PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

satisfied with his character and habits. (75) It is evident that extraordinary precautions and universal
vigilance were deemed necessary to exclude the obnoxious doctrines.
Yet these efforts were rewarded with no new discoveries, for Spanish Protestantism was a mere
episode, of no practical moment save as its repression fortified the Inquisition and led to the
segregation of Spain from the intellectual and industrial movement of the succeeding centuries. A few
sporadic cases may be noted from time to time, but the persecution of Jew and Morisco had trained the
nation too thoroughly in enthusiastic fanaticism, and the organization of monarchy and Church was too
absolute for [449] there to be any real danger that Protestantism could obtain a foothold. Yet the danger
was deemed so pressing that extreme measures were justified to protect the land from the intrusion of
foreign ideas. Philip II had lost no time, after his return from Flanders, in issuing the pragmática of
November 22, 1559, by which all Spanish youth studying abroad were ordered home within four
months, and all Spanish subjects for the future were forbidden to seek foreign lands for study under
penalty, for laymen, of confiscation and perpetual exile, and for clerics, of forfeiture of temporalities
and loss of citizenship. The only exceptions allowed were the college of Albornoz in Bologna and those
of Rome and Naples, for Spaniards residing in Italy and that of Coimbra for the professors there. (76) It
would be difficult to exaggerate the unfortunate influence of this in retarding Spanish development, yet
it was but the first of a series of measures which, by isolating Spain, crippled its energies in every
direction.
The spectre of active proselytism on the part of Protestants abroad was vigorously conjured up to
stimulate vigilance and justify repression. Undoubtedly the refugees in the Rhinelands and Switzerland
were earnestly desirous of evangelizing their native land, and they labored industriously to this end, but
the difficulties in the way were too great and the reports as to their efforts were systematically
exaggerated. Carranza, in his defence, dwelt on his exertions in Flanders to check this traffic, but
though he was told of barrels full of a forged letter of Philip II and of a papal bull, at the Frankfort fair
for shipment to Spain, and of shops in Medina del Campo and Málaga to which heretic books were
sent, the net results of his energy show how little substratum of fact there was in all this. (77) The career
of Julian Hernández proves that men who took their lives in their hands might occasionally bring in a
few books, but his fate was not encouraging. If some times a missionary undertook such work his
mission was apt to be brief. Hugues Bernat of Grenoble landed at Lequeitio (Biscay) August 10, 1559,
on such an errand. On the road to Guadalupe he fell in with a Minim named Fray Pedro, who pretended
inclination to Lutheranism and led Bernat to unbosom himself as to his plans and hopes, resulting in his
speedy arrest by the tribunal of Toledo, when he boldly confessed as to himself and [450] was tortured
to discover his accomplices. He was sentenced to relaxation in the auto of September 25, 1560, and as
he is not described as pertinacious, he probably professed conversion when, for some reason, his
sentence was not executed. (78) In the trial of Gilles Tibobil (or Bonneville), at Toledo, in 1564, we hear
of Francisco Borgoñon, a French haberdasher who, in his trips from France, brought with him heretic
books, but they were for the benefit of a little Huguenot colony in Toledo; the number of such
Frenchmen and Flemings in Spain was large and this, rather than projects of evangelization, probably
explains the greater part of the smuggling, attempted or performed. (79)
There were constant rumors, however, of propagandism on a larger scale which served to magnify the
importance of the Inquisition and to justify interference with commerce. In 1566, Don Francisco de
Alava, a Spanish envoy to France, was busy in Montpellier endeavoring to trace the agency by which
heretic books were conveyed to Catalonia, where the number of Frenchmen was large, (80) and, in the
same year, Margaret of Parma, from the Netherlands, sent to Philip the absurd statement that thirty
thousand of Calvin's books had been transmitted through Seville, whereupon the Suprema issued