II.—Salamanca University
In the Universities especially accusations of every kind hung fire over men marked out by their position or abilities. The University of Salamanca had always been eminently conservative. Popes and Kings were anxious for its welfare. Philip II. saw in the University a stronghold of religion and loyalty. Pedro Chacon tells how “in the year 1560, on the return of our sovereign Don Philip to Spain after an absence of several years spent in reducing and governing the kingdom of England, he at once confirmed all the privileges which the University had received from his predecessors.” He intervened personally in the general affairs and particular disputes of the University, and seems to have considered no trouble too great to preserve the ancient purity of its opinions. Luis de León became deeply attached to the University, “the light,” as he said, “not of Spain only, but of all Europe,” and to Salamanca as student and professor he devoted his entire life. He entered the Augustinian order a few months after arriving at Salamanca, and by so doing renounced a very considerable income which he would otherwise have inherited as his father’s eldest son. His success was rapid. He obtained the chair of philosophy, and afterwards that of theology, and this latter chair he still held when he was arrested in the beginning of 1572 and detained for nearly five years in the prison of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The most serious charges against him were that he had translated the Song of Solomon into the vulgar tongue, and that he had depreciated the authority of the Vulgate. But it was a question primarily between two schools of thought in the University, between the rival Greek and Hebrew scholars, between the members of the order of St. Dominic and the members of the order of St. Augustine, and the case only came under the authority of the Inquisition through the denunciations of Luis de León’s enemies, such as León de Castro. León de Castro was a professor of the old school. He was an excellent Latin and Greek scholar, and was possessed of great energy and perseverance. By his learning, and partly by sheer force of character, he had won a position of high authority in the University, and he guarded his authority with a jealous care. Intolerant of opposition, he sought to crush all who by their talents or popularity might throw him into the shade. He wished to reign supreme. He was easily roused to such a pitch of anger that he lost all control of himself; “when engaged in a dispute,” says Luis de León, “he does not know what he is doing or saying.” He was hasty in his judgment of men and opinions, and supplied deficiencies in his own knowledge by a fierce positiveness. It is said that if he found an opinion in the work of a saint or philosopher, he would at once say, “This is the opinion of all the saints, of all the philosophers.” To him the Vulgate was the final and irrefragable authority, and he opposed with the utmost vigour those scholars who went back to the Hebrew original. Such Hebrew scholars he called “Jews,” a name that smelt of fire in that age. (Against Luis de León the accusation was actually brought of being a Jew, and descended from Jews.) If it was shown that the Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate, Castro answered that the Hebrew text had been altered by the “Jews” since the translation had been made. His position was thus impregnable. He would listen to no arguments, but shouted down his opponents. In a narrow age he might persuade himself that in thus asserting his opinions he was doing good service to the Church. His influence was without doubt great, and it needed no little courage to oppose him. Luis de León, however, was not a man to lie flat and love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature, even to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness for reform was not afraid of making enemies. When he took his degree he attacked certain abuses in a Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another occasion he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with the heresies of their order, and the thrust seems to have gone home, for he himself says that they felt it keenly, “sintieronse fieramente.” Above all, he had no sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was impossible that two men of characters so different should not come into collision, and in fact the discussions between professors were often marked by boisterous disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling and discourtesy that sometimes strangely enough creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one occasion Luis de León threatened to have Castro’s book—a commentary on Isaiah—burnt by the Inquisition. On this book Castro had spent much trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to the quick, so that he answered that he would have Luis de León himself burnt. And such threats were not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an idle hour. That Luis de León had many malignant enemies was amply shown at his trial.