History of The Reign of Philip The Second King of Spain History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain Part 18

[Sidenote: PHILIP'S DEPARTURE.]

Having completed all his arrangements, about the middle of August the king proceeded to Zealand, where, in the port of Flus.h.i.+ng, lay a gallant fleet, waiting to take him and the royal suite to Spain. It consisted of fifty Spanish and forty other vessels,--all well manned, and victualled for a much longer voyage.[429] Philip was escorted to the place of embarkation by a large body of Flemish n.o.bles, together with the foreign amba.s.sadors and the duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Savoy. A curious scene is reported to have taken place as he was about to go on board. Turning abruptly round to the prince of Orange, who had attended him on the journey, he bluntly accused him of being the true source of the opposition which his measures had encountered in the States-General.

William, astonished at the suddenness of the attack, replied that the opposition was to be regarded, not as the act of an individual, but of the states. "No," rejoined the incensed monarch, shaking him at the same time violently by the wrist, "not the states, but you, you, you!"[430]

an exclamation deriving additional bitterness from the fact that the word _you_, thus employed, in the Castilian was itself indicative of contempt. William did not think it prudent to reply, nor did he care to trust himself with the other Flemish lords on board the royal squadron.[431]

The royal company being at length all on board, on the twentieth of August, 1559, the fleet weighed anchor; and Philip, taking leave of the duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Savoy, and the rest of the n.o.ble train who attended his embarkation, was soon wafted from the sh.o.r.es,--to which he was never to return.

Luc-Jean-Joseph Vandervynckt, to whom I have repeatedly had occasion to refer in the course of the preceding chapter, was a Fleming,--born at Ghent in 1691. He was educated to the law, became eminent in his profession, and at the age of thirty-eight was made a member of the council of Flanders. He employed his leisure in studying the historical antiquities of his own country. At the suggestion of Coblentz, prime minister of Maria Theresa, he compiled his work on the Troubles of the Netherlands. It was designed for the instruction of the younger branches of the imperial family, and six copies only of it were at first printed, in 1765. Since the author's death, which took place in 1779, when he had reached the great age of eighty-eight, the work has been repeatedly published.

As Vandervynckt had the national archives thrown open to his inspection, he had access to the most authentic sources of information. He was a man of science and discernment, fair-minded, and temperate in his opinions, which gives value to a book that contains, moreover, much interesting anecdote, not elsewhere to be found. The work, though making only four volumes, covers a large s.p.a.ce of historical ground,--from the marriage of Philip the Fair, in 1495, to the peace of Westphalia, in 1648. Its literary execution is by no means equal to its other merits. The work is written in French; but Vandervynckt, unfortunately, while he both wrote and spoke Flemish, and even Latin, with facility, was but indifferently acquainted with French.

CHAPTER III.

PROTESTANTISM IN SPAIN.

Philip's Arrival in Spain.--The Reformed Doctrines.--Their Suppression.--Autos da Fe.--Prosecution of Carranza.--Extinction of Heresy.--Fanaticism of the Spaniards.

1559.

The voyage of King Philip was a short and prosperous one. On the twenty-ninth of August, 1559, he arrived off the port of Laredo. But while he was in sight of land, the weather, which had been so propitious, suddenly changed. A furious tempest arose, which scattered his little navy. Nine of the vessels foundered, and though the monarch had the good fortune, under the care of an experienced pilot, to make his escape in a boat, and reach the sh.o.r.e in safety, he had the mortification to see the s.h.i.+p which had borne him go down with the rest, and with her the inestimable cargo he had brought from the Low Countries. It consisted of curious furniture, tapestries, gems, pieces of sculpture, and paintings,--the rich productions of Flemish and Italian art, which his father, the emperor, had been employed many years of his life in collecting. Truly was it said of Charles, that "he had sacked the land only to feed the ocean."[432] To add to the calamity, more than a thousand persons perished in this s.h.i.+pwreck.[433]

The king, without delay, took the road to Valladolid; but on arriving at that capital, whether depressed by his late disaster, or from his habitual dislike of such empty parade, he declined the honors, with which the loyal inhabitants would have greeted the return of their sovereign to his dominions. Here he was cordially welcomed by his sister, the Regent Joanna, who, long since weary of the cares of sovereignty, resigned the sceptre into his hands, with a better will than that with which most persons would have received it. Here, too, he had the satisfaction of embracing his son Carlos, the heir to his empire. The length of Philip's absence may have allowed him to see some favorable change in the person of the young prince, though, if report be true, there was little change for the better in his disposition, which, headstrong and imperious, had already begun to make men tremble for the future destinies of their country.

