A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4
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Title: A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4
Author: Henry Charles Lea
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN; VOL. 4 ***
THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES._ In three
volumes, octavo.
_THE INQUISITION IN THE SPANISH DEPENDENCIES._ In one volume,
octavo. (_Shortly._)
_A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES IN THE LATIN
CHURCH._ In three volumes, octavo.
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY IN THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH. Third edition. (_In preparation._)
_A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY._
One volume, octavo. (_Out of print._)
_SUPERSTITION AND FORCE._ Essays on The Wager of Law, The Wager of
Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition, revised. In one
volume, 12mo.
_STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY._ The Rise of the Temporal Power,
Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery.
Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.
_CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH THE
INQUISITION._ Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati,
Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí. In
one volume, 12mo.
_THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN, THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION._ In one
volume, 12mo.
A HISTORY
OF THE
INQUISITION OF SPAIN
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA, LL.D.
IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOLUME IV.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1922
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1907
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1907
CONTENTS OF VOL. IV.
BOOK VIII--SPHERES OF ACTION (CONTINUED).
CHAPTER V--MYSTICISM.
PAGE
Antiquity of Mystic Aspirations 1
Dangers--Impeccability--Independence 2
Illuminism and Quietism--Confusion with Protestantism--Uncertainty
as to Source of Visions--Contempt for Theology 4
Development in Spain 6
Commencement of Persecution--The Mystics of Guadalajara 7
Francisca Hernández 9
María Cazalla--The Group in Toledo--Ignatius Loyola 13
Archbishop Carranza--San Francisco de Borja--Luis de Granada--the
Jesuits 15
Fray Alonso de la Fuente--his struggle with Jesuitism 19
The Alumbrados of Llerena 23
Hostility of the Inquisition to Mysticism 24
Padre Gerónimo de la Madre de Dios 26
_Mística Theología_ of Fernando de Caldera 29
Prosecution of the Mystics of Seville--Condemnation of Alumbrado
Errors 29
Illuminism becomes formal Heresy--Procedure 34
Madre Luisa de Carrion 36
Influence of Mystics--Sor María de Agreda 39
Mysticism in Italy--Canon Pandolfo Ricasoli--The Impostor
Giuseppe Borri--The _Sequere me_ 42
The Pelagini of Lombardy 46
Miguel de Molinos--Condemnation of Mysticism 49
The Beccarellisti 61
Mysticism in France--Condemnation of Fénelon 62
Molinism in Spain--Persecution 68
Bishop Toro of Oviedo 71
Madre Agueda de Luna 76
Fray Eusebio de Villaroja--abusive Methods 77
Mysticism regarded as delusion 79
Prevalence of Imposture 81
Magdalena de la Cruz 82
Madre María de la Visitacion 83
Variable Treatment of Imposture 86
The Beata Dolores--The Beata de Cuenca--The Beata
Clara 89
Sor Patrocinio 92
CHAPTER VI--SOLICITATION
Frequency of Seduction in the Confessional 95
Invention of the Confessional Stall 96
Leniency of Spiritual Courts 97
The Inquisition indirectly seeks Jurisdiction 98
Paul IV and Pius IV grant Jurisdiction 99
The Regular Clergy endeavor to obtain Exemption 100
Legislation of Gregory XV--Struggle with Bishops over Jurisdiction100
Solicitation included in Edict of Faith 105
Difficulty of inducing Women to denounce Culprits 106
Solicitation a technical Offence against the Sacrament, not
against Morals 109
Difficulty of practical Definition 110
Passive Solicitation 111
Absolution of the Partner in Guilt 113
Facility of evading Penalty 114
Flagellation--Connection with Illuminism 116
Procedure--Tenderness for Delinquents 119
Two Denunciations required 123
Registers kept of Soliciting Confessors 125
Moderation of Penalties 126
Self-Denunciation--It finally secures immunity 130
Statistics of Cases--Predominance of the Regular Orders 134
CHAPTER VII--PROPOSITIONS
Growth of Jurisdiction over Utterances, public and private 138
Influence of habitual Delation 138
Danger incurred by trivial Remarks 140
Severity of Penalties--Question of Belief and Intention 142
Special Propositions--Marriage better than Celibacy 144
Fornication between the Unmarried no Sin 145
Theological Propositions--Case of Fray Luis de Leon 148
Scholastic Disputation, its Dangers 150
Fray Luis accused of Disrespect for the Vulgate 151
Arrested and imprisoned March 27, 1572 153
Endless Debates over multiplying Articles of Accusation 154
Vote _in discordia_, September 18, 1576 156
Acquitted by the Suprema, December 7, 1576 157
Second trial in 1582 for Utterances in Debate--Acquittal 159
Francisco Sánchez, his Contempt for Theology 162
He is summoned and reprimanded, September 24, 1584 164
Again summoned and imprisoned, September 25, 1600--his
Death 166
Fray Joseph de Sigüenza--Plot against him in his Order 168
Prefers Trial by the Inquisition--is acquitted 170
Case of Padre Alonso Romero, S. J. 171
Prosecutions of incautious Preachers 172
Increasing Proportion of Cases of Propositions, continuing to
the last 176
CHAPTER VIII--SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS.
Accumulation of Superstitious Beliefs in Spain 179
Toleration in the early Middle Ages 180
John XXII orders Persecution of Sorcery 181
Persistent Toleration in Spain 182
The Inquisition obtains Jurisdiction 183
Question as to Heresy--Pact with the Demon 184
The Demon omnipresent in Superstitious Practices--Hermaphrodites 186
Belief thus strengthened in Divination and Magic 189
The Inquisition thus obtains exclusive Jurisdiction 190
Astrology--Its Teaching suppressed in the University of Salamanca 192
Procedure--Directed to prove Pact with the Demon 195
Penalties--Less severe than in secular Courts 197
Rationalistic Treatment in Portuguese Inquisition 202
Prosecuted as a Reality in Spain, to the last 203
Increase in the Number of Cases 204
Belief remains undiminished to the present time 205
CHAPTER IX--WITCHCRAFT.
Distinctive Character of Witchcraft--The Sabbat 206
Origin in the 14th Century--Rapid Development in the 15th 207
Genesis of Belief in the Sabbat--The _Canon Episcopi_ 208
Discussion as to Delusion or Reality--Witch-Burnings 209
Congregation of 1526 deliberates on the Subject 212
Witch Epidemics--Active Persecution 214
The Suprema restrains the Zeal of the Tribunals 216
Enlightened Instructions 219
Auto-suggestive Hypnotism of confessed Witches 220
Conflict with secular Courts over Jurisdiction 222
Lenient Punishment 223
Retrogression--The Logroño Auto of 1610 225
Revulsion of Feeling--Pedro de Valencia 228
Alonso de Salazar Frias commissioned to investigate 230
His rationalistic Report 231
Instructions of 1614 virtually put an end to Persecution 235
Persistent Belief--Torreblanca 239
Witchcraft Epidemics disappear 240
Witchcraft in the Roman Inquisition 242
The Witchcraft Craze throughout Europe 246
CHAPTER X--POLITICAL ACTIVITY.
Assertion that the Inquisition was a political Instrument 248
No Trace of its Agency in the Development of Absolutism 249
Rarely called upon for extraneous Service 251
Case of Antonio Pérez 253
Assassination of Juan de Escobedo 254
Pérez replaced by Granvelle--is imprisoned--escapes to
Saragossa--is condemned in Madrid 255
Futile Attempts to prosecute him before the Justicia of
Aragon 258
The Inquisition called in and prosecutes him for Blasphemy 258
He is surrendered to the Tribunal--the City rises and rescues
him 259
Philip's Army occupies Saragossa--Pérez escapes to France--Execution
of the Justicia Lanuza 263
Prosecutions by the Inquisition in opposition to the policy
of Philip II--Auto de fe of October 20, 1592 267
Córtes of Tarazona in 1592 curtail the Liberties of Aragon 269
Death of Pérez in 1611--his memory absolved in 1615 272
Sporadic Cases of Intervention by the Inquisition 273
It is used in the War of Succession 275
Gradually becomes subservient under the Bourbons 276
Is a political Instrument under the Restoration 277
Sometimes used to enforce secular Law--The Export of Horses 278
CHAPTER XI--JANSENISM.
Indefinable Character of Jansenism, except as opposed
to Ultramontanism 284
Struggle in Spanish Flanders 286
Quarrel with Rome over the Condemnation of Cardinal Noris in
the Index of 1747 288
Opposition to Ultramontanism and Jesuitism persecuted as
Jansenism 292
Expulsion of the Jesuits--Reaction under Godoy 294
CHAPTER XII--FREE-MASONRY.
Development of Masonry--Condemned by the Holy See 298
Persecuted by the Inquisition and the Crown 300
It becomes revolutionary in Character 303
Persecution under the Restoration 304
Its pernicious Activity in the Constitutional Period 306
CHAPTER XIII--PHILOSOPHISM.
Growth of Incredulity towards the End of the Eighteenth Century 307
Olavide selected as a Victim 308
Impression produced by his Trial 311
Struggle between Conservatism and Progress 312
CHAPTER XIV--BIGAMY.
Assumption of Jurisdiction over Bigamy 316
Based on inferential Heresy 318
The Civil and Spiritual Courts strive to preserve
their Jurisdiction 319
Penalties 321
Contest over Jurisdiction revived--Carlos III subdivides it into
three 323
The Inquisition reasserts it under the Restoration 326
Number of Cases 327
CHAPTER XV--BLASPHEMY.
Distinction between heretical and non-heretical Blasphemy 328
Contests over Jurisdiction with the spiritual and secular Courts 329
Attempts at Definition of heretical Blasphemy 330
Cumulative Jurisdiction 333
Moderation of Penalties 334
Number of Cases 335
CHAPTER XVI--MISCELLANEOUS BUSINESS.
Marriage in Orders 336
Personation of Priesthood 339
Roman Severity and Spanish Leniency 340
Hearing of Confessions by Laymen 344
Personation of Officials 344
Demoniacal Possession 348
Insults to Images 352
Uncanonized Saints 355
The Plomos del Sacromonte 357
The Immaculate Conception 359
Unnatural Crime 361
Jurisdiction conferred in the Kingdoms of Aragon 363
The Portuguese Inquisition obtains Jurisdiction 365
Trials conducted under secular Procedure 366
Penalties 367
Case of Don Pedro Luis Galceran de Borja 370
Usury 371
Jurisdiction abandoned 374
Morals 375
The Seal of Confession 377
General Utility 378
BOOK IX--CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER I--DECADENCE AND EXTINCTION.
Independence of the Inquisition in the XVII Century 385
THE BOURBONS.
Increased Control exercised by Philip V 386
Gradual Diffusion of Enlightenment 387
Progress under Carlos III--he limits Inquisitorial Privilege 389
Influence of the French Revolution 390
Diminished Respect--Increasing Moderation 392
Projects of Reform--Jovellanos--Urquijo 394
Growth of Opposition--Bishop Grégoire and his Opponents 397
THE CORTES.
The Napoleonic Invasion and the Uprising of Spain 399
The Inquisition supports the Intrusive Government 400
Its desultory Functions during the War of Liberation 402
The Extraordinary Córtes assemble, September 24, 1810 403
Freedom of the Press decreed--Controversy on the Inquisition 404
The Constitution adopted 406
Prolonged Struggle over the Suppression of the Inquisition--Carried
January 26, 1813 407
Resistance of the Clergy 414
Reaction preceding the Return of Fernando VII 418
THE RESTORATION.
Character of Fernando VII 420
Proscription of the Liberals 421
The Inquisition re-established 424
Its Reconstruction and financial Embarrassments 426
Resumption of Functions 429
Its diminished Authority--Its Moderation 430
THE REVOLUTION OF 1820.
Growing Disaffection culminates in successful Revolution 434
Fernando compelled to abolish the Inquisition, March 9, 1820 436
Suicide of Liberalism 438
Quarrel with the Church--Increasing Anarchy 440
The Congress of Verona orders Intervention 444
The French Invasion--Ferdinand carried to Cádiz 446
Proscription of the Liberals 448
Fernando released and returns to Power 449
TEN YEARS OF REACTION.
Absolutism revenges itself on Liberalism 450
Fernando refuses to revive the Inquisition 453
Discontent of the Extremists--Rising in Catalonia 456
Dormant Condition of the Inquisition 458
Episcopal juntas de fe--Execution of Cayetano Ripoll 460
CRISTINA.
The Question of Succession causes Reversal of Policy 462
Death of Fernando VII--The Carlist War--Alliance of the Regent
Cristina with the Liberals 466
The Inquisition definitely abolished, July 15, 1834 467
Gradual Development of Toleration 469
CHAPTER II--RETROSPECT.
Vicissitudes in the History of Spain 472
Causes of Decadence--Misgovernment of the Hapsburgs 473
Industry crushed by Taxation 478
Lack of Means of Intercommunication--_The Mesta_ 480
Debasement of the Coinage 482
Aversion for Labor 483
Multiplication of Offices--Empleomanía 485
Gradual Recuperation under the Bourbons 486
Inordinate Growth of the Church in Numbers and Wealth 488
Demoralization of the Clergy 496
Clerical Influence--Development of Intolerance 498
Superficial Character of Religion 502
Results of Intolerance 504
Influence of the Inquisition on the People 507
Contemporary opinion of its Services 508
Indifference to Morals 509
Disregard for Law--Aspirations to Domination 511
Suppression of adverse Opinion 513
Statistics of its Operations 516
Conscientious Cruelty 525
Persecution Profitable 527
Influence on Intellectual Development 528
Result of seeking to control the Human Conscience 531
APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS 535
INDEX 547
THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN.
BOOK VIII. (Continued).
CHAPTER V.
MYSTICISM.[1]
The belief that, by prolonged meditation and abstraction from the
phenomenal world, the soul can elevate itself to the Creator, and can
even attain union with the Godhead, has existed from the earliest times
and among many races. Passing through ecstasy into trance, it was
admitted to the secrets of God, it enjoyed revelations of the invisible
universe, it acquired foreknowledge and wielded supernatural powers. St.
Paul gave to these beliefs the sanction of his own experience;[2]
Tertullian describes the influence of the Holy Spirit on the devotee in
manifestations which bear a curious similitude to those which we shall
meet in Spain,[3] and the anchorites of the Nitrian desert were adepts
of the same kind to whom all the secrets of God were laid bare.[4] These
supernal joys continued to be the reward of those who earned them by
disciplining the flesh, and the virtues of mental prayer, in which the
soul lost consciousness of all earthly things, were taught by a long
series of doctors--Richard of Saint Victor, Joachim of Flora, St.
Bonaventura, John Tauler, John of Rysbroek, Henry Suso, Henry Herp, John
Gerson and many others. If Cardinal Jacques de Vitry is to be believed,
the nuns of Liége, in the thirteenth century, were largely given to
these mystic raptures; of one of them he relates that she often had
twenty-five ecstasies a day, while others passed years in bed, dissolved
in divine love;[5] and Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, who missed
his deserved canonization, was fully acquainted with the superhuman
delights of union with God.[6] These spiritual marvels are reduced to
the common-places of psychology by modern researches into hypnotism and
auto-suggestion. The connection is well illustrated by the Umbilicarii,
the pious monks of Mount Athos who, by prolonged contemplation of their
navels, found their souls illuminated with light from above.[7]
[Sidenote: _IMPECCABILITY_]
Yet there were dangers in the pursuit of the _via purgativa_ and the
_via illuminativa_. The followers of Amaury of Bène, who came to be
popularly known in Germany as Begghards and Beguines, invented the term
Illuminism to describe the condition of the soul suffused with divine
light and held that any one, thus filled with the Holy Ghost, was
impeccable, irrespective of the sins which he might commit; he was
simply following the impulses of the Spirit which can do no sin. Master
Eckhart, the founder of German mysticism, was prosecuted for sharing in
these venturesome speculations and, if the twenty-eight articles
condemned by John XXII were correctly drawn from his writings, he
admitted the common divinity of man and God and that, in the sight of
God, sin and virtue are the same.[8] Zealots too there were who taught
the pre-eminent holiness of nudity and, in imitation of the follies of
early Christian ascetics, assumed to triumph over the lusts of the flesh
by exposing themselves to the crucial temptation of sleeping with the
other sex and indulging in lascivious acts.[9] The condemnation, by the
Council of Vienne in 1312, of the tenets of the so-called Begghards
respecting impeccability[10] was carried into the body of canon law and
thus was rendered familiar to jurists, when mysticism came to be
regarded as dangerous and was subjected to the Inquisition.
