A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

LUIS DE LEON

On the final decision, September 18, 1576, Menchaca, Alava, Tello and Albornoz voted for torture on the intention, including the propositions which the theologians had declared that Fray Luis had satisfied, after which another consulta should be held. They humanely added that it should be moderate in view of the debility of the accused. Those better acquainted with the case, Guijano and Frechilla, were more lenient. They voted for a reprimand, after which, in a general assembly of professors and students, Fray Luis should read a declaration, drawn up by the calificadores, pronouncing the propositions to be ambiguous, suspicious and likely to cause scandal. Moreover his Augustinian superior was to be told, extra-judicially, to order him privately to employ his studies in other directions and to abstain from teaching in the schools. The vernacular version of Canticles was to be suppressed, if the inquisitor-general and Suprema saw fit.[347] Comparatively mild as this sentence might seem, it gratified to the full the vindictiveness of his enemies—it humiliated him utterly and destroyed his career.

As there was discordia the case necessarily reverted to the Suprema, which seems to have recognized that both votes assumed the nullity of the laborious trifling, by which the calificadores had found dangerous heresies in his acknowledged propositions. Discussion must have been prolonged however, for the final sentence was not rendered until December 7th. This fully acquitted Fray Luis of all the charges, but ordered a reprimand in the audience-chamber and a warning to treat such matters in future with great circumspection, so that no scandal or errors should arise. The Suprema could scarce say less, if the whole dismal farce, of nearly five years, was not to be admitted as wholly unjustifiable, and it enclosed the sentence in a letter instructing the tribunal to order Fray Luis to preserve profound silence and to avoid dissension with those whom he suspected of testifying against him. It was probably on December 15th that the sentence was read and the reprimand administered. Fray Luis took the necessary oaths, he made the promises required, and was discharged as innocent after an incarceration, incomunicado, which had lasted for four years, eight months and nineteen days. His requests were granted for a certificate de no obstancia and for an order on the paymaster of the schools to pay him his professorial salary from the date of his arrest to the expiration of his quadrennial term.[348]

During this prolonged imprisonment, Fray Luis seems to have been treated with unusual consideration. He was allowed to send for all the books needed for his defence and for study—even for recreation, for we find him, July 6, 1575, asking for the prose works of Bembo, for a Pindar in Greek and Latin and for a copy of Sophocles.[349] He relieved the distractions of his defence and the anxieties of his position by the composition of his De los Nombres de Christo, which has remained a classic. Yet these were but slender alleviations of the hardships and despairing tedium of his prison cell. On March 12, 1575, he is begging for the sacraments; though he is no heretic, he says, he has been deprived of them for three years. This petition was forwarded to the Suprema, which replied by drily telling the tribunal to complete the cases of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez as soon as opportunity would permit.[350] At an audience of August 20th, of the same year, when remanded to his cell, he paused to represent that, as the inquisitors well knew, he was very sick with fever; there was no one in his cell to take care of him, save a fellow-prisoner, a young boy who was simple; one day he fainted through hunger, as there was no one to give him food, and he asked whether a fraile of his Order could be admitted to assist him and to aid him to die, unless they wished him to die alone in his cell. This was not refused but, as the condition was imposed that the companion should as usual share his imprisonment to the end, the request was in vain. Then, on September 12th, in his reply to the five propositions suddenly sprung upon him, he feelingly referred to the years of prison and the sufferings caused by the absence of comforts in his weakness and sickness, as a torture long and cruel enough to purge all suspicions.[351] Even more pitiful was a petition to the Suprema in November of the same year—“I supplicate your most illustrious body, by Jesus Christ, on my giving ample security, to order me to be placed in one of the convents of this city, even in that of San Pablo (Dominican), in any way that it may please you, until sentence is rendered, so that if, during this time, God should call me, which I greatly fear, in view of my much trouble and feeble health, I may die as a Christian among religious persons, aided by their prayers and receiving the sacraments, and not as an infidel, alone in prison with a Moor at my bed-side. And since the rancor of my enemies and my own sins have deprived me of all that is desirable in life, may the Christian piety of your most illustrious body give me this consolation in death, for I ask nothing more.”[352] It is perhaps needless to say that this touching appeal did not even receive an answer.

