• Chapter 1 - Review of the Ecclesiastical History of Spain
• Chapter 2 - Of the State of Literature in Spain
• Chapter 3 - Of the Inquisition
• Chapter 4 - Introduction of the Reformed Doctrine
• Chapter 5 - Causes of the Progress
• Chapter 6 - Progress of the Reformation in Spain
• Chapter 7 - Suppression of the Reformation in Spain
• Chapter 8 - Protestant Exiles From Spain.
• Chapter 9 - Effects Which the Suppression
• Appendix
  • No. 1 - Dedication By Francisco De Enzinas
  • No. 2 - Extracts From a Preface By Juan Perez
  • No. 3 - Extracts From the Confession of a Sinner
  • No. 4 - Letter From Francisco Farias and Nicolas Molino
  • No. 5 - Specimens of Early Spanish Translations
    • Ferrer’s Version.
    • Enzinas’s Version.
• Footnotes

• Publishers Notes

REVIEW OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF SPAIN BEFORE THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION.

ERRONEOUS opinions as to their early history, originating in vanity, and fostered by ignorance and credulity, have been common among almost every people. These are often harmless; and while they afford matter of good-humored raillery to foreigners, excite the more inquisitive and liberal-minded among themselves to exert their talents in separating truth from fable, by patient research, and impartial discrimination. But they are sometimes of a very different character, and have been productive of the worst consequences. They have been the means of entailing political and spiritual bondage on a people, of rearing insurmountable obstacles in the way of their improvement, of propagating feelings no less hostile to their domestic comfort than to their national tranquillity, and of making them at once a curse to themselves and a scourge to all around them.

If the natives of Spain have not advanced those extravagant pretensions to high antiquity which have made the inhabitants of some other countries ridiculous, they have unhappily fallen under the influence of national prejudices equally destitute of truth, and far more pernicious in their tendency. Every true Spaniard is disposed to boast of the purity of his blood, or, in the established language of the country, that he is “an Old Christian, free from all stain of bad descent.” The meanest peasant or artisan in Spain looks upon it as a degradation to have in his veins the least mixture of Jewish or Moorish blood, though transmitted by the remotest of his known ancestors, in the male or female line. To have descended from that race, “of which, as concerning the flesh, Christ came,” or from Christians who had incurred the censure of a tribunal whose motto is the reverse of his who “came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them,” is regarded as a greater disgrace than to have sprung from savages or pagans, or from those who had incurred the last sentence of justice for the most unnatural and horrid crimes. “I verily believe,” says a modern Spanish writer who sometimes smiles through tears at the prejudices of his countrymen, “that were St. Peter a Spaniard, he would either deny admittance into heaven to people of tainted blood, or send them into a corner, where they might not offend the eyes of the Old Christian.” ^f1 We might go further, and say, that if a Spaniard had the keys of heaven in his keeping, St. Peter, and all the apostles with him, would be “removed into a corner.” It is easy to conceive what misery must have been felt by persons and families who have incurred this involuntary infamy in their own estimation, or in that of their neighbors; and what bitter and rancorous feelings must have been generated in the hearts of individuals and races of men living together or contiguously, both in a state of peace and of warfare.

But, when the records of antiquity are consulted, the truth turns out to be, that in no other country of Europe has there been such an intermixture of races as in Spain—Iberian, Celtic, Carthaginian, Roman, Greek, Gothic, Jewish, Saracennic, Syrian, Arabian, and Moorish. With none are the Spaniards more anxious to disclaim all kindred than with the Jews and Moors. Yet anciently their Christian kings did not scruple to form alliances with the Moorish sovereigns of Grenada, to appear at their tournaments, and even to fight under their banners. Down to the middle of the fifteenth century, the Spanish poets and romancers celebrated the chivalry of “the Knights of Grenada, gentlemen though Moors.” ^f2 It was no uncommon occurrence for the Christians in Spain to connect themselves by marriage with Jews and Moors; and the pedigree of many of the grandees and titled nobility has been traced up to these “cankered branches” by the Tizon de Espana, or Brand of Spain, a book which neither the influence of the government, nor the terror of the Inquisition, has been able to suppress. ^f3 Nor is greater credit due to the opinion which has long been prevalent in the Peninsula, that its inhabitants have uniformly kept themselves free from all stain of heretical pravity, and preserved the purity of the faith inviolate since their first reception into Christianity.

The ancient state of the church in Spain is but little known. Modern writers of that nation have been careful to conceal or to pass lightly over those spots of its history which are calculated to wound the feelings or abate the prejudices of their countrymen. Shut out from access to original documents, or averse to the toil of investigating them, foreigners have generally contented themselves with the information which common books supply. And knowing that the Spaniards have signalized their zeal for the See of Rome and the catholic faith during the last three centuries, the public, as if by general agreement, have come to the hasty conclusion that this was the fact from the beginning. To correct such mistakes, and to furnish materials for an accurate judgment, it may be proper to take a more extensive view of the state of religion in Spain before the Reformation, than would otherwise have been necessary to our undertaking.

The ecclesiastical history of Spain during the three first centuries may be comprised in two facts,—that the Christian religion was early introduced into that country; and that churches were erected in various parts of it, notwithstanding the persecution to which they were exposed at intervals. All beside this is fable or conjecture. That the gospel was first preached to their ancestors by St. James, the son of Zebedee, is an opinion which has been long so popular among the Spaniards, and so identified with the national faith, that such of their writers as were most convinced of the unsound foundation on which it rests have been forced to join in bearing testimony to its truth. The ingenuity of the warm partisans of the popedom has been put to the stretch in managing the obstinate fondness with which the inhabitants of the Peninsula have clung to a prepossession so hazardous to the claims of St. Peter and of Rome. They have alternately exposed the futility of the arguments produced in its support, and granted that it is to be received as a probable opinion, resting on tradition. At one time they have urged that the early martyrdom of the apostle precludes the idea of such an expedition; and at another time they have tendered their aid to relieve the Spaniards from this embarrassment, and to “elude the objection,” by suggesting, with true Italian dexterity, that the Spirit might have carried the apostle from Palestine to Spain, and after he had performed his task, conveyed him back with such celerity that he was in time to receive the martyr’s crown at Jerusalem. ^f4 By such artful managements, they succeeded at last in settling the dispute, after the following manner; that, agreeably to the concurring voice of antiquity, the seven first bishops of Spain were ordained by St. Peter, and sent by him into the Peninsula; but that, as is probable, they had been converted to the Christian faith by St. James, who despatched them to Rome to receive holy orders from the prince of the apostles; from which the inference is, that St. James was the first who preached the gospel to the Spaniards, but St. Peter was the founder of the church of Spain. ^f5 Leaving such fabulous accounts, which serve no other purpose than to illustrate human credulity, and the ease with which it is wrought upon by artifice and cunning, we proceed to the period of authentic history.

The facts which we have to bring forward may be arranged under three heads:—the doctrine of the ancient church of Spain; her government; and her worship.

I. Sentiments which by common consent have been regarded as heretical, without as well as within the pale of that church which arrogates to herself the title of catholic, sprang up repeatedly in Spain, and in some instances overran the whole country. In the fourth century, Priscillian, a native of Gallicia, founded a new sect, which united the tenets of the Manichaeans and Gnostics. It made many converts, including persons of the episcopal order, and subsisted in Spain for two hundred years. ^f6 When they boast of the pure blood of the Goths, the Spaniards appear to forget that their Gothic ancestors were Arians, and that Arianism was the prevailing and established creed of the country for nearly two centuries. ^f7 Nor did Spain long preserve her faith uncontaminated, after she had adopted the common doctrine under Reccared, who reigned in the close of the sixth century. To pass by the spread of Nestorianism and some tenets of less note, ^f8 she gave birth, in the eighth century, to the heresy called adoptionarian, because its disciples held that Christ is the adopted Son of God. This opinion was broached by Elipand, archbishop of Toledo, who was at the head of the Spanish church; it was vigorously defended by Felix, bishop of Urgel, a prelate of great ability; and maintained itself for a considerable time, in spite of the decisions of several councils, supported by the learning of Alcuin and the authority of Charlemagne. ^f9

Nor were there wanting in the early ages Spaniards who held some of the leading opinions afterwards avowed by the protestant reformers. Claude, bishop of Turin, who flourished in the ninth century, and distinguished himself by his valuable labors in the illustration of the scriptures, was a native of Spain. His decided condemnation of the worship of images, and of the veneration paid to the relics and sepulchers of the saints, together with his resistance to the ecclesiastical authority which imposed these practices, has exposed the memory of this pious and learned divine to the deadly hatred of all the devotees of superstition and spiritual despotism. ^f10 In support of his principal tenet, Claude could plead the authority of one of the most venerable councils of his native church, which ordained that there should be no pictures in churches, and that nothing should be painted on the walls which might be worshiped or adored. ^f11

Galindo Prudentio, bishop of Troyes, was a countryman and contemporary of Claude. His learning was superior to that of the age in which he lived; and the comparative purity of his style bears witness to his familiarity with the writings of the ancient classics. Having fixed his residence in France, he enjoyed the confidence of Charlemagne, who employed him in visiting and reforming the monasteries. In the predestinarian controversy which divided the French clergy of that time, he took part with Goteschalcus against Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, and the noted schoolman, Joannes Scotus, surnamed Erigena. The sentiments which Prudentio held on that subject bear a striking resemblance to those which the church of Rome has since anathematized in the writings of Luther and Calvin. ^f12

II. The Spanish church, at the beginning of the fourth century, acknowledged no other officers than bishops, presbyters, and deacons. ^f13 She was equally a stranger to the superior orders of metropolitans and archbishops, and to the inferior orders of sub-deacons and lectors. Her discipline was at that time characterized by great strictness and even rigor, of which there was a palpable relaxation when the government of the church came to be formed upon the model of the empire, after Constantine had embraced christianity. ^f14 This change was, however, introduced more slowly into Spain than into some other countries. The church of Africa was careful to guard the parity of episcopal power against the encroachments of the metropolitans; and the Spanish bishops, who appear from an early period to have paid great deference to her maxims and practices, continued for a considerable time to evince the same jealousy. ^f15 To the supremacy of the bishops of Rome the ancient church of Spain was a stranger, and there is no good evidence that she acknowledged, during the eight first centuries, their right to interfere authoritatively in her internal affairs.

