at Seville; in fine, after several other admonitions, he observed to Ferdinand and Isabella, that mercy towards the guilty was more pleasing to God than the severity which it was desired to use; and he gave the example of the good Shepherd following the wandering sheep. He ended by exhorting the sovereigns to treat with mildness those who voluntarily confessed their faults, desiring them to allow them to reside at Seville, or in some other place they might choose; and to allow them the enjoyment of their property, as if they had not been guilty of the crime of heresy.

Moreover, it is not to be supposed that the appeals admitted at Rome, and by virtue of which the lot of the accused was improved, were founded on errors of form and injustice committed in the application of the law. If the accused had recourse to Rome, it was not always to demand reparation for an injustice, but because they were sure of finding indulgence. We have a proof of this in the considerable number of Spanish refugees convicted at Rome of having fallen into Judaism. Two hundred and fifty of them were found at one time; yet there was not one capital execution. Some penances were imposed on them, and when they were absolved, they were free to return home, without the least mark of ignominy. This took place at Rome in 1498.

It is a remarkable thing that the Roman Inquisition was never known to pronounce the execution of capital punishment, although the Apostolic See was occupied during that time by Popes of extreme rigor and severity in all that relates to the civil administration. We find in all parts of Europe scaffolds prepared to punish crimes against religion; scenes which sadden the soul were everywhere witnessed. Rome is an exception to the rule; Rome, which it has been attempted to represent as a monster of intolerance and cruelty. It is true, that the Popes have not preached, like Protestants, universal toleration; but facts show the difference between the Popes and Protestants. The Popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, have not spilled a drop of blood; Protestants and philosophers have shed torrents. What advantage is it to the victim to hear his executioners proclaim toleration? It is adding the bitterness of sarcasm to his punishment. The conduct of Rome in the use which she made of the Inquisition, is the best apology of Catholicity against those who attempt to stigmatize her as barbarous and sanguinary. In truth, what is there in common between Catholicity and the excessive severity employed in this place or that, in the extraordinary situation in which many rival races were placed, in the presence of danger which menaced one of them, or in the interest which the kings had in maintaining the tranquillity of their states, and securing their conquests from all danger? I will not enter into a detailed examination of the conduct of the Spanish Inquisition with respect to Judaizing Christians; and I am far from thinking that the rigor which it employed against them was preferable to the mildness recommended and displayed by the Popes. What I wish to show here is, that rigor was the result of extraordinary circumstances, – the effect of the national spirit, and of the severity of customs in Europe at that time. Catholicity cannot be reproached with excesses committed for these different reasons. Still more, if we pay attention to the spirit which prevails in all the instructions of the Popes relating to the Inquisition; if we observe their manifest inclination to range themselves on the side of mildness, and to suppress the marks of ignominy with which the guilty, as well as their families, were stigmatized, we have a right to suppose that, if the Popes had not feared to displease the kings too much, and to excite divisions which might have been fatal, their measures would have been carried still further. If we recollect the negotiations which took place with respect to the noisy affair of the claims of the Cortes of Aragon, we shall see to which side the court of Rome leaned.

As we are speaking of intolerance with regard to the Judaizers, let us say a few words as to the disposition of Luther towards the Jews. Does it not seem that the pretended reformer, the founder of independence of thought, the furious declaimer against the oppression and tyranny of the Popes, should have been animated with the most humane sentiments towards that people? No doubt the eulogists of this chieftain of Protestantism ought to think thus also. I am sorry for them; but history will not allow us to partake of this delusion. According to all appearances, if the apostate monk had found himself in the place of Torquemada, the Judaizers would not have been in a better position. What, then, was the system advised by Luther, according to Seckendorf, one of his apologists? "Their synagogues ought to be destroyed, their houses pulled down, their prayer-books, the Talmud, and even the books of the Old Testament, to be taken from them; their rabbis ought to be forbidden to teach, and be compelled to gain their livelihood by hard labor." The Inquisition, at least, did not proceed against the Jews, but against the Judaizers; that is, against those who, after being converted to Christianity, relapsed into their errors, and added sacrilege to their apostacy, by the external profession of a creed which they detested in secret, and which they profaned by the exercise of their old religion. But Luther extended his severity to the Jews themselves; so that, according to his doctrines, no reproach can be made against the sovereign who expelled the Jews from their dominions.

