A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

Among converts the most curious case in the records is that of Joh. Heinrich Horstmann—with many aliases—of Borgenstreich, who supported himself during a long life by trading on the rivalry between Protestantism and Catholicism. Born about 1663, he was educated as a Catholic by the Jesuits of Prague. When about 25, he changed his religion at Dresden, studied at Wittenberg, and for many years wandered through Germany, living on charitable contributions given to him as a convert. He even went to England, where the Archbishops of Canterbury and York assisted him. Then, in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, he supported himself as a Catholic ready for conversion, and in the Catholic ones as a Lutheran seeking salvation in the Church. Finally in the latter capacity he hit upon the lucrative device of saying that he had been baptized in the Lutheran fashion of one person administering the material and another the form; theologians would pronounce this invalid, and that rebaptism was necessary; some prominent person would be induced to act as godfather and would encourage him with a donation of twenty or thirty ducats, and possibly there was an additional collection from the faithful. On this he traded for the rest of his life, varied with an episode of having himself circumcised in Amsterdam and living for some years on the Jews there. This subsequently gave him trouble, for in Rome he was recognized as a Jew, he was tried by the Inquisition and sent to the galleys for ten years, after which he resumed the profession of a candidate for baptism. From Lisbon to Paris and Naples, he imposed on the credulity of the faithful, and it was reckoned that in all he had been baptized twenty-one times. A second visit to Spain, however, brought his career to an end in his eighty-ninth year. Repeated baptisms in Cádiz, Madrid and Valencia aroused suspicion. All the tribunals were ordered to be on the watch for him and, after a year of searching, he was arrested at Valencia in 1751. He told his story freely and fully; at first he said that his repeated baptisms were merely to gain a living, but subsequently he asserted that he was possessed by a demon, whom he hoped to eject by the repetition of the rite. The consulta de fe voted that, as an apostate and relapsed heretic and diminuto he had forfeited his life, but that efforts should be made to save his soul, after which another vote should be taken. At this conjuncture he fell mortally sick; he refused to speak to those who sought his salvation and, when one of them told him, if he desired to die in Calvinism, to squeeze his hand, he seized it with such a grip that assistance was necessary to unloosen it. Thus he passed away in his heresy on February 28, 1752; the body was buried in unconsecrated ground in a box of quick-lime and, in an auto held August 26, 1753, the bones and effigy were reduced to ashes and scattered.[1276]

Thus, when divested of legendary amplification, Spanish Protestantism is seen to have been of importance only as serving to tighten the bonds which restricted the development of the nation. One of the most efficient means to this end remains to be considered in the censorship of the press.

CHAPTER IV.
CENSORSHIP.

CENSORSHIP of the press was not the least effective function of the Inquisition in arresting the development of the Spanish intellect. That it should suppress the utterance of heresy in print as well as in speech would appear to be inevitable, and yet no such power was included in the commissions of the earlier inquisitors-general, nor at first was this regarded as one of its duties. It is true that, as early as 1490, it burnt a large number of Hebrew Bibles and other Jewish books and, soon afterwards in Salamanca, it consigned to the flames in an auto some six thousand volumes of works on Judaism and sorcery.[1277] We have seen also that Ximenes in Granada burnt a mass of Moorish MSS., but these were extra-judicial acts, which there was none to call in question. In the Instructions issued by Torquemada and his immediate successors, there is no reference to censorship as an inquisitorial duty and, in the earliest manual, printed in Valencia in 1494, the only allusion to it is the prescription, derived from the canon law, that any one obtaining possession of an heretical book is bound, within eight days, to burn it or to deliver it to the bishop or inquisitor.[1278]

EARLY TOLERATION

In fact, the matter was not regarded as pertaining especially to the Inquisition. The earliest provision for censorship, called forth by the development of the art of printing, is a faculty granted, March 17, 1479, by Sixtus IV to the rector and dean of the University of Cologne, to proceed with censures against the printers, sellers and readers of heretical books.[1279] Alexander VI, in 1501, assumed it to be an episcopal function, when he called on the German bishops to keep a vigilant watch on the press.[1280] So Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1502, when they promulgated the earliest law regulating the issue of books, made no mention of the Inquisition. This law formed the basis of all subsequent legislation, and its uncompromising character foreshadowed the relations that were henceforth to exist between the government and the intelligence of Spain. No book was to be printed, imported or exposed for sale without preliminary examination and licence. In Valladolid this duty was imposed on the president judges of the royal courts; in Toledo, Seville and Granada on the archbishops, in Burgos on the bishop, and in Salamanca and Zamora on the Bishop of Salamanca, who were to act through examiners, paid by a moderate salary, not oppressive to booksellers and printers. When a MS. had been thus licensed, it was, after printing, to be carefully compared with the sheets to see that no changes had been made. Any book printed or imported and offered for sale, without such licence, was to be seized and publicly burnt; the printer or vendor was incapacitated from continuing in business and was fined in twice the amount received for any copies that he might have sold.[1281] That the censorship thus created was enforced with more or less regularity may be inferred from a remark of Chancellor Gattinara, in 1527, reassuring Erasmus against expected attacks—that nothing was permitted to be published in Spain without careful previous examination, and he fervently wished that an equally wholesome rule could be established in Germany.[1282]

