PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

could not fail to prejudice Vergara's case, which dragged on, in spite of the efforts of his friends, and
even of the empress, to expedite it. At length, on December 21, 1535, he was sentenced to appear as a
penitent in an auto de fe, to abjure de vehementi, to be recluded in a monastery for a year irremissibly,
and to pay a fine of fifteen hundred ducats. In three months, however, Manrique charitably transferred
him to the cathedral cloister and, on February 27, 1537, his confinement came to an end. (8) He incurred
no disabilities; his reputation seems not to have suffered, for he retained his Toledo canonry and, as we
have seen, he incurred, in 1547, the displeasure of Archbishop Silicio by opposing the statute of
limpieza.
Virués was a similar victim to the revulsion against Erasmus. He was Benedictine Abbot of San Zoilo,
a learned orientalist and the favorite preacher of Charles V, who had carried him to Germany. Envy of
his favor at court caused his denunciation; isolated passages in his sermons were cited against him, and
he was thrown in prison in 1533. His incarceration lasted for four years, in spite of Charles's efforts for
his liberation; it was in vain that he pleaded that, some fourteen years before, Erasmus had been
regarded as orthodox, and that he adduced the arguments which he had used against Melanchthon in the
Diet of Ratisbon. In 1537, he was declared to be suspect of Lutheranism, he was required to abjure and
was recluded in a convent for two years, with suspension from preaching for two more. Charles was so
much interested in him that, notwithstanding his strenuous objection to papal interference, he procured
from Paul III a brief of May 29, 1538, by which the sentence was set aside and Virués was declared
capable of any preferment, even episcopal. When [419] Juan de Sarvia, Bishop of Canaries, died in
1542, Virués was appointed his successor and died in 1545. (9)
Contemporary with these cases was that of Pedro de Lerma, a member of one of the leading families of
Burgos. He was a canon of the Cathedral and Abbot of Alcalá, renowned as a preacher and a man of the
highest consideration. He had spent fifty years in the University of Paris, where the Sorbonne made
him dean of its faculty. Happening to read some of the works of Erasmus, he was so impressed that
they influenced his sermons. He was denounced to the Inquisition, which imprisoned him and, after a
long trial he was required, in 1537, to recant eleven propositions publicly in all the towns where he had
preached, confessing that he had taught them at the instigation of the devil to propagate error in the
Church. He was so humiliated that he abandoned Spain for Paris, where he was warmly received as
dean of the faculty, and where he died in 1541. The people of Burgos, we are told, who had regarded
him with the greatest reverence, were so impressed by this that those who had sent their sons abroad to
study at once recalled them. (10)
This atmosphere of all-pervading suspicion, and this exaggerated sensitiveness to possible error,
exposed everyone to prosecution for the most innocently unguarded remark. Miguel Mezquita, a
gentleman of Formiche (Teruel) appeared January 19, 1536, before the Valencia tribunal in obedience
to a citation and, under the usual formula of being told to search his conscience, he intuitively recurred
to Erasmus and related a talk which he had, some five or six years previous, with a Dominican, in
which he had defended the Enchiridion on the ground that it had been subjected to examination without
being condemned. This however proved not to be the cause of his summons, for Pedro Forrer, a priest
of Teruel, had denounced him as having said that Luther preached the gospel and was therefore called
an evangelist, while the followers of the pope were called papists, and that Luther was right in
maintaining that Scripture did not say that Christ gave power to St. Peter, but to all the apostles.
Mezquita explained that he had been several times to Italy and had been sent to [420] Flanders; the
priest had asked him what was said about Luther, and he had merely gratified his curiosity by repeating
what he had heard abroad in common talk. He earnestly implored to be released, for he had eight
children, four of them studying in Salamanca and, when suddenly carried off from home, he had left