Philip had not been many days in Valladolid when his presence was celebrated by one of those exhibitions, which, unhappily for Spain, maybe called national. This was an _auto da fe_, not, however, as formerly, of Jews and Moors, but of Spanish Protestants. The Reformation had been silently, but not slowly, advancing in the Peninsula; and intelligence of this, as we have already seen, was one cause of Philip's abrupt departure from the Netherlands. The brief but disastrous attempt at a religious revolution in Spain is an event of too much importance to be pa.s.sed over in silence by the historian.

[Sidenote: THE REFORMED DOCTRINES.]

Notwithstanding the remote position of Spain, under the imperial sceptre of Charles she was brought too closely into contact with the other states of Europe not to feel the shock of the great religious reform which was shaking those states to their foundations. Her most intimate relations, indeed, were with those very countries in which the seeds of the Reformation were first planted. It was no uncommon thing for Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, to be indebted for some portion of their instruction to German universities. Men of learning, who accompanied the emperor, became familiar with the religious doctrines so widely circulated in Germany and Flanders. The troops gathered the same doctrines from the Lutheran soldiers, who occasionally served with them under the imperial banners. These opinions, crude for the most part as they were, they brought back to their own country; and a curiosity was roused which prepared the mind for the reception of the great truths which were quickening the other nations of Europe. Men of higher education, on their return to Spain, found the means of disseminating these truths. Secret societies were established; meetings were held; and, with the same secrecy as in the days of the early Christians, the Gospel was preached and explained to the growing congregation of the faithful. The greatest difficulty was the want of books. The enterprise of a few self-devoted proselytes at length overcame this difficulty.

A Castilian version of the Bible had been printed in Germany. Various Protestant publications, whether originating in the Castilian or translated into that language, appeared in the same country. A copy, now and then, in the possession of some private individual, had found its way, without detection, across the Pyrenees. These instances were rare, when a Spaniard named Juan Hernandez, resident in Geneva, where he followed the business of a corrector of the press, undertook, from no other motive but zeal for the truth, to introduce a larger supply of the forbidden fruit into his native land.

With great adroitness, he evaded the vigilance of the custom-house officers, and the more vigilant spies of the Inquisition, and in the end succeeded in landing two large casks filled with prohibited works, which were quickly distributed among the members of the infant church. Other intrepid converts followed the example of Hernandez, and with similar success; so that, with the aid of books and spiritual teachers, the number of the faithful multiplied daily throughout the country.[434]

Among this number was a much larger proportion, it was observed, of persons of rank and education than is usually found in like cases; owing doubtless to the circ.u.mstance that it was this cla.s.s of persons who had most frequented the countries where the Lutheran doctrines were taught.

Thus the Reformed Church grew and prospered, not indeed as it had prospered in the freer atmospheres of Germany and Britain, but as well as it could possibly do under the blighting influence of the Inquisition; like some tender plant, which, nurtured in the shade, waits only for a more genial season for its full expansion. That season was not in reserve for it in Spain.

It may seem strange that the spread of the Reformed religion should so long have escaped the detection of the agents of the Holy Office. Yet it is certain that the first notice which the Spanish inquisitors received of the fact was from their brethren abroad. Some ecclesiastics in the train of Philip, suspecting the heresy of several of their own countrymen in the Netherlands, had them seized and sent to Spain, to be examined by the Inquisition. On a closer investigation, it was found that a correspondence had long been maintained between these persons and their countrymen, of a similar persuasion with themselves, at home. Thus the existence, though not the extent, of the Spanish Reformation was made known.[435]

No sooner was the alarm sounded, than Paul the Fourth, quick to follow up the scent of heresy in any quarter of his pontifical dominions, issued a brief, in February, 1558, addressed to the Spanish inquisitor-general. In this brief, his holiness enjoins it on the head of the tribunal to spare no efforts to detect and exterminate the growing evil; and he empowers that functionary to arraign and bring to condign punishment all suspected of heresy, of whatever rank or profession,--whether bishops or archbishops, n.o.bles, kings, or emperors.

Paul the Fourth was fond of contemplating himself as seated in the chair of the Innocents and the Gregories, and like them setting his pontifical foot on the necks of princes. His natural arrogance was probably not diminished by the concessions which Philip the Second had thought proper to make to him at the close of the Roman war.

Philip, far from taking umbrage at the swelling tone of this apostolical mandate, followed it up, in the same year, by a monstrous edict, borrowed from one in the Netherlands, which condemned all who bought, sold, or read prohibited works to be burned alive.