The titles of pope or father, apostolical bishop, and bishop of the apostolic see, were at first given promiscuously to all who were invested with the episcopal office. ^f16 After they came to be used in a more restricted sense, they were still applied to a number in common. ^f17 The bishops of Rome early acquired high consideration among their brethren, founded on the dignity of the city in which they had their residence, the number of the clergy over whom they presided, and the superior sanctity of life by which some of their line had been distinguished; to which must be added the opinion, which soon became general, that they were the successors of St. Peter. In matters which concerned religion in general, or in difficult questions relating to internal managements, it was a common practice to ask the advice of foreign and even transmarine churches. On these occasions the bishops of Rome were consulted, but not to the exclusion of others. The African bishops, in a council held at Carthage, agreed to take the advice of Siricius, bishop of Rome, and Simplician, bishop of Milan, on the affair of the Donatists; and in a subsequent council, they agreed to consult Anastasius and Venerius, who at that time filled the same sees, on the controversy respecting the validity of the baptism of heretics. ^f18 With this the practice of the Spanish church agreed. ^f19 Indeed, the bishops of Rome, in those days, disclaimed the pretentions which they afterwards put forth with such arrogance. Gregory the Great himself, when in danger of being eclipsed by his eastern rival, acknowledged this in the memorable words, which have so much annoyed his successors and their apologists. Speaking of the title of universal patriarch, which the bishop of Constantinople had assumed, he says:—“Far from the hearts of Christians be this name of blasphemy, which takes away the honors of the whole priesthood, while it is madly arrogated by one!—None of my predecessors would ever consent to use this profane word, because if one patriarch is called universal, the rest are deprived of the name of patriarchs.” ^f20

But there is positive evidence that the ancient church of Spain maintained its independence, and guarded against the interference of the Roman See, or any other foreign authority. Whatever judgment we form concerning the disputed canon of the council of Sardis, as to the references to the bishop of Rome, ^f21 it is certain that an African council, which met at Mela in the year 416, decreed that if any of the clergy had a dispute with his bishop, he might bring it before the neighboring bishops; but if he thought proper not to rest in their decision, it should be unlawful for him to make any appeal except to an African council, or to the primates of the African churches. ^f22 In accordance with the spirit of this canon, with some variation in particulars, the ninth council of Toledo, in the year 655, determined that appeals should lie from a bishop to a metropolitan, and from a metropolitan to the royal audience; a regulation which was confirmed by a subsequent council held in the same city. ^f23 In the fifth and sixth centuries Arianism was predominant in Spain. During that period the bishops who adhered to the orthodox faith being few in number, discountenanced by the royal authority, and rarely allowed to assemble in provincial councils, were naturally induced to turn their eyes to Rome for counsel and support; while the popes laid hold of the opportunity which the circumstances afforded them to extend their influence over that country, by holding correspondence with the dissenting clergy, and conferring on some of them the title of apostolical vicars. ^f24 But, strange as the assertion may appear to some, this intercourse ceased as soon as Spain embraced the catholic faith.

Spain is always spoken of as a catholic country from the time that she renounced Arianism under Reccared; and if we are to believe some of her writers, her monarchs obtained, at that early period, the title of Catholic kings, which they retain to this day, as expressive of their devotion to the faith and authority of the Roman see. But this is a glaring mistake, originating in, or concealed by the equivocal use of a word which was anciently understood in a sense very different from its modern acceptation. It was by adopting the common doctrine received by the church at large, in opposition to the Arian and other errors condemned by the first ecumenical or universal councils, that Spain became catholic, and that her kings, bishops, and people, obtained this designation, and not by conforming to the rites of the church of Rome, or owning the supremacy of its pontiffs. Ecclesiastical affairs were managed in Spain without any interference on the part of the See of Rome, or any reference to it, during the whole of the century which elapsed after the suppression of Arianism. This is so undeniable, that those advocates of the pontifical authority who have examined the documents of that age, have been forced to admit the fact, and endeavor to account for it by saying, that such interference and reference was unnecessary during a peaceful state of the church; a concession which goes far to invalidate the whole of their claims. ^f25 The pall sent from Rome to Leander, bishop of Seville, forms no exception to the remark now made; for, not to mention that it was never received, it was not intended to confer any prerogative upon him, but merely as a testimony of his sanctity, and a mark of personal esteem from pope Gregory, who had contracted a friendship with him when they met at Constantinople. It was of the nature of a badge of honor conferred by a prince on a deserving individual belonging to another kingdom. ^f26

There is one piece of history which throws great light on the state of the Spanish church during the seventh century, and which I shall relate at some length, as it has been either passed over or very partially brought forward by later historians. The sixth ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in the year 680, condemned the heresy of the Monothelites, or those who, though they allowed that Christ had two natures, ascribed to him but one will and one operation. In 683, Leo II., bishop of Rome, sent the acts of that council, which he had received from Constantinople, to Spain, requesting the bishops to give them their sanction, and to take measures for having them circulated through their churches. As a council had been held immediately before the arrival of the papal deputation, and a heavy fall of snow prevented the reassembling of the members at that season, it was thought proper to circulate the acts among the bishops, who authorized Julian, archbishop of Toledo, to transmit a rescript to Rome, intimating in general their approbation of the late decision at Constantinople, and stating at considerable length the sentiments of the Spanish church on the controverted point. A council, convened in Toledo during the following year, entered on the formal consideration of this affair, in which they proceeded in such a manner as to evince their determination to preserve at once the purity of the faith and the independence of the Spanish church. They examined the acts of the council at Constantinople, at which it does not appear that they had any representative, and declared that they found them consonant with the decisions of the four preceding canonical councils, particularly that of Chalcedon, of which they appeared to be nearly a transcript. “Whereof (say they) we agree that the acts of the said council be reverenced and received by us, inasmuch as they do not differ from the foresaid councils, or rather as they appear to coincide with them. We allot to them therefore that place in point of order to which their merit entitles them. Let them come after the council of Chalcedon, by whose light they shine.” The council next took into consideration the rescript which archbishop Julian had sent to Rome, and pronounced it “a copious and lucid exposition of the truth concerning the double will and operation of Christ;” adding, “wherefore, for the sake of general instruction, and the benefit of ecclesiastical discipline, we confirm and sanction it as entitled to equal honor and reverence, and to have the same permanent authority, as the decretal epistles.” ^f27

The council of Constantinople had condemned pope Honorius I. as an abettor of the Monothelite heresy; a stigma which the advocates of papal infallibility have labored for ages to wipe off. But the Spanish council, on the present occasion, proceeded farther, and advanced a proposition which strikes at the very foundation on which the bishops of Rome rest their claims, by declaring, that the rock on which the church is built is the faith confessed by St. Peter, and not his person or office. ^f28

But this was not all that the Spanish clergy did. When the rescript of the archbishop of Seville reached Rome, it met with the disapprobation of Benedict II., who had succeeded Leo in the popedom. Having drawn up certain animadversions upon it, his Holiness gave them to the Spanish deputy to communicate to his constituents, that they might correct those expressions savoring of error which they had been led incautiously to adopt. An answer, not the most agreeable to the pope, was returned by Julian in the mean time; and the subject was afterwards taken up by a national council held in 688 at Toledo. Instead of retracting their former sentiments, or correcting any of the expressions which the pope had blamed, the Spanish prelates drew up and sanctioned a labored vindication of the paper which had given offence to his Holiness, of whom they speak in terms very disrespectful, and even contemptuous. They accuse him of “a careless and cursory perusal” of their rescript, and of having passed over parts of it which were necessary to understand their meaning. He had found fault with them for asserting that there are three substances in Christ, ^f29 to which they reply: “As we will not be ashamed to defend the truth, so there are perhaps some other persons who will be ashamed at being found ignorant of the truth. For who knows not that in every man there are two substances, namely, soul and body?” After confirming their opinion by quotations from the fathers, they add: “But if any one shall be so shameless as not to acquiesce in these sentiments, and acting the part of a haughty inquirer, shall ask, whence we drew such things, at least he will yield to the words of the gospel, in which Christ declares that he possessed three substances.” Having quoted and commented on several passages of the New Testament, the council concludes in these terms: “If, after this statement, and the sentiments of the fathers from which it has been taken, any person shall dissent from us in any thing, we will have no farther dispute with him, but keeping steadily in the plain path, and treading in the footsteps of our predecessors, we are persuaded that our answer will commend itself to the approbation of all lovers of truth who are capable of forming a divine judgment, though we may be charged with obstinacy by the ignorant and envious.” ^f30

III. The independence of the ancient church of Spain will appear more fully if we attend to its form of worship. All the learned who have directed their attention to ecclesiastical antiquities are now agreed that, although the mode of worship was substantially the same throughout the Christian church, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, yet different liturgies or forms of celebrating divine service were practiced in different nations, and sometimes in different parts of the same nation. The Ambrosian liturgy, used by the church of Milan, differed from the Roman. f31 It was adopted in many parts of France, and continued in use there until the time of Charlemagne, when it was supplanted by the Roman or Gregorian. f32 So far was the church of Rome from having at first regulated the religious service of other churches by her laws or even by her example, that she did not even preserve her own forms, which were superseded in their most important parts, by the sacramentary or missal which was drawn up by pope Gelasius, corrected finally by Gregory at the close of the sixth century, and imposed gradually, and at distant periods, on the several divisions of the western church. ^f33 Different offices, or forms of celebrating divine service, were used in Spain down to the year 633, when the fourth council of Toledo passed a decree that one uniform order should be observed in all the churches of the Peninsula. ^f34 This decree led to the adoption of that liturgy which has been called the Gothic, and sometimes the Isidorian, or the Ildefonsian, from St. Isidore and Ildefonso, archbishops of Seville, by whom it was revised and corrected. That this ritual was quite different from the Roman or Gregorian is put beyond all doubt, by the references made to both in the course of the adoptionarian controversy, which raged in the eighth century. The patrons of the adoptionarian tenet in Spain appealed to their national ritual, “compiled by holy men who had gone before them,” and quoted passages from it as favorable to their views. To this argument the fathers of the council of Frankfort replied: “It is better to believe the testimony of God the Father concerning his own Son, than that of your Ildefonso, who composed for you such prayers, in the solemn masses, as the universal and holy church of God knows not, and in which we do not think you will be heard. And if your Ildefonso in his prayers called Christ the adopted Son of God, our Gregory, pontiff of the Roman see, and a doctor beloved by the whole world, does not hesitate in his prayers to call him always the only begotten.” ^f35 In like manner Alcuin, after insinuating that they might have taken improper liberties in their quotations, says: “But it matters not much whether these testimonies have been altered or correctly quoted by you; for we wish to be confirmed in the truth of our assertion and faith by Roman rather than Spanish authority.” ^f36

The Gothic or Isidorian office has also been called the Mozarabic or Mixtarabic, probably because it was used and held in great veneration by the Christians in Spain who lived under the dominion of the Arabians or Moors. The identity of these formularies has, indeed, been of late disputed by several learned men. ^f37 But it is most probable that they were originally the same office, and that alterations were made upon it, both by the Mozarabes and the Montanes, (as those were called who betook themselves to the mountains to escape the yoke of the Moors,) during the period that they lived asunder.

