Perhaps the harm of the Inquisition was, rather, not that it affected original thought and research, but that it created in everyday life an intolerable spirit of suspicion and distrust. It was to the animosity of their private enemies that the imprisonment of both Archbishop Carranza and Luis de León was due, and it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the witnesses who, “without being cited” and “for the discharge of their conscience,” laid their accusations before the Inquisition. In the University of Salamanca there was much prying and spying, fostered by the rivalries and enmity of the professors. The professors were elected by the votes of the students after a public discussion between the candidates on a given theme, and this system naturally led to considerable ill-feeling and many abuses. During discussions in the University there would be always some one on the watch for any specious subject of accusation. Thus, when Luis de León maintained that “marriage was not in itself an evil but only a less blessed state than celibacy,” León de Castro had written it down in order to denounce it to the Inquisition, and in the same way another professor had gone hastily out during a discussion in order to fetch pen and ink. On one occasion, when Zuñiga was in Luis de León’s cell at Salamanca, the latter mentioned a book which his friend, the celebrated Arias Montano, had sent him. Zuñiga thereupon displayed suspicions of Montano which Luis de León resented. A few days afterwards, to quote Luis de León’s own words, “he seemed to me to be still suspicious and, knowing that he was of a morose spirit and ever inclined to see things in their worst light, I said to him laughingly: ‘You are indeed a pessimist; it seems you still think ill of Montano.’ He said, ‘No; of the man I do not think ill, but I am not certain that it is not my duty to denounce the book.’” Luis de León goes on to say that more than two years afterwards he also “had a fit of pessimism, and, considering the number of heretics who had been discovered and were being discovered daily in Spain,” determined himself to lay the matter before the Inquisition—a common way of forestalling an accusation. Again, Medina examined with most holy zeal (con santísimo celo) Luis de León’s lectures and other papers. The result would be all the more fruitful in that he would not omit the notes taken by students at the lectures, and, as Luis de León was well aware, “ignorant students often put a quite wrong interpretation on what the lecturer said.” Medina did, in fact, call a meeting of students in his cell and inquired of them if they had heard or knew of any suspicious or perverted doctrines of Luis de León. Such methods must multiply means of attack and further spin out a trial. Of one witness Luis de León, in his defence, said, “This witness is the Bachelor of Arts Rodríguez, nicknamed ‘Doctor Subtle’ in the University. I think it is he because he says I left him without an answer, and he was the only person of that University with whom this happened. For as he was a man of unsound judgment and sometimes asked impertinent questions and from what he heard and did not understand collected nonsensical answers, I grew angry and called him a fool. And at other times, in order not to become angry and out of humour on his account, I would give him no answer but flee from him. And he is so witless and importunate that I remember trying to escape him both indoors and in the Schools and in the streets, he following and asking absurd questions, I hurrying on without answering, until at last some of my companions or other students would push him aside and hold him back by force.” A little picture of academic life which for vividness it would be hard to surpass. Luis de León, indeed, was not sparing in his criticism of his various accusers. Their names, in accordance with the custom of the Inquisition, were kept from him, but on reading the anonymous accusations, he referred each one to its true author with unfailing judgment and was thus enabled to refute them with a sure hand. Of one of the witnesses who belonged to his own order he said: “He is known among us as a man who never speaks the truth except by accident.” Of another he speaks satirically as “most spiritual,” espiritualísimo, and says that the words “kisses,” “embraces,” “bright eyes,” and other words in the Spanish rendering of the Song of Songs scandalized him; words, that is, which had not struck him when he read them in Latin, shocked him now that they were written in the romance. Luis de León was not unaware that the worst interpretation would be put on his sayings, or reported sayings, and he was led by this fear himself to lay many trivial details before the Inquisition. Thus he confessed that at a lecture “the students furthest from me bade me speak louder, for I was hoarse and they could not hear me well, and I said: ‘I am hoarse and, you know, it is better to speak low that the gentlemen of the Inquisition may not hear.’” He was full of life and humour, and many a chance word spoken in jest might be twisted by the malicious to an uncatholic implication. He felt in prison that he was fighting blindfold against many enemies and asked more than once to be brought face to face with his accusers. “And thus,” he says, “they speak from afar as men in safety and free, while I, blind and in prison, cannot see who is attacking me.” Many absurd charges were brought against him. According to one witness he “always said low mass, even on a feast day, and no one could hear what he said as he mumbled ‘tu, tu, tu,’ and made an end very speedily.” Another accusation seems to have been based on a mere quibble between the words vino, “wine,” and vinó, “came.” For at a dinner some one seems to have asked for wine and Fray Luis to have said that it was doubtful if it had come; but, according to the witness, all understood his answer to refer to the coming of Christ! Another witness said that he was “a very clever theologian, but somewhat bold in his lectures”—a charge less petty than the preceding, but from its vagueness scarcely less ridiculous. In the same spirit Castro “had heard say,” “thought that he had heard”; Medina “thought that he saw in Fray Luis an inclination to new things.” Such charges coming from enemies made his innocence, as he said, “clearer than the light of noon.” Minute points were elaborately dealt with. For instance, the sale of Castro’s book on Isaiah had been spoilt, he said, by the Jews (Luis de León and his friends); according to Luis de León, the real reason of its failure was its size and costliness. As to the accusation of being, in fact, by descent a Jew, it would appear that Fray Luis’ great-grandmother, or rather the second wife of his great-grandfather, was of Jewish origin.
