PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

was less disposition to mercy, in 1630, in the case of María González, widow of Pedro Merino of
Canaca, one of the exceedingly rare instances of a Spanish female Protestant. To the Valladolid tribunal
she freely confessed her belief and persisted in it, despite earnest and prolonged efforts to undeceive
her. There was no escape from condemning her to relaxation and the Suprema confirmed the sentence,
but whether it would have been executed cannot be told for persistent labors were crowned with
success; she was finally converted and the sentence was changed to reconciliation. (97) There may have
been subsequent cases of Spaniards relaxed for Protestantism, but I have not met with them. In 1678,
Thomas Castillanos was kindly sent to an insane hospital by the tribunal of Toledo. In 1718, Pedro
Ortiz of Valencia was reconciled with perpetual prison in the Córdova auto of April 24th, and, in that of
November 30, 1722, at Seville, Joseph Sánchez of Cádiz appeared as a "Calvinist and Lutheran" and
was reconciled with irremissible prison. (98)
The Augustinian Fray Manuel Santos de San Juan, better known as Berrocosa, would, in the sixteenth
century, have been burnt as an undoubted Lutheran, although when arrested, in 1756, it was merely as a
regalista or upholder of the supremacy of the State. His Ensayo de el Theatro de Roma, circulated in
MS., was an essay to prove this, in a manner highly offensive to the hierarchy, and for this he was
relegated for ten years to the strict convent of Risco. During his confinement he wrote tracts to prove
that Rome was Babylon, that the existing Church in no way resembled that of the Apostles, that there
should be no Order higher than the priesthood, that capital punishment for heresy [457] was in itself a
heresy, and other doctrines which no calificador could help qualifying as the rankest Lutheranism, but
Berrocosa was not relaxed, although he found associates to copy these heretical documents and
circulate them. When his ten years' confinement ended, in 1767, he was again strictly secluded in a cell,
from which, in 1768, he managed to escape, eluding pursuit until, in January, 1770, he was recaptured
and delivered to the Toledo tribunal. Here he underwent a second trial, resulting in a sentence of
confinement for life in the convent of Sarria (Galicia), where he was to be kept incomunicado. (99)
This case illustrates why, during the decadence of the Inquisition, we hear little or nothing of
Protestantism among Spaniards, although the spirit of persecution was unabated. Revolt against
Ultramontanism was no longer styled Lutheranism but Regalism or Jansenism. With those whose
dissidence went beyond discipline to dogma, it took the shape of the fashionable philosophy of the
period and became Naturalism or Philosophism, Deism or Atheism, as the case might be. The
Inquisition still did its work with more or less rigor, but the arena had shifted.
While thus there had been little tendency to Protestantism among natives, since the inconsiderable
outbreaks of 1558, foreigners furnished an ample field of labor. Spain had a reputation for wealth
which rendered it attractive to the stranger; its people held in contempt the arts and crafts in which
Frenchmen and Flemings and Italians were adepts, and its internal peace seemed to offer a refuge to
those whose industries were precarious in the incessant clash of arms through which the old order of
things gave way to the new. Consequently every city in Spain had a considerable population of
foreigners, intent on earning a livelihood without much thought of spiritual matters. Some trials in the
Toledo tribunal, about 1570, allude to French and Flemish printers then under arrest in Toledo,
Barcelona, Alcalá, Salamanca, Valladolid and Granada. (100) In 1600, the Count of Benavente, Viceroy
of Valencia, estimated the number of Frenchmen there at fourteen or fifteen thousand and added that
there were vast numbers in Aragon. (101) While many of these were undoubtedly Calvinists, sedulously
concealing their faith, the majority were [458] Catholics, more or less sincere, but even their orthodoxy
was not of a quality to suit the Spanish standard. They had been accustomed to live in contact with
heretics; they had no such fanatical horror of heresy as was universal in Spain, and they were apt to be
careless in the observances which the Spaniard regarded as indispensable. All foreigners were thus