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and causing scandal, they were to be arrested and transmitted to the tribunal for trial. They were not to be compelled to enter churches but, if they did so, they were to pay due respect to the Sacrament and, on meeting it in the street, they were to kneel or remove themselves out of the way. Strangers were forbidden to keep public houses for the entertainment of Protestant shipmasters and sailors or travellers. The commissioner was to be vigilant in ascertaining and reporting to the tribunal everything they said against the Catholic faith, how they behaved in public and in private and whether any scandal was caused to the faithful. (156) Spain was the same as it had been two centuries before. There was one exception, however, to the prohibition of the hated presence of heretics on Spanish soil. Constantly recurring war necessitated the employment of whatever troops could be had, irrespective of their spiritual condition. It was the German bands of Lutherans under Georg Fronsberg who sacked Rome for Charles V in 1527. Foreign mercenaries were continually in Spanish service, and they grew more indispensable in the seventeenth century with the decline both in population and military ardor. The revolts of Portugal and Catalonia, in 1640, rendered Spain the battle-field, and recruits from any source were welcome, who of course could not be subjected to inquisitorial interference, no matter what their faith. The Inquisition in vain pointed out the dangers thence arising. In a consulta of November 13, 1647, the Suprema related with grief that four hundred German soldiers, landed at San Sebastian, on their way to Catalonia, were disseminating their errors, distributing heretic books and outraging images. (157) There was no help for it and, after war had ceased on [476] Spanish territory, the employment of foreign regiments continued to excite its susceptibilities. In 1668, the Suprema arguing in a consulta for the maintenance of its prerogatives, urged that they were especially necessary, in view of the presence of such bodies of soldiers, many of whom were heretics. (158) Still, there was an effort made to preserve the Spanish organizations from wolves in sheep's clothing. Fernando VI issued a decree, December 31, 1756, imposing the death-penalty on any heretic who pretended to be a Catholic in order to enlist and, in 1765, Carlos III modified this to expulsion from the kingdom under pain of ten years' labor in the bagne, adding that, if the heretic when enlisting had sworn that he was a Catholic, he should run the gauntlet twice before expulsion. (159) There was some slight compensation, for the presence of these heretics, in the field which they furnished for missionary work. There were frequent conversions, especially when the chaplains were zealous for the salvation of souls. One of these was Francisco Columbano Burke, chaplain of the first Swiss battalion, who held a faculty for this purpose as commissioner of the Inquisition. He writes, May 23, 1764 from Tarragona to the Barcelona tribunal, forwarding the abjurations of six converts in the Swiss regiment of St. Gall and giving the names of twenty-four others, who were ready for conversion. They were duly gathered in when there proved to be ten Calvinists and fifteen Lutherans. (160) The exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition over heresy rendered its interposition necessary in this, for it alone could admit the heretic to incorporation in the Church, it alone could judge of the degree of his sin, determine whether he was rightfully a son of the Church through baptism, and whether he was worthy of admission through repentance. In theory he was a heretic spontaneously denouncing himself and, when these conversions became frequent, early in the seventeenth century, they took the form of a regular trial, in which the fiscal acted on one side and the convert had counsel assigned to him on the other while, in the form of abjuration administered, he pledged submission to the penalties of relapse in case of backsliding. (161) Indeed the Suprema felt it necessary, April 22, [477] 1605, to warn the tribunals that foreigners coming forward voluntarily and confessing their errors were not to be imprisoned but were to be welcomed; their reconciliation was to be in the audience chamber, without sanbenito or confiscation, and with spiritual penances only; then they were to confess their errors sacramentally and receive absolution for their sins. (162) Heresy, even congenital, was a mortal sin, to
e duly atoned for. Subsequently the rigor of these formalities was abandoned and the process was facilitated, although it was still formidable. Printed instructions for commissioners, apparently drafted in the eighteenth century, prescribe a minute examination into the life and history of the convert and his motives, so as to be satisfied that his object is really salvation. All details as to his baptism are to be specially inquired into, so as to be assured whether or not he is really baptized, and, if there is any doubt, proceedings are to be suspended until the tribunal can be consulted. He is also made to specify all the errors of his former religion, and to utter a profession of faith in which he promises to reduce, as far as he can, all heretics to Catholicism and to denounce them to the Inquisition. He is also to be asked whether he knows of any heretics save those permitted for the sake of trade, and whether any of the latter have transgressed the conditions of their residence. Also, whether he has ever professed Catholicism, and whether he has been instructed in it sufficiently to incur the obligation of its profession, in which case he is required to abjure and to be formally reconciled and is absolved from the excommunication which he has incurred, while, if he has never known Catholicism, he is absolved ad cautelam. If he is less than 25 years of age, a curador is to be appointed, with all the formalities, who is to be present and to consent to all the proceedings. There is suggestiveness in the contrast of this cautious detail with the multitudinous sprinkling by which Jews and Moors were incorporated in the Church. Among converts the most curious case in the records is that of Joh. Heinrich Horstmann--with many aliases--of Borgenstreich, who supported himself during a long life by trading on the rivalry between Protestantism and Catholicism. Born about 1663, he was educated as a Catholic by the Jesuits of Prague. When about [478] 25, he changed his religion at Dresden, studied at Wittenberg, and for many years wandered through Germany, living on charitable contributions given to him as a convert. He even went to England, where the Archbishops of Canterbury and York assisted him. Then, in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, he supported himself as a Catholic ready for conversion, and in the Catholic ones as a Lutheran seeking salvation in the Church. Finally in the latter capacity he hit upon the lucrative device of saying that he had been baptized in the Lutheran fashion of one person administering the material and another the form; theologians would pronounce this invalid, and that rebaptism was necessary; some prominent person would be induced to act as godfather and would encourage him with a donation of twenty or thirty ducats, and possibly there was an additional collection from the faithful. On this he traded for the rest of his life, varied with an episode of having himself circumcised in Amsterdam and living for some years on the Jews there. This subsequently gave him trouble, for in Rome he was recognized as a Jew, he was tried by the Inquisition and sent to the galleys for ten years, after which he resumed the profession of a candidate for baptism. From Lisbon to Paris and Naples, he imposed on the credulity of the faithful, and it was reckoned that in all he had been baptized twenty-one times. A second visit to Spain, however, brought his career to an end in his eighty-ninth year. Repeated baptisms in Cádiz, Madrid and Valencia aroused suspicion. All the tribunals were ordered to be on the watch for him and, after a year of searching, he was arrested at Valencia in 1751. He told his story freely and fully; at first he said that his repeated baptisms were merely to gain a living, but subsequently he asserted that he was possessed by a demon, whom he hoped to eject by the repetition of the rite. The consulta de fe voted that, as an apostate and relapsed heretic and diminuto he had forfeited his life, but that efforts should be made to save his soul, after which another vote should be taken. At this conjuncture he fell mortally sick; he refused to speak to those who sought his salvation and, when one of them told him, if he desired to die in Calvinism, to squeeze his hand, he seized it with such a grip that assistance was necessary to unloosen it. Thus he passed away in his heresy on February 28, 1752; the body was buried in unconsecrated ground in a box of quick-lime [479] and, in an auto held August 26, 1753, the bones and effigy were reduced to ashes and scattered. (163)
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