The Gospel had made noble conquests in the north and centre of the peninsula: it did the same at Naples, and even at Rome.
It was not the Italians alone who spread the Gospel in Italy. Among the contemporaries and acquaintances of Paleario, Peter Martyr, and Occhino, were two twin brothers, descended from one of the oldest families of Leon in Spain, Juan and Alfonso di Valdez. They were so much alike, that Erasmus, who knew Alfonso, wrote to Juan: ‘They tell me you are so like your brother, both in figure and in talent, that when people see you, they do not take you for twins, but for the same person. I shall regard you, then, as one, and not two individuals.’[[883]] And, indeed, some historians, understanding literally what Erasmus merely intended for a pleasant jest, have converted the two brothers into one person. One of them disappears, and it is usually Alfonso: his actions are recorded, but they are ascribed to Juan. The two Valdez were born in 1500, at Cuença, in New Castile, of which their father was corregidor in 1520. Charles V. made Alfonso his secretary,[[884]] and took him with him when he left Spain in 1520, to receive the imperial crown at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the following year the young Spaniard was among the gentlemen who attended the emperor at Worms, when Luther made his famous appearance before the Diet. Luther’s writings having been condemned by imperial decree to be burnt, Alfonso, whom all these events interested in the highest degree, desired to be present at the execution of the sentence. When the monks, who surrounded and fed the fire saw all the heretical paper converted into black ashes, as thin as a spider’s web, and blown to and fro by the wind, they exclaimed: ‘There is nothing more to fear now: it is all over;’ and then went away. But such was not Alfonso’s opinion. ‘They call it the end of the tragedy,’ he wrote to his friend Peter Martyr of Anghiera (who must not be confounded with Vermigli), ‘but I believe we are only at the beginning of it.’ Valdez, whom everybody looked upon as a youth of great expectation,[[885]] became intimate with Erasmus; perhaps at the suggestion of the emperor, who, like Francis I., would willingly have united with the prince of the schools, in order to become master of Luther and the pope, and if possible to reconcile them. Alfonso, who was a great admirer of Erasmus, was considered to be more Erasmian than Erasmus himself; but the disciple went further and higher than the teacher. Erasmus was the bridge by which Alfonso crossed the river, and passed from Rome to the Gospel.
A Dialogue By Valdez.
In May, 1527, the emperor and his court were at Valladolid, where the empress awaited her confinement. Valdez was there also. On a sudden the news arrived of the famous sack of Rome by the troops of Charles V. The indignation of the clergy, the agitation of the people, and the emotion of the courtiers were extreme. Although grieved by the excess of which the capital of Romanism had been the theatre, Alfonso believed it was the season to say what he thought of the papacy, and consequently he wrote and published a ‘Dialogue on the Things which happened at Rome.’[[886]] The afflictions of the metropolis of catholicism, he says, have dispersed a great number of its inhabitants; a Roman archbishop, escaping from the disaster, arrives at Valladolid, and in the town where a prince (the future Philip II.) had just been born, he meets one of the emperor’s knights, by name Lactontio. The guilt of these disasters, says the knight, lies with the pope, who, as instigator of the war and unfaithful to his oaths, has dishonored his holy calling. Lactontio draws one of those contrasts of light and darkness, between Christ and the pontiff, which Luther’s pen could describe so well, but which were quite new in the ‘most catholic’ kingdom. He goes even further, and declares for the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power. ‘Is it useful, is it advantageous,’ he asks, ‘for the high priests of Christendom to possess temporal power? We believe they could occupy themselves much more freely with spiritual interests if they had not this great burden of secular things. In all Christendom there is not a state worse governed than the States of the Church. Erasmus pointed out the faults of the Court of Rome, but his gentle remonstrances did not touch you. Then God permitted Martin Luther unsparingly to expose all your vices in broad daylight, and to detach many churches from their obedience to you. It was all of no use; neither the respectful advice of Erasmus nor the irreverent language of Luther could convince Rome of its errors. God, therefore, had recourse to other appeals, and permitted the calamities of war to fall upon your impenitent city.’ Here the archdeacon, much more sensitive about the punishment of Rome than about its faults, exclaims with mingled sorrow and naïveté: ‘Alas! the sacking of the city has occasioned a loss of fifteen millions of ducats. Rome will never become Rome again, even in half a century. The holy church of St. Peter has been turned into a stable. For forty days not a single mass has been said in the metropolis of Christendom. Even the bones of the Apostles were scattered about.’ ‘The relics of the saints should be honored,’ remarks the knight. ‘Let us understand one another, however; I do not speak of those which require believers to solve some very thorny problems—to decide, for instance, whether the mother of the Virgin had two heads or the Virgin had two mothers.... We should place all our hope in Jesus Christ alone. Honor images, if you like, but do not dishonor Jesus Christ, and do not let Paradise be shut against the man who has no money in his purse.’[[887]]
This sharp attack, levelled at the papacy, was the more important, as before the dialogue was published and circulated in Spain, Italy, and Germany, it had been submitted by Valdez to several men of mark: to Don Juan Manuel, formerly ambassador of the emperor at Rome, to the celebrated imperial chancellor Gattinara, to Doctor Carrasco, and several other theologians, who with a few unimportant observations, had approved it. Count Castiglione, the papal nuncio, was not to be deceived; he made a violent attack upon the imperial secretary, called him a Lutheran, and declared that he could already see him wearing the ignominious costume of the autos da fé.