That it should eventually be so regarded was inevitable. The mystic, who
considered himself to be communing directly with God and who held
meditation and mental prayer to be the highest of religious acts, was
apt to feel himself released from ecclesiastical precepts and to regard
with indifference, if not with contempt, the observances enjoined by the
Church as essential to salvation. If the inner light was a direct
inspiration from God, it superseded the commands of the Holy See and,
under such impulse, private judgement was to be followed, irrespective
of what the Church might ordain. In all this there was the germ of a
rebellion as defiant as that of Luther. Justification by faith might not
be taught, but justification by works was cast aside as unworthy of the
truly spiritual man. The new Judaism, decried by Erasmus, which relied
on external observances, was a hindrance rather than a help to
salvation. Francisco de Osuna, the teacher of Santa Teresa, asserts that
oral prayer is a positive injury to those advanced in mental prayer.[11]
San Juan de la Cruz says that church observances, images and places of
worship are merely for the uninstructed, like toys that amuse children;
those who are advanced must liberate themselves from these things which
only distract from internal contemplation.[12] San Pedro de Alcántara,
in his enumeration of the nine aids to devotion, significantly omits all
reference to the observances prescribed by the Church.[13] In an
ecclesiastical establishment, which had built up its enormous wealth by
the thrifty exploitation of the text "Give alms and behold all things
are clean unto you" (Luke, XI, 41), Luis de Granada dared to teach that
the most dangerous temptation in the spiritual life is the desire to do
good to others, for a man's first duty is to himself.[14] Yet these men
were all held in the highest honor, and two of them earned the supreme
reward of canonization.
There was in this a certain savor of Lutheranism, but it was not until
the danger of the latter was fully appreciated that the Inquisition
awoke to the peril lurking in a system which released the devotee from
the obligation of obedience to authority, as in the _Alumbrado_ or
Illuminated, who recognized the supremacy of the internal light, and the
_Dejado_ or Quietist, who abandoned himself to God and allowed free
course to the impulses suggesting themselves in his contemplative
abstraction, with the corollary that there could be no sin in what
emanated from God. The real significance of that which had been current
in the Church for so many centuries was unnoticed until Protestantism
presented itself as a threatening peril, when the two were classed
together, or rather Protestantism was regarded as the development of
mysticism. In the letter of September 9, 1558, to Paul IV, the
Inquisition traced the origin of the former in Spain farther back than
to Doctor Egidio and Don Carlos de Seso; the heresies of which Maestro
Juan de Oria (Olmillos?) was accused and of those called Alumbrados or
Dejados of Guadalajara and other places, were the seed of these Lutheran
heresies, but the inquisitors who tried those heretics were
insufficiently versed in Lutheranism to apply the proper vigor of
repression.[15] It is necessary to bear all this in mind to understand
the varying attitude of the Inquisition in its gradual progress towards
the condemnation of all mysticism.
[Sidenote: _CONTEMPT FOR THEOLOGY_]
The distinction at first attempted between the mysticism that was
praiseworthy and that which was dangerous was complicated by the
recognized fact that, while visions and revelations and ecstasies might
be special favors from God, they might also be the work of demons, and
there was no test that could be applied to differentiate them. The
Church was in the unfortunate position of being committed to the belief
in special manifestations of supernatural power, while it was
confessedly unable to determine whether they came from heaven or from
hell. This had long been recognized as one of the most treacherous
pitfalls in the perilous paths of illumination and union with God. As
early as the twelfth century, Richard of St. Victor warns his disciples
to beware of it, and Aquinas points out that trances may come from God,
from the demon or from bodily affections.[16] John Gerson wrote a
special tractate in which he endeavored to frame diagnostic rules.[17]
The Blessed Juan de Avila emphatically admonishes the devout to beware
of such deceptions, but he fails to guide them in discriminating between
demonic illusions and the effects of divine grace.[18] Arbiol describes
the uncertainty as to the sources of these manifestations as the
greatest danger besetting the path of perfection, causing the ruin of
innumerable souls.[19] When, in the eighteenth century, mysticism had
become discredited, Dr. Amort argues that, even if a revelation is from
God, there can be no certainty that it is not falsified by the operation
of the fancy or the work of the demon.[20] When to this we add the
facility of imposture, by which a livelihood could be gained from the
contributions of the credulous, we can appreciate the difficulty of the
task assumed by the Inquisition, in a land swarming with hysterics of
both sexes, to restrain the extravagance of the devout and to punish the
frauds of impostors, without interfering with the ways of God in guiding
his saints. It is merely another instance of the failure of humanity in
its efforts to interpret the Infinite.
Apart from visions and revelations, there was another feature of
mysticism which rendered it especially dangerous to the Church and
odious to theologians. Though the mystic might not controvert the
received doctrines of the faith, yet scholastic theology, on which they
were founded, was to him a matter of careless contempt. Mystic theology,
says Osuna, is higher than speculative or scholastic theology; it needs
no labor or learning or study, only faith and love and the grace of
God.[21] In the trial of María Cazalla, one of the accusations was that
she and her brother Bishop Cazalla ridiculed Aquinas and Scotus and the
whole mass of scholastic theology.[22] When Gerónimo de la Madre de Dios
was on trial, one of his writings produced in evidence was a comparison
between mystic and scholastic theology, to the great disadvantage of the
latter. Its learning, he says, is perfectly compatible with vice; its
masters preach the virtues but do not practise them; they wallow in the
sins that they denounce; they are Pharisees, and this is so general a
pest that there is scarce one who is not infected with the
contagion.[23]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _COMMENCEMENT OF PERSECUTION_]
Medieval Spain had been little troubled with mystic extravagance.
Eymerich who, in his _Directorium Inquisitorum_, gives an exhaustive
account of heresies existing towards the close of the fourteenth
century, makes no allusion to such errors, except in his denunciation of
his special object of hatred Raymond Lully, to whom he attributes some
vagaries of mystic illuminism, and the _Repertorium Inquisitorum_ of
1494 is equally silent.[24] Spiritual exaltation, however, accompanied
the development of the fanaticism stimulated by the establishment of the
Inquisition and its persecution of Jews and Moors. Osuna, in 1527,
alludes to a holy man who for fifty years had devoted himself to
_recojimiento_, or the abstraction of mental prayer, and already, in
1498, Francisco de Villalobos complains of the _Aluminados_ or
Illuminati, derived from Italy, of whom there were many in Spain, and
who should be reduced to reason by scourging, cold, hunger and
prison.[25] This indicates that mysticism was obtaining a foothold and
its spread was facilitated by the _beatas_, women adopting a religious
life without entering an Order, or at most simply as Tertiaries, living
usually on alms and often regarded as possessing spiritual gifts and
prophetic powers. The first of the class to obtain prominence was known
as the _Beata de Piedrahita_. A career such as hers was common enough
subsequently, as we shall see, and the discussion which she aroused
shows that as yet she was a novel phenomenon. The daughter of a fanatic
peasant, she had been carefully trained in mystic exercises and was
wholly given up to contemplative abstraction, in which she enjoyed the
most intimate relations with God, in whose arms she was dissolved in
love. Sometimes she asserted that Christ was with her, sometimes that
she was Christ himself or the bride of Christ; often she held
conversations with the Virgin in which she spoke for both. As her
reputation spread, her visions and revelations won for her the character
of a prophetess. Many denounced them as superstitious and demanded her
suppression, but Ximenes who, as inquisitor-general, had jurisdiction
in the matter, argued that she was inspired with divine wisdom and
Ferdinand, who visited her, expressed his belief in her inspiration. In
1510 the matter was referred to the Holy See, and Julius II appointed
his nuncio, Giovanni Ruffo, and the Bishops of Burgos and Vich, as
commissioners to examine her and to suppress the scandal if it proved to
be only female levity. Peter Martyr, to whom we are indebted for the
account, was unable to ascertain their decision but, as they discharged
her without reproof, it may be assumed that their report was favorable,
for it could scarce have been otherwise with such supporters as
Ferdinand and Ximenes.[26] Such success naturally stimulated imitation
and was the foreshadowing of wide-spread delusion and imposture.
In this case there appears no trace of carnality, but it is the
distinguishing feature of another soon afterwards, reported in 1512 to
Ximenes by Fray Antonio de Pastrana, of a contemplative fraile of Ocaña
"illuminated with the darkness of Satan." To him God had revealed that
he should engender on a holy woman a prophet who should reform the
world. He was a spiritual man, not given to women and, in his
simplicity, he had written to Madre Juana de la Cruz, apparently
inviting her coöperation in the good work. Fray Antonio, who was
custodian of the Province of Castile, imprisoned the alumbrado and
subjected him to treatment so active that he speedily admitted his
error.[27]
Guadalajara and Pastrana were becoming centres of a group of mystics who
attracted the attention of the Inquisition about 1521, when it commenced
gathering testimony about them. The earliest disseminator of the
doctrine appears to have been a sempstress named Isabel de la Cruz,
noted for her ability in the exposition of Scripture, who commenced
about 1512 and was a leader until superseded by Francisca Hernández, of
whom more hereafter. The Seraphic Order of St. Francis naturally
furnished many initiates, whose names are included among the fifty or
sixty forming the group. The Franciscan Guardian of Escalona, Fray Juan
de Olmillos, had ecstasies when receiving the sacrament and when
preaching, in which he talked and acted extravagantly. When removed to
Madrid, this attracted crowds to watch his contortions and he was
generally regarded as a saint; he was promoted to the provincialate of
Castile and died in 1529. The Marquis of Villena, at Escalona, was
inclined to mysticism, induced perhaps by Fray Francisco de Ocaña, who
was stationed there and had prophetic visions of the reform of the
Church. Villena, in 1523, employed as lay-preacher Pedro Ruiz de
Alcaraz, one of the most prominent of the Guadalajara mystics, who seems
to have converted all the members of the household. The name of Alcaraz
appears frequently in the trials of the group; he was a married layman,
uneducated but possessing remarkable familiarity with Scripture and
skilled in its exposition, and he was an earnest missionary of
mysticism. When sufficient evidence against him was accumulated, he was
arrested February 26, 1524, and imprisoned by the Toledo tribunal. The
formal accusation, presented October 31st, indicates that the mysticism,
of at least some of the accused, embraced Quietism or _Dejamiento_ to
the full extent, with its consequent assumption of impeccability, no
matter what might be the acts of the devotee, that mental prayer was the
sole observance necessary, that all the prescriptions of the
Church--confession, indulgences, works of charity and piety--were
useless, and that the conjugal act was Union with God. There was also
the denial of transubstantiation and of the existence of hell, which may
probably be left out of account as foreign to the recognized tenets of
mysticism. The latter, in fact, was presumably an exaggeration of an
utterance of Alcaraz, who said that it was the ignorant and children who
were afraid of hell, for the advanced served the Lord, not from servile
fear but from fear of offending Him whom they loved, and moreover that
God was not to be prayed to for anything--principles subsequently
approved in S. François de Sales and condemned in Fénelon. There was no
spirit of martyrdom in Alcaraz, and the severe torture to which he was
exposed would seem a superfluity. He confessed his errors, professed
conversion and begged for mercy. His sentence, July 22, 1529, recited
that he had incurred relaxation but through clemency was admitted to
reconciliation with confiscation, irremissible prison and scourging in
Toledo, Guadalajara, Escalona and Pastrana, where he had disseminated
his errors. This severity indicates the inquisitorial estimate of the
magnitude of the evil to be suppressed but, after ten years, on February
20, 1539, the Suprema liberated him, with the restriction of not leaving
Toledo and the imposition of certain spiritual exercises.[28]
[Sidenote: _FRANCISCA HERNANDEZ_]
In the ensuing trials, pursued with customary inquisitorial
thoroughness, the question of sexual aberrations constantly obtrudes
itself and offers no little complexity. That the majority of the Spanish
mystics were thoroughly pure in heart there can be no doubt, but
spiritual exaltation, shared by the two sexes, had the ever-present risk
that it might insensibly become carnal, when those who fancied
themselves to be advancing in the path of perfection might suddenly find
that the flesh had deceived the spirit. This was an experience as old as
mysticism itself, and the eloquent warning which St. Bonaventura
addressed to his brethren shows, by the vividness of its details, that
he must have witnessed more than one such fall from grace.[29] The
danger was all the greater in the extreme mysticism known as Illuminism,
with its doctrines of internal light, of Dejamiento, or abandonment to
impulses assumed to come from God, and of the impeccability of the
advanced adept, combined with the test of continence. Unquestionably
there were cases in which these aberrations were honestly entertained;
there were numerous others in which they were assumed for purposes of
seduction, nor can we always, from the evidence before us, pronounce a
confident judgement.
Of the trials which have seen the light several centre around the
curious personality of Francisca Hernández, who succeeded Isabel de la
Cruz as the leader of the mystic disciples. She seems to have possessed
powers of fascination, collecting around her devotees of the most
diverse character. We have seen how she entangled Bernardino de Tovar
and how his brother, Juan de Vergara, became involved with the
Inquisition, after detaching him from her. Francisco de Osuna, the
earliest Spanish writer on mysticism and the teacher of Santa Teresa,
was one of her disciples and so was Francisco Ortiz, a Franciscan of the
utmost purity of heart. A devotee of a different stamp was Antonio de
Medrano, cura of Navarrete, who had made her acquaintance in 1516 when a
student at Salamanca. She was attractive and penniless but, through a
long career, she always managed to live in comfort at the expense of her
admirers. Though she claimed to be a bride of Christ, she practised no
austerities; she was fastidious in her diet and slept in a soft bed,
which she had no scruple in sharing with her male devotees. This
required funds and she and Medrano persuaded an unlucky youth named
Calero to sell his patrimony and devote the proceeds to support the
circle of Alumbrados whom she gathered around her. The episcopal
authorities commenced investigations, ending with a sentence of
banishment on Medrano, when the pair betook themselves to Valladolid,
whither Tovar followed them, and where the Inquisition commenced
proceedings in 1519; it was as yet not aroused to dealing harshly with
these eccentric forms of devotion, and it merely forbade him and Tovar
from further converse with Francisca; this they eluded, the tribunal
insisted and Medrano went to his cure at Navarrete. She was kept under
surveillance, but her reputation for holiness was such that Cardinal
Adrian, after his election to the papacy, in 1522, ordered his secretary
Carmona to ask her prayers for him and for the whole Church.
[Sidenote: _FRANCISCA HERNANDEZ_]
In 1525 the Inquisition again arrested her; she was accused of
suspicious relations with men and, when discharged, was obliged to swear
that she would permit no indecent familiarities. Meanwhile Medrano, at
Navarrete continued his career as an Alumbrado, holding conversations
with the Holy Ghost and declaring himself to be impeccable. In 1526 the
Logroño tribunal arrested him and, after nearly eighteen months, he was
discharged June 4, 1527, with the lenient sentence of abjuration _de
levi_ and such spiritual penance as might be assigned to him. This
escape emboldened him to greater extravagance and to renewed devotion to
Francisca, leading to another prosecution, in 1530, by the Toledo
tribunal. There was evidence of highly indecent character as to their
relations, but he stoutly denied it, asserting that he was so favored by
God that all the evil women in the world and all the devils in hell
could not move him to carnal sin--a grace which came to him after he
knew Francisca; he could lie in bed with a woman without feeling desire
and it gave him grace to do so with Francisca and to fondle and embrace
her, which she enjoyed; he believed her to be free from both mortal and
venial sin, and he held her to be a greater saint than any in heaven
except Our Lady. Under torture, however, he confessed whatever was
wanted--that when he told people that she could not sin, because she was
illuminated by the Holy Ghost, it was to spread her reputation and gain
money for them both; that he was jealous of all her other disciples,
among whom he named Valderrama, Diego de Villareal, Muñoz, Cabrera,
Gumiel, Ortiz and Sayavedra and his brother, showing that she had a
numerous following. He admitted teaching that male and female devotees
could embrace each other naked, for it was not clothes but intention
that counted. By this time the Inquisition was dealing harshly with
these aberrations, and his sentence, April 21, 1532, excused him from
relaxation as an incorrigible heretic because he was only a hypocritical
swindler whose object was to raise money for a life of pleasure; he was
to retract his propositions in an auto de fe, to abjure _de vehementi_
and to be recluded for life in a monastery, with two years' suspension
from his sacerdotal functions, and was to hold no further communication
with Francisca, under pain of impenitent relapse, but he was not
deprived of his cure of Navarrete. In 1537 the Duke of Nájera interceded
for his release, with what result the records fail to inform us.[30]
Francisca's strange powers of fascination were manifested by the
influence which she acquired over a man of infinitely higher character
than Medrano. Fray Francisco Ortiz was the most promising member of the
great Franciscan Order, who was rapidly acquiring the reputation of the
foremost preacher in Spain. He was not fully a mystic, but his pulpit
exhortations, stimulating the love of God, caused him to be regarded as
wandering near to the dangerous border. In 1523 he made the acquaintance
of Francisca and his feelings towards her are emphatically expressed in
a defiant declaration to the Inquisition during his trial.--"No word of
love, however strong, is by a hundredth part adequate to describe the
holy love, so pure and sweet and strong and great and full of God's
blessing and melting of heart and soul, which God in his goodness has
given me through His holy betrothed, my true Mother and Lady, through
whom I hope, at the awful Day of Judgement, to be numbered among the
elect. I can call her my love for, in loving her, I love nothing but
God." There can be no doubts as to the purity of his relations with her
whom he thus reverenced, but they were displeasing to his superiors who
viewed with growing disquiet the distraction of one whom they regarded
as a valuable asset of the Order. It was in vain that he was ordered to
break off all relations with her; he replied vehemently that God was to
be obeyed rather than man and that if he was to be debarred from seeing
that beloved one of God he would transfer himself to the Carthusians. To
effect the separation the Franciscan prelates induced the Inquisition to
arrest Francisca, but the unexpected result of this was that Ortiz, in
a sermon before all the assembled magnates of the city April 7, 1529,
arraigned the Inquisition for the great sin committed in her arrest.
