CHAPTER I.
THE AWAKENING IN SPAIN.
(1520-1535.)
The Church of Spain had long preserved its independence with regard to the papacy. It was at the time of the ambitious and monopolizing Hildebrand that it began to lose it.
At the period of the Reformation it had been subject to the pope for more than four hundred years, and great obstacles were opposed to its deliverance. The mass of the people were given to superstition; the Spanish character was resolute to the degree of obstinacy; the clergy reigned supreme; the Inquisition had just been armed with new terrors by Ferdinand and Isabella; and the peninsular situation of the country seemed inevitably to isolate it from those lands in which the Reformation was triumphant.
Nevertheless many minds were, up to a certain point, prepared for evangelical reform. In almost every class the Inquisition excited the liveliest discontent. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a man was often to be met with traversing Spain, surrounded by a guard of fifty mounted attendants and two hundred foot-soldiers. This man, whose name was Torquemada, was the terror of the people; and consequently in his progresses he displayed the greatest distrust, imagining that every one was bent on assassinating him. On his arrival at any place, when he sat down to table, he trembled lest the dishes brought to him should have been poisoned. For this reason, before partaking of any food, he used to place before him the horn of a unicorn, to which he attributed the virtue of discovering and even of neutralizing poisons. Universal hatred accompanied him to the tomb. Torquemada, the first inquisitor-general, caused eight thousand persons to be put to death, and a hundred thousand to be imprisoned and despoiled of their goods. Whole provinces rose against this horrible tribunal.[4] 'They steal, they kill, they outrage,' wrote the chevalier de Cordova, Gonzalo de Ayora, speaking of the inquisitors to the first secretary of King Ferdinand. 'They care neither for justice nor for God himself.'[5] 'O unhappy Spain!' cried Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, councillor for the Indies, in his distress. 'Mother of so many heroes, how this horrible scourge dishonors thee!'[6]
Meanwhile the universities were being enlightened. Various writings, especially those of Erasmus, were much read; and while doctors and students learned to scrutinize more closely the state of the Church, a spirit of inquiry began to penetrate those ancient institutions. There were, besides, scattered here and there in the towns and in country places, some Christians, called Alumbrados, who sought after an inward light and applied themselves to secret prayer. These pious Mystics were better prepared to receive divine truth.[7]
THE AWAKENING IN SPAIN.
More than this, political circumstances were favorable to the introduction of the Reformation. Spain was at this time under the same sceptre as Germany and the Netherlands, and the rays of light emanating from the Scriptures could not but reach it. The emperor Charles the Fifth, who was fighting against the Reformation in Germany, was to be the means of bringing it into the country of his very Catholic ancestors. The young Alfonso Valdès, his secretary, who was with him at Brussels in 1520, and afterwards at Worms in 1521, was at first struck with horror at seeing the boldness with which Luther attacked the authority of the pope. But what he saw and heard led him gradually to comprehend the necessity for Reformation. Consequently, when writing from Brussels and Worms to his friend Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, Valdès sorrowfully exclaimed, 'While the pontiff shuts his eyes and desires to see Luther devoured by the flames, the whole Christian community is near its ruin, unless God save it.'[8]