In the following January, Paul, to give greater efficacy to this edict, published another bull, in which he commanded all confessors, under pain of excommunication, to enjoin on their penitents to inform against all persons, however nearly allied to them, who might be guilty of such practices. To quicken the zeal of the informer, Philip, on his part, revived a law fallen somewhat into disuse, by which the accuser was to receive one fourth of the confiscated property of the convicted party.

And finally, a third bull from Paul allowed the inquisitors to withhold a pardon from the recanting heretic, if any doubt existed of his sincerity; thus placing the life as well as fortune of the unhappy prisoner entirely at the mercy of judges who had an obvious interest in finding him guilty. In this way the pope and the king continued to play into each other's hands, and while his holiness artfully spread the toils, the king devised the means for driving the quarry into them.[436]

Fortunately for these plans, the Inquisition was at this time under the direction of a man peculiarly fitted to execute them. This was Fernando Valdes, cardinal-archbishop of Seville, a person of a hard, inexorable nature, and possessed of as large a measure of fanaticism as ever fell to a grand-inquisitor since the days of Torquemada. Valdes readily availed himself of the terrible machinery placed under his control.

Careful not to alarm the suspected parties, his approaches were slow and stealthy. He was the chief of a tribunal which sat in darkness, and which dealt by invisible agents. He worked long and silently under ground before firing the mine which was to bury his enemies in a general ruin.

[Sidenote: SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORM.]

His spies were everywhere abroad, mingling with the suspected, and insinuating themselves into their confidence. At length, by the treachery of some, and by working on the nervous apprehensions or the religions scruples of others, he succeeded in detecting the lurking-places of the new heresy, and the extent of ground which it covered. This was much larger than had been imagined, although the Reformation in Spain seemed less formidable from the number of its proselytes than from their character and position. Many of them were ecclesiastics, especially intrusted with maintaining the purity of the faith. The quarters in which the heretical doctrines most prevailed were Aragon, which held an easy communication with the Huguenots of France, and the ancient cities of Seville and Valladolid, indebted less to any local advantages than to the influence of a few eminent men, who had early embraced the faith of the Reformers.

At length, the preliminary information having been obtained, the proscribed having been marked out, the plan of attack settled, an order was given for the simultaneous arrest of all persons suspected of heresy, throughout the kingdom. It fell like a thunderbolt on the unhappy victims, who had gone on with their secret a.s.sociations, little suspecting the ruin that hung over them. No resistance was attempted.

Men and women, churchmen and laymen, persons of all ranks and professions, were hurried from their homes, and lodged in the secret chambers of the Inquisition. Yet these could not furnish accommodations for the number, and many were removed to the ordinary prisons, and even to convents and private dwellings. In Seville alone eight hundred were arrested on the first day. Fears were entertained of an attempt at rescue, and an additional guard was stationed over the places of confinement. The inquisitors were in the condition of a fisherman whose cast has been so successful that the draught of fishes seems likely to prove too heavy for his net.[437]

The arrest of one party gradually led to the detection of others.

Dragged from his solitary dungeon before the secret tribunal of the Inquisition, alone, without counsel to aid or one friendly face to cheer him, without knowing the name of his accuser, without being allowed to confront the witnesses who were there to swear away his life, without even a sight of his own process, except such garbled extracts as the wily judges thought fit to communicate, is it strange that the unhappy victim, in his perplexity and distress, should have been drawn into disclosures fatal to his a.s.sociates and himself? If these disclosures were not to the mind of his judges, they had only to try the efficacy of the torture,--the rack, the cord, and the pulley,--until, when every joint had been wrenched from its socket, the barbarous tribunal was compelled to suspend, not terminate, the application, from the inability of the sufferer to endure it. Such were the dismal scenes enacted in the name of religion, and by the ministers of religion, as well as of the Inquisition,--scenes to which few of those who had once witnessed them, and escaped with life, dared ever to allude. For to reveal the secrets of the Inquisition was death.[438]

At the expiration of eighteen months from the period of the first arrests, many of the trials had been concluded, the doom of the prisoners was sealed, and it was thought time that the prisons should disgorge their superfluous inmates. Valladolid was selected as the theatre of the first _auto da fe_, both from the importance of the capital and the presence of the court, which would thus sanction and give greater dignity to the celebration. This event took place in May, 1559. The Regent Joanna, the young prince of the Asturias, Don Carlos, and the princ.i.p.al grandees of the court, were there to witness the spectacle. By rendering the heir of the crown thus early familiar with the tender mercies of the Holy Office, it may have been intended to conciliate his favor to that inst.i.tution. If such was the object, according to the report it signally failed, since the woeful spectacle left no other impressions on the mind of the prince than those of indignation and disgust.

