Encouraged by this evidence of weakness, on November 24, 1564, Philip sent Rodrigo de Castro to Rome on a mission to have Carranza abandoned to the Inquisition, significantly instructing him not to disdain whatever means he might find necessary to win over everybody of influence. Even the unlimited bribery thus planned failed of success, although the secondary object of procrastination was effected. Castro commenced by demanding, in a private audience, that the case be abandoned to the Inquisition, but refused to put the demand in writing. Then he lowered his tone and the pope agreed to send a special legate to Spain to review the case and pronounce sentence, but Castro insisted that the Suprema and such prelates as the king might select should be adjoined to the legate. This the pope refused, but there was some misunderstanding about it, and when Castro saw the commission drafted for the legate he was furious. He sought an audience and accused the pope of breaking his word; Pius lost his temper and said that in this whole business he had been treated like an ass; the affair was his and he would do as he pleased. Thus rebuffed, Castro poured forth his griefs to Cardinal Borromeo and declared that, if the legate went to Spain with such a commission, he would not get a real. This assertion may seem enigmatical to modern ears, but it is explained by the remark of the shrewd French ambassador, when reporting to Charles IX the arrival of the legate, that the case of Carranza and the use of his legatine faculties would bring him much money.[210]
The Holy See has rarely sent abroad a body so distinguished as this legation, predestined to failure. The special legate a latere was Cardinal Buoncompagni, afterwards Gregory XIII, accompanied by Archbishop Rossano, subsequently Urban VII, Fra Felice Perretti, afterwards Sixtus V and Giovanni Aldobrandini, subsequently cardinal and brother of Clement VIII. The legate had been given discretional power as to admitting Spanish associates, but he found on arrival at Madrid, in November, 1565, that the demand made on him was the impossible one which Pius had refused to Castro—the whole Suprema and prelates, amounting in all to fifteen Spaniards. He offered to admit two as against two of his associates, but he would do no more. As he wrote to Pius, the terror inspired by the Inquisition was beyond belief; to admit a majority of Spaniards would be to invite injustice, for the acquittal of Carranza would be the conviction of the Inquisition and any one who had the courage to bring this about would be exposed to lifelong persecution.[211] Of course Philip was firm, as his object was to baffle the legate, but discussion was cut short when the news came of the death of Pius IV, December 9th. Buoncompagni departed in haste to participate in the conclave; he was met at Avignon with the intelligence of the election of Pius V, January 7, 1566, in spite of which he continued his journey to Rome.[212]
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
Pius IV had carried to an extreme his subservience to Philip. Pedro de Avila, one of Philip’s agents, wrote, August 23, 1565, that Cardinal Borromeo assured him that the pope had done and was doing more than he had power to do in order to gratify the king; he had gone against the canons, the councils and the cardinals and, when recently he thought himself to be dying, nothing weighed on his conscience more heavily than this.[213] His successor was a man of different stamp. To few popes does Catholicism owe more than to St. Pius V, for, while pitiless in his persecution of heresy, his recognition of the need of reform and his unbending resolution to effect it, regained for the Church much of the respect which it had forfeited. The Spanish agents speedily found that in the matter of Carranza he was incorruptible and intractable. As the ambassador Zuñiga plaintively reported to Philip, February 23, 1566, “He is certainly well-intentioned but, having no experience in affairs of state and no private interests, which are the two things that ordinarily make popes yielding, he fixes his eyes on what he deems just and is immovable.”[214] As cardinal-inquisitor and Dominican he had been favorably inclined to Carranza, whose friends received with hope the news of his accession. They conveyed this by means of an arrow aimed at one of his window-shutters and he responded by casting out a paper, picked up by a person stationed for the purpose, in which he addressed the new pope in the words of Peter, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water” (Matt. xiv, 28).[215]
Pius did not need urging. One of his first acts was to despatch a messenger to Buoncompagni ordering him to remain and bring the affair to a conclusion, but the legate’s Spanish experience did not incline him to return from Avignon. Doubtless his report brought conviction that justice was not to be expected in Spain, for Pius speedily made a demand for the person of Carranza and the papers so that he might decide the case. Accustomed to browbeat popes, Philip replied that the demand was offensive and contrary to the royal prerogative, as an attempt to change a matter unalterably fixed by the Holy See, and that it would not be entertained; the pope could commit the case to such persons as he pleased, provided they were Spaniards, otherwise, if Carranza should linger in prison until he died, the responsibility would not be with those who had offered every possible alternative. This audacious answer only strengthened the determination of Pius, who summoned Zuñiga and told him to tell his master that he exposed himself to all the indignation of the Holy See, for the pope was resolved to carry the matter to a conclusion. Zuñiga was silenced and could only report to Philip the terrible earnestness of Pius, from which there was no hope of diverting him.[216]