Other instances in which the worship of the ancient church of Spain differed widely from the modern might be produced. We have already mentioned that a national council, in the beginning of the fourth century, prohibited the worship of images, and the use of pictures in churches. ^f38 It may be added, that the first council of Braga, held in the year 561, forbade the use of uninspired hymns, which came afterwards to be tolerated, and were ultimately enjoined under the highest penalties. ^f39

Having produced these facts as to the early opinions and usages of the Spanish church, we proceed to state the manner in which she was led to adopt the rites, and submit to the authority of the church of Rome.

In the eleventh century Spain was divided into three kingdoms—the kingdom of Leon and Castile, of Aragon, and of Navarre, of which the two first were by far the most powerful. In the latter part of that century, Alfonso, the sixth of Leon, and first of Castile, after recovering Valentia by the valor of the famous Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar, finally obtained possession of Toledo, which had been in the power of the Moors for three centuries and a half. He had married, for his second wife, Constance, a daughter of the royal house of France, who, from attachment to the religious service to which she had been accustomed, or under the influence of the priests who accompanied her, instigated her husband to introduce the Roman liturgy into Castile. Richard, abbot of Marseilles, the papal legate, exerted all his influence in favor of a change so agreeable to the court which he represented. The innovation was warmly opposed by the clergy, nobility, and people at large, but especially by the inhabitants of Toledo and other places which had been under the dominion of the Moors. To determine this controversy, recourse was had, according to the custom of the dark ages, to judicial combat. Two knights, clad in complete armor, appeared before the court and an immense assembly. The champion of the Gothic liturgy prevailed; but the king insisted that the litigated point should undergo another trial, and be submitted to, what was called, the judgment of God. Accordingly, in the presence of another great assembly, a copy of the two rival liturgies was thrown into the fire. The Gothic resisted the flames and was taken out unhurt, while the Roman was consumed. But upon some pretext—apparently the circumstance of the ashes of the Roman liturgy curling on the top of the flames and then leaping out—the king, with the concurrence of Bernard, archbishop of Toledo, who was a Frenchman, gave out that it was the will of God that both offices should be used; and ordained, that the public service should continue to be celebrated according to the Gothic office in the six churches of Toledo which the Christians had enjoyed under the Moors, but that the Roman office should be adopted in all the other churches of the kingdom. The people were displeased with the glaring partiality of this decision, which is said to have given rise to the proverb, The law goes as kings choose. ^f40 Discountenanced by the court and the superior ecclesiastics, the Gothic liturgy gradually fell into disrepute, until it was completely superseded by the Roman. ^f41

The introduction of the Roman liturgy had been undertaken rather more early in Aragon than in Castile, but was completed in both kingdoms about the same time. The modern inhabitants of the Peninsula please themselves with the idea that they are hearing the self-same mass which has been performed in Spain from the days of the apostles; whereas, the exact day and place in which the modern service began, can be pointed out. The first mass, according to the Roman form, was celebrated in Aragon in the monastery of St. Juan de la Pena, on the 21st of March 1071; and in Castile, in the Grand Mosque of Toledo, on the 25th of October 1086. ^f42 Gregory VII. commemorates this change, “as the deliverance of Spain from the illusion of the Toledan superstition.” ^f43 His Holiness was more clear-sighted than those moderns, who, looking upon all forms of worship as equal, treat with contempt or indifference the efforts made by a people to defend their religious rights against the encroachments of domestic, or the intrusions of foreign authority. The recognition of the papal authority in Spain followed upon the establishment of the Roman liturgy; nor would the latter have been sought with such eagerness, had it not been with a view to the former. Having once obtained a footing in the Peninsula, the popes pushed their claims, until at last the whole nation, including the highest authorities in it, civil as well as ecclesiastical, acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman see.

It is sufficient to exemplify this statement in the subjugation of the crown and kingdom of Aragon. Don Ramiro I., who died in 1063, was the first Spanish king, according to the testimony of Gregory the Great, who recognized the pope and received the laws of Rome. ^f44 In 1204, Don Pedro II., eight years after he had ascended the throne, went to Rome, and was crowned by pope Innocent III. On that occasion his Holiness put the crown on his head in the monastery of Pancracio, after Pedro had given his corporal oath that he and all his successors would be faithful to the church of Rome, preserve his kingdom in obedience to it, defend the catholic faith, pursue heretical pravity, and maintain inviolate the liberties and immunities of the holy church. Then going to the chapel of St. Peter, the pope delivered the sword into the hands of the king, who, armed as a cavalier, dedicated all his dominions to St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and to Innocent and his successors, as a fief of the church; engaging to pay an annual tribute, as a mark of homage and gratitude for his coronation. In return for all this his Holiness granted, as a special favor, that the kings of Aragon, instead of being obliged to come to Rome, should afterwards be crowned in Saragossa, by the archbishop of Tarragona, as papal vicar. This act of submission was highly offensive to the nobility, who protested for their own rights, and to the people at large, who complained that their liberties were sold, and power given to the popes to disturb the peace of the kingdom at their pleasure. ^f45 It was not long before these fears were realized. The king, having a few years after offended the pope by taking arms in defence of heretics, was laid under the sentence of excommunication, for violating the oath which he had sworn; and his grandson, Pedro the Great, was deprived of his kingdom, as a vassal of the church, which kindled a civil war, and led to the invasion of Aragon by the French. ^f46 Attempts to release themselves from this degrading vassalage were made by different monarchs, but these always issued in the renewal of their oaths of fealty to Rome; and they found it too late to throw off a yoke which had by this time been received by all the nations around them, and which they had taught their own subjects to revere and hold sacred.

The history of Spain during the period we are reviewing, furnishes important notices respecting the Waldenses, Vaudois or Albigenses, whom we formerly met with in tracing the progress of the Reformation in Italy. It is well known, that these early reformers had fixed their abode in the southern provinces of France, where they multiplied greatly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. ^f47 —Various causes contributed to this. The inhabitants of the south of France, though inferior in arms, were superior in civilization, to those of the north. They had addicted themselves to commerce and the arts. Their cities, which were numerous and flourishing, enjoyed privileges favorable to the spirit of liberty, and which raised them nearly to the rank of the Italian republics, with which they had long traded. They possessed a language rich and flexible, which they cultivated both in prose and verse; academies for promoting the Gui Saber, or polite letters, were erected among them; and the Troubadours, as the Provençal poets were called, were received with honor, and listened to with enthusiasm, at the courts of the numerous petty princes among whom the country was divided. A people advanced to this stage of improvement were not disposed to listen with implicit faith to the religious dogmas which the clergy inculcated, or to submit tamely to the superstitious and absurd observances which they sought to impose. Add to this, that the manners of the clergy, both higher and lower, in these provinces, were disorderly and vicious to a proverb. “I would rather be a priest, than have done such a thing!” was a common exclamation among the people on hearing of any unworthy action. With these feelings they were prepared to listen to the reformers, who exposed the errors and corruptions which had defaced the beauty of the primitive church, and whose conduct formed, in point of decency and sobriety, a striking contrast to that of the established clergy. For the last mentioned fact we have the testimony of those monkish writers, who strove to blacken their characters, by alleging that they practiced all kinds of licentiousness in secret. “I will relate (says the abbot of Puy Laurens) what I have heard bishop Fulco tell as to a conversation which he had with Pons Ademar de Rodelia, a prudent knight. ‘I cannot bring myself to believe,’ said the latter, ‘that Rome has sufficient grounds to proceed against these men’—‘Are they not unable to answer our arguments?’ demanded the bishop. ‘I grant it,’ said the other. ‘Well, then’ rejoined the bishop; ‘why do you not expel and drive them from your territories?’ ‘We cannot do it,’ replied the knight; ‘we have been brought up with them; we have our friends among them; and we see them living honestly.’ After relating this anecdote on the authority of the archbishop of Thoulouse, the great adversary of the Albigenses, the historian adds: “Thus it is that falsehood, veiled under the appearance of a spotless life, draws uncautious men from the truth.” ^f48

The Albigensian barbs, or pastors, enjoying a respite from persecution during the early part of the twelfth century, applied themselves to the study of the scriptures, and devoted their hours of relaxation to the cultivation of poetry. They were held in veneration by the people, who named them in their wills, and left for the support of the new worship those sums which had been formerly bequeathed to the priests or appropriated for the saying of masses for their own souls and those of their departed relations. They had chapels in the principal castles; their religious service was frequented by persons of all ranks; and they numbered among their converts many individuals of noble birth, and who held some of the principal situations in the country. Among their protectors were the powerful counts of Toulouse, Raymond VI. and VII., the counts of Foix and Comenges, the

viscounts of Beziers and Bearn, Savary de Mauleon, seneschal of

Aquitaine, Guiraud de Minerve, and Olivier de Termes, a cavalier who had distinguished himself greatly in the wars against the infidels in the Holy Land, in Africa and in Majorca. Their opinions were avowedly entertained by the wives and sisters of these great lords, as well as by the heads of the noble houses of Mirepoix, Saissac, Lavour, Montreal, St. Michael de Fanjaux, Durfort, Lille-Jourdain, and Montsegur. ^f49

When we have stated these facts, we have said enough to account for the implacable hostility to this sect on the part of the ruling ecclesiastics, and the bloody crusades preached up against it by the monks, and conducted, under the direction of the popes, by Simon de Montfort and Louis VIII. of France, during the early part of the thirteenth century. By means of these the attempted reformation of the church was suppressed, and its disciples nearly exterminated; one of the finest regions of the world was laid waste by countless and successive hordes of barbarous fanatics—its commerce destroyed, its arts annihilated, its literature extinguished; and the progress of the human mind in knowledge and civilization, which had commenced so auspiciously, was arrested and thrown back for ages. ^f50

The intimate connection which subsisted between Spain and the South of France had great influence on the fate of the Albigensian reformers. Provence and Languedoc were at that time more properly Aragonese than French. As count of Provence, the king of Aragon was the immediate liege lord of the viscounts of Narbonne, Beziers, and Carcassone. Avignon and other cities acknowledged him as their baronial superior. The principal lords, though they did homage to the king of France or to the emperor, yielded obedience in reality to the Spanish monarch, lived under his protection, and served in his armies. And several of them, by gifts from the crown, or by marriages, possessed lands in Spain.

