PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

objects of suspicion, and the Catholic was as liable to arrest as the Calvinist. Jacques Zacharie, a dealer
in rosaries and images in Burgos, in 1637, chanced to be relating his adventures with the heretics in
France who, in examining his baggage, had said ' Let him take these wares to Spain and bring us back
good money," when one of his hearers expressed surprise that the Most Christian king would let
heretics dwell in his land. This led Jacques patriotically to defend them as good baptized Christians,
who lived righteously according to their law. He was asked how they could be Christians when they did
not go to mass and confess to priests, when, in the heat of discussion, he replied that there was not
scriptural command of sacramental confession. For this he was denounced to the Valladolid tribunal; he
was arrested and tried and all his property was sequestrated. (102)
It is no wonder therefore that the tribunals were kept busy with these cases and that the records are full
of them, especially under the crown of Aragon, owing to the propinquity of south-western France,
where Huguenotism was in the ascendant. In Saragossa the relaxations for Lutheranism, from 1546 to
1574, though amounting to only seven, were all of Frenchmen. (103) Barcelona was more active. In an
auto of May 16, 1561, there appeared for Lutheranism, eleven Frenchmen, one Piedmontese and one
Maltese. In that of July 11, 1563, there were thirty-four Frenchmen, two Italians and two Catalans, of
whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in person and three in effigy. In that of March 5, 1564, there were
twenty-eight Frenchmen, two Catalans and one Swiss, of whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in
person and two in effigy. (104) From a report by Dr. Zurita of his visitation in the summer of 1564, we
obtain a glimpse of how these autos were fed. At Perpignan, for Lutheranism, five persons were
arrested with sequestration, of whom four, and possibly all five, were French. At Castellón de
Ampurias, Maestre Macian, a Frenchman, was sent [459] to Barcelona for trial. Jean de Adin, a
Frenchman of Aldas, escaped arrest by flight, and the arrest was ordered of Pere Bayrach, a Frenchman
of Flasa. (105) When, simultaneously with this, the ambassador Saint-Sulpice complained to Philip II of
the cruelty exercised on his fellow-countrymen, who were peaceably plying their industries, without
creating scandal, the king coolly replied that the Inquisition acted without regard to persons, but
nevertheless he would speak with the inquisitor-general. (106)
The complaint of cruelty was justified. In the rebuke which the Suprema administered to the tribunal of
Barcelona, in 1568, as the result of de Soto Salazar's visitation, allusion is made to a case, in 1565, of a
Frenchman named Antoine Aymeric, arrested without evidence; his first audience was held at his own
request February 23d, the second on July 27th, when, without more ado, he was tortured and sentenced
to reconciliation and confiscation. In another case of a Frenchman, Armand Jacobat, he was tortured
without confession, but subsequently admitted some Lutheran errors, begged for mercy and desired to
be converted, in spite of which he was relaxed and burnt, for which the Suprema held the tribunal to be
gravely in fault. (107) What became of those not burnt is seen in a report of December, 1566, to Charles
IX, by his ambassador M. de Fourquevaux, that seventy poor Frenchmen, prisoners of the Barcelona
tribunal, had been condemned to the galleys and had been delivered, in November, to Don Alvar de
Bazan, who had taken the fleet to winter near Cádiz. In February, 1567, he writes that, on complaint to
the Duke of Alva, the latter had assured him on his honor that they were all dogmatizing Huguenots;
that Frenchmen were never arrested for Protestantism if they had not said or done something
scandalous. This was as mendacious as the repeated promises to release the galley-slaves, which were
always evaded until Fourquevaux recommended the seizure as a hostage, at Narbonne, of Andrea
Doria, the naval commander-in-chief. At last, on December 20th, he reported the sending of royal
letters to Doria to release them, but it is fairly questionable whether the order was obeyed. Again, in a
list of complaints made by Charles IX to Philip, there was one concerning five of his subjects arrested
in Havana and sent to [460] Seville for trial, to which Philip replied that he was not accustomed and did
not desire to interfere in such affairs, but nevertheless he would have the inquisitor-general requested to