PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

to Scotland and Germany, and had become a deacon in the Walloon church of Frankfort. The story that
he reached Seville with two large casks of Pérez's Testament, Psalms and Catechism is probably an
exaggeration, but he brought a supply of them, reaching Seville in July, 1557. The books were
deposited outside the walls and were smuggled in at night, or were brought in by Don Juan Ponce de
Leon in his saddlebags. Julian made a fatal blunder with a letter and a copy of the Imajen del
Antichristo, addressed to a priest, which he delivered to one of the same name who was a good
Catholic. When the latter saw as the frontispiece the pope kneeling to Satan, and read that good works
were useless, he hastened with the dangerous matter to the Inquisition which made good use of the clue
thus furnished. Don Juan promptly fled to Ecija and Julian to the Sierra Morena, but they were tracked
and brought back on October 7th. Other arrests speedily followed and the prisons began to fill. (37)
With its customary unwearied patience, the tribunal traced out all the ramifications of the heretical
conventicle, arresting one after another as denunciations of accomplices were obtained from prisoners.
Dr. Constantino and his friend Dr. Blanco were not seized until August, 1558, and the first auto de fe
was not celebrated until September 24, 1559.
Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, a similar association of Protestants had been discovered at
Valladolid, then the residence of the court. An Italian gentleman, Don Carlos de Seso, said to be the son
of the Bishop of Piacenza, had been converted about 1550, apparently by the writings of Juan de
Valdés. He came to Spain, bringing with him heretical books and ardently desiring to spread the
reformed faith. He settled first in Logroño, where he made some converts, and then, through the
influence of his wife, Isabel de Castilla, of royal blood and highly esteemed, he was appointed
corregidor of Toro, about 1554. There he converted the Bachiller Antonio de Herrezuelo and his wife,
Leonor de Cisneros, Doña Ana Enríquez, daughter of Elvira, Marchioness of Alcañizes, Juan de Ulloa
Pereira, Comendador of San Juan, and others of more or less distinction, while, in Pedrosa, a town
lying between Toro and Valladolid, Pedro de Cazalla, the parish priest, also fell under his influence and
became a missionary in his turn. Among his converts was his sacristan, Juan Sánchez, [430] whose
imprudent zeal greatly alarmed Cazalla; in 1557, Sánchez left Pedroso for Valladolid, where he entered
the service of Doña Catalina de Hortega, whom he soon converted, and with her Doña Beatriz de
Vivero, a sister of Cazalla. Through them, seven nuns of the Cistercian house of Nuestra Señora de
Belén were brought to the new faith, but the greatest conquest, about May, 1557, was made when
Beatriz de Vivero and Pedro Cazalla won their brother, Doctor Agustín de Cazalla. No ecclesiastic was
of higher repute or greater influence with all classes; he was the favorite preacher of Charles V, who
had carried him to Germany in 1543, where possibly his debates with heretics may have unconsciously
undermined his faith. Next to him among the converts might be ranked the Dominican Fray Domingo
de Rojas, whose reputation for learning and eloquence was of the highest. He had been a fellow student
of Pedro de Cazalla; he had accompanied Carranza to Trent, in 1552, where he had encountered
heretics, and since then some of his utterances had led his brother Dominicans to entertain suspicions,
but, when Beatriz de Vivero first sought to convert him, he was firm and even thought of denouncing
her. In the autumn of 1557, however, Augustin Cazalla and Carlos de Seso won him over to heresy and
he, in his turn, brought in his brother, Don Pedro Sarmiento and his nephew Don Luis de Rojas, heir to
the marquisate of Pozo. As in Seville, the reformers thus included men of the highest consideration,
socially and ecclesiastically, as well as those of the lower classes. Still, their numbers were few; the
wild estimates of five hundred or six thousand are baseless, for they did not exceed fifty-five or sixty,
wholly without organization, being scattered from Logroño to Zamora, though the house of Doña
Leonor de Vivero, the widowed mother of the Cazallas, served occasionally as a meeting-place. Of her
ten children, four sons, Agustín and Pedro Cazalla, Francisco and Juan de Vivero, and two daughters,
Beatriz and Costanza, were involved; the rest seem to have escaped. She herself, after the prosecutions
commenced, was only confined to her house; she speedily died and received Christian burial, but her
bones were subsequently exhumed and burnt. Notwithstanding, this, one of the sons, Gonzalo Pérez de