A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

FOREIGNERS

The Augustinian Fray Manuel Santos de San Juan, better known as Berrocosa, would, in the sixteenth century, have been burnt as an undoubted Lutheran, although when arrested, in 1756, it was merely as a regalista or upholder of the supremacy of the State. His Ensayo de el Theatro de Roma, circulated in MS., was an essay to prove this, in a manner highly offensive to the hierarchy, and for this he was relegated for ten years to the strict convent of Risco. During his confinement he wrote tracts to prove that Rome was Babylon, that the existing Church in no way resembled that of the Apostles, that there should be no Order higher than the priesthood, that capital punishment for heresy was in itself a heresy, and other doctrines which no calificador could help qualifying as the rankest Lutheranism, but Berrocosa was not relaxed, although he found associates to copy these heretical documents and circulate them. When his ten years’ confinement ended, in 1767, he was again strictly secluded in a cell, from which, in 1768, he managed to escape, eluding pursuit until, in January, 1770, he was recaptured and delivered to the Toledo tribunal. Here he underwent a second trial, resulting in a sentence of confinement for life in the convent of Sarria (Galicia), where he was to be kept incomunicado.[1212]

This case illustrates why, during the decadence of the Inquisition, we hear little or nothing of Protestantism among Spaniards, although the spirit of persecution was unabated. Revolt against Ultramontanism was no longer styled Lutheranism but Regalism or Jansenism. With those whose dissidence went beyond discipline to dogma, it took the shape of the fashionable philosophy of the period and became Naturalism or Philosophism, Deism or Atheism, as the case might be. The Inquisition still did its work with more or less rigor, but the arena had shifted.

While thus there had been little tendency to Protestantism among natives, since the inconsiderable outbreaks of 1558, foreigners furnished an ample field of labor. Spain had a reputation for wealth which rendered it attractive to the stranger; its people held in contempt the arts and crafts in which Frenchmen and Flemings and Italians were adepts, and its internal peace seemed to offer a refuge to those whose industries were precarious in the incessant clash of arms through which the old order of things gave way to the new. Consequently every city in Spain had a considerable population of foreigners, intent on earning a livelihood without much thought of spiritual matters. Some trials in the Toledo tribunal, about 1570, allude to French and Flemish printers then under arrest in Toledo, Barcelona, Alcalá, Salamanca, Valladolid and Granada.[1213] In 1600, the Count of Benavente, Viceroy of Valencia, estimated the number of Frenchmen there at fourteen or fifteen thousand and added that there were vast numbers in Aragon.[1214] While many of these were undoubtedly Calvinists, sedulously concealing their faith, the majority were Catholics, more or less sincere, but even their orthodoxy was not of a quality to suit the Spanish standard. They had been accustomed to live in contact with heretics; they had no such fanatical horror of heresy as was universal in Spain, and they were apt to be careless in the observances which the Spaniard regarded as indispensable. All foreigners were thus objects of suspicion, and the Catholic was as liable to arrest as the Calvinist. Jacques Zacharie, a dealer in rosaries and images in Burgos, in 1637, chanced to be relating his adventures with the heretics in France who, in examining his baggage, had said “Let him take these wares to Spain and bring us back good money,” when one of his hearers expressed surprise that the Most Christian king would let heretics dwell in his land. This led Jacques patriotically to defend them as good baptized Christians, who lived righteously according to their law. He was asked how they could be Christians when they did not go to mass and confess to priests, when, in the heat of discussion, he replied that there was not scriptural command of sacramental confession. For this he was denounced to the Valladolid tribunal; he was arrested and tried and all his property was sequestrated.[1215]

