§ 1 Persecution of the Protestants — The Inquisition
Philip lands in Spain. Aug. 29, 1559.
At the date of the Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis (April 5, 1559), Philip was in his thirty-second year. He had already wedded and lost two wives. His first, Maria of Portugal, had died, in giving birth to Don Carlos, on July 8, 1545; his second, Mary of England, on 17th November 1558. After having settled the government of the Netherlands (cf. p. 319 ff.), Philip proceeded to Spain. A furious tempest greeted his arrival; nine vessels of his fleet were lost; and the King himself landed on the shores of his kingdom—which he was never to leave again—in a small boat.
He devotes himself to the extirpation of Protestantism.
Philip had not hitherto displayed those bigoted views of which he henceforth became the exponent. During his brief residence in England he had, in the vain attempt to conciliate the English, opposed or pretended to oppose the policy of persecution adopted by his unhappy wife. He had intervened to protect the Princess Elizabeth, and after her accession had first proposed to marry her, and, when that was refused, had continued on friendly terms. He even gave the Calvinists of Scotland his tacit support against Mary of Guise and her daughter. No sooner, however, did he finally settle in Spain than all was changed. Spain was the representative of all that was most fanatical in Europe, and Philip eagerly adopted the views of that country. Henceforth the increase of his own authority, and the advance of Catholicism, became identified; the reformed opinions were in his eyes a gospel of rebellion and of opposition to authority, and to crush out this pernicious heresy under his absolute rule became the principle of his life.
During the early years of Charles V., a few Spaniards abroad had adopted reformed opinions, such as Francis de Enzinas, the translator of the New Testament into Spanish, and subsequently Professor of Greek at Oxford (1520–1522); while in 1553 Servetus the anti-Trinitarian suffered at Geneva. But it was not until the year 1558 that Protestantism seems to have made much head in Spain itself. By that time, however, not only had Spanish translations of the New Testament and various Protestant books been disseminated in Spain, but a considerable congregation of Reformers had been secretly formed, more especially in the towns of Seville, Valladolid, and Zamora, and in the kingdom of Aragon. On receiving intelligence of this new nest of heretics, Pope Paul IV. issued a brief, February 1558, in which he urged the Inquisitor-General to spare no efforts in exterminating this evil; and the dying Emperor, forgetting his dislike of papal interference, besought the Regent Joanna, and Philip himself, to listen to the Pope’s exhortations. Philip required no urging. He published an edict, borrowed from the Netherlands, which condemned all to the stake who bought, sold, or read prohibited books, and revived a law by which the accuser was to receive one-fourth of the property of the condemned. Paul enforced the law by his Bull of 1559, commanding all confessors to urge on their penitents the duty of informing against suspected persons. He also authorised the Inquisition to deliver to the secular arm even those who abjured their errors, ‘not from conviction, but from fear of punishment,’ and made a grant from the ecclesiastical revenues of Spain to defray the expenses of the Inquisition.
The Inquisition and the Spanish Church.
This terrible tribunal, which had been established in its final form by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, and freed from appeal to Rome in 1497, consisted of a Supreme Council formed of lawyers and theologians, mostly Dominicans, an order to which Philip showed especial favour.The Inquisition. At the head of this Council stood the Grand Inquisitor, appointed by the king himself, with numerous subordinate tribunals, protected by armed ‘familiars.’ Their trials were conducted in secret. Persons were tempted or forced by threats to denounce their enemies, their friends, and even their relatives; a system of espionage was resorted to; torture was freely used to extort confessions from the accused; and the most harmless words were often twisted into heterodoxy by the subtle refinements of the Dominican theologians. They punished by forfeiture of goods, by penance, by imprisonment, and in the last resort handed over the condemned to the secular arm, to be burnt at an Auto da fè. Supported by this unwonted harmony between Pope and King, the Grand Inquisitor, Don Fernando Valdès, Archbishop of Seville, set vigorously to work. In Seville alone, 800 were arrested on the first day, and on May 21, 1559, the first of the Autos da fè took place in the streets of Valladolid; another was solemnised on the arrival of Philip in Spain, and a third amid the fêtes attending his marriage with his third wife, Elizabeth of France, in 1560. Indeed, no great ceremonial was for some years considered complete unless sanctified by an Auto da fè, and the Spaniards preferred one to a bull-fight. It may be true that the cruelties of the Inquisition have been exaggerated; yet, at least, opinions, which in other countries would have been tolerated, were ruthlessly suppressed. Not only was all scientific speculation tabooed, and Spanish scholars forbidden to visit other countries, but the slightest deviation from the strictest orthodoxy was severely visited. The Inquisition was even used against the Church. Although the number of the clergy and the monks was very large, and their wealth, especially in Castile, enormous, no Church in Europe was more completely under royal control. The nomination to ecclesiastical offices was exclusively in the hands of the king; papal interference, unless by his leave, was stoutly resisted; and, if the Church was rich, at least one-third of its revenues fell into the royal coffers. The power of the crown was also enhanced by the devotion of the Jesuits to the royal cause. It was, however, on the Dominicans that Philip mostly relied. The ignorance and bigotry of the members of this order of friars in Spain is only equalled by their subservience to the royal will. They dominated the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and subjected to its discipline not only Theresa, one of the most devoted of Spanish saints, but the members of the powerful Society of Jesus, and even the episcopal bench itself. No less than nine bishops were condemned to various acts of penance; even Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, was attacked. This learned and zealous prelate, who had taken an important part in some of the sessions of the Council of Trent, and in whose arms Charles V. had died, was charged in August, 1559, with heterodox opinions. After his trial had dragged on for more than seven years, Pius V. insisted on the case being transferred to Rome. But the death of the Pope again delayed the matter, and it was not until April 1576 that the papal decision was finally given. The Archbishop was convicted of holding doctrines akin to those of Luther, and was to abjure sixteen propositions found in his writings; he was to do certain acts of penance; to be suspended from his episcopal functions for five years more, and meanwhile to be confined in a convent of the Dominicans, his own order, at Orvieto.
The Inquisition used to punish political offences.
The efforts of the Inquisition succeeded in crushing out Protestantism in Spain; and its success unfortunately refutes the comforting doctrine that persecution is powerless against strong convictions. But the success involved the destruction of all intellectual independence; Spain soon became one of the most backward countries in Europe, and, if we except Cervantes the author of Don Quixote, and Calderon the poet, she gave birth to no writer of eminence. Nor did the Holy Office confine itself to the extirpation of heresy, or to the vigorous control of the clergy. Formed exclusively of nominees of the crown,59 it became an instrument in the royal hands for financial extortion and for the pursuit of political offenders. Thus, custom-house officers were dragged before the Inquisition for having allowed horses to cross the frontier, on the pretext that they were for the service of the Huguenots; Antonio Perez, the notorious secretary of Philip, was arraigned before the Inquisition of Aragon; and foreign ambassadors were enjoined to obey its orders. At times the Pope remonstrated against these abuses of the Holy Office, which trenched upon the papal claims. But Philip answered ‘that with his scruples his Holiness would destroy religion’; and long after the reign of Philip the Inquisition, as well as the Church, continued the humble servant of royal prerogative.