by Henry Kamen
León de Castro was not the only critic. There were others, wrote Montano in 1579, “men of letters who seek to find and note some error in my writings, making extraordinary efforts to do so.”115 It is easy to recognize in his words the conviction that he alone was right, and the others were mistaken. The conflict was one that all scholars have experienced, but in Montano’s case the fact is that the criticisms made of the Polyglot are now seen to have been in part justified. He was fortunate that the Holy Office was not brought into the quarrel.
Although the storm passed, Montano was the object of further, and this time indirect, attacks. In 1592 he was instrumental in bringing about a profound change in the spiritual life of José de Sigüenza, Jeronimite historian and monk of the Escorial, where Montano was librarian. Montano, it has been suggested, had heterodox views on religion that he had picked up in the Netherlands and may have communicated to Sigüenza. No evidence for this thesis has been found, but it is undeniable that Montano had an enormous influence on Sigüenza. In 1592 some of Sigüenza’s malicious colleagues, motivated in part by hostility to Montano’s Hebraic studies, denounced Sigüenza to the Inquisition. It was a brief three-month trial, and Sigüenza was completely exonerated.116
Another famous man of letters to fall foul of the Holy Office was Francisco Sánchez, “el Brocense,” professor of grammar at Salamanca. He was denounced in 1584 on charges of loose and presumptuous opinions on theological matters, and summoned before the tribunal of Valladolid. Although the tribunal voted for his arrest and the sequestration of his goods, the Suprema altered the sentence to one of grave reprimand only. Brocense’s turbulent and intemperate mind was not put off by this narrow escape, and he returned to the battle, disputing theology with theologians (once again it was a case of conflict between theologians and grammarians) and expressing contempt for Aquinas and the Dominicans. In 1593, at the age of eighty, this excitable old man found himself in trouble once more. Reports of his speeches were relayed to the tribunal of Valladolid, and in 1596 the Inquisition began proceedings. No action was taken until 1600, when he was put under house arrest and his papers sequestrated. Among the charges raised against him was that “he always subjects his understanding to obedience to the faith; but that in matters that are not of faith he has no wish to subject his understanding.”117 In ill health and humiliated by his treatment, Sánchez died at the beginning of December 1600. Because of the scandal hanging over his name, he was denied funeral honors by the University of Salamanca.
These were virtually the only intellectuals of that time to have had brushes with religious authority, and in each case the conflict was provoked not by the Inquisition but by rivalry over the interpretation of sacred texts at one university, Salamanca. Nothing comparable happened in the rest of the peninsula. We cannot therefore suggest that the Holy Office was in some way a threat to freedom of thought in Spain. There were, however, two significant and worrying aspects to these events. One was the anti-Semitic tenor to the prosecutions. It is notable that three of the accused—Luis de León, Gaspar de Grajal and Alonso Gudiel—were of converso origin; and witnesses claimed that Cantalapiedra was also. “Grajal and Fray Luis are well known to be conversos, so I believe they wish to blot out our Catholic Faith and return to their law,” stated a witness.118 A second aspect for concern was expressed by the accused themselves. When Luis de León heard of the arrest of his colleague Grajal he wrote indignantly to a friend in Granada, “This fate of the master has scandalized everyone and given just cause for keeping silent out of fear.” On another occasion, Fray Luis informs us, he had been lecturing about the fraternal correction of heretics when
those students who were furthest from the rostrum signaled that I should speak louder, because my voice was hoarse and they could not hear well. Whereupon I said, “I am hoarse, and it’s better to speak low like this so that the inquisitors don’t hear us.” I don’t know if this offended anyone.119
As a quantity of evidence—some of it noted elsewhere in this book—demonstrates, Spaniards in that age did not hesitate to express opinions about anything they wished to criticize, including the Inquisition. What Luis de León seemed to be implying was something different: the possibility that motivated persons would use existing legal processes to crush a differing point of view. It was a real fear, which haunted many in early modern Europe and continues to exist in many societies even today.120 The prosecutions inspired a strong reaction from the Jesuit historian Mariana. In a famous passage, he said that the case
