I.—Novedades
THE poetry of Luis de León is not voluminous; he has no great variety of theme; he sings “the quiet life of him who shuns the world’s uproar;” but there is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de León stands in the front of Spanish literature, as a writer of eloquent and well-moulded Castilian prose he has had few equals. His “Nombres de Cristo” is one of the masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences are perhaps occasionally too prolix, lengthening out in a rich profusion of words and images. He had, as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his style a colour and a sound which rank him among the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as a writer Luis de León is too well known to need comment. And to himself his literary works were of a secondary importance, and held a subordinate place in his strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of a well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he was sent by his father at the age of fourteen to the University of Salamanca with the advice to “follow the common opinion in letters, que siguiese la opinión comun en las letras.” The precept was not unneeded in that age, for the Reformation had unhinged men’s beliefs and left them a prey to many fears. Intolerance on the side of reformers was answered by fresh intolerance. In Spain one might least expect any dissent from the accepted religion. Even in Spain, however, the general ferment of the rest of Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and inquiry had penetrated to the Spanish Universities, and men’s minds were opening to new lines of thought. There was indeed ample scope for reform. Scholasticism had become a dry and stilted system, well qualified to call down ridicule on all learning. Its professors delighted in hairsplitting and quibbles. Luis de León speaks with a scathing sarcasm of the type of professor who said that he was ... “content with a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints ... and had no wish for any new learning (novedades);” of those who “flatter themselves and fancy that, because they have in their rooms a score of books covered with dust, and have obtained the degree of master of arts, they have well earned the name of men of letters, and may for the rest give themselves up quite securely to sleep and good living ... and they consider that the mere fact of having the books and dipping into some part of them once a year bestows on them a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints.” But the new spirit of inquiry and reform led those who belonged to the old school to fence themselves the more closely with narrow and bigoted beliefs, to cling to conventionalities of dogma, and to cry out on the most innocent innovations. Violent attacks on Scholasticism had the effect of showing more moderate attempts at reform in an odious light. Suspicions were everywhere rife, and it required no little care to avoid the accusation of being anxious for “new things.” The highest ecclesiastics were not exempt from attack. Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo, had spent a certain number of years in England. In 1556 he had visited Oxford and found it Catholic, la encontró católica, but in the following year at Cambridge he burnt many heretical books and English Bibles. On his return to Spain he was thought to have been contaminated by contact with so many heretics, though he boasted that he had done more than any other in discovering them.