ITS TITLE-PAGE.
There was nothing underhand in all this. The enterprise of Enzinas was well known, and some approved, while others blamed it. Any one who wished was admitted to the translator's house. One day, when he had some members of his family with him, and before he had sent the copy to the printer, an old Dominican monk, who scented some heretical design underneath it all, presented himself at his door. After the customary salutations, he took up the first page which lay on the table in manuscript and contained the title and an epistle to the emperor. The monk read: The New Testament, that is, the New Covenant of our Redeemer and only Saviour Jesus Christ. Francis had said Covenant because he had noticed that the word Testament was not well understood; and he had inserted the word only before the word Saviour to dissipate the error so common among the Spaniards, of admitting other saviours besides the Son of God. 'Covenant,' said the monk; 'your translation is faithful and good, but the word Covenant grates on my ears; it is a completely Lutheran phrase.' 'No, it is not a phrase of Luther's,' said Enzinas, 'but of the prophets and apostles.' 'This is intolerable,' resumed the monk; 'a youth, born but yesterday or the day before,[114] claims to teach the wisest and oldest men what they have taught all their life long! I swear by my sacred cowl[115] that your design is to administer to men's souls the poisonous beverages of Luther, craftily mixing them with the most holy words of the New Testament.' Then turning to the relatives of Enzinas, he began to rail like a madman, endeavoring by tragical words to excite his own family against him. Indeed, the monk had scarcely finished, when Francis was surrounded by his relatives, beseeching him, for the love of them, to erase the unlucky word. He did so, in order not to offend them, but he left standing the phrase only Saviour, to which the monk did not object. He then sent the sheets to the printer who put it to press and worked off a large number.
Having received this first printed sheet, Enzinas, through excess of caution, communicated it to a Spaniard of his acquaintance, an elderly, well-informed, and influential man. 'Only Saviour!' cried he, on seeing the title. 'If you will be advised by me, omit the word only, which will give rise to grave suspicions.' Enzinas explained his reasons. The Spaniard acknowledged the truth of the doctrine, but denied the expediency of putting it so prominently forward. The word was omitted, and the sheet had to be reprinted.[116] The whole edition was some time after ready to appear.
PEDRO DE SOTO.
It was now the beginning of November, 1543. The emperor had just made war against the Duke of Cleves, had conquered him, and had obtained by the treaty of Venloo a portion of the states of that prince. The duke's mother, the Princess Mary, a clever woman, had died of grief and indignation;[117] but the emperor was proud of his achievements, and thought only of following up his triumphs of every kind. It was to his Spanish troops in particular that Charles owed this victory. A great number of Spaniards of every rank accompanied him, and he had just appointed as his confessor a Dominican from the Peninsula, Pedro de Soto, who was afterwards the first theologian of Pius IV., in the third convocation of the Council of Trent. At this time Soto ranked, both in the Low Countries and in Germany, among the most zealous of the Romish priests. He sought to gain over ignorant minds, and knew how to insinuate himself into the good graces of the great. As he had the emperor's conscience at his disposal he 'instilled into him his venom,[118] thus perverting the sentiments of a prince who was full of clemency,' says Enzinas. But this supposed benignity on Charles's part was an illusion. Policy was his great guiding motive, and he was merciful or harsh, according as the interests of his ambition required. It is, however, true that Soto endeavored both by his sermons and otherwise to inflame men's minds, and especially that of Charles, against those whom he called heretics. Whenever the Dominican preached before Charles the Fifth and his court, he was to be seen entering the church in a lowly manner, his head sunk between his shoulders, his cowl pulled over his forehead, his eyes fixed on the ground, and his hands clasped.[119] One would have thought him a man dead to the world, who contemplated only heavenly things, and who would not harm a fly.[120] He mounted the pulpit, threw back his cowl and gravely saluted the emperor, and the princes and lords who surrounded him. Then he began his sermon, speaking with a low voice and slow enunciation, but clearly and firmly, so that his words sank the more impressively into men's hearts. He recalled with enthusiasm the religion of their ancestors and extolled the piety and zeal of Charles. Then, affecting to be more and more moved, he deplored with sighs and tears the ruin of religion and the attacks made upon the dignity of the priest, and conjured the emperor to tread in the way marked out for him by his predecessors. Having thus by feigned modesty insinuated himself into the hearts of his audience, he raised his head boldly, gave vent to the passion by which he was animated, and brought into play the powerful artifices suggested to him by the Evil One.[121] He hurled the thunders of his eloquence at his adversaries; he aimed a thousand shafts at them, and subdued his audience. But if his violence took the assembly by surprise, he shocked many, who thought with amazement: 'We might fancy we were listening to a man who had descended from the abode of the gods on Olympus to announce the secrets he had learned from Jupiter,' 'He was seized,' said one of his hearers, 'with a diabolical fury, and seemed like a priest of the mysteries, gesticulating and leaping in a chorus of the Furies.'[122] He laid siege to the mind of the emperor, and inflamed the princes with hatred of the divine doctrine. This he distorted and defamed; and he strove by all means to extinguish the salutary light of the Gospel which God had rekindled in the midst of the darkness. Turning towards the emperor and the princes, he proclaimed in a prophetic voice, that God would not be favorable to them until they should have destroyed the apostates with fire and sword. He did not conclude his discourse till he thought he had constrained his hearers by his thundering eloquence to burn all the Lutherans.
HE INSTIGATES TO PERSECUTION.
Nevertheless it was quite manifest that the emperor did not always use such diligence as De Soto demanded of him in his seditious discourses. Disquieted, therefore, and saddened because the monarch appeared 'backward to persecution,' he appealed to him in private, urging him to make confession; and it was in the retired chamber in which he received as a penitent the master of the world that he sought, by striking great blows, to drive Charles on to persecution. 'Most sacred Majesty,' he said, 'you are the monarch whom God has raised to the highest pitch of honor, in order that you may defend the Church and take vengeance on impiety, and I am the man whom God has appointed to govern your conscience. Power has been given me, as your majesty is aware, to remit and to retain sins. If your majesty does not purify the Church from pollution, I can not absolve you, ego non possum te absolvere.' He even menaced him with the anger of God and the pains of hell. Charles, who was easily intimidated—even, as we know, by the approach of a comet—'imagined himself already plunged into the abyss of hell.'[123] The monk, perceiving this, pressed his point, and did not pronounce absolution until he had extorted from the sovereign a promise to put the heretics to death.
This narrative by a contemporary appears to us perfectly authentic. There is, however, one point on which we can not follow it. We do not believe that De Soto was a hypocrite and employed fraud and treason, as this author seems to think. Charles's confessor was, we believe, a fanatic, but a sincere fanatic; he really believed himself to be prosecuting error.
No sooner had De Soto obtained the promise of Charles than he hastened to Granvella. It was said at court that these two personages had made a compact, by virtue of which the first minister never thwarted the confessor in matters of religion. It might be so; but we believe that Charles did not lightly submit his designs to the fanaticism of the priests, nor would he, we repeat, give them the rein unless it suited his policy.