caused anxiety to many until they should know the outcome. There was dissatisfaction that persons illustrious for their learning and reputation had to defend themselves in prison from so serious a threat to their fame and good name. It was a sad state when virtuous men, because of their great achievements, had to undergo hostility, accusations and injuries from those who should have been their defenders. . . . The case in question depressed the spirits of many who observed the plight of another, seeing how much affliction threatened those who spoke freely what they thought. In this way, many passed over to the other camp, or trimmed their sails to the wind. What else was there to do? The greatest of follies is to exert oneself in vain, and to weary oneself without winning anything but hatred. Those who agreed with current ideas did so with even greater eagerness, and entertained opinions that were approved of and were the least dangerous, without any great concern for the truth.121
The problems of a handful of persons at Salamanca help us to set in perspective the view that the Inquisition was an enemy of intellectuals. Conflicts were surprisingly few, in part probably because writers steered clear of trouble. There were occasional prosecutions that in no way involved intellectual freedom. An example is that of the Seville writer Juan de Mal Lara. From 1561 to 1562 he was imprisoned by the Seville Inquisition, not for any errors but for allegedly writing defamatory verses.122 The incident had no ill effect on his career. Conflicts between different approaches to learning or to spirituality inevitably continued. Where they could, protagonists would bring in the Inquisition on their side, using where possible (as in the Salamanca cases) anti-Semitic insinuations.
Almost invariably the Inquisition, like other policing bodies in all times and places, tended to operate in favor of the conservatives. When a learned and conservative Dominican at Salamanca in 1571 complained that “in this university there is great play about novelty and little about the antiquity of our religion and faith,”123 he knew he could count on the Inquisition. When the inquisitorial prosecutor of el Brocense alleged that the latter was “a rash, insolent heretic, temerarious and stubborn like all grammarians and Erasmians,”124 he was openly taking sides against university professors who analyzed texts (they were “grammarians”) and studied classical languages (“Erasmians”). The dispute among university teachers over how one should analyze texts of classical authors, and even of the Bible, became perilous ground because some inquisitors felt they should have a voice in it. It was no wonder that when the humanist Pedro Juan Núñez wrote to Jerónimo de Zurita in 1556, he complained that the inquisitors did not wish people to study humanities “because of the dangers present in them, for when a humanist corrects an error in Cicero he has to correct the same error in Scripture. This and other similar problems drive me insane, and often take away from me any wish to carry on.”125
The inquisitors, of course, did not create the trend nor set the pace. They were only a small part of an attitude that could be found in most of the post-Reformation world. In the same way the reaction against unorthodox spirituality was common to much of Counter-Reformation Europe, and the Inquisition was no innovator in this respect. A general (and not simply inquisitorial) suspicion of illuminism and certain types of popular religion explains the difficulties that St. Teresa of Avila experienced. On one occasion, she remarks in her autobiographical Life, “people came to me in great alarm, saying that these were difficult times, that some charge might be raised against me, and that I might have to appear before the inquis
itors. But this merely amused me and made me laugh. I never had any fear on that score.”
In 1574 the autobiography, still in manuscript form, attracted suspicion in common with writings by some other beatas. Her adviser, Father Báñez, recommended that it not be published until after her death. She had problems subsequently in 1576 when denunciations were made to the tribunal of Seville against her and her reformed Carmelites, but the Inquisition did not press the matter. Seriously worried, she told one of her advisers, Father Gracián, “Father, would that we could all be burnt for Christ,” and on another occasion, “Father, the Holy Inquisition, sent by God to protect his faith, is hardly likely to harm someone who has such faith as I.”126 After her death (1582) further denunciations were made against her in 1589–91 by Alonso de la Fuente, a friar with an obsession about illuminists, but the Inquisition ignored him.