The motive for this sharp and comprehensive legislation can only be conjectured. Before the Reformation there was little demand for the services of the censor. The Church was worldly; its supremacy in all matters of faith and discipline seemed to be so immutably established that it regarded with good-natured indifference abstract speculations such as those of Marsiglio Ficino, Pomponazzi and Agustino Nifo, and concrete ridicule like that of Sebastian Brandt, Thomas Murner and Erasmus. It was otherwise when the Lutheran revolt threatened the overthrow of Latin Christianity and spread with such rapidity that no man could foretell its limits. We have seen that, as early as 1521, Rome called upon Spain to prevent the introduction and dissemination of Lutheran writings, and that Cardinal Adrian promptly assumed that it was the function of the Inquisition to do so. There is no trace of any delegation of such faculty, from either the Holy See or the civil power, but his action was not likely to be called in question, and the civil authorities were under oath to obey the mandates of the inquisitors, where the faith was concerned Accordingly, his decree of April, 1521, is couched in the most absolute terms; the books in question had been prohibited by the inquisitors and spiritual judges, wherefore the tribunals were instructed to order, under heavy censures and civil penalties, that no one should possess or sell them, whether in Latin or Romance, but should, within three days after notice, bring them to the Inquisition to be publicly burnt; the edict was to be published in a sermon of faith and, after publication, any one possessing or selling them, or knowing that others possessed them and not denouncing the offenders, was to suffer the penalties announced by the inquisitors, while all ecclesiastical and secular authorities were ordered to render whatever aid might be necessary.[1283]

Thus, at a bound, the Inquisition claimed and exercised the power of enforcing the prohibition of condemned books. The next step—that of condemning books—would seem to have been taken, in 1525, in an order to the vicar of Alcalá de Henares to seize all copies of a certain book of expositions of the Psalter.[1284] Then followed, in 1530 and 1531, various edicts showing the activity of the Inquisition in exploiting its new field of action. The heretics were printing their works under assumed names, or adding heretic commentaries to authorized books, for the detection of which the utmost vigilance of the tribunals was invoked; a clause was to be added to the Edict of Faith requiring the denunciation of all such works; the tribunals were to send executory letters to all towns demanding the surrender of Luther’s writings, and discreet persons were to be appointed to investigate the book-shops in search of this evil literature. When, in 1535, the tribunal of Valencia admitted that it had neglected to do this it was commanded to make the appointments forthwith and to have all condemned books seized.[1285]

CONFIDED TO THE INQUISITION

The Inquisition had assumed and was exercising authority to condemn books, to seize those in circulation and to punish their possessors, although it had no formal authority for any of these acts. It seems to have felt that the punishment of offenders, at least, required papal faculties and, when Inquisitor-general Tavera, in 1539, succeeded Manrique, a clause was inserted in his commission empowering him and his successors to proceed against those who owned or read heretical books.[1286] The authority of the Holy Office was thus complete with regard to books after they were printed, but as to the equally important function of granting licences to print, its policy at first varied somewhat. The law of 1502 had confided this duty explicitly to judges and bishops, but, in 1527, the Inquisition invaded this by granting licences for Antonio de Obregon’s translations of some of St. Bernard’s and San Vicente de Ferrer’s works. Even individual inquisitors seem to have arrogated to themselves power to grant licences for, in 1530, the Suprema forbade them to do so, but it assumed for itself entire control over the matter, in 1536, by issuing orders that no book should be printed without a preliminary examination by the Holy Office.[1287] Reflection, and possibly experience, however, showed that this assumption of power carried with it a responsibility that occasionally might prove embarrassing, for books which it thus approved might subsequently, in the growing sensitiveness of orthodoxy, be condemned, and a carta acordada of 1550 definitely prohibited all such licences, adding that the Suprema did not grant them.[1288] It was wiser that preliminary approval and subsequent judgement should be in different hands, and this was provided for in an edict of Charles V and Prince Philip, in 1554, confining to the Royal Council the duty of issuing licences, after careful examination of the MSS. submitted, which, in the case of all important works, were to be retained for comparison with the printed sheets.[1289] Yet the Inquisition retained the right to stop the printing of any book denounced to it as heretical, and it seems for awhile to have occasionally issued licences, for a carta acordada of 1575 alludes to the approval of books and their licensing by inquisitors.[1290] This was probably the end of it, and the Inquisition tacitly declined to risk its reputation for infallibility by approving books in advance, which it might subsequently have to condemn.