In consequence of this connection between the two countries, some of the Vaudois had crossed the Pyrenees and established themselves in Spain as early as the middle of the twelfth century. ^f51 They appear to have enjoyed repose there for some time; but in the year 1194, pope Celestin III. sent the cardinal St. Angelo as legate to attend a council at Lerida, who prevailed on Alfonso II. king of Aragon, to publish an edict, ordering the Vaudois, or Poor Men of Lyons, and all other heretics, to quit his territories under severe pains. ^f52 This edict not having produced any effect, was renewed three years after by Pedro II, in consequence of a decree of a council held at Gironna. With the view of securing the execution of this measure, the subscriptions of all the grandees of Catalonia were procured to the decree; and all governors and judges were required to swear before the bishops, that they would assist in discovering and punishing those infected with heresy, under the penalty of being themselves treated as heretics. ^f53 Notwithstanding this edict, and the engagements he had contracted at his coronation, Pedro was disposed to be favorable to this sect. He was from the beginning displeased at the crusade which raged on the north of the Pyrenees; and having at last joined his army to those of his brother-in-law Raymond, count of Toulouse, he fell, in the year 1213, fighting in defence of the Albigenses in the battle of Muret. ^f54

This disaster, together with those that followed it, induced multitudes of the Albigenses to take refuge in Aragon, who gave ample employment to the inquisition after it was established in that country. From the accession of pope Gregory IX. to that of Alexander IV. (that is, from 1227 to 1254,) they had grown to such numbers and credit as to have churches in various parts of Catalonia and Aragon, which were provided with bishops, who boldly preached their doctrine. ^f55 Gregory, in a brief which he addressed to the archbishop of Tarragona and his suffragans, in 1232, complains of the increase of heresy in their dioceses, and exhorts them to make strict inquisition after it by means of the Dominican monks; and his successor Alexander repeated the complaint. ^f56 In 1237, the flames of persecution were kindled in the viscounty of Cerdagne and Castlebon, within the diocese of Urgel; forty-five persons being condemned, of whom fifteen were burnt alive, and eighteen disinterred bodies cast into the fire. ^f57 In 1267, the inquisitors of Barcelona pronounced sentence against Raymond, count of Forcalquier and Urgel, ordering his bones, as those of a relapsed heretic, to be taken out of the grave; ^f58 and two years after they passed the same sentence on Arnold, viscount of Castlebon and Cerdagne, and his daughter Ermesinde, wife of Roger-Bernard II. count of Foix, surnamed the Great. ^f59 Both father and daughter had been dead upwards of twenty years, yet their bones were ordered to be disinterred, “provided they could be found;” a preposterous and unnatural demonstration of zeal for the faith, which is applauded by the fanatical writers of that age, but was in fact dictated by hatred to the memory of the brave and generous Count de Foix. When summoned in his life-time to appear before the inquisition at Toulouse, that nobleman not only treated their order with contempt, but in his turn summoned the inquisitors of the county of Foix to appear before him as his vassals and subjects. During his exile at the court of his fatherin-law, he was excommunicated by the bishop of Urgel as a favorer of heresy; and although the sentence was removed, and he died in the communion of the church, yet the inquisitors never could forgive the disinterested and determined resistance which he had made to their barbarous proceedings. They put one of his servants to the torture, with the view of extorting from him some evidence upon which they might pronounce that his master had died a heretic; and, having failed in that attempt, they now sought to wreck their vengeance on the memory and the ashes of the countess and her father. ^f60

It has been said that the Poor Men of Lyons or Waldenses, when they made their first appearance, were looked upon at Rome as an order of monks who wished to revive the decaying fervor of piety among the people, and to lead a life of superior sanctity among themselves; and that it was seriously proposed at one time to give the pontifical sanctions to their internal regulations. ^f61 Whatever truth there may be in this statement, it is a curious fact, that, in Spain, some individuals of this sect did obtain a temporary respite from persecution by forming themselves into a new religious fraternity. In consequence of a dispute held at Pamiers in Languedoc, Durando de Huesca, a native of Aragon, with a number of his Albigensian brethren, yielded to the Romish missionaries, and having obtained liberty to retire into Catalonia, formed a religious community under the name of the Society of Poor Catholics. In 1207 Durando went to Rome, where he obtained from Innocent III. the remission of his former heresy, and an approbation of his fraternity, of which he was declared superior. Its members lived on alms, applied themselves to study and the teaching of schools, kept lent twice a-year, and wore a decent habit of white or grey, with shoes open at the top, but distinguished by some particular marks from those of the Poor Men of Lyons, who, from this part of their dress, were sometimes called Insabatati. The new order spread so rapidly, that in a few years it had numerous convents both to the south and north of the Pyrenees. But although the Poor Catholics professed to devote themselves to the conversion of heretics, and their superior wrote some books with that in view, they soon incurred the suspicion of the bishops, who accused them of favoring the Vaudois, and concealing their heretical tenets under the monastic garb. They had interest to maintain themselves for some time, and even to procure letters from his Holiness, exhorting the bishops to endeavor to gain them by kindness instead of alienating their minds from the church by severe treatment; but their enemies at last prevailed, and within a short time no trace of their establishments was to be found. ^f62

The Albigenses were not confined to Aragon and Catalonia. Of the extent to which they spread in the kingdom of Castile and Leon, we may form some judgment from an amusing anecdote, related from personal knowledge, by Lucio, bishop of Tuy, known, as a writer against the Albigenses, by the name of Lucas Tudensis; and which I shall give as nearly in his own words as is consistent with perspicuity. After the death of Roderic, bishop of Leon, (in the year 1237 ^f63 ) great dissension arose about the election of his successor. Taking advantage of this circumstance, the heretics flocked from all quarters to that city. In one of the suburbs, where every kind of filth was thrown, lay, along with those of a murderer, the bones of a heretic, named Arnald, who had been buried sixteen years before. Near to this was a fountain, over which they erected an edifice, and having taken up the bones of Arnald, whom they extolled as a martyr, deposited them in it. To this place a number of persons, hired by the heretics, came; and feigning themselves to be blind, lame, and afflicted with other disorders, they drank of the waters of the fountain, and then went away, saying that they were suddenly and miraculously healed. This being noised abroad, great multitudes flocked to the spot. After they had got a number of the clergy, as well as laity, to give credit to the pretended cures, the heretics disclosed the imposition which they had practiced, and then boasted that all the miracles performed at the tombs of the saints were of the same kind. By this means, they drew many to their heresy. In vain did the Dominican and Franciscan friars attempt to stem the torrent of defection, by exclaiming against the sin of offering sacrilegious prayers in a place defiled by profane bones. They were cried down as heretics and unbelievers. In vain did the adjacent bishops excommunicate those who visited the fountain or worshipped in the temple. The devil had seized upon the minds of the people and fascinated their senses. At last, a deacon, who resided at Rome, hearing of the state of matters in his native city, hastened to Leon, and “in a kind of frenzy,” at the risk of his life, upbraided the inhabitants for favoring the heretics, and called on the magistrates to abate the nuisance. For some months before his arrival, the country had been afflicted with a severe drought. This he declared to be a judgment from heaven on account of their sin, but promised that it should be removed within eight days from the time that they pulled down the heretical temple.

The magistrates granted him permission, and he razed the building to its foundation. Scarcely was this done, when a fire devoured a great part of the city, and for seven days no symptom of rain appeared; upon which the heretics insulted over the deacon. But on the eighth day the clouds collected, and poured down copious and refreshing showers on all the surrounding country. “After this, the foresaid deacon raised persecution against the heretics, who, being forced to leave the city, were miserably scattered abroad.” ^f64 We are assured, and not without great probability, that the deacon was no other than Lucas Tudensis, whose modesty induced him to suppress his name in relating the prediction and the persecution, in both of which he appears to have equally gloried. ^f65

In spite of the occupation given to the clergy by the suppression of the Knights Templars, and the schism of the anti-popes, the persecution of the Albigenses seldom relaxed during the fourteenth century. Scarce a year passed in which numbers were not barbarously led to the stake. ^f66 Among those who were condemned for heresy at this period, was Arnaldo of Villaneuva in Aragon, a celebrated physician and chemist. ^f67 He taught, that the whole Christian people had, through the craft of the devil, been drawn aside from the truth, and retained nothing but the semblance of ecclesiastical worship, which they kept up from the force of custom; that those who lived in cloisters threw themselves out of charity, and that the religious orders in general falsified the doctrine of Christ; that it is not a work of charity to endow chapels for celebrating masses for the dead; that those who devoted their money to this purpose, instead of providing for the poor, especially the poor belonging to Christ, exposed themselves to damnation; that offices of mercy and medicine are more acceptable to the Deity than the sacrifice of the altar; and that God is praised in the eucharist not by the hands of the priest, but by the mouth of the communicant. ^f68 Such being his avowed sentiments, we need not wonder that he was doomed to expiate his temerity by suffering the fire, from which he saved himself by flying from his native country, and taking refuge with Ferdinand, king of Sicily. ^f69 To Arnald we may add a writer of the following century, Raimond de Sebonde, author of a treatise on natural theology, who was charged with heresy for asserting that all saving truths are contained, and clearly proposed, in the sacred scriptures. ^f70

From 1412 to 1425, a great number of persons who entertained the sentiments of the Vaudois were committed to the flames by the inquisitors of Valentia, Rousillon, and Majorca. It appears, that the followers of Wicliffe had migrated to the Peninsula; for in 1441, the inquisitors of Aragon and Valentia reconciled some of them to the church, and condemned others to the fire as obstinate heretics. ^f71 If we may trust the monkish annalists, Spain was also visited at this period by the Beghards, a fanatical sect which the corruptions of the church and the ignorance of the times had generated in Germany and other parts of Europe. But this is uncertain, as it was common for the clergy to apply this and similar names to the Vaudois, with the view of exciting odium against them, and justifying their own cruelties. In 1350, we are told, a warm inquisition was commenced in Valentia against the Beghards, whose leader was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and the bones of many of his disciples dug up and consigned to the flames; and in 1442, it was found they had multiplied at Durango, a town of Biscay, and in the diocese of Calahorra. Alfonso de Mella, a Franciscan, and brother of the bishop of Zamora, who was afterwards invested with the purple, having incurred the suspicion of being at the head of this party, fled along with his companions, to the Moors, among whom “he died miserably at Grenada, being pierced with reeds; an example, (says the biographer of his brother) worthy to be recorded, of the variety of human affairs, and the opposite dispositions of persons who lay in the same womb.” ^f72 On application to John II. king of Castile, a band of royal musqueteers was sent to scour the mountains of Biscay, and the higher districts of Old Castile, who drove down the heretics like cattle before them, and delivered them to the inquisitors, by whom they were committed to the flames at St. Domingo de la Calzado, and Valladolid. ^f73 Thus were the Albigenses, after a barbarous and unrelenting persecution of two centuries, exterminated in Spain, with the exception of a few, who contrived to conceal themselves in the more remote and inaccessible parts of the country, and at a subsequent period, furnished occasionally a straggling victim to the familiars of the inquisition, when surfeited with the blood of Jews and Moriscoes.