The continuing history of the later alumbrados, with which the incident of St. Teresa is closely related, revolves around the denunciations made by Alonso de la Fuente from 1573 onwards against groups of adepts in Extremadura and later in Andalucia. Undoubtedly crazed, with a burning hatred of Jews and Jesuits, Fray Alonso was observant enough to be able to identify the new illuminism and its leaders, most of whom were clergy. In the town of Zafra, according to him, “there are seventy priests, and sixty of them are Jews.” He also picked on the influential priest Juan de Avila, who was working in Baeza, and accused him of being an illuminist. The inquisitors happened to value his information, which helped make possible his short (he died in 1594) and destructive career. At an auto de fe in Llerena on 14 June 1579, twenty alumbrados were among the sixty penitents. The group had unusual beliefs, rejecting the Church and Christ and centering their devotion on “God.” Their leader, Hernando Alvarez, “said that Jesus Christ was good for nothing except to be a gipsy.” Subsequently, alumbrados in Andalucia appeared in an auto held at Córdoba on 21 January 1590.127
An important undercurrent in the academic disputes of the time was, we have seen, the suspicion directed against writers of Jewish origin. The identification of creativity with conversos became, in the hands of the twentieth-century scholar Américo Castro, a tool of literary analysis.128 A key part in this analysis was concerned with the impact of the Inquisition on conversos and, by implication, on Spanish literature. Castro argued in several brilliant essays that the Semitic background of Spain, as expressed through the careers of thinkers and writers of Jewish origin, contributed to the formation of an intense creative consciousness. In line with the Liberal preconceptions of his time, he argued that the Inquisition crushed all intellectual life but converso creativity was rich enough to be stimulated even under persecution. Enthusiastic followers of his thesis, using racial origins as a key to their approach, offered a vision of peninsular history in which the crucial element was the suffering “converso,”129 seen as the key to Spain’s genius.
The most notable attempt to use the interpretation was in studies on the Celestina, on the premise that its author, Fernando de Rojas, was a converso.130 It is incontestable that some of the best known figures of Hispanic culture in the time of the Inquisition were of Jewish origin. Among the religious (and literary) figures were the reformer St. Teresa of Avila and the poet St. John of the Cross. Diligent researchers have put together a list of many other significant names from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, all of them occupying a central place in Hispanic culture as clergy, poets, preachers, nuns, writers and scholars. They have suggested that many other personages, such as Hernando de Talavera, Arias Montano and Bartolomé de las Casas, were also of converso origin.131 The most enthusiastic have not hesitated to claim Miguel de Cervantes and the painter Diego de Velázquez as conversos. The conclusions arrived at by supporters of this approach are principally two. First, Jewish blood was the most creative element in Hispanic culture. Second, since the Inquisition actively discriminated against people of Jewish origin, it was directly responsible for crushing Spanish creativity.
These hypotheses—which have for the last century provoked deep ideological quarrels among Castilian scholars132—concern us here only with respect to the role of the Inquisition. A crucial distinction should probably be made between, on one hand, the existence of anti-Semitic sentiment in Spanish society and, on the other hand, the persecution of individual converso writers. Thanks to generations of polemic and prejudice, anti-Semitism was commonplace in Golden Age Spain, and has been endemic in Spanish society down to today. It could be found anywhere, in popular conduct and elite attitudes, in universities and in the government. Inquisitors, like others, often shared an anti-Semitic viewpoint and brought it to bear in their work. In their experience, heresy had nearly always (judaizers, alumbrados, some Lutherans) been associated with people of Jewish origin.
