The venerable Fray Louis de Grenada, born in 1504, was the disciple of Juan d'Avila; he was of the order of St. Dominic, and left several works on religion. He was implicated in the trial of the Lutherans at Valladolid; Fray Dominic de Roxas defended his opinions, by saying that they were the same as those of Fray Louis de Grenada, Carranza, and other good Catholics. The procurator-fiscal made Fray Dominic renew his declaration, with the intention of producing him as a witness in the trial of Fray Louis: Fray Dominic was burnt five days after. A sentence condemning some of his works was also brought against Fray Louis.
He was denounced a third time as one of the Illuminati, but was acquitted. Fray Louis died in 1588. His works are well known: it is singular that the Index in which his condemnation was published, was afterwards prohibited by the inquisitor-general Quiroga.
The venerable Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, the natural son of Don James Palafox, afterwards Marquis de Hariza and of Donna Maria de Mendoza (who soon after became a Carmelite); he was born in 1600. He was made Bishop de la Puebla de los Angelos, in America, in 1639; afterwards Archbishop and Viceroy of Mexico; and lastly, Bishop of Osma, in Spain, in 1653. He died in 1659, leaving several works on history, devotion, and mysticity, and with so great a reputation of sanctity, that his canonization is pending at Rome.
Don Juan had great disputes with the Jesuits in America, on account of the privileges of his rank, of which the Fathers wished to deprive him. The most important of his writings, is his letter to Pope Innocent X., who terminated their disputes, to a certain degree, by a brief, in 1648. The Jesuits did not consider themselves vanquished; they denounced the archbishop as one of the Illuminati and a false devotee, at Rome, at Madrid, and at Mexico. The provincial inquisitors of the last city applied to the Supreme Council, and the venerable Palafox suffered everything from them which they could inflict, except imprisonment. They condemned and prohibited the writings which the archbishop had published in his defence, and circulated those of his adversaries, and some libels which they had framed to ruin Don Antonio Gabiola, procurator-fiscal to the Inquisition, who openly disapproved of the conduct of the Jesuits.
This officer wrote to Palafox in 1647, exhorting him to make every effort, that the trials before the Inquisition of Mexico should proceed in a regular manner, according to the spirit of the institution, and encouraging him to oppose his formidable enemies.
The Jesuits, by their intrigues, succeeded in causing some of the works of Palafox to be placed in the Index, but the congregation of cardinals having afterwards declared that they contained nothing reprehensible, or which could impede his beatification, the inquisitors were obliged to efface them from the catalogue.
CHAPTER XXXI.
OF THE CELEBRATED TRIAL OF DON CARLOS, PRINCE OF THE ASTURIAS.
ALL Europe has believed that Philip II. caused the Inquisition to proceed against Don Carlos his only son; that the inquisitors condemned the prince to death, and that they only differed on the manner in which the sentence was to be executed. Some writers have gone so far as to record the conversations which took place, on this occasion, between Philip and the inquisitor-general, Don Carlos and other persons, with as much confidence as if they had been present at them, and have even quoted part of the sentence as if they had read it.
As it has been my principal aim to ascertain the truth, I have examined the archives of the Council of the Inquisition and others, and I, in consequence, affirm, that Don Carlos was never tried or condemned by the Inquisition; an opinion only was given against the prince by the councillors of state, whose president was the Cardinal Espinosa, who at that time was the king's favourite. The circumstance of the cardinal being inquisitor-general may have been the cause of the mistake; the deaths of the Count de Egmont and other noblemen, and the intention of establishing the Inquisition in the Low Countries, may have tended to confirm the general opinion.
Don Carlos lost his life in consequence of a verbal sentence approved by his father, and the holy office was not concerned in it. As I wrote only the history of the Inquisition, this fact renders it unnecessary to say more on the subject; but as almost all the historians of Europe have said that the inquisitors condemned Don Carlos, the beat way of disproving it is to relate the facts as they occurred.