During these proceedings, Rome succeeded in establishing its empire a second time in Spain, and that in a more durable form than in the days of the Scipios and Augustus. This conquest was achieved chiefly by means of the monks and friars. Anciently the number of convents and of monks in Spain was small; but it multiplied greatly from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The beginning of that period was marked by the infliction of that scourge of society, and outrage of all decency,—privileged and meritorious mendicity. Of all the orders of mendicant friars, the most devoted to the See of Rome were those founded by St. Dominic and St. Francis, the former the most odious, the latter the most frantic, of modern saints. Within a few years after their institution, convents belonging to both these orders were to be found in every part of Spain. Though the Dominicans, owing to the patronage of the court of Rome, or to their founder, being a Spaniard, enjoyed the greatest share of political power, yet the reception given to the Franciscans left them no ground to complain of Spanish inhospitality. An event which happened at the close of the fifteenth century contributed to the still more rapid increase of religious houses. A great part of the wealth which flowed into Spain after the discovery of the New World, found its way to the church. Imitating the Pagan warriors who dedicated the spoils which they had gained to their gods, the Spaniards who enriched themselves by pillaging and murdering the Indians, sought to testify their gratitude or to expiate their crimes by lavishing ornaments on churches, and endowing monasteries. The following examples show the rate at which the regular clergy increased. The first Franciscan missionaries entered Spain in the year 1216; and, in 1400, they had, within the three provinces of Santiago, Castile, and Aragon, including Portugal, twenty-three custodiae, composed of an hundred and twenty-one convents. ^f74 But in the year 1506, the Regular Observantines, who formed only the third division of that order, had a hundred and ninety convents in Spain, excluding Portugal. ^f75 In the year 1030, the city of Salamanca did not contain a single convent; in 1480, it possessed nine, of which six were for males, and three for females; and in 1518, it could number thirty-nine convents, while its nuns alone amounted to eleven thousand. ^f76

The corruption of the monastic institutions kept pace with the increase of their numbers and wealth. The licentiousness of the regular clergy became notorious. They broke through the rules prescribed by their founders, and laid aside that austere mode of living by which they had at first acquired all their reputation. ^f77 Even those who had vowed the most rigid poverty, such as the Observantines, or third order of St. Francis, procured dispensations from Rome, in virtue of which they possessed rents, and property in houses and lands. By the original regulations of St. Francis, all belonging to his order bound themselves to live purely on alms and were strictly prohibited from receiving any money, on whatever pretext, even as wages for labor performed by them, “unless for the manifest necessity of infirm brethren.” ^f78 The monastic historians are greatly puzzled to account for the glaring departure from this rule of poverty; probably forgetting, or not wishing to have recourse to the well known maxim, that nature abhors a vacuum. Sometimes they wish to account for it by saying that a destructive pestilence, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, thinned the monasteries, which were afterwards filled with novices of a more earthly mould. ^f79 But they are forced to trace the evil to a more remote source, and to impute it to brother Elias, ^f80 a native of Cortona, and vicar-general of the order of Franciscans, under its founder. As early as 1223, he began to hint to his brethren that the rule prescribed to them was a yoke which neither they nor their successors could bear; but was silenced by the authority of St. Francis. After the death of the saint, he was more successful in gaining proselytes to his opinion, and drew upon himself the sentence of excommunication, from which, however, he was ultimately relieved. ^f81

The kings of Spain attempted at different times to correct these abuses, but the monks and friars had always the influence or the address to defeat the measure. When the glaring nature of the evil induced Ferdinand and Isabella to renew the attempt at the close of the fifteenth century, they were obliged to employ force; nor would their united authority have been sufficient to carry the point, had they not availed themselves of the sagacity and firmness of the celebrated cardinal Ximenes, himself a friar, and inflamed with the passion of restoring the order of St. Francis, of which he was then provincial, to all the poverty and rigor of its original institution. Lorenzo Vacca, abbot of the monastery of the Holy Spirit at Segovia, relying on the papal bulls which he had procured, made such resistance to the plans of his provincial, that the government found it necessary to commit him to prison, from which he escaped, and repairing to Rome, exerted himself, through the influence of Ascanio Sforza and other cardinals, in counteracting the reform of the religious orders in Spain. ^f82 The Franciscan friars of Toledo carried their resistance so far, that an order was issued to banish them from the kingdom; upon which they left the city in solemn procession, carrying a crucifix before them, and chaunting the psalm which begins, When Israel went up out of Egypt, &c. ^f83 The biographers of Ximenes represent him as having reformed all the religious institutions in Spain; but it is evident that his success was partial, and chiefly confined to his own order. So far as they proceeded on the rigid principles of monachism, the regulations which he introduced were unnatural and pernicious, and such of them as were favorable to morals were soon swept away by the increasing tide of corruption.

It has been said, that Ximenes abolished a number of superstitious practices which had crept into the worship of the Spanish church during the dark ages; and in proof of this we are told that he revived the Mozarabic office, and appointed it to be used in all the churches of his diocese. ^f84 But the writers who make this assertion have fallen into a mistake, both as to what was done by the cardinal, and as to the object he had in view. Perceiving that the Mozarabic service had fallen into desuetude in the six churches of Toledo, in which its use had been enjoined by an old law, ^f85 he was desirous to preserve this venerable relic of antiquity. With this view he employed Alfonso Ortiz, one of the canons of his cathedral, to collate all the copies of that liturgy which could be found; and, the Gothic letters in which they were written being changed into Roman, he caused the work to be printed. ^f86 Some years after ^f87 he erected a chapel in the cathedral church, with an endowment for thirteen priests, whose duty it was to celebrate the service according to that liturgy. ^f88 There is reason to think that he ordered it to be also used on certain festivals in the churches commonly called Mozarabic; but it is certain that the order did not extend to the other churches of his diocese. So far was it from his intention to make any innovation on the existing forms of worship, or to supplant the Roman by the ancient Spanish liturgy, that he interpolated his edition of the latter, in order to render it more conformable to the former; thus destroying its character and use as an ancient document. Among these interpolations are “a prayer for the adoration of the cross,” and offices for a number of saints who lived before as well as after the compilation of the liturgy; for the ancient Goths and Mozarabes commemorated none but martyrs in their public service.—Ferdinand de Talavera, archbishop of Granada, endowed, about the same time, a chapel in Salamanca, in which the service continued to be celebrated according to the ritual at the close of the seventeenth century. ^f89

It might be presumed, from the statements already made, and from what we know of other countries, that the Spanish clergy had sunk very low in point of knowledge, and that the absurdities which one of their countrymen afterwards exposed so wittily in Fray Gerundio, were not less common or less ridiculous before the revival of letters. But on this head we are not left to conjecture. In address to queen Isabella, cardinal Ximenes acknowledges the gross ignorance that prevailed among the priests. ^f90 This led to the adoption of the most absurd opinions, and the practice of the most extravagant superstitions. Legends and lives of saints formed the favorite reading of the devout, while the vulgar fed on the stories of everyday miracles which the priests and friars ministered fresh to their credulity. The doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin met with believers in other countries; but Spain could boast of an order of nuns consecrated to the honor of that newly-invented mystery. ^f91 The doctrine of transubstantiation, which many even at that period could not digest without difficulty, was no trial of faith to a Spaniard. “Do you believe that this wafer is the body of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?” was the question which the parish priests of Valencia, in the fourteenth century, were accustomed to put to dying persons; and on obtaining an affirmative answer, they administered the host. Another attempt to extend the mysterious process a little farther met with greater opposition. Eimeric, the author of the celebrated Guide to Inquisitors, wrote against Bonnet and Mairon, who maintained that St. John the Evangelist became the real son of the Virgin, in consequence of his body being transubstantiated into that of Christ, by the words pronounced on the cross, Ecce filius tuus, Behold thy son. ^f92

CHAPTER 2.

OF THE STATE OF LITERATURE IN SPAIN BEFORE THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION.

HAVING taken a general survey of the state of religion in Spain before the Reformation, let us look back for a little and trace the restoration of letters, which opened the prospect of a better order of things in that country. The learning of Isidore, archbishop of Seville, who flourished in the seventh century, and next to St. James, is venerated by the Spaniards as a tutelary saint, rests on a better foundation than the encomium of Gregory the Great, who called him a second Daniel. Besides various theological and historical treatises, ^f93 he composed a work on etymology, which, though disfigured by errors, discovers a considerable portion of philological knowledge, and contributed to check the barbarism which had already invaded every country in Europe. But ages of darkness succeeded, during which, while the name of St. Isidore was held in veneration, his works were disregarded, by an ignorant priesthood, into whose hands the key of knowledge had fallen.

It is not to the credit of Christianity, or at least of those who professed it, that, during the middle ages, letters were preserved from extinction, and even revived from the decline which had seized them, by the exertions of the followers of Mahomet. The tenth century, which has been denominated the leaden age of Europe, was the golden age of Asia. Modern writers have perhaps gone to an extreme on both sides in forming their estimate of the degree in which European literature is indebted to the Arabians. But when we find that this people have left such evident marks of their language upon that of Spain, it seems unreasonable to doubt that they had also great influence upon its literature. Cordova, Granada, and Seville, rivalled one another in the magnificence of their schools and libraries, during the empire of the Saracens, who granted to the Spanish Christians, whom they had subjugated, that protection in their religious rights, which the latter were far from imitating when they in their turn became the conquerors. ^f94 The two languages were spoken in common. ^f95 The Christians began to vie with their masters in the pursuit of science, composed commentaries on the scriptures in Arabic, and transfused the beauties of eastern poetry into the Castilian language. ^f96 It is even said, that a bishop of Seville, at this early period, translated the scriptures into the Arabic tongue. ^f97

If the Spanish language was in danger of suffering from the predominance of the Arabians, the evil was counteracted by the cultivation of Provençal poetry. In the twelfth century, Alfonso II. of Aragon, whose name has an honorable place among the Troubadours, zealously patronized those who wrote in the Catalonian or Valencian dialect. ^f98 In the subsequent century, Alfonso X. of Castile, surnamed the Wise, showed himself equally zealous in encouraging the study of the Castilian tongue, in which he wrote several poems; at the same time that he extracted the knowledge which was to be found in the books of the Arabians; as appears, among other proofs, from the astronomical tables, called from him Alphonsine. ^f99 the writings of Dante, Checo Dascoli, and Petrarch, gave a new impulse to the literature of Spain. From this period the study of the ancient classics imparted greater purity and elevation to works of imagination; and a taste for poetical compositions in their native tongue began to be felt by the Spanish gentry, who had hitherto found their sole pastime in arms and military tournaments. ^f100 Among those who distinguished themselves by improving the taste of their countrymen in the first part of the fifteenth century, were two persons of illustrious birth, in whose families the love of learning was long hereditary. Henry of Aragon, marquis of Villena, descended from the royal houses of Aragon and Castile, revived the Consistorio de la Gaya Sciencia, an academy situated at Barcelona for the encouragement of poetry, of which he was the president. His superior knowledge, combined perhaps with a portion of that learned credulity of which those who addicted themselves to astronomy and experimental science during the middle ages were often the dupes, brought on him the suspicion of necromancy. In consequence of this, his books were seized after his death, by the orders of Juan II. king of Castile, and sent for examination to Lope de Barrientos, a Dominican monk of considerable learning, and preceptor to the prince of Asturias. “Barrientos,” says a contemporary writer, “liking better to walk with the prince than to revise necroman-cies, committed to the flames upwards of a hundred volumes, without having examined them any more than the king of Morocco, or understood a jot of their contents more than the dean of Ciudad Rodrigo. There are many in the present day,” continues he, “who become learned men, by pronouncing others fools and magicians; and what is worse, make themselves saints, by stigmatizing others as sorcerers.” This indignity done to the memory of “the ornament of Spain and of the age,” was bewailed, both in verse and prose, by writers of that time. ^f101

Equally learned as Villena, but more fortunate in preserving his good name and his books, was Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana, who, in a treatise, intended as a preface to his own poetical works, has acted the part of historian to his countrymen who preceded him in paying court to the muse. ^f102 The merits of both marquises have been celebrated by the pen of Juan de Mena, unquestionably the first Spanish poet of that age.