Mercury And Charon.
Alfonso was silent; but a voice was raised in his defence—it was that of his twin brother. In 1528[[888]] Juan published a Dialogue, half serious and half in jest, between Mercury and Charon, which bears the mark of a young writer. While the ferryman of Hades is busy taking over the souls which come to him on the banks of the Styx, he is accosted by the messenger of heaven, who makes use of strong language about the papacy. ‘So great is the corruption of those who call themselves Christians,’ he says, ‘that I should consider it a great insult if they wanted to change their name and be called Mercurians. One day,’ he continues, ‘seeing a number of people approaching the altar to receive the host, I followed them, with the pious design of partaking one of the wafers the priests were distributing. But I was refused; and why? Solely because I would not pay for it.’ Then, turning to the relics, whose dispersion was considered to be the greatest outrage in the sack of Rome, Juan introduces St. Peter, and puts wiser words into his mouth on this subject than those of Mercury. According to the fervent apostle, the plunder of Rome teaches Christians that they ought to set more value upon one of the epistles of St. Paul or of himself than upon all the relics of their bodies. ‘The homage hitherto paid to our bones,’ he continues, ‘must now be paid to the spirit which, for the good of Christians, we have enshrined in our writings.’ But the satire immediately begins again. At the thought of the sack of Rome, Mercury bursts out into an ‘Olympian laugh.’ ‘Behold the judgment of God!’ he says; ‘the sellers have been sold, the robbers have been robbed, and the ill-doers ill-done!’ And when Charon complains that the pretended vicars of heaven often forget to keep their word, ‘It is quite the rule,’ answers Mercury, ‘that at the place where the best wine grows you drink the worst; that the cobbler is always ill-shod, and the barber never shaved.’ The dialogues of the twin brothers, so full of wit and yet of Christian truth, excited loud recriminations; for the moment, however, persecution did not touch them. It is true, the priests raised a violent storm against them; but they were protected by the name of Charles V. In March, 1529, Erasmus wrote to Juan, congratulating him on having escaped safe and sound from the tempest.[[889]]
When the emperor returned to Germany, Alfonso accompanied him. At Augsburg, in 1530, as we have said in another place,[[890]] he played the part of mediator between Charles V. and the protestants, and immediately translated the celebrated evangelical confession into Spanish. But in April, 1533, when Charles V. embarked at Genoa on his return to Spain, Valdez remained in Italy. If he had accompanied his master, even that powerful monarch, it was said, could not have preserved him from the death the monks were preparing for him. From this period Alfonso seems to have shared his time between Germany and Italy: henceforward his brother occupies the foremost place. He was converted to the Gospel after Alfonso, but eventually outstripped him.
Juan Valdez At Naples.
Juan had been forced to leave his native country.[[891]] He did not go to Germany, as some have said, confounding him with his brother; but henceforward he occupies an important position in Italy. In 1531 he went to Naples, thence he proceeded to Rome, returning again to Naples in 1534, where he spent the remainder of his days. Some zealous protestants, who formed part of the German army, and had been sent, in 1528, to drive off the French, who were besieging that city, were the first to propagate the knowledge of the Gospel in that district. ‘But when Juan Valdez arrived,’ says the Roman-catholic Caracciolo, ‘he alone committed greater ravages among souls than many thousands of heretic soldiers had done.’[[892]] Some have thought that he occupied the post of secretary to the viceroy of Naples. But if he had an office at court, he soon resigned it to enjoy his independence. ‘He did not frequent the court very much,’ says Curione, ‘after Christ was revealed to him.’[[893]]