PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

have no dates, but an allusion to Charles's expedition to Tunis would seem to place his career about
1540. (24)
Nearly at the same time there appeared another, who was classed as a Lutheran, although he seems to
have worked out his heresies independently. All that we know of Rodrigo de Valero rests on the
unreliable testimony of González de Montes, who describes him as a wealthy youth of Lebrija, near
Seville, suddenly converted from the vanities of the world to an assiduous study of Scripture and the
conviction that he was a new apostle of Christ. His special heresies are not recorded, but they led to his
trial by the Seville tribunal, which confiscated his property and discharged him as insane. He continued
his apostolate and, on a second trial, he was condemned to perpetual prison and sanbenito. Here, in the
obligatory Sunday attendance at mass, he contradicted the priest until, to silence him, he was recluded
in a convent at San Lucar de Barrameda, where he lay until his death. (25)
Valero was not without importance, for he was the perverter of Juan Gil, or Doctor Egidio, the founder
of the little Protestant community of Seville which came, as we shall see, to an untimely end. Egidio
was magistral canon of the cathedral and a man of the highest consideration for learning and eloquence;
indeed, he was nominated by Charles V to the see of Tortosa, which was vacant from 1548 to 1553. On
his post-mortem trial, in 1559, evidence showed that, as early as 1542, he had preached to the nuns of
Santa Clara on the uselessness of external works, denying the suffrages of the saints, and stigmatizing
image-worship as idolatry. (26) A letter of Charles to Valdés, from Brussels, January 25, 1550, shows
that Egidio was then on trial in Seville; Charles ordered Valdés to investigate the case personally in
Seville and [425] consult him before concluding it, all of which must be done speedily for that church
(Tortosa) must be provided with a prelate. (27)
Charles's solicitude shows that the matter was regarded as important. Egidio, in fact, was the centre of a
little band of Lutherans whom the Inquisition was eagerly tracking. The Suprema wrote, July 30, 1550,
to Valdés at Seville, urging him to expedite the case, and adding that it had written to Charles about the
arrest of those in Paris and Flanders implicated with Dr. Egidio, and about Dr. Zapata who had
delivered Lutheran books to Antonio de Guzman. (28) Yet when Egidio's trial ended, August 21, 1552,
he was treated with singular moderation. He was obliged publicly to abjure as heretical ten propositions
which he admitted to have uttered, subjecting himself to the penalty of relapse for reincidence. Eight
more propositions he recanted as false and erroneous, and seven he explained in a Catholic sense--all of
these being more or less Lutheran. He was sentenced to a year's confinement in the castle of Triana and
never to leave Spain; for a year after release he was not to celebrate mass and for ten years he was
suspended from preaching, confessing and partaking in disputations. (29) Death in 1556 saved him from
a harsher fate, although, as we shall see, his bones were exhumed and burnt in 1560.
The mildness of the Inquisition shows that thus far there was no alarm to stimulate severity, nor was
there any cause for it. We hear a good deal of the missionary efforts of the German or other heretics,
but up to this time there is slender trace of such work. The only indication--and that a very dubious
one--that I have met of such attempts, is the case of Gabriel de Narbonne, before the Valencia tribunal
in 1537. He was a Frenchman, who had learned heresy during four years spent in Germany and
Switzerland. As a wandering mendicant in Spain, he spoke freely of hjs beliefs to all whom he met.
When arrested, he confessed fully to all the leading tenets of Lutheranism and begged mercy; after a
year's confinement, under threat of torture, he stated that he had been sent by the Swiss heretics to
Spain as a missionary; there were three others, one named Beltran, who was [426] likewise in Spain,
one was destined to Venice and the other to Savoy. He had wandered, he said, on foot for two years
through the whole Peninsula, from Catalonia and Navarre to Lisbon, disseminating his heresies