Such revolt was unexampled and he was forthwith prosecuted, not so much
to punish him as to procure his retractation and submission, but he was
obstinate and defiant for nearly three years. It was in vain that the
Empress Isabel twice, in 1530, urged his liberation or the expediting of
his case, and equally vain was a brief of Clement VII, July 1, 1531, to
Cardinal Manrique, asking his discharge if his only offence was his
public denunciation of the arrest of that holy woman, Francisca
Hernández.[31] At length, in April 1532, Ortiz experienced a revulsion
of feeling, and the same emotional impulsiveness that had led to his
outbreak now prompted him to declare that God had given him the grace to
recognize his errors and that he found great peace in retracting them.
He escaped with public abjuration _de vehementi_, five years' suspension
from priestly functions, two years' confinement in a cell of the convent
of Torrelaguna, and absolute sundering of relations with Francisca. He
betook himself to his place of reclusion and, although papal briefs
released him from all restrictions and his prelates repeatedly urged him
to leave his retreat, he seems never to have abandoned the solitude
which he said had become sweet to him. Until his death, in 1546, he
remained in the convent, the object of overflowing honor on the part of
his brethren.[32]
[Sidenote: _CONNECTION WITH PROTESTANTISM_]
Francisca herself seems to have been treated with remarkable leniency,
in spite of her previous trials and the evidence of Medrano. Her arrest
had been merely with the object of separating her from Ortiz, and her
trial seems to have been scarce more than formal for, in September 1532,
we find her merely detained in the house of Gutierre Pérez de Montalvo,
at Medina del Campo, with her maid María Ramírez in waiting on her.[33]
Possibly this favor may have been earned by her readiness to accuse her
old friends and associates, among whom were two brothers and a sister,
Juan Cazalla, Bishop of Troy _in partibus_, Pedro Cazalla and María
Cazalla, wife of Lope de Ruida.[34] The trial of the latter is worth
brief reference as it throws some light on the confusion existing at the
time between Illuminism and Protestantism.
María Cazalla was a resident of Guadalajara who visited Pastrana, where
women assembled to listen to her readings and expositions of Scripture.
When proceedings were commenced against the group, in 1524, she was
arrested and examined but was discharged. For six years she remained
undisturbed, when the testimony of Francisca Hernández caused a second
prosecution, in which the heterogeneous character of the fiscal's
accusation shows how little was understood as to the heresies under
discussion. She was a Lutheran who praised Luther, denied
transubstantiation and free-will, ridiculed confession, decried
scholastic theology and held indulgences as valueless; she was an
Alumbrada who regarded Isabel de la Cruz as superior to St. Paul, who
rated matrimony higher than virginity, who wrote letters full of
Illuminism and taught the Alumbrados their doctrines from Scripture,
decrying external works of adoration and prayer; she was an Erasmist who
pronounced Church observances to be Judaism, despised the religious
Orders and ridiculed the preachers of sermons.[35] She had been arrested
about May 1, 1532, and her trial dragged on as usual. As a solvent of
doubts she was tortured smartly and, on December 19, 1534, her sentence
pronounced that the fiscal had not proved her to be a heretic but that,
for the suspicions arising from the trial, she should abjure de levi and
undergo solemn public penance in her parish church, she should avoid all
intercourse with Alumbrados or other suspects and pay a fine of a
hundred ducats.[36]
An affiliated group comes before us in Toledo, centering around
Petronila de Lucena, an unmarried woman of 25, living with her brother,
Juan del Castillo. She had a high reputation for sanctity and was
credited with thaumaturgic powers; when the Duke del Infantazgo was
mortally ill, she was sent for, but too late. We hear of María Cazalla,
Bernardino de Tovar and Francisca Hernández; there are allusions to
Erasmus, and Diego Hernández had included her in his denunciations of
Lutheranism. Letters to her from her brother, Gaspar de Lucena, are mere
mystical maunderings, showing the atmosphere in which they lived, but
the other brother, Juan del Castillo, then on trial, admitted many
Lutheran doctrines--works were not necessary, Church precepts were not
binding, man had not free-will, indulgences were useless and a book by
OEcolampadius had led him to disbelieve in transubstantiation. Both
Juan and Gaspar were on trial, and we hear of another prisoner, Catalina
de Figueredo. Petronila was arrested, with sequestration, May 7, 1534,
and her trial pursued the ordinary course until March 20, 1535, when, as
we have seen (Vol. III, p. 111), it was decided that, as the principal
witness against her, Juan del Castillo, had revoked the evidence given
under torture, she might be released on bail of a hundred thousand
maravedís, which was promptly entered. In June she petitioned to be
wholly discharged and that the sequestration be lifted; to this no
attention was paid but a second application, October 20, 1536 procured
the removal of the sequestration. Gaspar de Lucena was sentenced to
reconciliation and this was presumably the fate of Juan del Castillo
unless he was impenitent.[37]
[Sidenote: _PERVADING SUSPICION_]
These cases show that the prevalence of the mingled heresies of
Illuminism and Lutheranism was calling for repression, nor was this
confined to Castile. In 1533, Miguel Galba, fiscal of the tribunal of
Lérida, in a letter to Cardinal Manrique, declared that only the
vigilance of the Inquisition prevented both kingdoms from being filled
with the followers of the two heresies.[38] There was of course
exaggeration in this, but the fears of the authorities led them to see
heresies everywhere. As Juan de Valdés, himself inclined to mysticism,
says, when any one endeavored to manifest the perfection of
Christianity, his utterances were misinterpreted and he was condemned as
a heretic, so that there was scarce any one who dared to live as a
Christian.[39] Many suffered from the results of this hyper-sensitiveness.
When Ignatius Loyola, after his conversion, came in 1526 to Alcalá to
study, he was joined by four young men; they assumed a peculiar gray
gown and their fervor brought many to the Hôpital de la Misericordia,
where they lodged, to consult with them and join in their spiritual
exercises. This excited suspicion and invited investigation. What was
the exact authority of Doctor Miguel Carrasco, confessor of Fonseca
Archbishop of Toledo, and of Alonso Mexia, who bore a commission
as inquisitor, does not appear, but they examined witnesses and the
sentence rendered by the Vicar-general, Juan Rodríguez de Figueroa,
was merely that the associates should lay aside their distinctive
garments. After this the number who went to listen to Loyola continued
to increase, and the women had a fashion of falling in convulsions,
there was nothing of illuminism in his exhortations, but he was open to
suspicion, and it was inadmissible that a young layman should assume
the function of a director of souls. This time it was Vicar-general
Figueroa who took the matter in hand and threw Loyola into prison, in
1527, finally sentencing him and his companions not to appear in public
until they had assumed the ordinary lay garments, nor for three years
to hold assemblages public or private and then only with permission of
the Ordinary.[40] It was this experience that drove Loyola to complete
his studies in Paris, where he was not subject to the intrusion of
excitable devotees.
Carranza offered a mark too vulnerable to be spared. He was inclined to
mysticism, and there were many passages in his unfortunate _Comentarios_
which, separated from their context, afforded material for reprehension.
The keen-sighted Melchor Cano was able to cite isolated texts to prove
that he held the alumbrado doctrines of impeccability, of interior
illumination, of the supreme merits of contemplation, of despising all
exterior works and observances--in short that he defended the errors of
the Begghards and Beguines, of Pedro Rúiz Alcaraz and of the Alumbrados
who figured in the autos of Toledo.[41] It is significant of the
advanced position of Spanish orthodoxy on the subject of mysticism that
these accusations had no weight with the Council of Trent, which
approved the Comentarios, nor with Pius V, when he permitted the
publication of the book in Rome. When, at last in 1576, Gregory XIII
yielded and condemned the book and its author, of the sixteen
propositions which he was required to abjure only three bore any
relation to mysticism, and these were on the border line between it and
Protestantism--that all works without charity are sins and offend God,
that faith without works suffices for salvation, and that the use of
images and veneration of relics are of human precept.[42]
[Sidenote: _SANCTITY OR HERESY_]
In this inquisitorial temper it was a matter of chance whether a
devotional writer should be canonized or condemned and mayhap both might
befall him, as occurred to San Francisco de Borja, whose _Obras del
Cristiano_ was put on the Index of 1559, though it disappeared after
that of Quiroga in 1583.[43] Santa Teresa herself, the queen of Spanish
mystics and, along with Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, was
confined in a convent by the Nuncio Sega, who denounced her as a
restless vagabond, plunged in dissipation under pretext of religion, and
an effort was made to transport her to the Indies, which were a sort of
penal settlement. But for the accident that Philip II became interested
in her, she would probably have come down to us as one of the _beatas
revelanderas_ whom it was the special mission of the Inquisition to
suppress. When, in 1575, she founded a convent of her Barefooted
Carmelites in Seville, they were denounced as _Alumbradas_; the
inquisitors created a terrible scandal by going to the house with the
guards to investigate, but they could substantiate nothing to justify
prosecution. So, when in 1574 her spiritual autobiography was denounced
to the Inquisition, it was held for ten years in suspense, and the
Duchess of Alva, who possessed a MS. copy, was obliged to procure a
licence to read it in private until judgement should be
rendered--although finally, in 1588, it was printed by Fray Luis de Leon
at the special request of the empress. Even after canonization her
_Conceptos del Amor divino_, when printed with the works of her disciple
Jerónimo Gracian, were put on the Index and remained there.[44] Her most
illustrious disciple, San Juan de la Cruz, escaped prosecution, though
repeatedly denounced to the Inquisition, and his writings were not
forbidden, but he was most vindictively persecuted as an Alumbrado,
first by his unreformed Carmelite brethren and then by the Barefooted
Order, and he ended his days in disgrace, recluded in a convent in the
Sierra Morena.[45] Yet Francisco de Osuna, the preceptor of Santa
Teresa, although his writings are of the highest mysticism, escaped
persecution himself, and his _Abecedario Spiritual_ incurred only a
single expurgation.[46]
The Venerable Luis de Granada was not canonized, for the proceedings
were never completed. He was one of the most moderate of those who
taught the supreme virtues of _recojimiento_ and his _Guia de Pecadores_
ranks as one of the Spanish classics, yet his works were prohibited in
the Index of 1559.[47] Melchor Cano declared that his books contained
doctrines of Alumbrados and matters contrary to the faith, while Fray
Alonso de la Fuente, who was a vigorous persecutor of illuminism,
endeavored to have him prosecuted and pronounced his _De la Oracion_ the
worst of the books which presented these errors so subtly that only the
initiated could discover them. It illustrates the difference between
Spanish and Roman standards, at this period, that his writings were
translated and freely current in many languages and that, in 1582,
Gregory XIII wrote to him eulogizing them in the most exuberant terms
and urging him to continue his labors for the curing of the infirm, the
strengthening of the weak, the comfort of the strong and the glory of
both Churches, the militant and the triumphant. When he died, in 1588,
it was in the odor of sanctity, and he subsequently appeared to a
devotee arrayed in a cloak of glory, glittering with innumerable stars,
which were the souls of those saved by his writings.[48]
Ignatius Loyola was inclined to mysticism, and the mental prayer which
he taught--the _Ejercicio de las tres Potencias_ or exercise of the
memory, intellect and will--differed little from the meditation which,
with the mystics, was the prelude to contemplation.[49] Yet he was
sceptical as to special graces vouchsafed to mystic ardor; such things
were possible, he said, but they were very rare and the demon often thus
deludes human vanity.[50] His disciples were less cautious and indulged
in the extravagance of the more advanced school, producing many adepts
gifted with the highest spiritual graces. Luis de la Puente, who died in
1624, at the age of 69 may be mentioned as an example, for in him the
intensity of divine love was so strong that in his ecstasies he shone
with a light that filled his cell; he would be elevated from the floor
and the whole building would shake as though about to fall; during his
sickness, which lasted for thirty years, angels were often seen
ministering to him; he had the gift of prophecy and of reading the
thoughts of his penitents and, when he died, his garments were torn to
shreds and his hair cut off to be preserved as relics. He taught the
heretical doctrine that prayer is a satisfaction for sin, while his
views as to resignation to the will of God approach closely to the
Quietism which we shall hereafter see condemned by the Holy See. Yet he
escaped condemnation and his works have continued to the present time to
be multiplied in innumerable editions and translations.[51]
It was probably the impossibility of differentiation between heresy and
sanctity that explains the vacillation of the Inquisition. During the
active proceedings of the Toledo tribunal, the Suprema, in 1530, issued
general instructions that there should be appended to all edicts
requiring denunciation of prohibited books a clause including mystics
given to Illuminism and Quietism.[52] There seem to be no traces of any
result from this and the whole matter appears to have ceased to attract
attention for many years, until the animosity excited by the Jesuits led
to an investigation of the results of their teachings. Melchor Cano, who
hated them, denounced them as Alumbrados, such as the Devil has
constantly thrust into the Church, and he foretold that they would
complete what the Gnostics had commenced.[53]
[Sidenote: _THE JESUITS_]
The warning was unheeded and, some ten years later, another Dominican,
Fray Alonso de la Fuente, was led to devote himself to a mortal struggle
with Illuminism, and with the Society of Jesus as its source. In a long
and rambling memorial addressed, in 1575, to Philip II, he relates that,
in 1570, he chanced to visit his birth-place, la Fuente del Maestre,
near Cuidad Rodrigo, and found there a Jesuit, Gaspar Sánchez, highly
esteemed for holiness, but who was blamed for perpetually confessing
certain beatas and granting daily communion. Sánchez appealed to him for
support and he preached in his favor, which brought to him numerous
beatas, whose revelations of their ecstasies and other spiritual
experiences surprised him greatly. This led him to investigate, when he
found that the practice of contemplation was widely spread, but its
inner secrets were jealously guarded, until he persuaded a neice of his,
a girl of 17, to reveal them. She said that her director ordered her to
place herself in contemplation with the simple prayer, "Lord I am here,
Lord you have me here!" when there would come such a flood of evil
thoughts, of filthy imaginings, of carnal movements, of infidel
conceptions, of blasphemies against God and the saints and the purity of
the Mother of God, and against the whole faith, that the torment of them
rendered her crazy, but she bore it with fortitude, as her director told
her that this was a sign of perfection and of progress on the path.[54]
Thenceforth Fray Alonso devoted himself to the task of investigating and
exterminating this dangerous heresy, but the work of investigation was
complicated by the concealment of error under external piety. Before
discovering a single false doctrine, we meet, he says, a thousand
prayers and disciplines and communions and pious sighs and devotions. It
is like sifting gold out of sand; to reach one heresy you must winnow
away a thousand pious works. So it is everywhere in Spain where there
are Jesuits and thus we see what great labor is required to overcome it,
since there are not in the kingdom three inquisitors who understand it
or have the energy and requisite zeal. Yet he penetrated far enough into
it, after sundry prosecutions, to draw up a list of thirty-nine errors,
some of which, like those ascribed to witchcraft, suggest the influence
of the torture-chamber in extracting confessions satisfactory to the
prosecutor. Not only are the adepts guilty of all the heresies of the
Begghards, condemned in the Clementines, and of teaching that mental
prayer is the sole thing requisite to salvation, but the teachers are
great sorcerers and magicians, who have pact with the demon, and thus
they make themselves masters of men and women, their persons and
property, as though they were slaves. They train many saints, who feel
in themselves the Holy Ghost, who see the Divine Essence and learn the
secrets of heaven; who have visions and revelations and a knowledge of
Scripture, and all this is accomplished by means of the demon, and by
magic arts. By magic, they gain possession of women, whom they teach
that it is no sin, and sometimes the demon comes disguised as Christ and
has commerce with the women.