The prominence in Spanish culture of some persons of Jewish origin, however, is itself an argument against assuming too easily that Spain’s society and Inquisition were rabidly anti-Semitic, or that peninsular culture was somehow damaged by it. The example of Teresa of Avila speaks for itself. She was notoriously of converso stock. Her grandfather was punished by the Inquisition in 1485 for allegedly judaizing. Yet the fact was never cited against her nor did it affect her career, or her subsequent adoption as patron saint of Spain in the seventeenth century. Numerous other cases may be cited (see chapter 12), among them the humanist Juan Luis Vives, who spent his entire career outside Spain.
Born in Valencia city of converso parents who continued to practice their Jewish religion in secret, Vives was sent by his father to study abroad in Paris at the age of sixteen in 1509, a year after the death of his mother in an epidemic. His life and career were thereafter based in the Netherlands, and though always conscious of his roots he was no longer an active part of the Hispanic world. Early in 1522 he heard (too late to be able to profit from it) that the second duke of Alba, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, had invited him to return to Spain as tutor to his grandson.133 Even though the duke may have known of Vives’s Jewish origins, he and his wife certainly harbored no anti-Semitic prejudices, and members of their family were subsequently active patrons of Teresa of Avila. In the same year, 1522, Vives was invited to occupy a chair at the University of Alcalá, but hesitated. Family circumstances combined to complicate his life. In 1520 his father was arrested by the Inquisition as a judaizer and burnt alive in 1524. Four years later his long-dead mother was also prosecuted and her bones disinterred and burnt.134 This shocking history had no impact on his standing in Spain, where he was always held in the highest respect by the establishment and his books circulated without problems. In the event, he chose to go to England rather than Spain, a country where, he felt, “everything is darkness and night, no less in what is happening than in what I feel.” The silence over his family background was a sign that Spaniards wished to conceal a problem. Indeed, his Jewish origins were hidden so effectively that scholars only learned about them in the twentieth century. For his part, Vives lost hope of ever achieving recognition in his homeland. Shortly before his death he stated that “Spaniards are indifferent to study. I shall be read there by few, and understood by even fewer.”135
Public figures continued to have problems if their converso origins clashed with anti-Semitic prejudices. But, as in the case of St. Teresa, there was no systematic pressure. A case in point is that of Diego Pérez de Valdivia, apostle of the Counter-Reformation in Catalonia in the 1580s.136 Of converso origin, he spent several months in the cells of the Inquisition of Córdoba, where he was accused of asserting, among other things, that conversos were better people than non-conversos, and that “it is a sin to observe the principles of racial purity.” The incident was quietly buried by all concerned. Pérez spent his subsequent career in Barcelona where, with the support of bishops, Inquisition and clergy, he pursued a prominent career as religious writer, reformer and preacher.
A prolonged discussion of such cases—of which there are many—is unlikely to have much impact on those who share in
the confrontation—dating back to the early nineteenth century—between two deeply entrenched ideological positions. One position, shared by the Liberals of that period and by “progressives” down to today, declares the Inquisition responsible for Spain’s intellectual backwardness and its alleged isolation from the modern world and from Europe. The other, held to no less passionately by conservatives, controverts these claims.
There are great names among the progressives. “It would seem superfluous to insist,” argued the historian Henry Charles Lea, “that a system of severe repression of thought by all the instrumentalities of Inquisition and state is an ample explanation of the decadence of Spanish learning and literature.”137 For the English Catholic historian Lord Acton, the injury inflicted on literature by the Inquisition was “the most obvious and conspicuous fact of modern history.”138 The scholar Américo Castro put the argument succinctly. Writing in exile from his study in Harvard, he asserted that “not thinking, not knowing, not reading” was the fate of Spaniards crushed by “the sadism and lust for plunder of those of the Holy Office.”139
On the opposing side, among the Catholic voices that expressed dissent the most striking was that of a young scholar of twenty-two, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who produced a brilliant essay on Spanish Science (1876), which aimed to prove that the Inquisition had not eliminated learning in Spain. In a passage in his Historia de los heterodóxos españoles (1880), he denounced the Liberals passionately: