A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

ERASMISTS

The danger impending over Erasmists is still more forcibly illustrated by the case of one who was regarded as perhaps the foremost among them in Spain. No man stood higher for learning and culture than Doctor Juan de Vergara. He had been secretary of Ximenes as Archbishop of Toledo, and subsequently to Fonseca, who succeeded to the primatial dignity in 1524. Ximenes had made him professor of Philosophy at Alcalá, where he translated the Wisdom of Solomon for the Complutensian Polyglot, and the treatises de Anima, de Physica and de Metaphysica for the projected edition of Aristotle. He was an elegant Latin poet, and Menéndez y Pelayo tells us that he was the father of historical criticism. He was regarded with favor by Manrique and was a warm defender of Erasmus in the contest over the Enchiridion.[1120] We shall have occasion hereafter to treat of the adventures of the alumbrada Francisca Hernández and the men whom she entangled in her toils; among them was Bernardino de Tovar, also an Erasmist, half-brother of Vergara, who incurred her enmity by rescuing him from her clutches. To revenge herself, when on trial in 1530, she accused Vergara of holding all of Luther’s doctrines, except as to confession, and of possessing some of Luther’s works—the latter accusation being true, but when, in 1530, Manrique ordered the surrender of all such books, Vergara, after some delay, carried them to the tribunal. Another of Francisca’s disciples, Fray Francisco Ortiz, when on trial, also accused Vergara of denying the efficacy of indulgences and abusing the University of Paris for condemning the writings of Erasmus, in which, he said, the Church had found no heretical errors. The tribunal collected some other evidence against Vergara and industriously searched for more, even as far as Flanders. In May, 1533, a willing witness was found in Diego Hernández, a buffoon of a priest, whom María Cazalla had employed as confessor until she dismissed him for seducing a nun and asserting that it was no sin. This worthy produced a list of seventy Lutheran heretics, qualified according to their degrees of guilt, among whom Vergara figured as fino lutherano endiosado (mystically abstracted). Whatever hesitation there may have been in arresting such a man, however, disappeared when it was found, in April, 1533, that he had been communicating with Tovar in prison, by bribing the officials. The fiscal presented his clamosa, May 17th, accusing Vergara of being a fautor and defender of heretics, a defamer of the Inquisition and a corrupter of its officials, and his arrest and imprisonment followed on June 24th.

This occasioned general surprise. Archbishop Fonseca was deeply moved and endeavored to obtain his release under bail for fifty thousand ducats, or to have him confined in a house under guard, but the only result of his efforts was to lead the tribunal to shut up the windows of Vergara’s cell, converting it into a dungeon and seriously affecting his health. The trial proceeded through the regular stages. He refused the services of an advocate and, on January 29, 1534, he presented his defence, denying nearly all the errors attributed to him and explaining the rest in a Catholic sense. After this a fresh accusation was presented based on his friendship for and correspondence with Erasmus, to whom he had induced Archbishop Fonseca to grant a pension. Fonseca had died, February 24th, so that his evidence was unattainable, but Vergara pronounced the story as to the pension to be false, though had it been true it would have been innocent. Everyone knew that Erasmus had neither income nor benefice, never having been willing to accept either, and that he was supported by the liberality of gentlemen who contributed to him from all parts. Fonseca had only offered him an income if he would come to reside at Alcalá, an offer which Ximenes had previously made. It was true that, when Erasmus dedicated to him his edition of St. Augustin, Fonseca sent him two hundred ducats, scarce enough, in the case of so large a work, to give the printers their customary pour-boire. Fonseca felt this, and, when he heard of the death of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury († 1532), who was accustomed to provide liberally for Erasmus, he said that he ought to pay for the printing of the book, whereupon Vergara wrote that he would send something, but it was not done. As for corresponding with Erasmus, popes and kings and the emperor himself were gratified to have letters from him and, in the printed collections of his epistles, were to be found his answers to Vergara, showing that the latter had urged him to write in confutation of Luther.

The day after this defence was presented, there came the most serious evidence as yet offered against him. This was from another distinguished Erasmist, then on trial, Alonso de Virués, who testified that, four years before, in a discussion whether the sacrament worked ex opere operato, Vergara ridiculed it as a fantastic opinion, and further, that he did not hold as he should, certain pious and Catholic doctrines. It is true that the Council of Trent had not yet pronounced, as it did in 1547 (Sess. VII, De Sacramentis, can. viii) the self-operation of the sacrament to be de fide, but the doctrine was coeval with the development of the sacramental theory in the twelfth century and was indispensable in vindication of its validity in polluted hands against the Donatist heresy. To deny it, even in disputation, could not fail to prejudice Vergara’s case, which dragged on, in spite of the efforts of his friends, and even of the empress, to expedite it. At length, on December 21, 1535, he was sentenced to appear as a penitent in an auto de fe, to abjure de vehementi, to be recluded in a monastery for a year irremissibly, and to pay a fine of fifteen hundred ducats. In three months, however, Manrique charitably transferred him to the cathedral cloister and, on February 27, 1537, his confinement came to an end.[1121] He incurred no disabilities; his reputation seems not to have suffered, for he retained his Toledo canonry and, as we have seen, he incurred, in 1547, the displeasure of Archbishop Silicio by opposing the statute of limpieza.