If Fray Alonso found it difficult to inspire belief in these horrors, it
is easily explicable by his account of the origin of the sect in
Extremadura, the region to which his labors were devoted. When Cristóbal
de Rojas was Bishop of Badajoz (1556-1562) there came there Padre
González, a Jesuit of high standing, who introduced the use of Loyola's
_Exercicios_; there were already there two priests, Hernando Alvarez and
the Licentiate Zapata, who were familiar with it, and the practice
spread rapidly, under the favor of the bishop and his provisor Meléndez,
and none who did not use it could be ordained, or obtain licence to
preach and hear confessions, for the bishop placed all this in the hands
of Alvarez; and when he was translated to Córdova (1562-1571) and
subsequently to Seville (1571-1580) he continued to favor the
Alumbrados. He was succeeded in Badajoz (1562-1568) by Juan de Ribera,
subsequently Archbishop of Valencia, who was at first adverse to the
Alumbrados, but they won him over, and he became as favorable to them as
Rojas had been, especially to the women, whose trances and stigmata he
investigated and approved and rewarded. If any preacher preached against
Illuminism, Ribera banished him and, under this protection, the sect
multiplied throughout Extremadura. It is true that Bishop Simancas, who
succeeded Ribera (1569-1579) was not so favorable, and his provisor,
Picado, at one time prosecuted a number of Alumbrados, who took refuge
in Seville under Rojas, among whom was Hernando Alvarez, but the Llerena
tribunal took no part in this and the great body of the sect was
undisturbed.
[Sidenote: _THE JESUITS_]
It is easy to conceive, therefore, the obstacles confronting Fray
Alonso, when he commenced his crusade in 1570. He relates at much length
his labors, against great opposition, especially of the Jesuits, and he
found no little difficulty in arousing the Llerena inquisitors to
action, for they said that it was a new matter and obscure, which
required instructions from the Suprema. It is true that, in February
1572, they lent him some support and made a few arrests, but nothing
seems to have come of it. He wished to go to Madrid and lay the matter
before the Suprema, but his superiors, who apparently disapproved of his
zeal, sent him, in October 1572, to Avila, to purchase lumber, and then
to Usagre, to preach the Lenten sermons of 1573. After this his prior
despatched him to Arenas about the lumber, and it was a providence of
God that this business necessitated action by the Council of Military
Orders, so that he had an excuse for visiting Madrid. There he sought
Rodrigo de Castro--the captor of Carranza--to whom he complained of the
negligence and indifference of the Llerena inquisitors, and gave a
memorial reciting the errors of the Alumbrados. This resulted in the
Suprema sending for the papers, on seeing which it ordered the arrest of
the most guilty, when Hernando Alvarez, Francisco Zamora and Gaspar
Sánchez were seized in Seville, where they had taken refuge. This
produced only a momentary effect in Extremadura, where the Alumbrados
comforted themselves with the assurance that their leaders would be
dismissed with honor.
It had been proposed to remove the tribunal from Llerena to Plasencia,
where houses had been bought for it, but, early in 1574, Fray Alonso
remonstrated with the inquisitor-general, pointing out that the land was
full of Alumbrados, many of them powerful, and what preaching had been
done against them, under the protection of the Inquisition, would be
silenced if it was removed. This brought a summons and in May he
appeared before the Suprema, where his revelations astonished the
members and they asked his advice. He urged a visitation of the
district, to be made by the fiscal Montoya, who had studied the matter
and understood it, while the inquisitors did not comprehend the subtile
mysteries and distinctions involved. It was so ordered, and Montoya
commenced his visitation at Zafra, where, on July 25th he published the
Edict of Faith, and a special one against Illuminism and Quietism. At
first he was much disconcerted in finding among the Alumbrados nothing
but fasts and disciplines, prayers, contemplation, hair-shirts,
confessions and communions or, if traces appeared of evil doctrines, so
commingled with the words of God and the sacraments that evil was
concealed in good. Fray Alonso however encouraged him to investigate the
lives and conversation of those who enjoyed trances and visions and the
stigmata, when it became evident that all was magic art, the work of
Satan and of hell. For four months Montoya gathered information and sent
the papers to the Suprema, which ordered the arrest with sequestration
of five persons, four of the adepts and a female disciple. Towards the
close of December he returned to Llerena, to resume the visitation in
March, 1575. During the interval Fray Alonso was summoned to Madrid,
where he was ordered to accompany Montoya, and the inquisitors were
instructed to pay him a salary; this at first they refused to do and
then assigned him four reales a day for each day on which he should
preach, but the Suprema intervened with an order on the receiver to pay
him a certain sum that would enable him to perform the duty. The
visitation lasted from March till the beginning of November, and
comprised sixteen places, in which Fray Alonso tells us that there were
found great errors and sins. Unfortunately he omits to inform us what
were the practical results or what was done with the culprits arrested
the previous year, and he concludes his memorial by assuring us that the
Jesuits and the Alumbrados are alike in doctrine and are the same, which
is so certain that to doubt it would be great sin and offence to God.
[Sidenote: _THE ALUMBRADOS OF LLERENA_]
Fray Alonso might safely thus attack the children of Loyola in Spain,
but he made a fatal error when his zeal induced him to carry the war
into Portugal. In the following year, 1576, he addressed memorials to
the Portuguese ecclesiastical authorities, ascribing to the Jesuits all
the Illuminism that afflicted Spain; they taught, he said, that their
contemplation of the Passion of Christ was rewarded with the highest
spiritual gifts, including impeccability, with the corollary that carnal
indulgence was no sin in the Illuminated, while in reality their visions
and revelations were the work of demons, whom they controlled by their
skill in sorcery. The Jesuits, however, by this time were a dominant
power in Portugal; Cardinal Henry, the inquisitor-general, transmitted
the memorials to the Spanish Inquisition, with a request for the condign
punishment of the audacious fraile. It was no more than he had openly
preached and repeatedly urged on the Suprema, but the time was fast
approaching for the absorption of Portugal under the Castilian crown,
and Cardinal Henry was to be propitiated. Fray Alonso was forced to
retract, and was recluded in a convent, but this did not satisfy the
Cardinal, who asked for his extradition, or that the matter be submitted
to the Holy See, when the opportune death of the fraile put a happy end
to the matter.[55]
Yet, in Spain, Fray Alonso exerted a decisive influence on the relations
of the Inquisition to mysticism and, before this unlucky outburst of
zeal, he had the satisfaction of seeing the indifference of the Llerena
tribunal excited to active work. In 1576, while preaching in that city,
he said that he had heard of persons who, under an exterior of special
sanctity, gave free rein to their appetites. On this, an imprudent
devotee, named Mari Sanz, interrupted him, exclaiming "Padre, the lives
of these people are better and their faith sounder than your own" and,
when he reproved her, she declared that the Holy Spirit had moved her.
This was a dangerous admission; she was arrested, and her confessions
led to the seizure of so many accomplices that the tribunal was obliged
to ask for assistance. An experienced inquisitor, Francisco de Soto,
Bishop of Salamanca, was sent, who vigorously pushed the trials until he
died, January 29, 1578, poisoned, as it was currently reported, by his
physician, who was long detained in prison under the accusation. How
little the sectaries imagined themselves to have erred is seen in the
fact that one of them, a shoemaker named Juan Bernal, obeyed a
revelation which directed him to appeal to Philip II, to tell him of the
injustice perpetrated at Llerena and to ask him why he did not intervene
and evoke the matter to himself--hardihood which earned for him six
years of galley-service and two hundred lashes.
The evidence elicited in the trials showed the errors ordinarily
attributed to Illuminism, including trances and revelations and sexual
abominations unfit for transcription. After three years spent in this
work, an auto was held, June 14, 1579, in which, among other offenders,
there appeared fifteen Alumbrados--ten men and five women. Of the men,
all but the unlucky shoemaker were priests, and among them we recognize
Hernando Alvarez, against whom there appeared no less than a hundred and
forty-six witnesses. Many were _curas_ of various towns and naturally
the illicit relations were principally between confessors and their
spiritual daughters. From a doctrinal standpoint, their offence seems
not to have been regarded as serious, for none of them were degraded,
and the abjurations were for light suspicion, but this leniency was
accompanied by deprivation of functions, galley-service, reclusion and
similar penalties, while the fines inflicted amounted to fifteen hundred
ducats and eight thousand maravedís. The unfortunate Mari Sanz, who had
caused the explosion, expiated her imprudence by appearing with a gag
and a sentence to perpetual prison, two hundred lashes in Llerena and
two hundred more at la Fuente del Maestre, her place of residence.[56]
From the number of those inculpated it may be assumed that this auto did
not empty the prisons, and that it was followed by others, but if so, we
have no record of them. The impression produced by the affair was wide
and profound. Páramo, writing towards the end of the century, speaks of
it as one in which the vigilance of the Inquisition preserved Spain from
serious peril.[57]
[Sidenote: _HOSTILITY OF THE INQUISITION_]
In fact, it marks a turning-point in the relations of the Inquisition to
Spanish mysticism, of which the persecution became one of its regular
and recognized duties. Even before the auto of 1579, the Suprema, in a
carta acordada of January 4, 1578, ordered the tribunals to add to the
Edict of Faith a section in which the errors developed in the trials
were enumerated. These consisted in asserting that mental prayer is of
divine precept and that it fulfils everything, while vocal prayer is of
trivial importance; that the servants of God are not required to labor;
that the orders of superiors are to be disregarded, when conflicting
with the hours devoted to mental prayer and contemplation; decrying the
sacrament of matrimony; asserting that the perfect have no need of
performing virtuous actions; advising persons not to marry or to enter
religious Orders; saying that the servants of God are to shine in
secular life; obtaining promises of obedience and enforcing it in every
detail; holding that, after reaching a certain degree of perfection,
they cannot look upon holy images or listen to sermons, and teaching
these errors under pledge of secrecy.[58]
It is noteworthy that here there is no allusion to ecstasies or trances
or to sexual aberrations, as in subsequent edicts, although Páramo, some
twenty years later, in his frequent allusions to the Alumbrados, dwells
especially on the latter and on the dangers to which they led in the
confessional.[59] That this danger was not imaginary is indicated by the
case of Fray Juan de la Cruz, a discalced Franciscan, so convinced of
the truth of alumbrado doctrine that, in 1605, he presented himself to
the Toledo tribunal with a memorial in which he argued that indecent
practices between spiritual persons were purifying and elevating to the
soul, and resulting in the greatest spiritual benefit when unaccompanied
with desire to sin. He was promptly placed on trial and six witnesses
testified to his teaching of this doctrine. Ordinary seduction in the
confessional, as will be seen hereafter, when the culprit admitted it to
be a sin, was treated with comparative leniency, but doctrinal error was
far more serious, and the unlucky fraile, who maintained throughout the
trial the truth of his theories, was visited with much greater severity.
Humiliations and disabilities were heaped upon him; he received a
circular scourging in a convent of his order and a monthly discipline
for a year, with six years of reclusion.[60]
Simple mysticism, however, even without the advanced doctrines of
Illuminism and Quietism, was becoming to the Inquisition an object of
pronounced hostility. The land was being filled with _beatas
revelanderas;_ mystic fervor was spreading and threatening to become a
part of the national religion, stimulated doubtless by the increasing
cult paid to its prominent exemplars, for Santa Teresa was beatified in
1614 and canonized in 1622, while San Pedro de Alcántara was beatified
in the latter year. Apart from all moral questions, the mystic might at
any moment assert independence; his theory was destructive to the
intervention of the priest between man and God, and Illuminism was only
a development of mysticism. The Inquisition was not wholly consistent,
but its determination to stem the current which was setting so strongly
was emphatically expressed in the trial of Padre Gerónimo de la Madre de
Dios by the Toledo tribunal in 1616.
The padre was a secular priest, the son of Don Sánchez de Molina, who
for forty-eight years had been corregidor of Malagon. He had entered the
Dominican Order, had led an irregular life and apparently had been
expelled but, in 1610, had been converted from his evil ways by a vision
and, in 1613, obeying a voice from God, he had come to Madrid and taken
service in a little hospital attached to the parish church of San
Martin. His sermons speedily attracted crowds, including the noblest
ladies of the court; his fervent devotion, the austerity of his life,
the rigor of his mortifications and the self-denial of his charities won
for him the reputation of a saint, which was enhanced by the trances
into which he habitually fell when celebrating mass, and popular
credulity credited him with elevation from the ground. There is
absolutely no evidence that in this there was hypocrisy or imposture,
and the most searching investigation failed to discover any imputation
on his virtue. All that he received he gave to the poor, even to clothes
from his back, and his sequestrated property consisted solely of pious
books, rosaries and objects of devotion. He speedily gathered around him
disciples, prominent among whom was Fray Bartolomé de Alcalá, vicar of
the Geronimite convent; the number of their penitents, all
_espirituales_ was large, and these usually partook of the sacrament
daily or oftener; many of them had revelations and were consulted by the
pious as being in direct relations with God, from whom they received
answers to petitions.
[Sidenote: _GERONIMO DE LA MADRE DE DIOS_]
In all this there was nothing beyond the manifestations of devotional
fervor customary to Spanish piety, but an accusation was brought against
Padre Gerónimo, September 20, 1615, for teaching that the soul could
reach a state of perfection in which it would be an act of imperfection
to ask God for anything. This, which was one of the refinements of
mysticism, was subsequently proved by the calificadores to be subversive
of existing observances, because the saints in heaven were in a state of
perfection and, if they could ask nothing of God, what would become of
their suffrage and intercession and what would be the use of the cult
and oblations offered to them? Still, at the time, the tribunal took no
action beyond examining a few witnesses, and Gerónimo would probably
not have been disturbed in his useful career had he not written a book.
In his mystic zeal he imagined himself inspired in the composition of a
work entitled _El Discipulo espiritual que trata de oracion mental y de
espiritu_, which he submitted to several learned theologians, whose
emendations he adopted. This had considerable currency in MS.; a demand
arose for its printing, and he laid it before the Royal Council for a
licence, when he was informed that the approbation of the episcopal
provisor of Toledo was a condition precedent. After sending it to that
official and receiving no answer for six months, he submitted a copy to
the Suprema, October 20, 1615, explaining what he had done and asking
for its examination; if there was in it anything contrary to the faith,
he desired its correction, for he wished the work to be unimpeachably
orthodox and would die a thousand deaths in defence of the true
religion.
He waited some seven months and, on May 17, 1616, he ventured an inquiry
of the Suprema, but a month earlier three calificadores had reported on
it unfavorably, the Suprema had ordered the Toledo tribunal to act and,
on May 28th, the warrant for his arrest with sequestration was issued. A
mass of papers, MS. sermons, tracts and miscellaneous accumulations were
distributed among fifteen calificadores, who, as scholastic theologians,
were not propitiated by his contempt for schoolmen. They performed their
task with avidity and accumulated an imposing array of a hundred and
eighty-six erroneous propositions--many of them the veriest trifles,
significant only of their temper, but, after all his explanations, there
was a formidable residuum of twenty-five qualified as heretical,
twenty-nine as erroneous, three as sacrilegious, and numerous others as
scandalous, rash and savoring of heresy.