The one serious charge was, indeed, that he did not give due authority to the Vulgate. It is probable that his attitude had been inopportune at a time when the Vulgate was being attacked on all sides by the heretics, and that the numerous students who attended his lectures were apt to exaggerate his doctrine.
And so the trial dragged on. Luis de León began to lose patience. “If only,” he exclaims, “the sun were divided fairly between me and my accusers”—a metaphor borrowed from duelling. He complains frequently of unnecessary delay. He writes to the Inquisitors, “You are delaying the conclusion of my trial without just cause,” “without cause and to the one end of lengthening out my imprisonment, and with the wish to put a term to my life, since you find me without fault.” He begs that there be no more delay “considering the length of time I have been here, and the small cause there was for bringing me here, and the enmity and notorious calumnies that began and occasioned this scandal.” His imprisonment, he says, is “a long, harsh and cruel torment.” Partly constant communications between Valladolid and Madrid caused delay. Thus a request of Fray Luis, made on the 20th of August, did not receive an answer from the Supreme Tribunal at Madrid till the 20th of September. Partly, too, it must be admitted that after the scandal and excitement caused by his imprisonment at Salamanca, where he had a host of friends and followers, it would seem almost as if the Inquisitors were unwilling to release him with the confession that the whole matter had been smoke without a fire; and the longer the trial continued the greater, naturally, would become their embarrassment.
He was allowed some books and a few other articles. Thus he asks for a crucifix, a brass candlestick, a knife, “to cut what I eat,” the works of St. Leon, a Hebrew Bible, a Sophocles in Greek, a Pindar in Greek and Latin, etc. He complains that he is not properly attended, and “it has happened that I have fainted with hunger from having no one to give me food, and I beg that I may be given a monk of my order to serve me if you do not wish to allow me to die alone between four walls.” He was not allowed the use of the Sacraments, and in his frequent illness this was a constant torture. “You persist,” he says, “in keeping me in prison as if I were a heretic, deprived of the use of the Sacraments, with manifest danger to my life and to my soul, though you bring no fresh charge against me.” He therefore begs them, pending the sentence, to “allow me at least a free death among my monks.” Seeing that the conclusion of his case was delayed from day to day he implores, in another petition, to be transported to some monastery in Valladolid that he may die there as a Christian. “This is the only thing that I solicit or desire, since the passion of my enemies and my own sins have taken from me all that one desires in life.”
IV.—Ex Forti Dulcedo.
On the 28th September, 1576, the sentence is at length pronounced. The majority of the judges “are of opinion that Fray Luis de León be put to the torture as to his meaning, and as to what has been witnessed against him, and as to the propositions that have been noted as heretical, in spite of the fact that the theologians profess finally to be satisfied with them and to give them the meaning that Fray Luis would have them bear; and that the torture to be applied to him be moderate, seeing that the accused is of delicate health; and that the results obtained be then further examined.” This was the verdict of four out of the seven judges; one gave no decision; the remaining two were of opinion that the accused should be reprimanded in the Court of the Holy Office, and that in the general hall of the greater Schools of Salamanca, in the presence of the students and other persons of the University, he should declare his propositions to be suspicious and ambiguous; that he should be forbidden to lecture in the Schools or elsewhere, and that his translation of the Song of Solomon should be prohibited and withdrawn from circulation.
The superior and more impartial tribunal of Madrid quashed the sentence, and Luis de León was not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th December, 1576) that Fray Luis de León should be acquitted and admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be careful in future how he treated of matters so dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The sentence pronounced runs as follows: “We find, in accordance with the decrees and on the merits of the said suit, that it is our duty to absolve and we do absolve the said Fray Luis de León from the burden of this trial.” He requested and obtained a declaration that he had been acquitted without penance or stain whatsoever, and was free to exercise all his duties in the University.
Luis de León’s health had never been robust, and the hardships of his imprisonment broke it completely. That he survived is probably due to his fortitude and mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga, he says: “When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues of certain of my enemies, and was branded as suspicious in the faith, and was cut off not only from the conversation but from the intercourse and very sight of men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the midst of all this I felt a peace and joyfulness of spirit which I often miss now that I am restored to the light of day and to my friends.”
These years spent in prison were not passed in idleness. Besides the business of his defence, he wrote several of his poems during this time and his long treatise “Los Nombres de Cristo.” Many know his short poem beginning, “Here falsehood and wrong kept me imprisoned,” and ending with the line so often quoted in Spanish literature, “ni envidiado ni envidioso.” And we may refer to this time of his imprisonment such passages as “No pinta el prado aquí la primavera”—
“Here with the spring the meadows are not gay
Nor the clouds golden in the rising sun;
No nightingale pours forth its plaintive lay:
But here the night is sleepless, and the day
Is full of tears and unconsoling sorrow,
And the sad present has a sadder morrow....”