The History of the Inquisition of Spain from the Time of its Establishment to the Reign of Ferdinand VII.

by Juan Antonio Llorente

On the 20th of July, Olivares ordered a medicine which Don Carlos took. Louis Cabrera, who was employed in the palace at that time, and who often saw Rui Gomez, says in his history of Philip II., that "this medicine did not produce any beneficial effect; and the malady appearing to be mortal, the physician informed the patient, that he must prepare to die like a good Christian, and receive the sacraments."

The histories published by Cabrera, Wander-Hamen, Opmero and Estrada, all agree with the secret memoirs of the times which I have read. It is not surprising, then, that the Prince of Orange, in his manifesto against Philip II., should impute to him the death of his son[63]; that James Augustus de Thou, a French contemporary historian, has done the same, from the accounts given him by Louis de Foix, a French architect, employed in building the Escurial, and Pedro Justiniani, a Venetian nobleman, who resided some time in Spain; although he was mistaken in making the holy office interfere in this affair; in supposing that the prince died, in a few hours, from poison; and in advancing some other errors on the authority of his two informants[64]. It is not more surprising that the authors cited by Gregorio Leti have stated things which appear to be written by the pen of a novelist or romance writer, because the death of the prince being occasioned by a mysterious medicine, administered according to a private order, no one doubted that it was caused by violence, and endeavoured to conjecture how it was done.

But the truth is always discovered sooner or later, and after a century and a half, we find so many isolated facts and accounts of this event, that they produce conviction, and show that the death of Don Carlos had the external appearances of a natural death, and that he himself considered it to be so. The accounts of some foreign historians, of the result of the medicine, have been refuted by authentic documents: those of the writers, who have composed romances under the names of histories, are equally disproved. I shall therefore proceed to relate the facts as they occurred.

Don Carlos, on being informed by Olivares that death was approaching, desired that Fray Diego de Chaves, his confessor, might be sent for: his orders were executed on the 21st of July. The prince commissioned the monk to ask pardon of his father, in his name; the king sent to tell him, that he granted it with all his heart, as well as his blessing, and that he hoped his repentance would obtain pardon from God. On the same day he received the sacraments of the Eucharist and Extreme Unction with great devotion. He also, with the king's consent, made a will, which was written by Martin de Gatzelu, his secretary. On the 22nd and 23rd he was in a dying state, and tranquilly listened to the exhortations of his confessor and Doctor Suarez de Toledo. The ministers proposed to the king that he should see his son, and give him his blessing in person, as it would be a consolation to him on his death-bed. Philip asked the opinion of the two ecclesiastics above-mentioned. They said that Don Carlos was well-disposed, and it might be feared that the sight of his father would occasion some disturbance in his mind. This motive restrained him for the present; but being informed, on the night of the 23rd, that his son was at the point of death, he went to his apartment, and extending his arms between the Prince of Evoli and the grand prior, he gave him his blessing a second time, without being perceived. He then retired weeping, and Don Carlos expired soon after, at four o'clock in the morning of the 24th of July, which was the day before the festival of St. James, the patron Saint of Spain.

The death of Don Carlos was not kept secret. He was interred, with all the pomp due to his rank, in the church of the Convent of the Nuns of St. Dominic el Real, at Madrid, but there was no funeral oration. Philip II. announced the death of Don Carlos to all the authorities who had been informed of his imprisonment. The city of Madrid also celebrated solemn obsequies on the 14th of August. The sermon was preached by Fray Juan de Tobar, the same monk who had deceived the prince, to make him confess who he wished to kill. In the same year a long account of the sickness, death, and funeral of Don Carlos was printed. The municipality of Madrid had ordered it to be written by Juan Lopez del Hoyo, professor of Latin in that capital.

Spain regretted the death of Don Carlos, as the king had no other son. By his third wife, Elizabeth or Isabella of France, he had only had two daughters, and that virtuous princess died of a miscarriage in the same year, 1568. This misfortune (and the bad opinion conceived by all Europe of Philip II., who was considered as a cruel and hypocritical prince) occasioned the imputation of having caused the queen's death. He was first accused of it by the Prince of Orange, and afterwards by many other persons. France had proofs of the contrary, since Charles IX. sent an ambassador extraordinary to Madrid, with compliments of condolence to the king, who was really inconsolable for the loss of his expected heir. Juan Lopez del Hoyo, in 1569, published a faithful account of the illness and death of the queen; and some circumstances which he mentions seem incompatible with the use of poison, which is said to have occasioned her death. It is evident that the Prince of Orange suffered himself to be misled by hatred and revenge. The reality of a crime cannot be believed when neither the end nor motives for it can be perceived, and Philip was certainly interested in the queen's life. Some writers, after having supposed that the crime was committed, have endeavoured to discover the cause, and some romance-writers have thought that they discovered it in the pretended intrigue with Don Carlos. Supposing it to be true, there are historical proofs that it could not have commenced till after his return from Alcala, and at that time he ardently wished to marry his cousin, Anne of Austria. This princess became the fourth wife of Philip, and the mother of his successor, Philip III.

Philip II., wishing to commemorate the justice of his conduct towards his son, ordered that the writings of the trial, with the original, and translation from the Catalonian tongue of that of Don Charles, Prince of Biana, should be collected and preserved. Don Francis de Mora, Marquis de Castel Rodrigo, who became the king's confidant after the death of Rui Gomez de Sylva, in 1592, deposited these writings in a green coffer, which the king afterwards sent shut, and without a key, to the royal archives of Simancas, where it is still, if it has not been carried away by the order of the French government, as it has been reported in Spain.

CHAPTER XXXII.
TRIAL OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOLEDO.

ONE of the most illustrious victims of the holy office was Don Bartholomew Carranza de Miranda, Archbishop of Toledo. The writings of the trial amount to twenty-four folio volumes, each containing one thousand or twelve hundred pages. This immense mass of writings must doubtless contain many facts unknown to Don Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, the author of the life of Carranza. This respectable writer spared no expense to discover the truth, but could not penetrate the mystery which envelopes the proceedings of the Inquisition. I have read this trial, which enables me to fill up the omissions of Salazar de Mendoza, and correct his involuntary errors.

Bartholomew Carranza was born in 1503, at Miranda de Arga, a little borough in the kingdom of Navarre: he was the son of Pedro Carranza, and grandson of Bartholomew, both members of the nobility of Miranda. His true family name, consequently, was Carranza; but while he was a Dominican monk, he was only called Miranda. When he was made Archbishop of Toledo, he was named Carranza de Miranda, to prove the identity: he, however, only signed the name Fray Bartholomeus Toletanus, according to the custom of the times. The family of Carranza has been perpetuated to the eighteenth century, in the direct male line from Pedro, brother to the archbishop. At twelve years of age, Bartholomew, through the interest of his uncle Sancho de Carranza, a doctor in the university of Alcala de Henares, and the antagonist of Erasmus, was received into the College of St. Eugenius, which was dependant on the university. When he attained his fifteenth year, he passed into the College of St. Balbina, to study what was then called philosophy and the arts, which was confined to some general ideas of logic, metaphysics, and physics. In 1520 he took the habit of a Dominican, in the Convent of Venaleç, in the Alcarria, which was afterwards transferred to the city of Guadalaxara. As soon as he had professed, he was sent to study theology in the College of St. Stephen of Salamanca and in 1525 he was placed in that of St. Gregory of Valladolid.