Despite the piteous supplications of his aged father, his trial lasted
until September, 1618--some twenty-seven months of incarceration, during
which his health suffered severely. Throughout it all he never varied
from his attitude of abject submission; kneeling and weeping he begged
for penance and punishment, as he would rather be plunged in hell than
commit a sin or give utterance to aught offensive to pious ears. This
availed him little. He was sentenced to appear in the auto of September
2, 1618, as a penitent, to abjure _de vehementi_ and to retract publicly
a list of sixty-one errors. He was forbidden for life to preach or to
hear confessions, or to write on religious subjects; he was recluded
for a year in a designated convent and for five more was banished from
Madrid and Toledo, and a public edict commanded the surrender of all his
writings. Thus he was not only publicly proclaimed a heretic, but his
career was blasted, he was virtually deprived of the means of
subsistence, yet his first act on reaching his place of confinement was
to write humbly thanking the inquisitors for their kindness. Seven
months later he appealed to them, saying that he was sick and enfeebled,
he had been bled four times and he begged for the love of God that he
might be spared the rest of his reclusion and be allowed to comfort his
aged father. To this no attention was paid and we hear nothing more of
him.
[Sidenote: _THE MYSTICS OF SEVILLE_]
For us the interest of the case lies not so much in the cruelty with
which the bruised reed was broken, as in the revelation of the silent
revolution in the Spanish Church with regard to mysticism. In the
sixty-one condemned propositions there were one or two properly liable
to censure, the most dangerous being that ascribed to the
Begghards--that the perfected soul enjoys the spirit of liberty, going
at will without laws or rules, and that in this state God gives it the
power of working miracles. Another which asserted that devotion to
images, rosaries, blessed beads etc. was an error so great that souls so
employed could have no hope of salvation was scarce more than an
exaggeration of the precepts of Francisco de Osuna and Juan de la Cruz.
For the most part, the condemned propositions were merely the
common-places of the great mystics of the sixteenth century--that the
perfected soul enjoys absolute peace, for the appetites and passions are
at rest and the flesh in no way contradicts the spirit--that trances are
the highest of God's gifts--that the supreme grade of contemplation
becomes habitual, and that the soul at will can thus enter God's
presence--that, in the trance, God can be seen--that the perfected soul
should ask only that God's will be done. Other condemnations were
directed against the claims of inspiration and revelation, against the
suspension of the faculties in mental prayer, against the Union with God
which had been the aim of all the mystics. In short, it was a
condemnation of the doctrines and practices which, for centuries, had
been recognized by the Church as manifestations of the utmost holiness.
Had Francisco de Osuna, Luis de Granada, San Pedro de Alcántara, Santa
Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz and their disciples been judged by the same
standard, they would have shared the fate of Padre Gerónimo unless,
indeed, their convictions had led them to refuse submission, in which
case they would have been burnt.[61] This was shown at Valladolid when,
in 1620, Juan de Gabana, priest of San Martin de Valverri and Gerónima
González, a widow, were prosecuted for mysticism. He died in prison,
pertinacious to the last and was duly burnt in effigy, in 1622. She was
less firm and was voted to reconciliation, but the Suprema ordered her
to be tortured; this she escaped by dying, and her effigy was
reconciled.[62]
Yet the mystic cult was too firmly planted in the religious habits of
Spain to be readily eradicated, nor was the Inquisition prepared to be
wholly consistent. While Padre Gerónimo was thus harshly treated for
unpublished writings, the Minim Fray Fernando de Caldera was allowed
undisturbed to publish, in 1623, his _Mística Teología_, perhaps the
craziest of the mystic treatises. It is cast in the form of instructions
uttered by Christ, in the first person, and teaches Illuminism and
Quietism of the most exalted kind. The intellect is to be suspended and
the will abandoned to God, who does with it as he pleases, infusing it
with divine light and admitting it to a knowledge of the divine
mysteries. Lubricious temptations, if they come from the flesh are to be
overcome with austerities; if from pride, with humility; if they are
passive, they are to be met with patience and resignation, for God who
sends them will remove them at his own time and with great benefit to
the soul.[63] No teaching more dangerous is to be found in Molinos but,
although a translation of the work appeared in Rome in 1658, it escaped
condemnation both there and in Spain.
During this time there was a storm gathering in Seville which enabled
the Inquisition to impress its definite policy on the mystically
inclined. We have seen how mysticism flourished there under the
patronage of Archbishop Rojas, and the persecution in Extremadura seems
not to have extended to Andalusia, so that it continued unrepressed.
While Padre Gerónimo was awaiting his doom in Toledo, a much more
extravagant performer was enjoying the cult of the devout in Seville. A
priest named Fernando Méndez had a special reputation for sanctity; when
celebrating mass he fell into trances and uttered terrible roars; he
taught his disciples to invoke his intercession, as though he were
already a saint in heaven; fragments of his garments were treasured as
relics; he gathered a congregation of beatas and, after mass in his
oratory, they would strip off their garments and dance with indecent
vigor--drunk with the love of God--and, on some of his female penitents,
he would impose the penance of lifting their skirts and exposing
themselves before him. His disciples were not drawn merely from the
lower classes, for we are told that as many as thirty coaches could be
counted of a morning around the gate of the Franciscan convent to which
he had retired.[64]
[Sidenote: _THE MYSTICS OF SEVILLE_]
This hysteric contagion spread through Seville, affecting a considerable
portion of the population. There was no concealment and evidently no
thought that it involved suspicion of heresy, or that it departed in any
way from orthodoxy. A special group of mystics, known as la Granata,
under successive spiritual directors, had long held their meetings in
the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Granada, without exciting
animadversion or calling for interference from the Inquisition.[65]
When, however, the imperious Pacheco, in 1622, assumed the office of
inquisitor-general, he speedily ordered the Seville tribunal to
investigate and report as to the mystic extravagances current in the
city, and there could have been no difficulty in collecting ample
material for condemnation according to the new standard. This resulted
in the publication of a special Edict of Grace, May 9, 1523, granting
the customary thirty days in which those feeling themselves inculpated
could denounce themselves and their accomplices and be admitted to
absolution with salutary penance and without confiscation or
disabilities affecting their descendants. That all might understand what
these new heresies were, the edict embodied a list of seventy-six errors
ascribed to the Alumbrados, which marks the advance made since 1578 in
suppressing mysticism in general and in attributing to it additional
evil practices. There was a fuller condemnation of the beliefs common to
all mystics, which had so often earned canonization--that their
trembling or burning or fainting was a sign of grace and of the
influence of the Holy Spirit--that a stage of perfection could be
reached in which they could see the Divine Essence and the mysteries of
the Trinity and that, in this state, grace drowned all the
faculties--that they were governed directly by the Holy Spirit in what
they did or left undone--that in contemplation they dismissed all
thought and concentrated themselves in the presence of God--that, in the
state of Union with God, the will is subordinated--that in trances God
is clearly seen in his glory--that mental prayer renders other works
superfluous--that other duties, both religious and worldly, can be
neglected to devote oneself wholly to this supreme devotion.
Besides these, there was an enumeration of the errors commonly
attributed to the Alumbrados with more or less
justice--impeccability--the elevation of mental prayer to the dignity of
a sacrament--communion with more than one wafer--promiscuous intercourse
among the elect--indecent actions in the confessional regarded as
meritorious--teaching wives to refuse cohabitation--forcing girls to
take vows of chastity or to become nuns--requiring vows of absolute
obedience to the spiritual director--breathing on the mouths of female
penitents to communicate to them the love of God--violation of the seal
of the confessional--that the perfected have power of absolution even in
reserved cases--that those who follow this doctrine will escape
purgatory and that many who refused to do so have returned to beg
release, when they give them an _Evangelio_ and see them fly to heaven.
One article would indicate that among the devotees, as was usually the
case, there was at least one who boasted of bearing the stigmata, of
conversing with God and of living solely upon the sacrament, while a
clause requiring the surrender of all statutes and instructions for
their congregations and assemblies shows that they were organized into
more or less formal associations.[66]
The audacious assumption of power in this pronouncement was forcibly
pointed out by Juan Dionisio Portocarrero, in an opinion furnished to
the Archbishop Pedro de Castro y Quiñones. There was gross disrespect
shown to him, who had been kept in ignorance, though it was known that
an edict was in preparation, of which the nature was sedulously
concealed until it was suddenly published in all the churches.
Inquisitors could not decide cases without the participation of the
Ordinary, while here the cases were tried and the parties admitted to
reconciliation, without calling in the episcopal authority. Similar
usurpation was manifested in the definition of heresies, which was the
attribute of the Holy See and of general councils, not of the
Inquisition. No general council could do more than the inquisitor-general
had done in defining the seventy-six errors, and to say that these
errors were widely disseminated in Seville, not without fault of
those permitting it, and to do so without calling upon the archbishop
to explain the condition of his flock, was to condemn him without
a hearing. These seventy-six propositions were all styled matters
of faith, although many of them were rather matters of discipline,
pertaining to the Ordinary, yet all were reserved to the Inquisition.
Moreover, the inquisitor-general was not competent to decide the
disputed question whether the power assured to bishops to absolve
for secret heresy was annulled by the bull in _Coena Domini_. Then
Portocarrero proceeded to examine one by one a considerable portion
of the condemned propositions and showed that some of them expressed
the accepted teaching of the Church, while many were not cognizable by
the Inquisition, because they had nothing to do with faith, and others
again he omitted as being unintelligible. He urged the archbishop to
vindicate his jurisdiction quietly, without causing scandal, and that
the edict be examined and qualified by learned men, not Dominicans,
for it had originated with them--the truth being that the inculpated
mystics were mostly under the direction of Franciscans and Jesuits
and that, in the bitter hatred between the Orders, the Dominicans had
stirred up the matter to strike a blow at their rivals.[67]
[Sidenote: _THE MYSTICS OF SEVILLE_]
The poor old archbishop, who died in December of the same year, of
course did nothing. The edict was published on June 4th and again on the
11th, when the most pious circles in Seville suddenly found themselves
arraigned for heresy. Mysticism had become fashionable, especially among
the women, from the noblest to the lower classes, and they rushed at
once to obtain the pardon promised within the thirty days. A Seville
letter of June 15th says that an inquisitor with a secretary established
himself in San Pablo (the Dominican church used in autos de fe), eating
and sleeping there, and on duty from 5 A.M. until 10 P.M., with an
hour's intermission for meals, but that he could not attend to a
twentieth part of the applicants, and that another thirty days would
have to be granted. In this there is doubtless exaggeration, but another
authority states the number of those inculpated at 695.[68] There had of
course been no intentional heresy and there were no pertinacious
heretics, although among them were impostors who had traded upon popular
credulity and love for the marvellous. Still, an auto de fe was
necessary to confirm the impression and it was held on November 30,
1624, in which eleven Alumbrados appeared, but eight of them were
confessed impostors. Of the remaining three, one was the Padre Fernando
Méndez, who in dying had distributed his garments and his virtues among
his disciples; no special punishment was decreed against his memory, but
his effigy was displayed in the auto, his revelations, trances, visions
and prophecies were declared to be fictitious, and his disciples were
required to surrender the articles which they had treasured as relics.
Another was a mulatto slave named Antonio de la Cruz, who had united to
his mysticism some unauthorized speculations respecting the power of
Satan; he escaped with abjuration _de levi_ and deprivation of the
sacrament except at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. The third was
Francisco del Castillo, a priest whose trances were so frequent and
uncontrollable that they would seize him in the act of eating; he was at
the head of a congregation, the members of which he boasted were all
saved, and through which the Church was to be reformed, he being
possessed of the spirit of Jesus Christ and his disciples of that of the
Apostles--all of which had not prevented him from maintaining improper
relations with his female penitents. He was sentenced only to abjuration
_de levi_, perpetual deprivation of confessing and reclusion for four
years in a convent, with exile from Seville--the usual penalty, as we
shall see, for solicitation _ad turpia_ in the confessional--with
warning of severer punishment if he did not abandon his visions and
revelations.[69]
Evidently the object of the Edict had been to warn rather than to
punish; but few examples were deemed necessary, and in these the
mildness of the penalties indicates a recognition of the fact that these
so-called heresies had not previously been regarded as culpable. It
sufficed to set an impressive stamp of reprobation on mysticism without
unnecessary severity.
Seville, however, was not yet cleansed of the infection. At an auto held
some two years later, on February 28, 1627, there were two conspicuous
mystics, Maestre Juan de Villalpando, a priest in charge of one of the
city parishes, and Madre Catalina de Jesus, a Carmelite beata.
Notwithstanding the Edict of 1623, Villalpando had maintained a
congregation of both sexes, who obeyed him implicitly in all things,
temporal and spiritual. No less than two hundred and seventy-five
erroneous propositions were charged against him, and he was required to
retract twenty-two articles. He was deprived of his priestly functions,
recluded for four years in a convent and confined subsequently to the
city of Seville, with a fine of two hundred ducats. Madre Catalina, for
thirty-eight years, had been sick with the love of God, and her
continued existence was regarded as a miracle by her numerous disciples,
who treasured as relics whatever had touched her person. She was accused
of improper relations with a priest--probably Villalpando--who
reverenced her as his guide and teacher, and she was a dogmatizer, for
her writings, both MS. and printed, were required to be surrendered. On
the testimony of a hundred and forty-eight witnesses, she was sentenced
to reclusion for six years in a hospital, where she was to earn her
support by labor.[70]
This shows increasing severity, and a still more deterrent example was
furnished, in 1630, by an auto in which eight Alumbrados, as we are
told, were burned alive and six in effigy. There were also sixty
reconciliations, of which some were doubtless for the same heresy.[71]
We have no further details of this auto, save that Bernino characterizes
the victims as obstinate; possibly they may have been relapsed but, as
we have seen, the abjurations had been for light suspicion, which did
not entail relaxation for relapse. Be this as it may, the affair would
indicate that Illuminism was now regarded as formal heresy, not as
merely inferring suspicion, and that pertinacity incurred the stake.
[Sidenote: _TREATMENT_]
Obstinacy, in fact, converts into formal heresy what may be otherwise
regarded as light suspicion, as it infers disobedience to the decisions
of the Church. This is seen in an interesting review of the whole
subject by an inquisitor about 1640. He describes the evidence
customarily brought against alumbrado confessors and preachers, of
teaching sensuality under cover of mortification. Some hold that
indecent handling and sleeping with a woman are meritorious as
trampling on the devil and overcoming temptation; so it is with making
the penitent strip and stand against a wall with arms outstretched, and
other details that may well be spared. There is also teaching that
obedience is better than the sacrament and that it excuses what would
otherwise be evil, or that God has revealed to them that such things are
not sin, or that interior impulses are to be followed in doing or not
doing anything. Such persons, he tells us are confined in the secret
prison, without sequestration, although, if there is suspicion of
heresy, there is sequestration. If, as usually occurs, they confess to
these teachings, extenuating them as the result of thoughtlessness or
ignorance without errors of belief, and if they are priests or frailes,
the sentence is read in the audience-chamber and the punishment is the
same as for solicitation in the confessional--that is to say, reclusion
in a monastery for a term of years and deprivation of the faculty of
confessing. But, if this evil doctrine has caused much injury, as at
Llerena, they appear in a public auto with some years of galley-service
and, if they are priests owning property, they are fined at discretion.
If there should be obstinacy and rejection of the arguments of the
theologians deputed to reason with them, there is postponement for some
months to allow time for conversion, as happened in Logroño with a
certain priest, and in Valladolid with a fraile. The priest taught his
female penitents that there was no sin in kisses and in indecent
handling and in sleeping with a woman so long as the final act was
omitted. He revoked repeatedly and varied between submission and
persistence, but was convinced at last and appeared in a public auto,
abjured de vehementi, was verbally degraded with five years of galleys
and ten more of exile, besides perpetual deprivation of confessing. If
the culprit is impervious to argument and will not abandon errors of
belief, he must be treated as a heretic and be relaxed even if he denies
intention. There was one who abjured _de vehementi_ and relapsed. It was
alleged by his Order that he was insane, for he was a person of high
repute for virtue and learning; he was given secret penance, but so
severe that he was never heard of again.[72]
From this statement it would appear that the extreme position assumed by
Pacheco had not been maintained and that simple mysticism was tolerated
unless it was complicated with the follies of Illuminism, especially as
concerned the relations between the sexes. The policy of the
Inquisition, in fact, was by no means uniform; for a time many harmless
mystics were allowed to enjoy in peace the veneration of their disciples
while, if there was scandal or imposture or some ulterior motive,
prosecution was easy. One such case was that of Fray Francisco García
Calderon whom we have seen (Vol. II, p. 135) concerned with the case of
the nuns of San Placido and the Marquis of Villanueva, in 1630. A
contemporary was Doña Luisa de Colmenares, popularly known as Madre
Luisa de Carrion, a nun of the convent of Santa Clara, at Carrion de los
Condes, who, at the age of seventy, had passed fifty-three years in a
cloister. She was not strictly an Alumbrado but a mystic of the type of
Santa Teresa, and her case is instructive as showing how general was the
belief attributing supernatural powers to beings favored by God, how
profitably this belief could be exploited by shrewd management, and how
effectively the Inquisition could intervene, in the face of the most
intense popular opposition. There is no reason to suppose that Madre
Luisa was consciously an impostor; she was merely an ignorant old woman,
hypnotically habituated to trances and visions like so many others, and
the Franciscan Order, to which she belonged, saw in her a speculative
value of which they made the most. Philip IV venerated her and popes
were her correspondents; there was an immense demand for objects
sanctified by her--crosses, beads, images of the Christ-child and
similar trifles--the sales of which brought in large profits and,
between these and the offerings of pilgrims, the Order was said to have
realized two hundred thousand crowns and to look forward to much more if
it could secure her canonization after death.