ERASMISTS

Virués was a similar victim to the revulsion against Erasmus. He was Benedictine Abbot of San Zoilo, a learned orientalist and the favorite preacher of Charles V, who had carried him to Germany. Envy of his favor at court caused his denunciation; isolated passages in his sermons were cited against him, and he was thrown in prison in 1533. His incarceration lasted for four years, in spite of Charles’s efforts for his liberation; it was in vain that he pleaded that, some fourteen years before, Erasmus had been regarded as orthodox, and that he adduced the arguments which he had used against Melanchthon in the Diet of Ratisbon. In 1537, he was declared to be suspect of Lutheranism, he was required to abjure and was recluded in a convent for two years, with suspension from preaching for two more. Charles was so much interested in him that, notwithstanding his strenuous objection to papal interference, he procured from Paul III a brief of May 29, 1538, by which the sentence was set aside and Virués was declared capable of any preferment, even episcopal. When Juan de Sarvia, Bishop of Canaries, died in 1542, Virués was appointed his successor and died in 1545.[1122]

Contemporary with these cases was that of Pedro de Lerma, a member of one of the leading families of Burgos. He was a canon of the Cathedral and Abbot of Alcalá, renowned as a preacher and a man of the highest consideration. He had spent fifty years in the University of Paris, where the Sorbonne made him dean of its faculty. Happening to read some of the works of Erasmus, he was so impressed that they influenced his sermons. He was denounced to the Inquisition, which imprisoned him and, after a long trial he was required, in 1537, to recant eleven propositions publicly in all the towns where he had preached, confessing that he had taught them at the instigation of the devil to propagate error in the Church. He was so humiliated that he abandoned Spain for Paris, where he was warmly received as dean of the faculty, and where he died in 1541. The people of Burgos, we are told, who had regarded him with the greatest reverence, were so impressed by this that those who had sent their sons abroad to study at once recalled them.[1123]

This atmosphere of all-pervading suspicion, and this exaggerated sensitiveness to possible error, exposed everyone to prosecution for the most innocently unguarded remark. Miguel Mezquita, a gentleman of Formiche (Teruel) appeared January 19, 1536, before the Valencia tribunal in obedience to a citation and, under the usual formula of being told to search his conscience, he intuitively recurred to Erasmus and related a talk which he had, some five or six years previous, with a Dominican, in which he had defended the Enchiridion on the ground that it had been subjected to examination without being condemned. This however proved not to be the cause of his summons, for Pedro Forrer, a priest of Teruel, had denounced him as having said that Luther preached the gospel and was therefore called an evangelist, while the followers of the pope were called papists, and that Luther was right in maintaining that Scripture did not say that Christ gave power to St. Peter, but to all the apostles. Mezquita explained that he had been several times to Italy and had been sent to Flanders; the priest had asked him what was said about Luther, and he had merely gratified his curiosity by repeating what he had heard abroad in common talk. He earnestly implored to be released, for he had eight children, four of them studying in Salamanca and, when suddenly carried off from home, he had left but six sueldos in his house. Fortunately for him, the inquisitors were not unreasonable and, on January 29th, he was allowed to return to his family, but the case remained on the records to be brought up against him should any malevolent neighbor see fit to distort some careless utterance.[1124]

Mysticism and illuminism, which, about this time, commenced their development in Spain, furnished another source of accusations of Lutheranism, due to their common tendency to cast aside the observances of sacerdotalism and to bring the sinner into direct relations with God, but this field of inquisitorial activity demands separate consideration. Meanwhile the above cases will probably suffice to indicate the way in which Catholics, who had no thought of wandering from the faith, fell under suspicion of partaking in the new heresies and were consequently subjected to persecution more or less distressing. It would scarce be worth while to follow in detail the long succession of those who had similar experience. The case of Carranza has already been discussed. Fray Juan de Regla, confessor of Charles V at San Yuste, and one of the witnesses against Carranza, was imprisoned by the Saragossa tribunal and was required to abjure eighteen propositions. Fray Francisco de Villalba, who preached the funeral sermon of Charles V, was denounced for Lutheranism and was saved only by the protection of Philip II. Miguel de Medina, one of the theologians of the Council of Trent, was so orthodox that, in his Disputatio de Indulgentiis, he ascribes to indulgences a virtue so great that without them Christianity would be a failure, yet this did not prevent his prosecution for defending certain propositions thought to savor of Lutheranism and, after four years’ detention, he died in prison with his trial unfinished.[1125]