It is not unworthy of remark here, that the Jews, while they enjoyed protection in Spain, co-operated with the Christians in the cultivation of polite letters. Rabbi Don Santo, who flourished about the year 1360, makes the following modest and not inelegant apology for taking his place among the poets of the land which had given him birth:—

The rose that twines a thorny sprig, Will not the less perfume the earth; Good wine, that leaves a creeping twig, Is not the worse for humble birth.

The hawk may be of noble kind, That from a filthy aiery flew; And precepts are not less refined, Because they issue from a Jew. ^f103

Long after their expulsion from Spain, the Jews cherished an ardent attachment to the Castilian tongue, in which they continued to compose works both in prose and verse. ^f104

On looking into the writings of the ancient Spanish poets, we are induced to conclude, that they were not in the habit of using those liberties with the church and clergy which were indulged in by the poets of Italy and the Troubadours of Provence. There is reason however to think, that the absence of these satires is to be accounted for, in no small degree, by the prudence of the editors of their works, and the vigilance of the censors of the press, after the invention of printing. Accordingly, of later years, since the severity of the Inquisition relaxed, and a passion to do justice to their literary antiquities has been felt by the Spaniards, poems have been brought to the light, though still with much caution, ^f105 which two centuries ago would have earned for their learned editors a perpetual prison. The poems of Juan Ruiz, archpriest of Hita, who flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century, contain severe satires on the avarice and loose manners of the clergy. He represents money as opening the gates of Paradise, purchasing salvation to the people, and benefices to priests; as equally powerful at the court of Rome and elsewhere, with the pope and all orders of the clergy, secular and regular; as converting a lie into the truth, and the truth into a lie. ^f106 In another poem he is as severe against the manners of the clergy, whom he describes as living avowedly in concubinage. He represents Don Gil de Albornoz, archbishop of Talavera, as having procured a mandate from the pope, ordering all his clergy to put away their wives or concubines whom they kept in their houses, under the pain of excommunication. When this mandate was read to them in a public assembly, it excited a warm opposition; violent speeches were made against it by the dean and others; some of them declared that they would sooner part with their dignities; and it was finally agreed that they should appeal from the pope to the king of Castile. ^f107

About the middle of the fifteenth century, literature was advanced under the patronage of Alfonso V. of Aragon. The education of this monarch had been neglected, and the early part of his life was spent in arms; but at fifty years of age he applied himself to study with such eagerness that he was soon able to read with ease the Roman classics, which became his constant companions. He disputed with the house of Medici the honor of entertaining men of letters, and rescuing the writings of antiquity from oblivion. When he had taken a town, his soldiers could not do the prince a greater pleasure than to bring him a book which they had discovered among the spoils; and Cosmo de’ Medici, by the present of an ancient manuscript, procured from him a treaty highly favorable to Florence. Anthony of Palermo, usually styled Panormitanus, who wrote the history of his life, resided at his court in great honor; and Laurentius Valla, one of the most profound and elegant scholars of that age, ^f108 when persecuted for the freedom of his opinions, was protected by Alfonso at Naples, where he opened a school for Greek and Roman eloquence. ^f109

Alfonso de Palencia, having visited Italy, became acquainted with cardinal Bessarion, and attended the lectures which the learned Greek Trapezuntius delivered on eloquence and his native tongue. On his return to Spain, he was made historiographer to Henry IV. of Castile, and afterwards to queen Isabella; and by his translations from Greek into the Castilian language, as well as by a work on grammar, excited a taste for letters among his countrymen. ^f110 He was followed by Antonio de Lebrixa, usually styled Nebrissensis, who became to Spain what Valla was to Italy, Erasmus to Germany, and Budé to France. After a residence of ten years in Italy, during which he had stored his mind with various kinds of knowledge, he returned home in 1473, by the advice of the younger Philelphus and Hermolaus Barbarus, with the view of promoting classical learning in his native country. Hitherto the revival of letters in Spain was confined to a few inquisitive individuals, and had not reached the schools and universities, whose teachers continued to teach a barbarous jargon, under the name of Latin, into which they initiated the youth by means of a rude system of grammar, rendered unintelligible, in some instances, by a preposterous intermixture of the most abstruse questions in metaphysics. ^f111 By the lectures which he read in the universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala, and by the institutes which he published on Castilian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar, Lebrixa contributed in a wonderful degree to expel barbarism from the seats of education, and to diffuse a taste for elegant and useful studies among his countrymen. ^f112 His improvements were warmly opposed by the monks, who had engrossed the art of teaching, and who unable to bear the light themselves, wished to prevent all others from seeing it; but, enjoying the support of persons of high authority, he disregarded their selfish and ignorant outcries. ^f113 Lebrixa continued, to an advanced age, to support the literary reputation of his native country. ^f114 During his residence at Salamanca, he was joined by three able coadjutors. The first was Arius Barbosa, a Portuguese, who had studied under the elegant Italian scholar, Angelo Politiano, and was equally skilled in Greek as Lebrixa was in Latin. ^f115 The second was Lucio Marineo, a native of Sicily, who, in 1485, accompanied the grand admiral of Castile into Spain, and began to read lectures on poetry. ^f116 The third was Peter Martyr of Anghiera, to whose letters we are indebted for some interesting particulars respecting the state of literature in Spain, along with much valuable information on the political transactions of that country, and the affairs of the New World. In 1488, he was persuaded to leave Italy by the conde de Tendilla, who inherited that love of letters which had distinguished his illustrious ancestor, the marquis of Santillana. Martyr commenced his literary career in Spain, by reading, with great applause, a lecture on one of the satires of Juvenal, at Salamanca; but he was soon called from that station to an employment of higher responsibility, for which he was eminently qualified. Under the patronage, and at the earnest desire of queen Isabella, who had herself taken lessons from Lebrixa, he undertook to superintend the education of the sons of the principal nobility, with the view of rooting out an opinion almost universally prevalent among persons of that order in Spain, that learning unfitted them for military affairs, in which they placed all their glory. The school was accordingly opened at court, not without a flattering prospect of success. But Spain was destined to exhaust her energies in gratifying the mad ambition for conquest of a succession of princes, and then to sink into inactivity under the benumbing influence of superstition and despotism. Finding the prejudice against education, in the minds of his pupils, more inveterate than he had anticipated, Martyr accepted of a political appointment; and the plan for inspiring the nobility with the love of polite letters, was abandoned soon after it had been begun under such good auspices. ^f117

In the mean time, the passion for learning spread from Salamanca to the other universities of the kingdom. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Francesco Ximenes, at that time archbishop of Toledo, restored and enlarged the university of Alcala de Henares, in which he founded a trilingual college. To acquire celebrity to his favorite institution he procured learned teachers to fill its chairs, among whom were Demetrius Ducas and Nicetas Phaustus, two natives of Greece, ^f118 and Fernando Nunez, a descendant of the noble house of Guzman. The latter, who had sacrificed his prospect of civil honors to the love of study, was inferior to none of his learned countrymen, and has left behind him a name in the republic of letters. ^f119

Living in the midst of Jews and Moors, and frequently engaged in controversy with them on their respective creeds, the Christians in Spain had better opportunities and a more powerful stimulus to study the oriental languages, than their brethren in other parts of Europe. About the middle of the thirteenth century, Raymond de Pennaforte, general of the Dominicans, persuaded Juan I. king of Aragon, to appropriate funds for the education of young men who might be qualified for entering the lists in argument with Jews and Mahometans. ^f120 And in 1259 it was appointed, at a general chapter of the Dominicans held in Valencia, that the prior of that order in Spain should see to the erection of a school for Arabic, at Barcelona or elsewhere. ^f121 From this school proceeded several individuals who distinguished themselves as disputants, both orally and by writing. Among the latter was Raymond Martini, the author of Pugio Fidei, or Poignard of the Faith against Jews and Moors; a work which discovers no contemptible acquaintance with the Hebrew language, and with the Rabbinical writings, which it quotes and comments upon in the original. ^f122

To the attention paid to the oriental tongues in Spain may be traced the decree of the council of Vienne, held under pope Clement V. in the year 1311, which ordained that Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, should be taught in whatever place the pontifical court might be held, and in the universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca. ^f123

The ardor with which these studies were prosecuted, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, led to the publication of the famous Complutensian Polyglot. This chef d’oeuvre of Spanish erudition was executed under the patronage and at the expense of cardinal Ximenes, then archbishop of Toledo; a prelate whose pretensions to learning were slender, ^f124 but whose ambition prompted him to seek distinction equally in the convent, the academy, the cabinet, and the field. In imitation of the celebrated Origen, he projected an edition of the Bible in various languages, and expended large sums of money in supporting the learned men who were engaged in the undertaking, purchasing manuscripts for their use, and providing the requisite printers and types. The work commenced in the year 1502, and the printing was finished in 1517, in six volumes folio, at the press of Complutum, or Alcala de Henares. ^f125 The Old Testament contained the original Hebrew text, the Vulgate or Latin version of Jerome, and the Greek version of the Septuagint, arranged in three columns; and at the foot of each page of the Pentateuch was printed the Chaldee paraphrase of Onkelos, accompanied with a Latin translation. The New Testament contained the original Greek, and the Vulgate Latin version. To the whole were added a grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew language, and a Greek lexicon or vocabulary, with some other explanatory treatises. John Brocar, the son of the printer, was accustomed to relate, that when the last sheet came from the press, he, being then a boy, was sent in his best clothes with a copy of it to the cardinal, who gave thanks to God for sparing him to that day, and turning to his attendants, said that he congratulated himself on the completion of that work more than on any of the acts which had distinguished his administration. ^f126

Spanish writers have been too lavish of their encomiums on the Polyglot of Alcala. The Hebrew and Greek manuscripts employed by its compilers were neither numerous nor ancient; and instead of correcting the text of the Septuagint from the copies which were in their possession, they made alterations of their own, with the view of adapting it to the Hebrew text. Some of the learned men who labored in this work, must have been ashamed of the following specimen of puerile devotion to the Vulgate, which occurs in one of the prologues written in the name of Ximenes. Speaking of the order in which the matter is disposed in the columns, he says: “We have put the version of St. Jerome between the Hebrew and Septuagint, as between the synagogue and eastern church, which are like the two thieves, the one on the right and the other on the left hand, and Jesus, that is, the Roman church, in the middle: for this alone, being founded upon a solid rock, remains always immovable in the truth, while the others deviate from the proper sense of scripture.” ^f127 But notwithstanding these defects, when we consider the period at which it was composed, and the example which it held out, we cannot hesitate in affirming that this work reflects great credit on its authors, and on the munificence of the prelate at whose expense it was executed.