[Sidenote: _MADRE LUISA DE CARRION_]
Suddenly, in 1635, the Inquisition undertook to investigate her. There
had been nothing exceptional in her career, except its success and,
under Franciscan management she had been mostly kept clear of the errors
condemned in Pacheco's edict. The motive for action is obscure, and the
most probable suggestion is that the opponents of Count-Duke Olivares
had sought, after the fashion of the time, to make use, for political
ends, of the boundless popular veneration of which she was the object.
Yet there was significant caution in the preliminaries. Juan Santos,
senior Inquisitor of Valladolid, was ordered to examine her, when he
pretended a visit to the Bishop of Palencia and on the road stopped for
a fortnight at Carrion. It was not difficult to involve an untutored
nun in erroneous theological speculations, and a warrant for her arrest
followed; she was placed in a carriage with a female relative of one of
the inquisitors, when her journey to Valladolid was a triumphal
procession. A pillar of light, changing into a cross, was seen in the
sky; everywhere the population gathered in mass, and the precaution of
entering Valladolid at night was unavailing, for the crowds were so
great that she was with difficulty carried in safety, through the
surging mob striving to gather some fragment of her dress as a talisman.
She was housed in the Augustinian convent, where she was the object of
veneration to the nuns, who declared her destined to be the most
powerful saint in the annals of the Church; but it was observed that she
no longer had ecstasies, although at Carrion they had been of daily
occurrence and were celebrated by sounding the organ, when everyone
rushed to see them.
The Franciscans officially undertook her defence; the population of
Valladolid, with the bishop at their head, were so demonstrative in her
favor that the tribunal hesitated, and the Suprema had to send a special
commissioner, who was no other than our old acquaintance Juan Dionisio
Portocarrero, soon afterwards rewarded with the bishopric of Guadix. It
was easy to make her convict herself of heresy, for she was foolish and
ignorant, full of vain-glory, and merely a tool of the rapacious friars
who had exploited her. Papers signed by her were in circulation in which
she declared that she had seen the Divine Essence, that she was
confirmed in grace, that at six years of age Christ had removed her
heart of flesh and substituted his own, that he had given her an apple
of paradise by which she would remain immortal until the Day of
Judgement, when she would accompany Enoch and Elias in the war with
Antichrist; that God sustained her without food, and much more that
testifies to the incredible credulity of the people, and to the
unscrupulous audacity of the friars. Under examination, she declared
that she had seen the Divine Essence, but she proved herself wholly
ignorant of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and uttered a thousand
follies, including a revelation from God that all who possessed her
crosses, beads, rosaries or other objects of devotion would be saved
unconditionally and could rest secure of their predestination.
The fore-ordained condemnation was preceded by an edict of October 23,
1636, requiring the surrender of all letters, portraits, crosses, beads
etc., which were so numerous that in a few days the cura of the parish
of San Miguel had a room full of them. The poor old crone was blind,
toothless and exhausted with a life of hysteria; the shock of these
experiences was too great for her feeble vitality, and she died in
November. This was, of course, no impediment to her trial, and the
tribunal was justly incensed to learn that the bishop had buried her
without its permission. When summoned to answer for this he threatened a
popular uprising, but the tribunal held good, exhumed the body and
verified its identity, after which the Suprema ordered a second
exhumation and burial under its authority.
It seems that no formal sentence was ever rendered. The Franciscans
talked of appealing to the pope, but were only laughed at. Madre Luisa
had ceased to be of importance, but that her devotees had not lost all
veneration for her is shown by the Inquisition, in 1638, forbidding all
discussion of the case. In 1643 it was referred to Arce y Reynoso,
together with that of San Placido and, in 1644, he was said to be
pushing it with energy, but probably it was wisely allowed to be
forgotten, without reaching a conclusion. Yet, notwithstanding the
inquisitorial edict, her crosses were not all surrendered and continued
to be regarded as enriched with indulgences, for we find them condemned
by the Roman Congregation of Indulgences in 1668 and again in 1678.[73]
[Sidenote: _INFLUENCE OF MYSTICS_]
But for the presumably political motive prompting her prosecution it may
be assumed that Madre Luisa would have been enrolled in the calendar of
saints. Her career was no more extravagant than that of her
contemporary, the Blessed María Ana de Jesus, a _Madrileña_, who was
born in 1565 and died in 1624. She belonged to the Order of La Merced,
and her biography was written in 1673, by Fray Juan de la Presentacion,
official historiographer of Philip IV, who informs us that, when an
infant at the breast, she gave evidence of her future sanctity; at the
age of four she was constantly at prayer, and at six she had ecstasies,
visions and revelations. She says herself that her soul was ordinarily
illuminated by God, who manifested his will to her unmistakably. The
effort for her canonization began shortly after her death and was
renewed at intervals, until she was beatified in 1783.[74] Another
contemporary of María Ana de Jesus was she of Peru, known as _la Azucena
de Quito_. Born in 1618 and dying in 1645, her miracles commenced before
her birth, and she began to mortify the flesh by refusing to suckle
before noon-day. It was in vain that, in her humility, she prayed to be
denied the favor of visions and miracles. Efforts were commenced, in
1670, to procure her canonization, but it was not until 1850 that she
was beatified by Pius IX.[75]
These saintly mystics, with their direct communications from God,
wielded an influence which we can scarce realize. They had become so
numerous and their revelations were so unhesitatingly accepted, that
Spain was enveloped in an atmosphere of mysticism, in which the divine
guidance was sought, rather than the councils of human wisdom. Olivares
might well fear any adverse utterances of Madre Luisa, for his downfall,
in 1643, was accelerated by visions enjoyed by Don Francisco de
Chiribaga, although the Jesuit Padre Galindo, who was concerned in
making them known, was imprisoned by his superiors for acting without
their permission.[76] When the affairs of the Spanish monarchy were at
their lowest ebb at this time, it is a curious revelation of the
impulses under which it was governed to find Philip IV complaining of
the perplexities to which he was exposed by the visions brought to him
by the frailes; this matter of revelations, he says, is one which
requires much consideration, especially when he is told that God orders
him to punish those who have rendered him good service, and to elevate
those whose methods have not earned them a good reputation. All that is
lacking to complete this picture of unreasoning superstition is found in
the fact that this utterance is made to another mystic to whom he
appeals for guidance and for intercession with God to send him
light.[77]
María de Jesus, commonly known as Sor María de Agreda, to whom Philip
thus turned for counsel, was too strongly entrenched in the royal favor
to be in danger from the Inquisition yet, notwithstanding that favor,
her revelations were rejected by Rome, thus furnishing another example
of the difficulty of differentiating between sanctity and heresy. She
had practised mental prayer from the time when she was able to use her
reason, and she was in constant communication with God, the Virgin and
the angels.[78] Her fame filled the land, and her voluminous writings,
which claim to be inspired, still form part of the devotional literature
of the faithful. She so captured the confidence of Philip that he made
her his chief adviser; for twenty-two years, until her death in 1665,
four months before his own, he maintained constant correspondence with
her by every post. Her influence thus was almost unbounded, but she
seems never to have abused it; her advice was usually sound, and she
never sought the enrichment of the impoverished convent of Agreda, of
which she was the superior.
[Sidenote: _SOR MARIA DE AGREDA_]
With all the power of the Franciscan Order and of the Spanish court to
sustain her claims to sanctity, the canonization of such a personage
would seem almost a matter of course, and it would doubtless have been
effected if she had not reduced her revelations to writing. However they
might suit the appetite of Spanish piety, nourished so long on mystic
extravagance, they did not appeal to the sober judgement of the rest of
the Catholic world. In spite of their divine inspiration, her _Letanía y
nombres misteriosos de la Reina del Cielo_ and her _Mística Ciudad de
Dios_ were condemned in Rome, and the decree as to the latter was posted
on the doors of St. Peter's, August 4, 1681. The _Mística Ciudad_ was
eminently popular in Spain and, at the instance of the Spanish court,
its prohibition was suspended. The Inquisition took advantage of this,
in 1686, to issue a decree permitting its circulation, at which the
Congregation of the Index was naturally offended and, in 1692, the papal
decree of condemnation appeared in the Appendix to the Index of Innocent
XI, in spite of which the book was formally permitted by the Spanish
Inquisition.[79] When, in 1695, a translation by Père Thomas Croset
appeared in France, the Sorbonne, by decree of September 27, 1696,
condemned it as containing propositions contrary to the rules of
ecclesiastical modesty, and many fables and dreams from the Apocrypha,
exposing Catholicism to the contempt of the heretics.[80] The Spanish
court labored earnestly to obtain a renewal of the suspension and
finally succeeded, so that the book was omitted from the 1716 Index of
Clement XI. Then in 1729, the subject was again taken up, when, after a
long debate, the book was permitted, though Dr. Eusebius Amort tells us
that in Rome, in 1735, he was shown a decree of Benedict XIII renewing
the prohibition and asserting that its withdrawal had been obtained
fraudulently; still, the book has never since reappeared in the
Index.[81] There was a similar struggle over the _Letanía_, which was
still included in the 1716 Index of Clement XI and the first Index of
Benedict XIV, in 1744, but has disappeared from all succeeding
issues.[82] Less successful thus far has been the persistent effort to
procure the canonization of Madre María, leading to a papal decree of
April 27, 1773, forbidding all future proceedings in the case.
Notwithstanding this, Leo XIII, on March 10, 1884, ordered the
Congregation of Rites to consider in secret whether this prohibition
could be removed. To suggest such a discussion is almost equivalent to
prejudging it affirmatively but, before the decision was reached, chance
led to the publication in the _Deutscher Merkur_ of December 29, 1889,
of the whole secret history of the case, which has probably put an end,
at least for the present, to the prospect of enrolling in the calendar
of saints one whose revelations have been so repeatedly condemned as
illusory or as emanating from Satan.
* * * * *
While, as we shall see, the pest of _beatas revelanderas_ and more or
less conscious impostors continued to afflict the land, the cases
recognized as Alumbrados are comparatively few during the remainder of
the seventeenth century. In a Toledo record, commencing in 1648, the
first one occurs in 1679, when the Franciscan Fray Francisco de Toledo
was convicted. In this the offence is treated as formal heresy,
requiring reconciliation, and the punishment was extremely severe. He
was to receive a circular discipline in his convent; he was to be
confined in a cell for two years and for two years more was to be
recluded, during which time he was to be occupied in works of humility.
In addition, he was perpetually suspended from orders, deprived of
active and passive voice, and reduced to lay communion. It is possibly
to this, or to some movement in which Fray Francisco bore a part, that
Miguel Molinos refers, in a letter of February 16, 1680, to the Jesuit
General Oliva, saying that when, in 1679, Satan sought to revive the
sect of Illuminists in Spain, and they had applied to him, he had given
an opinion so contrary to their follies that it frightened them and
stopped the attempt.[83]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _ITALIAN MYSTICS_]
While Spain had thus been combatting Mysticism, Rome had remained
comparatively indifferent, for in Italy it had not developed into a
popular mania to be suppressed irrespective of the immoral extravagances
to which it sometimes led. In the Edict of the Inquisition requiring
denunciation of all offences subject to its jurisdiction, there is no
mention of Mysticism or Illuminism.[84] The elaborate folios of the
writers on the Holy Office--Carena, Del Bene, Lupo, Dandino--are silent
as to its eccentricities. Yet these were by no means unknown to the
Roman Holy Office, which took cognizance of them when brought to its
notice. Occasionally some book too extravagant in its teachings was put
upon the Index.[85] Cardinal Scaglia ([dagger symbol] 1639), a member of the
Congregation of the Inquisition, in his little manual of practice, which
was circulated only in MS., when treating of the troubles customary in
nunneries, says that through giddiness of brain, or vain-glory, or
illusion, nuns often claim to have celestial visions and revelations and
intercourse with God and the saints when, if the confessor is
imprudently given to spirituality, he reduces their utterances to
writing and, if he is learned, he defends them, very often with
propositions punishable by the Inquisition. Sometimes, he adds,
sensuality is involved, leading to the assertion that carnal acts are
not sinful but meritorious, when, if the confessor desires to take
advantage of this, he seeks with revelations and false doctrines to
prove that they are lawful. Cases of this kind have occurred in the
Holy Office, when priests who so justify themselves become liable to the
penalties of heresy. Such cases also occur between women assuming to be
spiritual and their confessors, who so teach them, even without
revelations and visions, leading their spiritual daughters to believe
these to be works of merit and mortification.[86]
Bernino tells us that, early in the seventeenth century, Illuminism was
widely diffused throughout Italy, where abjurations enforced by the
Inquisition were frequent, but this is probably the exaggeration so
frequent with heresiologists.[87] A well-marked case, however, startled
Florence in 1640, when the Canon Pandolfo Ricasoli, a highly respected
member of the noble house of the Barons of Trappola and a man of wide
learning and handsome fortune, was arrested with his chief accomplice
Faustina Mainardi, her brother Girolamo, and the Maestro Serafino de'
Servi, Dottor Carlo Scalandrini, the priest Giacomo Fantoni, Andrea
Biliotti, Francesco Borgeschi and two others, Mozzetti and Cocchi. Some
nuns of Santa Anna sul Prato were also implicated, but if they were
prosecuted no knowledge of it was allowed to reach the public. They seem
to have formed a coterie of Illuminists to whom Ricasoli taught that all
manner of indecent acts conduced to purity, if performed with the mind
fixed on God; they claimed special relations with heaven and were free
from sin in whatever they did for the greater glory of God. This
continued for eight years; rumors spread abroad and were conveyed to the
Inquisition, when Ricasoli came forward and denounced himself with
expressions of contrition. A public _atto di fede_ was held, November
28, 1641, in the great refectory of the convent of Santa Croce, attended
by the Grand Duke, the Cardinal de' Medici, the nuncio and other
notabilities. One of the culprits, Serafino de' Servi, had died in
prison and appeared in effigy, the rest abjured de _vehementi_.
Ricasoli, Faustina and Fantoni were condemned to perpetual irremissible
prison, others to prison with the privilege of asking for pardon, while
two, Cocchi and Borgeschi, had a private atto di fede and were confined
in the Stinche prison at the pleasure of the Inquisition. Ricasoli, as
he was led away, declared that he had acted foolishly and ignorantly,
and he asked pardon of the people for the scandal which he had caused;
he lingered in his prison until July 1657, when he died at the age of
78, protesting to the end that he had erred through ignorance and not
through lust; there was some question as to his interment, but finally
he received Christian burial. The inquisitor, Fra Giovanni Muzzarelli,
was sternly rebuked for misplaced mercy by the Roman Congregation and
was speedily replaced by one of severer temper.[88]
Impostors likewise were not unknown, as appears in the career of
Francesco Giuseppe Borri, a brilliant but dissolute scion of a noble
Milanese house. A misadventure in Rome forced him to take asylum in a
church where, in recognition of the mercy of God, he changed his life.
He soon had visions and revelations, from which he constructed a new
theology, showing an intimate acquaintance with the mysteries of the
Trinity and of the universe. That St. Anne was conceived by the
operation of the Spirit and the Virgin consequently was Deity, was one
of the twenty errors set forth in his sentence. Moreover he had been
selected to found the Kingdom of the Highest, in which all mankind would
be brought under papal rule, and the world would live in peace for a
thousand years; the philosopher's stone, of which he had the secret,
would furnish the means of raising the papal armies, in the leadership
of which he would be guided by St. Michael. Rome soon became dangerous
for the new prophet and, in 1655, he transferred his propaganda to
Milan, where he founded a secret mystical Order, the members of which
were trained in meditation and mental prayer, pledged themselves to shed
their blood in the execution of the work and, what was more to the
purpose, contributed all their property to the common fund. The Milanese
inquisitor got wind of the new sect and arrested some of the members;
Borri thought of raising a tumult but decided in favor of the safer
alternative of flight. His case was transferred to the Roman
Congregation, which cited him, March 20, 1659, to appear within ninety
days and then tried him in _absentia_, with the result that his effigy,
with all his impious writings, was burnt on January 3, 1661. His dupes
were duly prosecuted, but seem not to have been severely punished.