LUIS DE LEON

After the term of his professorship had expired, about March 1, 1573, his special enemy, Bartolomé de Medina, was elected in his place and was promoted, in August 1576, to the leading chair in theology, while Fray García del Castillo succeeded to that of Durandus. On Fray Luis’s return, he was warmly and honorably received in an assembly of the Senate, convoked for the purpose, where the Commissioner of the Inquisition declared that the Holy Office had ordered his restoration to honor and to his professorship. Luis however refused to disturb Castillo and, in January 1577, an extraordinary chair on the Scriptures was created for him. The next year, on the chair of moral philosophy falling vacant, he obtained it and subsequently he became regular professor of Scripture—one of the highest positions in the University. His colleague Grajal had been less fortunate, having perished in prison before the termination of his trial.[353]

Fray Luis’s mental vigor was unimpaired, although his delicate frame never wholly recovered from the effects of his long imprisonment. Such an experience of the dangers attendant on the discussions of the schools might seem sufficient to dampen his disputatious ardor, but in a theology, which sought to reduce to hard and fast lines all the secrets of the unknown spiritual world, there was risk of heresy in every speculation. In an acto of the University, held January 20, 1582, the debate widened into a discussion upon predestination and free-will, in which Fray Luis and Fray Domingo de Guzman were bitterly opposed to each other. It was continued in another theological Act the next week; the students became excited and called upon Father Bañez to repress these novelties, which he did in a lecture declaring that the views of Fray Luis savored of Pelagianism. The latter was angered and the next day, in an assembly of all the faculties, the question under debate was: If God confers equal and sufficing grace on two men, nothing else interfering, can one be converted and the other reject the aid? The discussion between Fray Luis and Bañez was hot, and the excitement increased. Then on January 27th there was another assembly which wrangled over the intricate questions involved in prevenient aid and human coöperation.[354]

This was the commencement of the long debate De Auxiliis, between Jesuits and Dominicans, which lasted for a century, until both sides were silenced by the Holy See, without either being able to claim the victory. Fray Luis had excited many enmities—though not as many as he was in the habit of claiming—and the occasion was favorable for striking at him and at those whom he supported. Fray Juan de Santa Cruz drew up an account of the discussions, with a censure of the erroneous and heretical propositions defended; it was not a personal denunciation of any one, but he declared that the agitation and disquiet of the schools demanded a settlement by the Inquisition. This he presented, February 5th, at Valladolid, to the inquisitor, Juan de Arrese and, from the marginal notes, it appears that, besides Fray Luis, two Jesuits and a Benedictine were marked for prosecution. In March, Inquisitor Arrese came to Salamanca on a mission to suppress astrology and took the opportunity to gather testimony on the scholastic quarrel. Various witnesses, some of them Augustinians, came forward spontaneously with evidence, and the Mercenarian, Francisco Zumel presented a series of propositions, purporting to be drawn from a lecture by Fray Luis on predestination, of which the worst was that Christ on the cross was destitute of God and was provoked to sin. Zumel was a bitter enemy of Luis, who had defeated him, four years before, in competition for the chair of moral philosophy; both had their partizans and their quarrels were the cause of much trouble.[355]

LUIS DE LEON

Fray Luis’s experience of the Inquisition naturally led him to seek exculpation. Three times he appeared voluntarily before Arrese and made verbal and written statements, in which he rendered an account of his share in the debates. He admitted that he had defended a position opposite to what he had previously taught, which was not without a certain temerity, as differing from the ordinary language of the schools, and not proper for public debate, as it was delicate, difficult of comprehension and liable to lead the hearers into error. He protested that he had not intended to offend Catholic doctrine and, if he had said anything inconsiderately, he submitted it to the censure and correction of the holy tribunal. He also laid much stress on the notorious hatred of the Dominicans towards him, and the manner in which they lost no opportunity of decrying his doctrine, his person and his morals.[356]