The minuteness of the captious criticism which exposed the most eminent men to the horrors of inquisitorial prosecution can best be understood by two or three cases. Of these perhaps the most notable is that of the Augustinian Fray Luis de Leon, who was not only one of the most eminent theologians of his day, and who was unsurpassed as a preacher, but who ranks as a Castilian classic in both prose and poetry.[333] It is so suggestive of inquisitorial procedure in such matters that it is worthy of examination in some detail.
To a brilliant intellect Luis de Leon united a personal activity which led him to take a prominent part in the feverish life of the schools, not only in disputations but in the frequent rivalries and competitions, through which professorial vacancies were filled, for in Salamanca the professors were elected for terms of four years by the students of the faculty to which the chair belonged, after a disputation between the candidates. In these he had abundant opportunities of making enemies for, at the age of 34, he had been elected to the chair of Thomas Aquinas, from which he passed to that of Durandus. These opportunities he largely improved, if we may trust his characterizations of the numerous opponents whom he sought to disable as witnesses in the course of his trial. Even in his own Order he had enemies, owing to his active and influential participation in its internal politics.
Theological disputes are rarely wanting in rancor, no matter how minute may be the points at issue. In Salamanca, not only were there frequent disputations but, as the leading school of theology, questions were frequently submitted to it by the Suprema on which conferences and congregations were held, leading to interminable wrangles. Azpilcueta tells us that this disputatious mania led the participants to uphold what was false, for the purpose of exhibiting their dexterity, not only misleading their auditors but often blinding themselves to the truth, and Luis de Leon himself says that the warmth of debate sometimes carried them beyond the bounds of reason, and so confused them that they could scarce recall what they themselves had said. One of his witnesses, Fray Juan de Guevara, corroborates this with the remark that Maestro Leon de Castro (Luis de Leon’s chief accuser) sometimes might not understand what was said, but this happened to all theologians when heated in the disputations.[334]
A fairer field for inquisitorial intervention could scarce be devised and, from one point of view, its restraint of this dialectic ardor might not be amiss, but its influence on intellectual development was deplorable, when it made every man feel that he stood on the brink of an abyss into which, at any moment, he might be precipitated. Nor was such dread uncalled for; while Luis de Leon was on trial, three other Salamanca professors were in the same predicament—Antonio Gudiel, Gaspar de Grajal and Martin Martínez, while yet another, Dr. Barrientos, was released just prior to the arrest of Luis. Denunciation was an easy recourse for a defeated disputant; an incautious utterance in heated debate, imperfectly understood, or distorted in remembrance, furnished the means. Even lectures in the ordinary courses contributed their share, when zealous students disagreed with their teachers or made mistakes in their hasty notes.
LUIS DE LEON
The two prime movers in the prosecution of Fray Luis were Leon de Castro and Bartolomé de Medina. De Castro was an elderly man, a jubilado professor of Grammar, who had frequent wordy encounters with Fray Luis, usually to his discomfiture.
He had based great hopes on a Commentary on Isaiah, the publication of which was delayed by the Suprema requiring him to submit it to examination; he had to spend some months at the court before he could obtain permission for its sale, and then it proved a failure, entailing on him a loss of a thousand ducats—all of which he attributed to Fray Luis, who happened at the time to be in Madrid. Bartolomé de Medina was a younger man, ambitiously working his way upward, and meeting several rebuffs from Fray Luis, which accentuated the traditional hostility between the Dominicans and Augustinians, to which they respectively belonged. They were habitually opposed in the disputations, but it seems somewhat eccentric to find Medina accusing Luis and his friends Grajal and Martínez of introducing novelties and innovations, seeing that his own reputation is chiefly based on his invention of the greatest novelty of the period—the Probabilism which revolutionized the ethical teaching of the Church and gave rise to the new science of Moral Theology.[335]
It was not difficult for these enmities to find means of gratification. Robert Stephen’s edition of the Latin Bible, with the notes of François Vatable, had involved that printer in endless disputes with the Sorbonne, which accused him of having hereticated the comments of the thoroughly orthodox editor. In 1555, the University of Salamanca undertook its correction, but the result did not satisfy the sensitiveness of Spanish theology, and the edition was forbidden in the Index of 1559. Yet the work was wanted in Spain and, at command of the Suprema, in 1569, the university undertook the task anew. Numerous congregations were held, in which every point was hotly disputed. Medina, who had not yet attained his master’s degree, took no part in the meetings, but Leon de Castro and Fray Luis had many passages at arms. De Castro accused him of scant respect for the Vulgate text of the Bible, and of preferring the authority of the Hebrew and Greek originals. He stigmatized Luis, who was of converso descent, of being a Jew and a Judaizer and, on one occasion, declared that he ought to be burnt. In truth the question of the Vulgate was one of importance. The new heresies were largely based on the assumption of its imperfection, and sought to prove this by reference to the originals. Scholastic theology rested on the Vulgate and, in self-defence, the Council of Trent, in 1546, had declared that it was to be received as authentic in all public lectures, disputations, preaching and expositions, and that no one should dare to reject it under any pretext.[336] Yet it was notorious that, in the course of ages, the text had become corrupt; the Tridentine fathers included in their decree a demand for a perfected edition, but the labor was great and was not concluded until 1592, when the Clementine text was issued, with thousands of emendations. Meanwhile to question its accuracy was to venture on dangerous ground and to invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one of the calificadores, during Fray Luis’s trial, asserted “Catholic doctors affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate, as the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew and Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the means of confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free interpretation.”[337] Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a lecture on the subject four years before, he had maintained the accuracy of the Hebrew text, contending that St. Jerome the translator was not inspired, nor were the words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover that the Tridentine decree in no way affirmed such verbal inspiration.[338]
On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously, at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy, which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon.
LUIS DE LEON