PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

kindly, exhorting him to cast aside these fancies, which he professed willingness to do but could not
control them. Physicians were called in who bled and purged him; be begged for mercy, but could not
conquer his beliefs. This went on for a couple of months when he announced his conversion through
the teaching of his cell-companion, a priest named Juan Ramírez, who confirmed it, stating that Díaz
had talked like a Lutheran until the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, when he had read to him from
his breviary the services of the day and had urged his conversion; Díaz had wept and professed his
belief in the Church and Ramírez held him to be sincere. Thus far the conduct of the case had been
eminently humane and considerate, but when the consulta de fe met, May 17th, two of the consultors
voted for relaxation, while the two inquisitors, the Ordinary and two others voted for reconciliation,
confiscation and irremissible perpetual prison and sanbenito. At an auto held, September 19th, this
sentence was duly pronounced and, when the city of Toledo was assigned to him for a prison, he was
thrust into the streets to take his chance of starvation. (86) The case is not without interest as showing
that the [453] sentences read at the autos might be as effective as the dreaded missionaries.
A heretic of different calibre was Don Gaspar Centellas of Valencia, a gentleman of birth and culture.
During his trial, he evaded the accusation with skill but, when his counsel drew up for him a defence in
which he was made to recognize the Roman Church and pope as the Church of God, in which he
wished to live and die, he refused to sign it. He renounced all defence and was obdurate to the
arguments of the theologians, who were repeatedly summoned to convert him; there was nothing to do
but to burn him, which was executed accordingly, September 17, 1564. (87) His brother, Don Miguel
Centellas, Comendador of Montesa, was likewise exposed to a prolonged trial, but was acquitted in
1567. (88) Connected with Don Gaspar was Doctor Sigismondo Arquer who, though not a Spaniard,
was a Spanish subject, being from Cagliari. His trial at Toledo occupied nine years; he was unrepentant
to the last and when, in the auto of June 4, 1571, he was delivered to the secular arm, a curious debate
arose. The official entrusted with the execution of the sentences declared that, under the law in other
offences, there was no burning alive and he ordered Arquer to be garroted. The pious zeal of the
populace could not endure this ill-timed mercy; a riot occurred in which Arquer was pierced with
halberds and other weapons; fire was finally set and so, half dead already, he was burnt. (89)
By this time it was rare to find a native Spaniard tried for Protestantism, and women virtually disappear
as culprits. Moreover, the cases which are classed in the records as cosas de Luteranos are nearly all
those in which some trifling aberration or careless speech was qualified by the calificadores as savoring
of Lutheranism, so that the statistics unconsciously exaggerate greatly the prevalence of Protestantism.
Such cases were mostly treated with leniency, as that of Mosen Monserrat, a beneficed priest of the
church of San Salvador, accused in 1567 of Calvinism, to the Valencia tribunal, for saying that extreme
unction was not as efficacious as formerly, that it was mortal sin to administer the sacraments in mortal
sin, and that the religious Orders were not as strong as they had been. He escaped with having to
revoke his utterances in presence of the chapter of San Salvador and with [454] celebrating nine
masses. (90) So, in 1581, Juan de Aragon, a peasant, was tried at Toledo, on a charge of saying that
masses for the dead were absurd, for the priest was a sinner who could do nothing with God, and that it
sufficed to recommend oneself to God and the saints. He denied the accusation, the consulta de fe voted
in discordia and the Suprema merely sentenced him to abjure de levi, to hear mass as a penitent and to
pay a fine of twelve ducats. (91)
While such trivial matters form the bulk of the cases of so-called Lutheranism there were occasionally
more serious ones, such as that of Juan López de Baltuena of Calatayud in 1564, at Saragossa. In his
written defence there were sundry heresies, qualified as Lutheran, for which he was condemned to
abjure de vehementi, to serve in the galleys for life and never to read, write or talk about theology. (92)