That he was in deadly earnest is apparent in his brief of July 30th, which he caused to be privately printed and sent copies to the nuncio Rossano, with an autograph letter of August 3rd, commanding its rigid execution. After dwelling on the injustice and scandal of the treatment of Carranza, he deprived Valdés, the Suprema and all concerned of jurisdiction in the case. Under pain of excommunication and suspension of functions, Carranza was to be set at liberty and, after appointing a vicar for his see of Toledo, was at once to present himself to the pope for judgement. Under pain of the indignation of God and of the apostles Peter and Paul and of excommunication, all the papers in the case were to be delivered in Rome within three months, and any one impeding the execution of these commands incurred excommunication and suspension from office.[217]
By this time Pius was known as a man who was not to be trifled with, but Valdés and the Suprema were ready to risk a rupture with the Vicegerent of Christ rather than to remit their victim to his judgement. When Philip consulted them they urged him not to permit even a copy of the process to be sent to Rome, much less Carranza’s person, lest he should impair his prerogatives. They asserted that the papal brief had given ample power both to prosecute and to sentence and that, having been granted, it could not be withdrawn; that, under the papal concessions to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition was wholly independent of Rome and that, if the episcopal character were successfully urged in this case, some other excuse would be found in other cases.[218]
ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA
Valdés might be willing to risk a schism, but Philip drew back; it was not to be thought of that the Catholic king should incur excommunication, and he recognized what strength the heretic cause throughout Europe would derive from such a quarrel in such a cause. Still he dallied, until Pius forced Valdés to resign and threatened to lay all Spain under interdict.[219] He had encountered a will stronger than his own and Antonio Tiepolo, the Venetian envoy, is doubtless correct in saying that no other pope but Pius could have carried his point.[220] The pressure became irresistible and he yielded. Carranza, under charge of the hated inquisitor Diego González and guarded by a body of troops, left Valladolid December 5th, reaching Cartagena on the 31st, where he was confined in the castle until April 27, 1567, awaiting the arrival of the voluminous papers of the case, when he was placed on the admiral’s ship which was conveying the Duke of Alva on his fateful way to Flanders. Civita Vecchia was reached May 25th and Rome May 28th, where he was confined in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo—a second imprisonment that was to last for nine years. It was much less harsh than the previous one; besides his two faithful attendants he was allowed two others; he was assigned apartments in the quarters reserved for archbishops, he was sometimes permitted to leave his room under guard and enjoy the landscape, and at the first jubilee he was admitted to confession, although communion was still denied.[221]
The case promised to be as interminable in Rome as it had been in Spain. The anxiety of Pius for a thorough investigation caused endless delays, which were skilfully improved by the agents of the Inquisition. The enormous mass of papers reached Rome in the utmost confusion and some portions were lacking which had to be sent for. Then they had to be translated, as well as the voluminous Commentaries, which consumed a year. Philip was frequently sending new opinions and statements and Pius ordered all of Carranza’s writings, and even notes of his lectures taken by students, to be searched for and brought to Rome. He formed a special congregation of seventeen consultors, including four of the Spaniards who had been concerned in the case, with Ramírez as the fiscal. When all was ready the congregation met weekly under the presidency of the pope; the Spaniards insisted on his presence and, as his other duties frequently prevented this, the affair dragged on from year to year. Philip followed it with intense anxiety, as shown in his correspondence with Zuñiga. Thus a long letter of instructions, June 6, 1570, tells the ambassador to assure the pope that everything had been done in Spain with the most minute deliberation; there is an almost childish insistence on the opinions of some obscure theologians as to Carranza’s guilt, and it is pointed out that, if he is acquitted, he will teach and preach with greater authority than before and the whole prosecution will have been a blunder. All this, he says, should have weight with the pope, who is moreover to be threatened with what the king may find it necessary to do if the sentence is warped by personal considerations. Foolish communications of this kind were reiterated until, August 12, 1571, Pius, in an autograph letter, alluded to the repetition of these insinuations, which he declared to be groundless and, in dignified terms, warned Philip not to let his pious zeal get the better of his discretion.[222]