PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

ut six sueldos in his house. Fortunately for him, the inquisitors were not unreasonable and, on January
29th, he was allowed to return to his family, but the case remained on the records to be brought up
against him should any malevolent neighbor see fit to distort some careless utterance. (11)
Mysticism and illuminism, which, about this time, commenced their development in Spain, furnished
another source of accusations of Lutheranism, due to their common tendency to cast aside the
observances of sacerdotalism and to bring the sinner into direct relations with God, but this field of
inquisitorial activity demands separate consideration. Meanwhile the above cases will probably suffice
to indicate the way in which Catholics, who had no thought of wandering from the faith, fell under
suspicion of partaking in the new heresies and were consequently subjected to persecution more or less
distressing. It would scarce be worth while to follow in detail the long succession of those who had
similar experience. The case of Carranza has already been discussed. Fray Juan de Regla, confessor of
Charles V at San Yuste, and one of the witnesses against Carranza, was imprisoned by the Saragossa
tribunal and was required to abjure eighteen propositions. Fray Francisco de Villalba, who preached the
funeral sermon of Charles V, was denounced for Lutheranism and was saved only by the protection of
Philip II. Miguel de Medina, one of the theologians of the Council of Trent, was so orthodox that, in his
Disputatio de Indulgentiis, he ascribes to indulgences a virtue so great that without them Christianity
would be a failure, yet this did not prevent his prosecution for defending certain propositions thought to
savor of Lutheranism and, after four years' detention, he died in prison with his trial unfinished. (12)
All these were cases of good Catholics, whose prosecution is [421] attributable to a hyperaesthesia of
orthodoxy. As regards the real Protestantism, there was necessarily a double duty, one with respect to
its literature and the other to its professors. The former will be discussed in the next chapter and it
suffices here to point out that although there was as yet no organized censorship of the press, the
possession or reading of any of Luther's books was forbidden, under pain of excommunication, in
1520, by Leo X, in the bull Exsurge Domine, and this was extended to the works of all his followers in
the recension of the bull in Coena Domini by Adrian VI. (13) We have seen the flurry produced, in 1521,
by the dread of the introduction of this literature into Spain, and it would appear that there was a
demand for it, or that the German heretics were endeavoring to create one for, in 1524, we hear that a
ship from Holland for Valencia, captured by the French and recaptured, was brought into San
Sebastian, when two casks of Lutheran books were found in her cargo, which were publicly burnt.
Some eight months later, three Venetian galeasses brought large quantities of similar books to a port in
Granada, where the corregidor seized and burnt them and imprisoned the captains and crews. (14) As
yet, however, there seems to have been no definite penalty, save the papal censures, for possessing this
forbidden literature. We have seen Juan de Vergara simply surrendering what he had; in 1527 we
chance to find a commission, issued by the Suprema, to absolve a fraile from the excommunication
thus incurred and, in 1528, a similar one for the benefit of the Licenciado Fray Diego de Astudillo. (15)
As regards heretics in person, the relations of Spain with the Netherlands and Germany, at this period,
were too intimate for it to escape their intrusion. The earliest case I have met occurred in 1524, when a
German named Blay Esteve was condemned by the tribunal of Valencia. (16) Again the same tribunal, in
1528, tried Cornelis, a painter of Ghent, for saying that Luther was not a heretic and for denying the
existence of purgatory, the utility of masses, confession etc. He had not the spirit of martyrdom but
pleaded intoxication and that he had abandoned in Spain the errors which he had entertained in
Flanders; he was sentenced to reconciliation and perpetual prison and, in the papers of the [422] trial,
there is an allusion to the prosecution of Jacob Torres, apparently another Lutheran. Valencia, in 1529,
had another case in the person of Melchor de Württemberg, who came there by way of Naples. He
preached in the streets, saying that he had searched the world in vain for a true follower of Christ, and