The example of Valladolid was soon followed by _autos da fe_ in Granada, Toledo, Seville, Barcelona,--in short, in the twelve capitals in which tribunals of the Holy Office were established. A second celebration at Valladolid was reserved for the eighth of October in the same year, when it would be graced by the presence of the sovereign himself. Indeed, as several of the processes had been concluded some months before this period, there is reason to believe that the sacrifice of more than one of the victims had been postponed, in order to give greater effect to the spectacle.[439]

The _auto da fe_--"act of faith"--was the most imposing, as it was the most awful, of the solemnities authorized by the Roman Catholic Church.

It was intended, somewhat profanely, as has been intimated, to combine the pomp of the Roman triumph with the terrors of the day of judgment.[440] It may remind one quite as much of those b.l.o.o.d.y festivals prepared for the entertainment of the Caesars in the Colisaeum. The religions import of the _auto da fe_ was intimated by the circ.u.mstance of its being celebrated on a Sunday, or some other holiday of the Church. An indulgence for forty days was granted by his holiness to all who should be present at the spectacle; as if the appet.i.te for witnessing the scenes of human suffering required to be stimulated by a bounty; that too in Spain, where the amus.e.m.e.nts were, and still are, of the most sanguinary character.

The scene for this second _auto da fe_ at Valladolid was the great square in front of the church of St. Francis. At one end a platform was raised, covered with rich carpeting, on which were ranged the seats of the inquisitors, emblazoned with the arms of the Holy Office. Near to this was the royal gallery, a private entrance to which secured the inmates from molestation by the crowd. Opposite to this gallery a large scaffold was erected, so as to be visible from all parts of the arena, and was appropriated to the unhappy martyrs who were to suffer in the _auto_.

At six in the morning all the bells in the capital began to toll, and a solemn procession was seen to move from the dismal fortress of the Inquisition. In the van marched a body of troops, to secure a free pa.s.sage for the procession. Then came the condemned, each attended by two familiars of the Holy Office, and those who were to suffer at the stake by two friars, in addition, exhorting the heretic to abjure his errors. Those admitted to penitence wore a sable dress; while the unfortunate martyr was enveloped in a loose sack of yellow cloth,--the _san benito_,--with his head surmounted by a cap of pasteboard of a conical form, which, together with the cloak, was embroidered with figures of flames and of devils fanning and feeding them; all emblematical of the destiny of the heretic's soul in the world to come, as well as of his body in the present. Then came the magistrates of the city, the judges of the courts, the ecclesiastical orders, and the n.o.bles of the land on horseback. These were followed by the members of the dread tribunal, and the fiscal, bearing a standard of crimson damask, on one side of which were displayed the arms of the Inquisition, and on the other the insignia of its founders, Sixtus the Fifth and Ferdinand the Catholic. Next came a numerous train of familiars, well mounted, among whom were many gentry of the province, proud to act as the body-guard of the Holy Office. The rear was brought up by an immense concourse of the common people, stimulated on the present occasion, no doubt, by the loyal desire to see their new sovereign, as well as by the ambition to share in the triumphs of the _auto da fe_. The number thus drawn together from the capital and the country, far exceeding what was usual on such occasions, is estimated by one present at full two hundred thousand.[441]

[Sidenote: AUTOS DA FE.]

As the mult.i.tude defiled into the square, the inquisitors took their place on the seats prepared for their reception. The condemned were conducted to the scaffold, and the royal station was occupied by Philip, with the different members of his household. At his side sat his sister, the late regent, his son, Don Carlos, his nephew, Alexander Farnese, several foreign amba.s.sadors, and the princ.i.p.al grandees and higher ecclesiastics in attendance on the court. It was an august a.s.sembly of the greatest and the proudest in the land. But the most indifferent spectator, who had a spark of humanity in his bosom, might have turned with feelings of admiration from this array of worldly power, to the poor martyr, who, with no support but what he drew from within, was prepared to defy this power, and to lay down his life in vindication of the rights of conscience. Some there may have been, in that large concourse, who shared in these sentiments. But their number was small indeed in comparison with those who looked on the wretched victim as the enemy of G.o.d, and his approaching sacrifice as the most glorious triumph of the Cross.

The ceremonies began with a sermon, "the sermon of the faith," by the bishop of Zamora. The subject of it may well be guessed, from the occasion. It was no doubt plentifully larded with texts of Scripture, and, unless the preacher departed from the fas.h.i.+on of the time, with pa.s.sages from the heathen writers, however much out of place they may seem in an orthodox discourse.