[Sidenote: _ITALIAN MYSTICS_]
Meanwhile he was starting on a fresh career in Northern Europe, as a man
possessed of all the secrets of alchemy and medicine, with a success
that even Cagliostro might have envied. Strassburg and Amsterdam had
reason to repent of his seductive arts. In Hamburg, Christina of Sweden
furnished him with means to prosecute the work of the Grand Arcanum.
Frederic III of Denmark lavished large sums on him and even made him
chief political adviser, which aroused the hatred of the heir-apparent,
Christian V, on whose accession, in 1670, he was obliged to save his
life by flight. He sought to find refuge in Turkey, but in Moravia, when
within a day's journey of the frontier, he was arrested by mistake, on
suspicion of complicity in a conspiracy in Vienna. There the papal
nuncio recognized and claimed him, but Leopold I, whose favor he had
speedily acquired by his chemical marvels, surrendered him only on
condition that his life should be spared. Before the Inquisition he
confessed his errors and attributed them to diabolical inspiration, and
his sentence, September 25, 1672, was merely to perpetual prison and
certain spiritual penances. Even here his good luck befriended him, for
Cardinal d'Estrées, the influential ambassador of Louis XIV, in
dangerous illness, asked to consult him and, on recovery, procured his
transfer to easier confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, where he was
allowed special privileges and sometimes to go out and visit the sick.
There he remained until his death, August 20, 1695--just a century
before Cagliostro came to the same end.[89]
Although the Roman Inquisition issued no general denunciations, there
was a surveillance kept over the votaries of mental prayer and
contemplation, in view of the extravagances to which they might be led
when, abandoning themselves wholly to God, they felt themselves
irresponsible for what God might cause them to do, in the rapture of
Quietism. There was a little community of this kind formed in Genoa,
where they were known as _Sequere me_, from the phrase used when
addressing those whom they elected to join them. Under the lead of a
Trinitarian friar, they bought a house in the suburbs, where they lived
in the utmost austerity, devoting themselves to contemplation. Thus came
visions and revelations that the Church was to be reformed through them
by a new pope, of whom they were to be the apostles. One of them
communicated this to a vicar of the Inquisition who promptly reported to
the tribunal. They were all summoned before it; some went into ecstasies
and, as a body, they threatened the inquisitor with the vengeance of God
and were thrown into prison. The Congregation of the Inquisition ordered
their prosecution, which resulted in their being adjudged to be crazy
rather than evil-minded. The friar was deprived of active and passive
voice in his Order and the rest were dismissed with threats of the
galleys if they reassembled and continued to wear the habit which they
had adopted.[90]
More persistent was the sect known as the Pelagini which, about 1650,
developed itself in the Valcamonica and spread throughout Lombardy.
Giacomo Filippo di Santa Pelagia was a layman of Milan, highly esteemed
for conspicuous piety. From Marco Morosini, Bishop of Brescia
(1645-1654) he obtained permission to found conventicles or oratories in
the Valcamonica, but it shows that mental prayer was regarded as a
dangerous exercise when Morosini imposed the condition that it should
not be practised in these little assemblies. The prohibition was
disregarded and the devotees largely gave themselves up to
contemplation, with the result that they had trances and revelations;
they threw off subjection to their priests and were accused of claiming
that mental prayer was essential to salvation, that none but Pelagini
could be saved, that those who practised it became impeccable, that
laymen could preach and hear confessions, that indulgences were
worthless and that God through them would reform the world. In 1654,
Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (afterwards Alexander VIII) obtained the see of
Brescia and by accident discovered some colporteurs distributing the
Catechism of Calvin, along with the tracts of the Pelagini. In March,
1656, he sent to the Valcamonica three commissioners with verbal
instructions and armed with full powers, who temporarily suppressed the
oratories and made a number of arrests, but the Inquisition intervened,
taking the affair out of his hands and prosecuting the leaders.[91]
[Sidenote: _THE PELAGINI_]
We hear nothing more of Filippo, except that he never was condemned. He
probably died early in the history of the sect and his memory was
cherished as that of a saint with thaumaturgic power. In 1686, the
Archpriest of Morbegno, in the Valtelline, was found to be distributing
relics of him and collecting materials for his life and miracles, all of
which he was obliged to abandon, after obeying a summons from Calchi,
the Inquisitor of Como. There were also inquiries made of the Provost of
Talamona as to his motives in keeping a picture of Filippo and whether
it was prayed to.[92]
After Filippo's disappearance we hear of Francesco Catanei and of the
Archpriest Marc Antonio Ricaldini as leaders of the sect, but Agostino
Ricaldini, a brother of the latter and a married layman, was really the
centre around which it gathered. In Ottoboni's prosecution, he was
imprisoned in 1656 and thrice tortured, and, on September 19, 1660, he
was sentenced by the Brescia tribunal to exile from the Valcamonica and
was relegated to Treviso. Persisting in his errors, he was again tried
in Treviso, obliged to abjure _de vehementi_ and sentenced to perpetual
prison, while a book which he had written was publicly burnt. How long
his imprisonment lasted does not appear but, in 1680, we find him living
in Treviso, under surveillance of the episcopal vicar-general.[93]
If Ottoboni and the Inquisition fancied that they had crushed the sect,
they were mistaken. It maintained a secret existence for over twenty
years, which enabled it to spread far beyond its original seat and,
about 1680, it had associations and oratories for mental prayer
established in Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Pesaro, Lucca
and doubtless many other places, while its votaries expected it to
spread through the world. Ricaldini, at Treviso, was busy in
corresponding with the heads of the associations and receiving their
visits. In Brescia, Bartolommeo Bona, priest of S. Rocco, presided over
an oratory of sixty members and was even said to have six hundred souls
under his direction. They were called Pellegrini di S. Rocco, they
practised mental prayer assiduously and had even procured an episcopal
licence for the association. In Verona, Giovanni Battista Bonioli guided
a membership of thirty disciples, many of them persons of high
consideration. For the most part the devotees seem to have been quiet
and pious folk, humbly seeking salvation by the interior way, but there
were some who were given to extravagance. Margarita Rossi had visions
and revelations, strangely repeating portions of the fantastic theology
of Borri, and when written out by a believer, Don Giovanni Antonio, it
was not difficult to extract from them a hundred and thirty-four errors,
concerning which she was tortured as to intention as well as _in caput
alienum_. Two others, Cosimo Dolci and Francesco Nigra had visions and
prophetic insight, for which the latter was sentenced, in 1684, to five
years' incarceration.[94]
The sect could not continue spreading indefinitely without discovery. In
1682 the Inquisition suddenly awoke to the necessity of action and it
repeated an edict which it had issued in 1656, forbidding all oratories
and assemblages for mental prayer. Ricaldini felt his position critical,
for he had abjured _de vehementi_ and was liable to the stake for
relapse. He disappeared from Treviso and all that the Inquisition could
learn was that he was somewhere on the Swiss border. At length, in 1684,
his retreat was found to be Chiuro, in the Valtelline, and Antonio
Ceccotti, Inquisitor of Brescia, made fruitless attempts to induce the
authorities of the Valtelline and the Podestà of Brescia to unite in
procuring his extradition, but in March, 1685, Ceccotti had the
mortification to learn that he had died on the previous October 6th,
having received all the sacraments and with the repute of a most pious
Christian.[95]
[Sidenote: _MOLINOS_]
The prominent Pelagini were duly prosecuted, but there seems to have
been little vindictiveness aroused in regard to them and little heresy
attributable to them. The punishments inflicted were light, for we hear,
in 1685, of Bona, one of the leaders, having returned to his district
and living in retirement, and of Belleri, another, being in the
Valcamonica, where the bishop had appointed him missionary for the whole
district. Evidently the disciples must have escaped with a warning. What
the ecclesiastical authorities objected to was not Mysticism and its
long-accepted practices, but organization, more or less secret, under
leaders outside of the hierarchy and free from its supervision, when
heated brains, under divine inspiration, indulged in dreams of
regenerating the Church. It was not until the case of Molinos had called
attention to other dangers that there came from Rome strict orders for
the suppression of all oratories and of the practice of mental
prayer--that rapture of meditation which had been the distinguishing
habit of mystics through the ages.[96]
* * * * *
Miguel de Molinos was a Spaniard, born probably about 1630 at Muniesa
(Teruel). After obtaining at Coimbra the degree of doctor of theology,
he came to Rome in 1665, in connection with a canonization--probably of
San Pedro Arbués, who was beatified in 1668. There he speedily acquired
distinction as a confessor and spiritual director. Innocent XI prized
him so highly as to give him apartments in the papal palace; the noblest
women placed themselves under his care; his reputation spread throughout
Italy and his correspondence became enormous. On the day of his arrest
it is said that the postage on the letters delivered that day at his
house amounted to twenty-three ducats; he made a small charge to cover
expenses and, in the sequestration of his property, there were found
four thousand gold crowns derived from this source. The letters seized
were reported variously as numbering twelve or twenty thousand, of which
two hundred were from Christina of Sweden and two thousand from the
Princess Borghese. The mysticism which proved so attractive, when set
forth by his winning personality, had in it--ostensibly at
least--nothing that had not long since received the approbation of the
Church in the writings of the great Spanish mystics and of St. François
de Sales. It is true that Molinos dropped the machinery of ecstasies and
visions, which loom so largely in the writings of Santa Teresa, and
confined his way of perfection to the Brahmanical ideal of the
annihilation of sense and intellect, the mystic silence or death, in
which speech and thought and desire are no more and in which God speaks
with the soul and teaches it the highest wisdom.[97] This spiritualized
hypnotism was in no way original with Molinos, but was the goal which
all the mystic saints sought to attain. To reach it he tells us the
soul must abandon itself wholly to God; it must make no resistance to
the thoughts or impulses which God might send or allow Satan to send; if
assailed by intruding or sensual thoughts, they should not be opposed
but be quietly contemned and the resultant suffering be offered as a
sacrifice to God.[98] This was the Quietism--the Spanish
_Dejamiento_--which was subsequently condemned so severely; there is no
question that it had its dangers if the senses were allowed to control
the spirit, and the adversaries of Molinos made the most of it, but he
taught that the soul must overcome temptation through patience and
resignation. When souls have acquired control of themselves, he says, if
a temptation attacks them they soon overcome it; passions cannot hold
out against the divine strength which fills them, even if the violence
is continued and is supported by suggestions of the enemy; the soul
gains the victory and enjoys the infinite resultant benefit.[99]
[Sidenote: _MOLINOS_]
All this Molinos was allowed to teach for years in the Holy City with
general applause, though it had been persecuted in the Pelagini. In
1675, at the height of his popularity, he embodied his doctrine in the
_Guida spirituale_, a little volume which came forth with the emphatic
approbation of five distinguished theologians--four of them consultors
or censors of the Inquisition and all of them men of high standing in
their respective Orders of Franciscans, Trinitarians, Jesuits,
Carmelites and Capuchins. The book had an immediate and wide circulation
and was translated into many languages. Even in Spain there was a Madrid
edition in 1676, one at Saragossa in 1677 and another at Seville as late
as 1685, without exciting animadversion. Yet such a career as that of
Molinos could not continue indefinitely without exciting hostility, none
the less dangerous because prudently concealed. His immense success was
provocative of envy and, if mystic contemplation was largely adopted as
the surest path to salvation, what was to be the result on the infinite
variety of exterior works to which the Church owed so much of its power
and wealth? It was found that in many nunneries in Rome, whose
confessors had adopted his views, the inmates had cast aside their
rosaries and chaplets and depended wholly on contemplation. It was
observed that at mass the mystic devotees did not raise their eyes at
the elevation of the Host or gaze on the holy images, but pursued
uninterruptedly their mental prayer. Molinos gave further occasion for
criticism by a tract on daily communion, in which he asserted that a
soul, secure that it was not in mortal sin, could safely partake of the
sacrament without previous confession--a doctrine which, however,
theologically defensible, threatened, if extensively practised, largely
to diminish the authority of the priesthood, while encouraging the
sinner to settle his account directly with God.
To attack as a heretic a man so universally respected and so firmly
entrenched as Molinos might well seem desperate, and it is not
surprising that the credit for the work was attributed to the Jesuits,
as the only body daring and powerful enough. The current story is that,
having resolved upon it, they procured Père La Chaise to induce Louis
XIV to order his ambassador, Cardinal d'Estrées to labor unceasingly for
the removal of the scandal caused by the teaching of Molinos. Whether
this was so is doubtful, but it is certain that the first attack came
from the Jesuits, and that d'Estrées, who had professed the warmest
admiration for Molinos, became his unrelenting persecutor. The campaign
was opened in 1678, when Gottardo Bell' Uomo, S. J., issued at Modena a
work on the comparative value of ordinary and mystic prayer, which was
duly denounced to the Inquisition. Molinos had been made to recognize in
various ways the coming storm, and he sought to conjure it in a fashion
which revealed his conscious weakness. February 16, 1680, he addressed
to the Jesuit General Oliva a long exculpatory letter. He had not
attacked the Society but had always held it in the highest honor, and
when, in Valencia, the University had forbidden the Jesuit College to
teach theology, he was the only one who had disobeyed the order and had
come to its aid. He had never decried the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola,
but had recognized the vast good accomplished by them, though he held
that, for those suited to it, contemplation was better than meditation.
He had for some years been persecuted and stigmatized as a heretic, in
writing and preaching, by the most distinguished members of the Society,
but he rejoiced in this and only prayed God for those who reviled him
nor, in his defence of the _Guida_, had he sought aught but the glory of
God and, so far from defending the Begghards and Illuminati, he had
always condemned them. Evidently the work of the Jesuits in discrediting
him had been active and better organized than the records show, and he
thought it wiser to disarm, if possible, rather than to struggle with
adversaries so powerful. Oliva's answer of February 28th was by no
means reassuring. He complimented Molinos on his Christian spirit in
returning good for evil and on the flattering terms bestowed on the
Society and its founder. He had never read the books of Molinos and
could not speak of them with knowledge but, if they corresponded with
his letter, his disciples were doing him great wrong in applying his
system of contemplation, of which only the rarest souls were capable,
indiscriminately to nuns and worldly young women. Finally, he could not
understand why so distinguished a member of the Society as Padre Bell'
Uomo should have been brought before the Congregation of the Index, and
he gave infinite thanks to God for defending him before it.
Promptly on the next day, February 29th, Molinos replied to this
discouraging epistle. At much length he disculpated himself for writings
and sayings falsely attributed to him. He held meditation in the highest
esteem as an exercise suited to all; the loftiest form of contemplation
was a gift of God bestowed on the rare souls fitted for it. He again
spoke of the persecution to which he was exposed and, as for Padre Bell'
Uomo, whom he did not know, if his doctrine was as sound as represented
by Oliva, God would enlighten his ministers to recognize it. Oliva's
rejoinder to this, on March 2d, would appear to be written in a style of
studied obscurity, saying much and meaning little, but one passage
reveals a source of Jesuit enmity, in alluding to the number of convents
which had passed out of the direction of the Society to practise the new
method.[100]
[Sidenote: _MOLINOS_]
The effort of Molinos to propitiate his enemies had only encouraged them
by its confession of weakness. Their next step was a dextrous one. Padre
Paolo Segneri was not only the most popular Jesuit preacher in Italy,
but his favor with Innocent XI was almost as great as that of Molinos.