The Moors and the Mooriscoes no less occupied the attention of the Inquisition at that time; and all that has been said on the subject of the Jews may be applied to them with some modifications. They were also an abhorred race – a race which had been contended with for eight centuries. When they retained their religion, the Moors inspired hatred; when they abjured it, mistrust; the Popes interested themselves in their favor also in a peculiar manner. We ought to remark a Bull issued in 1530, which is expressed in language quite evangelical: it is there said, that the ignorance of these nations is one of the principal causes of their faults and errors; the first thing to be done to render their conversion solid and sincere was, according to the recommendation contained in this Bull, to endeavor to enlighten their minds with sound doctrine.

It will be said that the Pope granted to Charles V. the Bull which released him from the oath taken in the Cortes of Saragossa in the year 1519; an oath, by which he had engaged not to make any change with respect to the Moors; whereby, it is said, the Emperor was enabled to complete their expulsion. But, we must observe, that the Pope for a long time resisted that concession; and, that if he at length complied with the wishes of the Emperor, it was only because he thought that the expulsion of the Moors was indispensable to secure the tranquillity of the kingdom. Whether this was true or not, the Emperor, and not the Pope, was the better judge; the latter, placed at a great distance, could not know the real state of things in detail. Moreover, it was not the Spanish monarch alone who thought so; it is related that Francis I., when a prisoner at Madrid, one day conversing with Charles V., told him that tranquillity would never be established in Spain, if the Moors and Mooriscoes were not expelled.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

SECOND EPOCH OF THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN

It has been said that Philip II. founded a new Inquisition in Spain, more terrible than that of the Catholic sovereigns; at the same time the Inquisition of Ferdinand and Isabella receives a certain degree of indulgence, which is refused to that of their successors. At the very outset, we find an important historical mistake in this assertion. Philip did not establish a new Inquisition; he maintained that which the Catholic sovereigns had left him, and which Charles V., his father and predecessor, had particularly recommended to him by will. The Committee of the Cortes of Cadiz, in the project for the abolition of the tribunal of the Inquisition, excuses the conduct of the Catholic sovereigns, and blames with severity that of Philip II.; it attempts to make all the fault and odium fall on that prince. An illustrious French writer, very recently treating of this important question, has allowed himself to be led into the same errors, with that candor which sometimes accompanies genius. "There were," says M. Lacordaire, "in the Spanish Inquisition, two solemn periods, which must not be confounded; the one at the end of the fifteenth century, under Ferdinand and Isabella, before the Moors were expelled from Granada, their last asylum; the other, in the middle of the sixteenth, under Philip II., when Protestantism threatened to propagate itself in Spain. The Committee of the Cortes has perfectly distinguished these two epochs; and while it stigmatizes the Inquisition of Philip II., expresses itself with moderation with respect to that of Ferdinand and Isabella." After these words the writer quotes a text, where it is affirmed that Philip II. was the real founder of the Inquisition; if that institution attained in the end to a high degree of power, it was owing, it says, to the refined policy of that prince. We read, a little further on, that Philip II. was the inventor of the auto-da-fé, to terrify heretics; and that the first of these bloody spectacles was seen at Seville in 1559. (Mémoire pour le rétablissement de l'Ordre des Frères Precheurs, chap, vi.) Setting aside the historical mistake with respect to the auto-da-fés, it is well known that neither the san-benitos nor the fagots were the invention of Philip II. Such mistakes easily escape a writer who is satisfied with alluding to a fact incidentally; if we bring forward this one, it is because it contains an accusation against a monarch to whom, for a long time, too little justice has been done. Philip II. continued the work which had been begun by his predecessors; if they are excused, he ought not to be treated with greater severity. Ferdinand and Isabella directed the Inquisition against the apostate Jews; why could not Philip II. avail himself of it against Protestants? But I shall be told he abused his right and carried rigor to excess. Certainly there was not more indulgence in the times of Ferdinand and Isabella. Are the numerous executions at Seville and other places forgotten? Or what Mariana says in his history, and the public measures taken by the Popes for the purpose of checking the excessive severity? The words quoted against Philip II. are taken from the work called La Inquicitión sin mascura (the Inquisition unveiled,) published in Spain in 1811. We may judge of the value of this authority, when we know that the author of the book was distinguished till his death by a deep hatred to the Spanish kings. The book bears the name of Nathanael Jomtob; but the real author is a well-known Spaniard, who, in his latter writings, seems to have undertaken to avenge, by his unbounded exaggerations and furious invectives, all that he had previously attacked; a writer who assails, with an intolerable partiality, all that presents itself before him – religion, country, classes of society, individuals, and opinions – insulting and tearing to pieces all, as if he had been seized with a sally of passion, and not even sparing the men of his own party. Is it, then, surprising that this writer regarded Philip II. as Protestants and philosophers do, that is, as a monarch placed on the earth for the disgrace and misfortune of humanity, – a monster of Machiavellianism, anxious to diffuse darkness, in order to maintain himself in safety in his cruelty and perfidy? I will not undertake to justify, on all points, the policy of Philip II.; I will not deny that there are exaggerations in the eulogiums which some Spanish writers have given to that prince. But, on the other hand, it cannot be doubted, that Protestants and the political enemies of Philip II. have ever been careful to denounce him. And do you know why Protestants have done this? It is because it was he who prevented Protestantism from penetrating into Spain; it was he who, at that period of agitation, maintained the cause of Catholicity. Let us set aside the great events of the rest of Europe, of which each one will judge as he pleases; let us limit ourselves to Spain. We do not fear to assert, that the introduction of Protestantism into that country was imminent and inevitable without the system which he pursued. Whether Philip used the Inquisition for political purposes, in certain cases, is not the question we have to examine here; but at least it must be acknowledged that it was not a mere instrument of ambitious projects; it was an institution strengthened and maintained in presence of an imminent danger.