When the bishop had concluded, the grand-inquisitor administered an oath to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude, who on their knees solemnly swore to defend the Inquisition, to maintain the purity of the faith, and to inform against any one who should swerve from it. As Philip repeated an oath of similar import, he suited the action to the word, and, rising from his seat, drew his sword from its scabbard, as if to announce himself the determined champion of the Holy Office. In the earlier _autos_ of the Moorish and Jewish infidels, so humiliating an oath had never been exacted from the sovereign.

After this, the secretary of the tribunal read aloud an instrument reciting the grounds for the conviction of the prisoners, and the respective sentences p.r.o.nounced against them. Those who were to be admitted to penitence, each, as his sentence was proclaimed, knelt down, and, with his hands on the missal, solemnly abjured his errors, and was absolved by the grand-inquisitor. The absolution, however, was not so entire as to relieve the offender from the penalty of his transgressions in this world. Some were doomed to perpetual imprisonment in the cells of the Inquisition, others to lighter penances. All were doomed to the confiscation of their property,--a point of too great moment to the welfare of the tribunal ever to be omitted. Besides this, in many cases the offender, and, by a glaring perversion of justice, his immediate descendants, were rendered for ever ineligible to public office of any kind, and their names branded with perpetual infamy. Thus blighted in fortune and in character, they were said, in the soft language of the Inquisition, to be _reconciled_.

As these unfortunate persons were remanded, under a strong guard, to their prisons, all eyes were turned on the little company of martyrs, who, clothed in the ignominious garb of the _san benito_, stood waiting the sentence of the judges,--with cords round their necks, and in their hands a cross, or sometimes an inverted torch, typical of their own speedy dissolution. The interest of the spectators was still further excited, in the present instance, by the fact that several of these victims were not only ill.u.s.trious for their rank, but yet more so for their talents and virtues. In their haggard looks, their emaciated forms, and too often, alas! their distorted limbs, it was easy to read the story of their sufferings in their long imprisonment, for some of them had been confined in the dark cells of the Inquisition much more than a year. Yet their countenances, though haggard, far from showing any sign of weakness or fear, were lighted up with a glow of holy enthusiasm, as of men prepared to seal their testimony with their blood.

When that part of the process showing the grounds of their conviction had been read, the grand-inquisitor consigned them to the hands of the corregidor of the city, beseeching him to deal with the prisoners _in all kindness and mercy_;[442] a honeyed, but most hypocritical phrase, since no choice was left to the civil magistrate, but to execute the terrible sentence of the law against heretics, the preparations for which had been made by him a week before.[443]

The whole number of convicts amounted to thirty, of whom sixteen were _reconciled_, and the remainder _relaxed_ to the secular arm,--in other words, turned over to the civil magistrate for execution. There were few of those thus condemned who, when brought to the stake, did not so far shrink from the dreadful doom that awaited them as to consent to purchase a commutation of it by confession before they died; in which case they were strangled by the _garrote_, before their bodies were thrown into the flames.

Of the present number there were only two whose constancy triumphed to the last over the dread of suffering, and who refused to purchase any mitigation of it by a compromise with conscience. The names of these martyrs should be engraven on the record of history.

One of them was Don Carlos de Seso, a n.o.ble Florentine, who had stood high in the favor of Charles the Fifth. Being united with a lady of rank in Castile, he removed to that country, and took up his residence in Valladolid. He had become a convert to the Lutheran doctrines, which he first communicated to his own family, and afterwards showed equal zeal in propagating among the people of Valladolid and its neighborhood. In short, there was no man to whose untiring and intrepid labors the cause of the Reformed religion in Spain was more indebted. He was, of course, a conspicuous mark for the Inquisition.

[Sidenote: AUTOS DA FE.]

During the fifteen months in which he lay in its gloomy cells, cut off from human sympathy and support, his constancy remained unshaken. The night preceding his execution, when his sentence had been announced to him, De Seso called for writing materials. It was thought he designed to propitiate his judges by a full confession of his errors. But the confession he made was of another kind. He insisted on the errors of the Romish Church, and avowed his unshaken trust in the great truths of the Reformation. The doc.u.ment, covering two sheets of paper, is p.r.o.nounced by the secretary of the Inquisition to be a composition equally remarkable for its energy and precision.[444] When led before the royal gallery, on his way to the place of execution, De Seso pathetically exclaimed to Philip, "Is it thus that you allow your innocent subjects to be persecuted?" To which the king made the memorable reply, "If it were my own son, I would fetch the wood to burn him, were he such a wretch as thou art!" It was certainly a characteristic answer.[445]