FOREIGNERS

It is no wonder therefore that the tribunals were kept busy with these cases and that the records are full of them, especially under the crown of Aragon, owing to the propinquity of south-western France, where Huguenotism was in the ascendant. In Saragossa the relaxations for Lutheranism, from 1546 to 1574, though amounting to only seven, were all of Frenchmen.[1216] Barcelona was more active. In an auto of May 16, 1561, there appeared for Lutheranism, eleven Frenchmen, one Piedmontese and one Maltese. In that of July 11, 1563, there were thirty-four Frenchmen, two Italians and two Catalans, of whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in person and three in effigy. In that of March 5, 1564, there were twenty-eight Frenchmen, two Catalans and one Swiss, of whom eight Frenchmen were relaxed in person and two in effigy.[1217] From a report by Dr. Zurita of his visitation in the summer of 1564, we obtain a glimpse of how these autos were fed. At Perpignan, for Lutheranism, five persons were arrested with sequestration, of whom four, and possibly all five, were French. At Castellon de Ampurias, Maestre Macian, a Frenchman, was sent to Barcelona for trial. Jean de Adin, a Frenchman of Aldas, escaped arrest by flight, and the arrest was ordered of Pere Bayrach, a Frenchman of Flasa.[1218] When, simultaneously with this, the ambassador Saint-Sulpice complained to Philip II of the cruelty exercised on his fellow-countrymen, who were peaceably plying their industries, without creating scandal, the king coolly replied that the Inquisition acted without regard to persons, but nevertheless he would speak with the inquisitor-general.[1219]

The complaint of cruelty was justified. In the rebuke which the Suprema administered to the tribunal of Barcelona, in 1568, as the result of de Soto Salazar’s visitation, allusion is made to a case, in 1565, of a Frenchman named Antoine Aymeric, arrested without evidence; his first audience was held at his own request February 23d, the second on July 27th, when, without more ado, he was tortured and sentenced to reconciliation and confiscation. In another case of a Frenchman, Armand Jacobat, he was tortured without confession, but subsequently admitted some Lutheran errors, begged for mercy and desired to be converted, in spite of which he was relaxed and burnt, for which the Suprema held the tribunal to be gravely in fault.[1220] What became of those not burnt is seen in a report of December, 1566, to Charles IX, by his ambassador M. de Fourquevaux, that seventy poor Frenchmen, prisoners of the Barcelona tribunal, had been condemned to the galleys and had been delivered, in November, to Don Alvar de Bazan, who had taken the fleet to winter near Cádiz. In February, 1567, he writes that, on complaint to the Duke of Alva, the latter had assured him on his honor that they were all dogmatizing Huguenots; that Frenchmen were never arrested for Protestantism if they had not said or done something scandalous. This was as mendacious as the repeated promises to release the galley-slaves, which were always evaded until Fourquevaux recommended the seizure as a hostage, at Narbonne, of Andrea Doria, the naval commander-in-chief. At last, on December 20th, he reported the sending of royal letters to Doria to release them, but it is fairly questionable whether the order was obeyed. Again, in a list of complaints made by Charles IX to Philip, there was one concerning five of his subjects arrested in Havana and sent to Seville for trial, to which Philip replied that he was not accustomed and did not desire to interfere in such affairs, but nevertheless he would have the inquisitor-general requested to order the tribunal to despatch these cases with all speed.[1221]

A more pleasing international episode is connected with the case of Robert Fitzwilliam, an Englishman, condemned by the Seville tribunal to ten years of galleys and perpetual prison. He was received on board, February 25, 1578 and, in November 1582, his wife Ellen presented herself in the court of Madrid, with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to Philip II, representing that the poor woman had beseeched her interposition, and that the liberation of the husband would be a favor which she would be glad to reciprocate. Under any other jurisdiction, the granting of such a royal request would have been a matter of course, but the assent of the Holy Office had to be secured. The existing papers fail to inform us of the result, but that it was favorable can scarce be doubted, for the devotion of the faithful wife made a strong impression even on the hardened officials, whose correspondence alludes to her in terms of respect and admiration.[1222] More summary was the process when, in 1572, the Barcelona tribunal sent a commissioner into French territory on some duty, and he was seized and held as a hostage for a Frenchman arrested by the tribunal, leading to an exchange of prisoners.[1223]

The Val d’Andorra furnished another source of international questions, for the Barcelona tribunal claimed jurisdiction over it, while Jeanne d’Albret, as Queen of Navarre, held that it was her fief. In 1572, she put a French veguer there to administer justice, whereupon the inquisitors commenced to gather information about him, as a presumable Huguenot, and the Suprema ordered them to arrest him if sufficient evidence could be found, but, as the attempt was likely to prove dangerous, it need not be made unless the viceroy would furnish a sufficient guard, which apparently he declined to do.[1224]

DIMINISHING NUMBERS