It appears, from the proceedings of the Inquisition at this time, that Protestantism began to spread in an incredible manner in Spain; eminent ecclesiastics, monks, nuns, seculars of distinction, in a word, individuals of the most influential classes, were attached to the new errors. Could the efforts of Protestants to introduce their creed into Spain remain altogether unproductive, when they employed every stratagem in their ardor to introduce their books? They went so far as to place their prohibited writings in casks of Champagne and Burgundy wine, with so much art as to deceive the custom-house men: thus wrote the Spanish Ambassador at Paris.

To perceive the whole danger, it is enough to observe with attention the state of minds in Spain at this time; besides, incontestable facts come in support of conjectures. The Protestants, taking great care to declaim against abuses, represented themselves as reformers, and labored to draw to their side all who were animated by an ardent desire for reform. This desire for reform had existed for a long time in the Church; but with some it was inspired by bad intentions; in other words, the specious name of reform concealed the real intention of many, which was to destroy. At the same time, with some sincere Catholics, this desire, although pure in principle, went to imprudent zeal, and reached an ill-regulated ardor. It is probable that such zeal, carried to too great an extent, was, with many, changed into acrimony; thence a certain facility in receiving the insidious suggestions of the enemies of the Church. Many people who had begun with indiscreet zeal, perhaps fell into exaggeration, then into bitterness, and finally into heresy. Spain was not exempt from this disposition of mind, from whence the course of events might have drawn very bitter results, if Protestantism had obtained any footing on our soil. We know that the Spaniards at the Council of Trent distinguished themselves by their reforming zeal, and their boldness in expressing their opinions. Let us remark, moreover, that religious discord being once introduced into a country, minds are excited by disputes, they are irritated by frequent shocks, and it sometimes happens that respectable men precipitate themselves into excesses which they would have abhorred a short time before. It is difficult to say with precision what would have happened if the rigor had been at all relaxed on this point. Certain it is, that, when reading some passages of Luis Vives, of Arias Montanus, of Carranza, and of the consultation of Melchior Cano, we can fancy we find, at the bottom of their minds, a sort of disquietude and agitation, which may best be compared to those heavy murmurings which announce from afar the commencement of a tempest.

The famous trial of the Archbishop of Toledo, Fray Bartolomé de Carranza, is one of the facts which are most frequently cited to show the arbitrary nature of the proceedings of the Spanish Inquisition. We certainly cannot see without emotion, shut up in prison for many years, one of the most learned men in Europe, the Archbishop of Toledo, honored with the intimate confidence of Philip II. and the Queen of England, allied in friendship with the most distinguished men of the time, and known to all Christendom by the brilliant part which he had played at the Council of Trent. The process lasted seventeen years; and although the cause was carried to Rome, where the Archbishop must have found powerful friends, a declaration of innocence in his favor could not be obtained. Without staying to notice the many incidents of a cause so long and so complicated, without insisting on the more or less reason which the discourses and writings of Carranza may have afforded for suspicions against his faith, I am quite certain, in my own mind, that, in his own conscience and before God, he was perfectly innocent. Here is a proof that places my opinion beyond a doubt. A short time after the judgment was given, he fell ill; his malady was supposed to be mortal, and the sacraments were administered to him. At the moment of receiving the Viaticum, in the presence of a large concourse, he declared, in the most solemn manner, that he had never left the Catholic faith, that his conscience acquitted him of all the accusations made against him; and he confirmed his declaration by calling to witness God, in whose presence he was, whom he was about to receive under the most sacred species, and before whose awful tribunal he was in a few moments to appear. This pathetic act drew tears from all present; all suspicions against him were dissipated as by a breath, and a new sympathy was added to that which his continued misfortunes had excited. The Sovereign Pontiff did not doubt the sincerity of the declaration, as a magnificent epitaph was placed upon his tomb, which certainly would not have been allowed if there had been the least doubt of it. It certainly would be rash to refuse to believe a declaration so explicit from the mouth of such a man as Carranza, expiring, and in the presence of Jesus Christ Himself.