The Arabic language was also cultivated at this time by some individuals in Spain. ^f128 This branch of study was zealously patronized by Fernando de Talavera, who, after the overthrow of the Moorish kingdom, was appointed the first archbishop of Granada. This pious and amiable prelate, being desirous of converting the Moors who resided in his diocese by gentle and rational methods, and consequently of promoting the knowledge of Christianity among them, encouraged the clergy under his charge to make themselves masters of the Arabian tongue. With the view of assisting them in this task, he employed his chaplain, Pedro de Alcala, a Hieronymite monk, to draw up an Arabic grammar, vocabulary, and catechism containing the first rudiments of Christian doctrine, for the use of parish priests and catechists; which were the first books ever printed in that language. ^f129 In order the more effectually to promote the same object, the archbishop caused the religious service to be performed in their vernacular tongue, to such of the Moors as had submitted to baptism, or were willing to be instructed; and, accordingly, Arabic translations of the collects from the Gospels and Epistles were also made by his orders. It was his intention to have the whole scriptures translated into that language, agreeably to what is said to have been done at an early period of the Moorish dominion in Spain. ^f130

These measures, which were applauded by all enlightened men, met with the strenuous opposition of cardinal Ximenes, who, while he wished to be regarded as the patron of learning, was a determined enemy to the progress of knowledge. The archbishop had appealed to the authority of St. Paul, who said, “In the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” But the cardinal pleaded that the times were changed, and appealed to St. Peter. To put the sacred oracles into the hands of those who were but newly initiated into our religion, was, in his opinion, to throw pearls before swine. Nor did he think it a whit safer to intrust the old Christians with this treasure; for, (added he, changing the metaphor,) in this old age of the world, when religion is so far degenerated from that purity which prevailed in the time of St. Paul, the vulgar are in danger of wresting the scriptures to their destruction. Knowing that the common people are inclined to revere what is concealed, and to despise what is known, the wisest nations have always kept them at a distance from the mysteries of religion. Books written by men of approved piety, and calculated, by the examples which they propose, or by the fervor of their style, to raise the dejected, and recall the minds of men from the things of sense to divine contemplation, might be safely circulated in the vulgar tongue; ^f131 and it was the cardinal’s intention, as soon as he found leisure, to publish some works of this description; but the sacred scriptures ought to be exclusively preserved in the three languages in which the inscription on our Saviour’s cross was written; and if ever this rule should be neglected, the most pernicious effects would ensue. ^f132 This opinion, which is merely a commentary on the favorite maxim of the church of Rome, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, has met with the warm approbation of his biographer, and was afterwards produced as a proof of his prophetic gift, along with his miracles, in the application which the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso made to the papal court for his canonization. ^f133 The arguments of Ximenes were not of a kind to carry conviction to the minds of those who favored enlightened measures; but they were the arguments of a man who, unfortunately for the best interests of Spain, had even then acquired great influence in the councils of government, and continued for many years to have the chief direction of the affairs of the nation, both civil and ecclesiastical. The books which the cardinal had promised as a substitute for the Gospels and Epistles made their appearance, consisting of treatises of mystic or rather monastic devotion, and the lives of some of its most high-flying zealots, both male and female; such as, the Letters of Santa Catalina de Sena, of Santa Angela de Fulgino, and of Santa Matilda, the Degrees of San Juan Climaco, the Instructions of San Vicente Ferrer, and of Santa Clara, the Meditations of the Carthusian Thomas Landulpho, and the Life of St. Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. ^f134

The opposition of Ximenes, and the violent and impolitic measures which the government adopted against the Jews and Moors, checked the cultivation of oriental literature to such a degree, that, in the year 1535, when an enthusiastic scholar visited Spain, he found Hebrew neglected, and could not met with a single native acquainted with Arabic, except the venerable Nunez, who still recollected the characters of a language to which he had paid some attention in his youth. ^f135

A translation of the scriptures into Spanish, of which I shall afterwards speak, had probably little influence in preparing for the introduction of the reformed opinions, as all the copies of it appear to have been destroyed soon after it came from the press. Considerable light was thrown upon the sacred writings by those who studied them in the original languages, at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Pablo de San Maria of Burgos, commonly called Paulus Burgensis, a converted Jew, discovered the same acquaintance with Hebrew which distinguishes the Postilla, or notes on scripture, by Nicolas de Lira, to which he made additions. ^f136 Alfonso Tostado, bishop of Avila, who wrote commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament, and on Matthew, had formed correct notions of the literal and proper sense of scripture, and of the duty of an interpreter to adhere to it in opposition to the method of the allegorizing divines; but he swelled his works to an immoderate bulk, by indulging in digressions on common places. ^f137 Pedro de Osma, professor of theology at Salamanca, employed his talents in correcting the original text of the New Testament, by a critical collation of different manuscripts. He displayed the same freedom of opinion on doctrinal points; and in 1479 was forced to abjure eight propositions relating to the power of the pope, and the sacrament of penance, which were extracted from a book written by him on Confession, and condemned as erroneous by a council held at Alcala. ^f138 Besides his services in the cause of polite literature, Antonio Lebrixa wrote several works illustrative of the scriptures, for which he was brought before the Inquisition, and would have incurred the same censure as De Osma, had he not been so fortunate as to secure the protection of their Catholic Majesties. ^f139

By the labors of these men, together with the writings of their countryman Ludovicus Vives, who had settled in the Low Countries, and of his friend Erasmus, a salutary change was produced on the minds of the youth at the universities. They became disgusted at the barbarism of scholastic theology, read the scriptures for themselves, consulted them in the originals, and from these sources ventured to correct the errors of the Vulgate, and to expose the absurd and puerile interpretations which had so long passed current under the shade of ignorance and credulity.

Having put the reader in possession of the circumstances connected with the state of letters and knowledge which tended to facilitate the introduction of the reformed doctrine into Spain, I shall now take a view of the obstacles with which it had to contend, of which the most formidable by far was the Inquisition.

CHAPTER 3.

OF THE INQUISITION, AND OTHER OBSTACLES TO THE REFORMATION IN SPAIN.

SOON after the Roman empire became Christian, laws were enacted, subjecting those who propagated erroneous opinions to punishment, under the false idea that heresy, or error in matters of revelation, was a crime and an offence against the state. The penalties were in general moderate, compared with those which were decreed at a subsequent period. Manicheism, which was considered as eversive of the principles of natural religion, and dangerous to morals, was the only heresy visited with capital punishment; a penalty which was afterwards extended to the Donatists, who were chargeable with exciting tumults in various parts of the empire. The bishops of that time were far from soliciting the execution of these penal statutes, which in most instances had passed at their desire, or with their consent. They flattered themselves that the publication of severe laws, by the terror which it inspired, would repress the hardihood of daring innovators, and induce their deluded followers to listen to instruction, and return to the bosom of the faithful church. When Priscillian was put to death for Manicheism, at Treves in 384, St. Martin, the apostle of the French, remonstrated with the emperor Maximus against the deed, which was regarded with abhorrence by all the bishops of France and Italy. ^f140 St. Augustine protested to the proconsul of Africa, that, if capital punishment was inflicted on the Donatists, he and his clergy would suffer death at the hands of these turbulent heretics sooner than be instrumental in bringing them before the tribunals. ^f141 But it is easier to draw than to sheathe the sword of persecution; and the ecclesiastics of a following age were zealous in stimulating reluctant magistrates to execute these laws, and in procuring the application of them to persons who held opinions which their predecessors looked upon as harmless or laudable. In the eleventh century, capital punishment, even in its most dreadful form, that of burning alive, was extended to all who obstinately adhered to opinions differing from the received faith. ^f142

Historians have not pointed out with precision the period at which this extension of the penal code took place, or the grounds on which it proceeded. Instances of the practice occur previously to the imperial edict of Frederic II. in 1224, and even to that of Frederic I. in 1184. ^f143 It appears to me to have been at first introduced by confounding the different sects which arose with the followers of Manes. Taking advantage of the circumstances, that some individuals belonging to those who went by the names of Henricians, Arnoldists, Poor Men of Lyons, and Vaudois, held the leading tenet of Manicheism, the clergy fixed this stigma on the whole body, and called on magistrates to visit them with the penalty decreed against that odious heresy. In an ignorant age this charge was easily believed. It was in vain that the victims of persecution protested against the indiscriminate accusation, or disowned the sentiments imputed to them. By the time that undeniable facts cleared their innocence, the public mind had learned to view the severity of their fate with indifference or approbation; and the punishment of death, under the general phrase of delivering over to the secular arm, came to be considered as the common award for all who entertained opinions opposite to those of the church of Rome, or who presumed to inveigh against the corruptions of the priesthood.

Other causes, some of which had been long in operation, continued to work, in the course of the eleventh century, a great change on the criminal proceedings against heretics. The sentence of excommunication, which at first only excluded from the privileges of the church, was now considered as inflicting a mark of public infamy on those who incurred it; from which the transition was not difficult, in a superstitious age, to the idea that it deprived them of all the rights, natural or civil, of which they were formerly in possession. The unhappy individuals who were struck with this spiritual thunder, felt all the bonds which connected them with society suddenly dissolved, and were regarded as objects at once of divine execration and human abhorrence. Subjects threw off their allegiance to their legitimate sovereigns; sovereigns gave up their richest and most peaceable provinces to fire and sword; the territories of a vassal became lawful prey to his neighbors; and a man’s enemies were those of his own house. The Roman pontiffs, who had extended their authority by affecting an ardent zeal for the honor of the Christian faith, found a powerful engine for accomplishing their ambitious designs, in the crusades, undertaken at their instigation, to deliver the Holy Land, and the sepulchre of Christ, from the pollution of infidels. These mad expeditions, whose indirect influence was ultimately favorable to European civilization, were in the mean time productive of the worst effects. While they weakened the sovereigns who embarked in them, they increased the power of the popes, and placed at their disposal immense armies, which they could direct against all who opposed their measures. They perverted, in the minds of men, the essential principles of religion, justice, and humanity, by cherishing the false idea that it is meritorious to wage war for the glory of the Christian name,—by throwing the veil of sanctity over the greatest enormities of which a licentious soldiery might be guilty,—by conferring the pardon of their sins on all who arrayed themselves under the banners of the cross,—and by holding out the palm of martyrdom to such as should have the honor to fall in fighting against the enemies of the faith. Nor were the popes either dilatory or slack in availing themselves of these prejudices. Finding that their violent measures for suppressing the Albigenses were feebly seconded by the barons of Provence, they proclaimed a crusade against heretics, launched the sentence of excommunication against both superiors and vassals, and carried on a war of extermination in the south of France during a period of twenty years. It was amidst these scenes of blood and horror that the Inquisition arose.

