A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

EXPLOITATION BY VALDES

That the government should feel keen anxiety at the unknown proportions of the portentous discovery was natural. Charles V was nearing his end in the retirement of Yuste, and Philip was in Flanders, engrossed in the war with France. His sister, the Infanta Juana, the temporary ruler, was a woman of very moderate capacity and she and her advisers, in view of the religious disquiet in France and Germany, might reasonably view with dread the prospect of civil dissension which in that age was the usual result of dissidence in faith. The outbreak in Seville had not excited much attention, but now this one at the court, involving such personages, portended unknown evils and came just in time to save Valdés from disgrace, as we have seen above (Vol. II, p. 47). On March 23, 1558 the Princess Juana had written to her father that when he had ordered the body of his mother Juana to be transferred to Granada, she had commanded Valdés to accompany it and then to visit his diocese of Seville; he had endeavored to excuse himself at the moment but promised to arrange so as to obey shortly. Then, when urged to do so some days later he raised further difficulties; it made no difference whether the body was buried then or in September; everybody was endeavoring to drive him away; troubles with his chapter required his presence at the court or in Rome; besides, he was occupied with some heresies which had arisen in Seville and in Murcia, and was busy in endeavoring to get a subsidy from the Moriscos of Granada. Evidently he was belittling the Seville heresies, lest they should serve as an excuse for sending him thither and, when Juana referred his letter to the Council of State, it insisted that he could be properly obliged to reside in his diocese.[1156]

It can therefore be easily conceived how eagerly he grasped the opportune explosion in Valladolid and how it was magnified so as to produce on the court a vastly greater impression than the more dangerous one in Seville. In a letter of May 12th to Philip, the Suprema briefly announced the discovery; the heretics were so numerous and the time had been so short that it could give no details, but it suggestively insisted on the necessity of the presence of Valdés to urge the matter forward and it hoped that, with the royal favor, action would be taken for the salvation of the delinquents and the example and restraint of others.[1157] As we have seen this produced immediate effect, for Philip, who had written June 5th that he must be relegated to his see, on the 14th countermanded the order. Charles had already been induced to take the same position. As early as April 27th, Juan Vázquez reported to him the arrest of Dr. Cazalla and the alarming outlook, adding that the remedy should be speedy and that the inquisitor-general and Suprema were actively at work.[1158] Charles was thoroughly aroused. He had spent his strength and his life in combating heresy; it had baffled his policies and frustrated his ambitions; it had been a thorn in the flesh, rankling and crippling him at every turn. It had fairly worn him out and driven him to abdication, and now its spectre broke in upon the repose for which his wearied soul and exhausted body had longed. He was appalled by the prospect of a renewal of the struggle, in the only land as yet preserved from its influence, and his religious zeal was enkindled with the conviction that only by the enforcement of unity of faith could public order and even the monarchy itself be maintained.

ALARM OF CHARLES V

Accordingly, on May 3d, he wrote to Juana asking her most earnestly to order that Valdés should not leave the court, where his presence was so necessary. She must give him and the Suprema all the support requisite to enable them to suppress so great an evil by the rigorous punishment of the guilty. Had he the bodily strength, he would himself come and share the labor. Juana sent for Valdés and showed him the letter, which assured him that he had regained his position, and the work went on of arresting the heretics, reports of which were duly sent to Charles. The more he pondered over the situation, the more excited he grew. On May 25th, in a long letter to Juana, he magnified the danger and the urgency of stern measures. “I do not know,” he said, “that in these cases it will suffice to follow the common law that the guilty of a first offence can secure pardon by begging mercy and professing conversion for, when at liberty, they will be free to repeat the offence.... The admission to mercy was not provided for cases like these for, in addition to their enormity, from what you write to me, it appears that in another year, if unchecked, they would have dared to preach in public, thus inferring their dangerous designs, for it is clear that they could not do so without organization and armed leaders. It must therefore be seen whether they can be prosecuted for sedition and disturbance of the republic, thus incurring the penalty of rebellion without mercy.” He goes on to instance his own cruel edicts in the Netherlands, under which the pertinacious were burnt alive and the repentant were beheaded, a policy which he urged Philip to continue and which the latter practised in England, as though he were its natural king, leading to so many and such pitiless executions, even of bishops. “There must” he concluded “be no competencias of jurisdiction over this, for believe me, my daughter, if this evil be not suppressed at the beginning, I cannot promise that there will be a king hereafter to do it. So I entreat you, as earnestly as I can, to do everything possible, for the nature of the case demands it and, that the necessary action be taken in my name, I order Luis Quijada to go to you and to talk to such persons as you may direct.”[1159]

Not satisfied with this, Charles, on the same day, sent to Philip a copy of this letter and begged him to give orders for the unsparing punishment of the guilty, for the service of God and the preservation of the kingdom were at stake. Philip’s marginal note on this was to thank him for what he had done, to ask him to press the matter, and to assure him that the same would be done from Flanders.[1160] We shall see that Charles’s cruel desire was fulfilled, though it was done ecclesiastically and not by distorting the secular law.

There followed a brisk correspondence between Valladolid and San Yuste, Charles burning with impatience and urging speedy action, and Valdés assuring him that all possible effort was making by the Inquisition in its crippled condition for want of funds. Philip was kept advised and wrote to Juana, from his camp near Dourlens, September 6th, expressing his satisfaction with what had been done; they were not to delay by communicating with him, who was busy with the war, but were to take orders from the emperor to whom he had written, asking him to take charge of the affair.[1161]

Valdés was now master of the situation, both in this and the affair of Carranza, which hinged upon it to a large extent. To exploit it to the utmost he addressed, September 9th, to Paul IV a letter in which he gave a brief account of the development of Lutheranism in Valladolid and Seville; he dwelt upon the dangers impending, the labors of the Inquisition and the poverty which crippled its efforts. Adopting the argument of Charles V, he pointed out that this Lutheranism was a kind of sedition or tumult, occurring as it did among persons of importance by birth, religion and wealth, so that there was peril of greater evils if they were treated with the same benignity as the converts from Islam and Judaism, who were mostly of low estate and not to be feared. Lutheranism promised relief from Church burdens, which bore hardly on the people who would welcome liberation, while tribunals might scruple to relax persons of quality who would not patiently endure penance and imprisonment and, from their rank and the influence of their kindred, great evils might arise, both to religion and the peace of the kingdom. A papal brief would be highly desirable, therefore, under which the tribunals, without scruple or fear of irregularity, could and should relax the guilty from whom danger to the republic might be feared, no matter what their dignity in Church or State, giving to the inquisitors full power to employ the rigor required by the situation, even if it went beyond the limits of the law.[1162] We have seen (Vol. II p. 426) how successful was this appeal in establishing on a firm basis the finances of the Inquisition, nor was it less so in obtaining the cruel power for which Charles V aspired, and also a faculty which enabled Valdés to destroy Carranza. Allusion has already been made (Vol. II, p. 61; Vol. III, p. 201) to the briefs of January 4 and 7, 1559 by which Paul IV granted a limited jurisdiction over the episcopal order and authorized the relaxation of penitents who begged for mercy, when it was believed that their conversion was not sincere. In both these directions, as was customary with the Inquisition, the limitation was disregarded and the grant of power was freely exercised.[1163]

VALLADOLID AUTO DE FE