After having paid this tribute to the knowledge, virtues, and misfortunes of Carranza, it remains for us to examine whether, whatever may have been the purity of his conscience, it can be justly said that his trial was a perfidious intrigue, carried on by envy and hatred. This is not the place to examine the immense procedure in this case; but since allusion has been made to it to condemn Philip II. and the adversaries of Carranza, I wish, in my turn, to make some observations, to endeavor to place the affair in its proper light. In the first place, is it not astonishing that a trial devoid of all foundation should have had so extraordinary a duration? At least there must have been some appearance of it. Besides, if the cause had been decided in Spain, the length of the trial might not have been so extraordinary. But it was not so; the cause remained pending in Rome many years. Were the judges so blind or so wicked that they could not discover the calumny, or that they wanted the virtue to destroy it, supposing it to have been as clear and evident as it has been pretended? It may be replied to this, that the intrigues of Philip II., who was determined on the destruction of the Archbishop, prevented the truth from appearing; in proof of this assertion, have we not the difficulties which the king made to allow the prisoner to be transferred to Rome? It was necessary, it is said, for Pius V. to effect this by the threat of excommunication. I will not deny that Philip II. attempted to aggravate the situation of the Archbishop, and wished for a sentence little favorable to the illustrious accused. Yet, before deciding that the conduct of the king was criminal, we must know whether he acted thus from personal resentment, from conviction, or from the suspicion that the Archbishop inclined towards Lutheranism. Carranza, before his disgrace, was highly favored and esteemed by Philip, as appears from the missions which were confided to him in England, and from his elevation to the first ecclesiastical dignity in Spain. How, then, can we presume that so much good-will was converted on a sudden into personal and violent hatred? Is it not, at least, necessary that history should afford a fact in support of this conjecture? Now, I find this nowhere in history, nor am I aware that others have done so. If Philip took so decided a part against the Archbishop, it was evidently because he believed, or strongly suspected him of being heretical. In that case, Philip may have been rash, imprudent – all that you please; but it cannot be said that, in the pursuit, he was moved by the spirit of vengeance, or by low animosity.

Other men of the time were equally accused. Among the rest, Melchior Cano. Carranza himself seemed to be suspicious; he bitterly complained that Melchior Cano had ventured to say that the Archbishop was as heretical as Luther. But Salazar de Mendoza, when relating the fact in the life of Carranza, asserts that Cano, hearing this, openly denied it, saying, that he had said nothing of the kind. Indeed, the mind is easily inclined to believe him; men with intellects as favored as his, have, in their own dignity, too powerful a preservative against baseness, to allow them to be suspected of playing the infamous part of calumniators.

I do not believe that it is necessary to seek for the cause of the misfortunes of Carranza in private hatred or jealousy; it is found in the critical circumstances of the time, and in the character of this illustrious man himself. The grave symptoms which produced alarm lest Protestantism might make proselytes in Spain; the efforts of the Protestants to introduce their books and emissaries there; the experience of what happened in other countries, and particularly in the kingdom of France, created so much dread in men's minds, rendered them so fearful and mistrustful, that the least suspicion of error, above all, in persons elevated in dignity or distinguished for their knowledge, occasioned disquietude and apprehension. We are aware of the hot disputes which took place with respect to the Polyglot of Antwerp and Arias Montanus, and we are not ignorant of the sufferings of the famous Fray Luis de Leon, and some other illustrious men of that time. Another conjuncture which contributed to push things to extremes was, the political situation of Spain with respect to strangers. The Spanish monarchy had too many enemies and rivals for her not to have reason to fear that heresy, in the hands of her adversaries, would become a means of introducing discord and civil war into her bosom. These causes united, naturally rendered Philip suspicious and mistrustful; the hatred of heresy combining in his mind with the desire of self-preservation, he showed himself severe and inexorable with respect to all that could affect the purity of the Catholic faith in his empire.