Historians are divided in opinion as to the exact time at which the Inquisition was founded. Inquisitors and informers are mentioned in a law published by the emperor Theodosius against the Manicheans; but these were officers of justice appointed by the prefects, and differed entirely from the persons who became so notorious under these designations many centuries after that period. ^f144 The fundamental principle of that odious institution was undoubtedly recognized in 1184, by the council of Verona; which however established no separate tribunal for the pursuit of heretics, but left this task entirely in the hands of the bishops. Rainier, Castelnau, and St. Dominic, who were sent into France at different times from 1198 to 1206, had a commission from the pope to search for heretics, and in this sense may be called inquisitors; but they were invested with no judicial power to pronounce a definite sentence. ^f145 The council of the Lateran in 1218 made no innovation on the ancient practice. The council held at Toulouse in 1229, ordained that the bishops should appoint, in each parish of their respective dioceses, “one priest and two or three laics, who should engage upon oath to make a rigorous search after all heretics and their abettors, and for this purpose should visit every house from the garret to the cellar, together with all subterraneous places where they might conceal themselves.” ^f146 But the Inquisition, as a distinct tribunal, was not erected until the year 1233, when pope Gregory IX. took from the bishops the power of discovering and bringing to judgment the heretics who lurked in France, and committed that task to the Dominican friars. In consequence of this the tribunal was immediately set up in Toulouse, and afterwards in the neighboring cities, from which it was introduced into other countries of Europe. ^f147

It may be considered as a fact at least somewhat singular, that in the proceedings of the first Spanish council whose records have reached our time, we find a deeper stigma attached to the character of informers than to that of heretics. The council of Elvira, after limiting the duration of the penance of those who might fall into heresy, decreed that “if a catholic become an informer, and any one be put to death or proscribed in consequence of his denunciation, he shall not receive the communion, even at the hour of death.” ^f148 On a review of criminal proceedings in Spain anterior to the establishment of the court of Inquisition, it appears in general that heretics were more mildly treated there than in other countries. Jews who relapsed, after having been baptized, were subject to whipping and spare diet, according to the age of the offenders. ^f149 Those who apostatized to paganism, if nobles or freemen, were condemned to exile, and if slaves, to whipping and chains. ^f150 The general law against heretics was, that such as refused to recant, if priests, should be deprived of all their dignities and property, and if laics, that they should, in addition, be condemned to perpetual banishment. ^f151 Even after the barbarous custom of committing obstinate heretics to the flames had been introduced into other parts of Europe, Spain testified her aversion to sanguinary measures. In 1194, when Alfonso II. of Aragon, at the instigation of the legate of pope Celestine, published an edict, commanding the Vaudois, and all other sectaries, to quit his dominions, those who remained after the time specified were expressly exempted from suffering either death or the mutilation of their bodies. ^f152

No sooner had the Inquisition received the papal sanction, than measures were taken for having it introduced into Spain, where the Dominicans had already established convents of their order. In the course of the thirteenth century, inquisitorial tribunals were permanently erected in the principal towns of the kingdom of Aragon, from which they were extended to Navarre. ^f153 Though a papal brief was issued in 1236 for the special purpose of introducing the Holy Office into Castile, and Ferdinand III. surnamed the Saint, is said to have carried with his own hand the wood destined for burning of his subjects,—yet it does not appear that there ever was a permanent tribunal in that kingdom under the ancient form of the Inquisition; either because heresy had made little progress among the Castilians, or because they were averse to the new method of extirpating

_it. f154

The mode of proceeding in the court of Inquisition, when first erected, was simple, and differed very little from that which was followed in the ordinary courts of justice. In particular, the interrogatories put to persons accused, and to witnesses, were short and direct, evincing merely a desire to ascertain the truth on the subjects of inquiry. ^f155 But this simplicity soon gave place to a system of the most complicated and iniquitous circumvention. Grossly ignorant of judicial matters, the Dominicans modelled their new court after what is called in the Roman church, the Tribunal of Penance. Accustomed, in the confessional, to penetrate into the secrets of conscience, they converted to the destruction of the bodies of men all those arts which a false zeal had taught them to employ for the saving of their souls. Inflamed with a passion for extirpating heresy, and persuading themselves that the end sanctified the means, they not only acted upon, but formally laid down, as a rule for their conduct, maxims founded on the grossest deceit and artifice, according to which they sought in every way to ensnare their victims, and by means of false statements, delusory promises, and a tortuous course of examination, to betray them into confessions which proved fatal to their lives and fortunes. ^f156 To this mental torture was soon after added the use of bodily tortures, together with the concealment of the names of witnesses.

After this court had subsisted for two centuries and a half, it underwent what its friends have honored with the name of a reform; in consequence of which it became a more terrible engine of persecution than before. Under this new form it is usually called the Modern Inquisition, though it may with equal propriety bear the name of the Spanish, as it originated in Spain, and has been confined to that country, including Portugal, and the dominions subject to the two monarchies.

The war of the Albigenses was the pretext used by the popes for the establishment of the ancient Inquisition; the necessity of checking the apostasy of the converts from Judaism was urged as the reason for introducing the modern. While the Spaniards were engaged in continual wars with one another or with the Moors, the Jews, who had been settled for ages in the Peninsula, by addicting themselves to trade and commerce, had, in the fourteenth century, engrossed the wealth of the nation, and attained to great influence in the government both of Castile and Aragon. Those who were indebted to them, and those who envied them on account of the civil offices which they held, united in stirring up the religious prejudices of the populace against them; and in one year five thousand Jews fell a sacrifice to popular fury. With the view of saving their lives, many submitted to baptism, and it is computed that, in the course of a few years, nearly a million of persons renounced the law of Moses and made profession of the Christian faith. The number of converts, as they were called, was increased in the beginning of the fifteenth century, by the zeal of the Dominican missionaries, and especially of St. Vincent Ferrer, to whom the Spanish historians have ascribed more miracles and conversions than were wrought by the apostles. ^f157 These converts were called New Christians, and sometimes Marranos from a form of execration then in use among the Jews. As their adoption of the Christian profession proceeded from the fear of death, or a desire to secure secular emoluments, rather than internal persuasion, the greater part repented of having abjured the religion of their fathers, and resumed the practice of its rites in secret, while they publicly conformed to those of the Christians. This forced conformity could not fail to be painful to their minds, and was relaxed in proportion as the fears which they felt for their safety abated. The consequence was, that many of them were discovered by the monks, who cried out that if some severe means were not adopted to repress the evil, the whole body of converted Jews would soon relapse into their former habits, and the faith of the old Christians would be corrupted and overthrown by these concealed apostates with whom they were intermingled.—But, although more immediately intended to guard the fidelity of the New Christians, the modern Inquisition, like the ancient, was charged with the discovery and punishment of all kinds of heresy, and extended its jurisdiction over the Old Christians, as well as Jewish and Moorish converts.

It is proper that the names of those individuals to whom Spain owes this institution should not be forgotten. The most active were Felippe de Barberis, inquisitor of Sicily, and Alfonso de Hoyeda, prior of Seville, both of them Dominican friars, assisted by Nicolas Franco, bishop of Treviso, who was at that time nuncio from pope Sixtus IV. to the Spanish court. ^f158

The whole of Spain was at this period united into one kingdom by the marriage of Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile. Ferdinand readily acceded to a proposal which gave him the prospect of filling his coffers by means of confiscations; it was equally agreeable to Sixtus, from its tendency to promote the views of the court of Rome; and they succeeded, by the help of the friars, in overcoming the repugnance which it excited in the humane but superstitious mind of Isabella. The bull for establishing the Inquisition in Castile was issued on the 1st of November 1478; and on the 17th of September 1480, their catholic majesties named the first inquisitors, who commenced their proceedings on the 2d of January 1481, in the Dominican convent of St. Paul at Seville. The tribunal did not however assume a permanent form until two years after, when friar Thomas Torquemada, prior of Santa Cruz in the town of Segovia, was placed at its head, under the designation of inquisitor-general, first of Castile, and afterwards of Aragon. ^f159 Torquemada proceeded without delay to exercise the high powers with which he was intrusted, by choosing his assessors, and erecting subordinate tribunals in different cities of the united kingdom. Over the whole was placed the Council of the Supreme, consisting of the inquisitor-general as president, and three counsellors, two of whom were doctors of law. This regulated and controlled the inferior tribunals; and by its fundamental laws, the counsellors had a deliberative voice in all questions relating to civil law, but a consultative voice only in those which appertained to ecclesiastical law, of which Torquemada was constituted the sole judge by the apostolical bulls. These counsellors appear to have been appointed with the view of preventing encroachments on the secular authorities, and accordingly altercations did sometimes arise between the inquisitors-general and the counsellors of the Supreme; but as the latter were all of the clerical order, and as no clear line of distinction between civil and ecclesiastical affairs was drawn, the questions which came before the court were generally brought under the rules of canon law, or in other words, decided according to the pleasure of the president. Torquemada’s next employment was to form a body of laws for the government of his new tribunal. This appeared in 1484; additions were made to it from time to time; and, as a diversity of practice had crept into the subordinate courts, the inquisitor-general Valdes, in 1561, made a revisal of the whole code, which was published in eighty-one articles, and continues, with the exception of a few slight alterations, to be the law to this day. ^f160 From these constitutions, as illustrated by the authentic documents connected with the history of the Inquisition which have been lately made public, a correct idea may be formed of the mode of process observed in that dreadful tribunal. Instead however of entering here into details which may be found elsewhere, I shall select such particulars as show that the Inquisition possessed powers which enabled it effectually to arrest the progress of knowledge, and to crush every attempt which might be made for the reformation of religion and the church.

The first thing which presents itself to our view, is the immense apparatus which the Inquisition possesses for the discovery of heresy, and the apprehension of those who are suspected of having incurred its taint. Deceived by the importance attached to denunciation in the instructions of the Holy Office, some writers would lead us to believe that there is no way in which a process can be commenced before the Inquisition, except by a formal charge preferred by some individual; whereas the truth is, that information, in whatever way it may be obtained, is sufficient for this purpose. ^f161 The Inquisition is not only a court of justice, but also, as its name intimates, a body of police, employed in discovering the offenses on which it is afterwards to sit in judgment. Every individual belonging to its tribunals, supreme or subordinate, from the inquisitor-general down to the lowest alguazil or familiar, is charged with this employment. At those periods when its vigilance was aroused by the alarm of heresy, it had its secret spies and authorized agents at every port and pass of the kingdom, as regularly as government had its tide-waiters and custom-house officers, armed with authority to arrest the persons and property of all who incurred their suspicions. In addition to its internal resources, it avails itself of the superstitious prejudices of the people, wh