He was selected as the next athlete and, in 1680, he issued a little
volume--"Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell' oratione," in which
he argued that the highest life is that which combines activity with
contemplation. He was promptly answered by Pietro Matteo Petrucci, an
ardent admirer of Molinos, who was rewarded by Innocent with the see of
Jesi. Segneri rejoined in a "Lettera di riposta al Sig. Ignacio
Bartalini" and the controversy was fairly joined. A more aggressive
antagonist was the Minorite Padre Alessandro Reggio whose "Clavis Aurea
qua aperiuntur errores Michaelis de Molinos" appeared in 1682 and boldly
argued that the _Guida_ revived the condemned errors of the Begghards,
that Quietism destroyed all conceptions of the Trinity, while the
practice of prayer without works was destructive of all the pious
observances prescribed by the Church, and the teaching that temptation
should be endured without resistance was dangerous and contrary to
Scripture and to the doctors. Petrucci responded vigorously, while
Molinos remained silent. He had, at least, the advantage of official
support, for Bell' Uomo's book was forbidden _donec corrigatur_;
Segneri's "Lettera" and the "Clavis Aurea" were condemned
unconditionally, and Segneri's "Concordia," while it escaped the Index,
was quietly forbidden and he was instructed to revise it.[101]
The Jesuits, however, were not the only body interested in the downfall
of Molinos. There is a curious anonymous tract devoted to explaining
what it calls the secret policy of the Quietists, assuming their main
object to be the destruction of all the religious Orders and especially
of the Dominicans and Franciscans. Apparently taking advantage of the
development of the Pelagini about this time, it asserts that the
Quietists had organized conventicles and oratories throughout Italy;
that they had a common treasury in which 14,000 ducats were found; that
they flattered the secular clergy and sought to unite them in opposition
to the regulars, whom they systematically decried, raking together all
the stories of their corruption and ignorance. In short, Quietism was a
deep-laid conspiracy, through which Molinos expected to revolutionize
the Church and reduce the religious Orders to impotence.[102] The only
importance of the tract is as a manifestation of the attitude of the
regulars towards Molinos and the hostility aroused by his success in
winning from them, for his disciples, the directorship of souls which
was their special province.
The enormous influence of the elements thus combining for his
destruction left little doubt of the result. The first open attack was
made in June, 1682, when Cardinal Caraccioli, Archbishop of Naples, a
pupil of the Jesuits, reported to the pope that he found his diocese
deeply infected with this new Quietism, subversive of the received
prescriptions of the Church, and he asked instructions for its
suppression, nor was he alone in this for similar appeals came from
other Italian bishops. Molinos was too firmly established in the papal
favor for this to dislodge him, but the hostile forces gradually
gathered strength and, in November, 1684, the Congregation of the
Inquisition formally assumed consideration of the matter. At its head
was Cardinal Ottoboni, a fanatic whose experience with the Pelagini,
when Bishop of Brescia, had sharpened his hatred of mysticism. The
spirit in which he conducted the inquest is revealed in a memorandum in
his handwriting of the points to be elaborated in the next day's meeting
of the Congregation--that this heresy is the worst of all and if left
alone will become inextinguishable; that it is spreading in Spain
through the Archbishop of Seville and in France with many books of the
most dangerous nature; that it destroys the Catholic faith and all the
religious Orders; that in Jesi the canons and the cura of the cathedral
keep a school for its propagation; that a rich and powerful citizen of
Jesi threatens the witnesses and that a vigorous commissioner must be
sent there; that the monasteries of Faenza and Ravenna are infected and
one in Ferrara has a Quietist confessor; that this pestilence calls for
fire and steel.[103] In a court presided over by so bitter a prosecutor,
the judgement was fore-ordained.
For awhile the contending forces seem to have been equally balanced and
eight months were spent in gathering testimony sufficient to justify
arrest. At last, on July 3, 1685, at a meeting of the Congregation,
Cardinal d'Estrées insisted that no one should leave the chamber until
the arrest was ordered and executed. This was agreed to; the sbirri were
despatched and Molinos was lodged in the prison of the Inquisition.[104]
Yet when, on November 9th the Spanish Holy Office condemned the _Guia
espirituale_ as containing propositions savoring of heresy and
Illuminism, the Congregation addressed to the pope a vigorous protest
against its action on a matter which was still under consideration at
headquarters.[105]
[Sidenote: _MOLINOS_]
The influence of Queen Christina, we are told, was exerted to procure
for Molinos better treatment than was usual with prisoners. Of the
details of the trial we know little or nothing, but, as torture was
habitual in the Roman Inquisition, it is not probable that he was
spared. As his books had not been condemned, the evidence employed was
drawn exclusively from the immense mass of his correspondence and MSS.
which had been seized, the depositions of witnesses and his own
confessions, so that we are unable to judge how far it justified the
conclusions set forth in the sentence, though, from the manner in which
that discriminates between what he admitted and what he denied, it is
but fair to assume that it represents correctly the evidence before the
tribunal. The trial was necessarily prolonged. In his defence
interrogatories were forwarded to Saragossa and Valencia, in 1687, where
his witnesses were duly examined.[106] Two hundred and sixty-three
erroneous propositions were extracted by the censors from the mass of
matter before them, to which he of course was required to answer in
detail, and these seem to have been condensed into nineteen for the
consideration of the Congregation.[107]
Petrucci was threatened and his elevation to the cardinalate, September
2, 1686, was ascribed to the desire of Innocent to save him from
prosecution. Shortly afterwards, two of the principal assistants of
Molinos, the brothers Leoni of Como, of whom Simone was a priest and
Antonio Maria was a tailor, were arrested. Then, on February 9, 1687,
followed the arrest of the Count and Countess Vespiniani, of Paolo
Rocchi, confessor of the Princess Borghese, and of seventy others,
causing general consternation, not diminished by the subsequent
imprisonment of some two hundred more. The Congregation was doing its
work thoroughly and it was even said that, on February 13th, it
appointed a commission which examined the pope himself. A revolution in
the traditional standards of orthodoxy could not be effected without
compromising multitudes, and the victors were determined that their
victory should be complete. On February 15th, Cardinal Cibò, the
secretary of the Congregation, addressed to all the bishops of Italy a
circular stating that in many places there existed or were forming
associations called spiritual conferences, under ignorant directors,
who, with maxims of exquisite perfection, misled them into most
pernicious errors, resulting in manifest heresy and abominable
immorality. The bishops were therefore ordered to investigate and, if
such assemblies were found, to abolish them forthwith, taking moreover
especial care that this pestilence was not allowed to infect the
monasteries.
[Sidenote: _MOLINOS_]
There could be but one end to the trial. Every possible accusation was
brought against Molinos, even to a foolish self-laudatory speech made to
the sbirri who arrested him, and his admiring certain anagrams made of
his name. One charge, which he denied, was his giving to a certain
person the soiled shirt in which he had come from Spain, saying that,
after his death, it would be a great relic. He seems to have responded
with candor to the various articles, denying some and admitting others.
Of the articles the most important were his justifying the sacrilege of
breaking images and crucifixes; depreciating religious vows and
dissuading persons from entering religious Orders; saying that vows
destroyed perfection; that, by the prayer of Quiet, the soul is rendered
not only sinless but impeccable, for it is deprived of freedom and God
operates it, wishing us sometimes to sin and offend him, and the demon
moves the members to indecent acts; that the three ways of the spirit,
hitherto described by the doctors, are absurd and that there is but one,
the interior way; that he had formed conventicles of men and women and
permitted them to perform immoral acts and to eat flesh on fast days.
He admitted excusing the breaking of images and crucifixes; he denied
depreciation of solemn vows, but admitted it as respects private ones,
and he had only dissuaded from entering religion those whom he knew
would create scandal. He denied teaching that in Quietism the soul
becomes impeccable, but only that it did not consent to the act of sin
and he said that he knew many persons practising it who lived many years
without committing even venial sin. He denied also that Quietism
deprived the soul of freewill, but said that, in that perfect union with
God, it was God who worked and not the faculties, and when he said that
God sometimes wished sin, he meant material sin (as distinguished from
formal), and that the demon, as God's instrument to mortify the flesh
and purify the soul, causes sometimes the hand and other members to
perform lascivious acts. He denied condemning the three ways of the
spirit, having meant only that the interior way was so much more perfect
that the others were negligible by comparison. He denied forming
conventicles in which lascivious acts were permitted and he had excluded
some persons who would not refrain from them. He admitted eating flesh
on prohibited days, and that he had not perfectly observed a single Lent
since he came to Rome, but said that this was by licence of his
physician. He confessed that for many years he had practised the most
indecent acts with two women, the details of which need not be repeated;
he had not deemed this sinful, but a purification of the soul and that
in them he enjoyed a closer union with God; these were merely acts of
the senses, in which the higher faculties had no part, as they were
united with God. When he was told that these were propositions
heretical, bestial and scandalous, he replied that he submitted himself
in all things to the Holy Office, recognizing that its lights were
superior to his own.[108]
A sentence of condemnation was inevitable. It was drawn up, August 20,
1687; on the 28th an inquisitorial decree was signed embodying
sixty-eight propositions, drawn from the evidence and confessions, which
were condemned as heretical, suspect, erroneous, scandalous,
blasphemous, offensive to pious ears, subversive of Christian discipline
and seditious; they were not to be taught or practised under pain of
deprivation of office and benefice and perpetual disability, and of an
anathema reserved to the Holy See. All the writings of Molinos, in
whatever language, were forbidden to be printed, possessed or read, and
all copies were, under the same penalties, to be surrendered to the
inquisitors or bishops, who were to burn them.[109] This was posted in
the usual places on September 3d, the day fixed for the atto di fede in
which Molinos was to appear.
Under a heavy guard he was brought, on the previous evening, from the
inquisitorial prison to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in
which the atto was to be celebrated. In the morning, in a room next to
the sacristy, he was exhibited to some curious persons of distinction,
eliciting from him an expression of indignation, construed as indicating
how little he felt of real repentance. This was confirmed by what
followed, explicable possibly by Spanish imperturbability, but more
probably by the Quietism which led him to regard himself as the passive
instrument of God's will, and superbly indifferent to whatever might
befall him, so long as his soul was rapt in the joys of the mystic
death, which he had taught as the _summum bonum_. Called upon to order a
meal, he specified one which in quantity and quality might satisfy the
most voracious _gourmet_ and, after partaking of it, he lay down to a
refreshing siesta, until he was roused to take his place on the platform
where, in spite of his manacles, his bearing was that of a judge and not
of a convict.
[Sidenote: _CONDEMNATION OF MOLINISM_]
The vast church was thronged to its farthest corner with all that was
notable in Rome, including twenty-three cardinals, and the spacious
piazza in front and all the neighboring streets were crowded. An
indulgence of fifteen days and fifteen quarantines had been proclaimed
for all in attendance, but in Rome, where plenary indulgences could be
had on almost every day in the year by merely visiting churches, this
could not account for the eagerness which brushed aside the Swiss guards
stationed at the portals, requiring a reinforcement of troops and
resulting in considerable bloodshed. As the long sentence was read,
with its details of Molinos's enormities, occupying two hours, it was
interrupted with the frequent roar of Burn him! Burn him! led by an
enthusiastic cardinal and echoed by the mob outside. Through all this,
we are told, his effrontery never failed him, which was reckoned as an
infallible sign of his persistent perversity. The sentence concluded by
declaring him convicted as a dogmatizing heretic but, as he had
professed himself repentant and had implored mercy and pardon, it
ordered him to abjure his heresies and to be rigidly imprisoned with the
sanbenito for life, without hope of release, and to perform certain
spiritual exercises. This was duly executed and he lingered, it was said
repentant, until his death, December 28, 1696. The day after the atto di
fede his disciples performed their abjuration. There was no desire to
deal harshly with them, and they were dismissed with trivial penances,
except the brothers Leoni. Simone the priest, who had been a popular
confessor, was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; Antonio Maria, the
tailor, who had been a travelling missionary and organizer, was
incarcerated for life. There was still another victim, the secretary of
Molinos, Pedro Peña, arrested May 9, 1687, for defending his master. He
was fully convicted of Quietism and, on March 16, 1689, he was condemned
to life-long prison.[110]
There still remained the publication to Christendom of the new position
assumed by the Holy See towards Mysticism. The sixty-eight propositions,
condemned in the inquisitorial decree of August 28th, were printed in
the vernacular and placed on sale, but were speedily suppressed. There
must still have been opposition in the Sacred College, or on the part of
Innocent XI, for the bull _Coelestis Pastor_ was not drawn up and
signed until November 20th, and was not finally published to the world
until February 19, 1688. This recited the same series of propositions
and the condamnation of Molinos and confirmed the decree of August
28th. The propositions condemned consisted, for the most part, of the
untenable extravagances of Quietism, including impeccability and the
sinlessness of acts committed while the soul was absorbed with God, but
it was impossible to do this without condemning much that had been
taught and practised by the mystic saints, and there were no saving
clauses to differentiate lawful from unlawful converse of the soul with
its Creator. The Church broke definitely with Mysticism, and by
implication gave the faithful to understand that salvation was to be
sought in the beaten track, through the prescribed observances and under
the guidance of the hierarchical organization.[111]
This change of front was emphasized in various ways. Innocent's favor
saved Cardinal Petrucci from formal prosecution; to the vexation of the
Inquisition, his case was referred to four cardinals, Cibò, Ottoboni,
Casanate and Azzolini; he professed himself ready to retract whatever
the pope objected to and, though the Inquisition held an abjuration to
be necessary, he was not required to make it; he was relegated to Jesi
and then recalled to Rome, where he was kept under surveillance. He
could not, moreover, escape the mortification of seeing the books, which
had been so warmly approved, condemned by a decree of February 5, 1688.
Many other works, which had long passed current as recognized aids to
devotion, were similarly treated--those of Benedetto Biscia, Juan
Falconi, François Malaval and of numerous others--even the _Opera della
divina Gratia_ of the Dominican Tommaso Menghini, himself
Inquisitor-general of Ferrara and author of the _Regole del Tribunal del
Santo Officio_, which long remained a standard guide in the tribunals.
What had been accepted as the highest expression of religious devotion
had suddenly become heresy.[112] Apparently it was not until May, 1689,
that instructions were sent everywhere to demand the surrender of all
books of Molinos and to report any one suspected of Molinism.[113]
[Sidenote: _THE BECCARELLISTI_]
Persecution received a fresh impulse when Cardinal Ottoboni, as
Alexander VIII, succeeded Innocent XI, October 6, 1689. Bernino tells us
that he appeared to him an angel in looks and an apostle in utterance
when he declared that there was no creature in the world so devoid of
sense as a heretic for, as he was deprived of faith so also was he of
reason. His first care was to remove from office and throw into
irremissible prison every one who was in the slightest degree suspect of
Molinism; in this he did not even spare his Apostolic camera, for he
arrested an Apostolic Prothonotary and, although in the Congregation of
the Inquisition there were four kinsmen of the prisoner, zeal for the
faith preponderated over blood.[114] Fortunately his pontificate lasted
for only sixteen months, so that he had but limited opportunity for the
gratification of his ardent fanaticism and scandalous nepotism.
In spite of all this, there were still found those who indulged their
sensual instincts under cover of exalted spirituality. In 1698 there was
in Rome the case of a priest, named Pietro Paolo di San Giov.
Evangelista, who had already been tried by the tribunals of Naples and
Spoleto, so that his career must have been prolonged, while references
to a Padre Benigno and a Padre Filippo del Rio show that he was not
alone. He had ecstasies and a following of devotees; he taught that
communion could be taken without preliminary confession and that, when
the spirit was united with God, whatever acts the inferior part might
commit were not sins. He freely confessed to practices of indescribable
obscenity with his female penitents, whom he assured afterwards that
they were as pure as the Blessed Virgin. He was sentenced to perpetual
prison, without hope of release, and to a series of arduous spiritual
penances, while Fra Benigno escaped with seven years of
imprisonment.[115]
Another development of the same tendencies--probably a survival of the
Pelagini--was discovered in Brescia in 1708. The sectaries called
themselves disciples of St. Augustin, engaged in vindicating his
opinions on predestination and grace, but they were popularly known as
Beccarellisti, from two brothers, priests of the name of Beccarelli,
whom they regarded as their leaders. For twenty-five years--that is,
since the ostensible suppression of the Pelagini--the sect had been
secretly spreading itself throughout Lombardy, where it was said to
number some forty-two thousand members, including many nobles and
wealthy families and ecclesiastics of position. They had a common
treasury and a regular organization, headed by the elder Beccarelli as
pope, with cardinals, apostles and other dignitaries. The immediate
object of the movement, we are told, was to break the power of the
religious Orders and to restore to the secular priesthood the functions
of confession and the direction of souls which it had well-nigh lost,
but there was taught the Quietist doctrine of divine grace to which the
devotee surrendered all his faculties. This was allowed to operate
without resistance, and Beccarelli held that Molinos was the only true
teacher of Christian perfection, but we may safely reject as
exaggeration the statement that carnal indulgence was regarded as
earning a plenary indulgence, applicable to souls in purgatory. Cardinal
Badoaro, then Bishop of Brescia, took energetic measures to stamp out
this recrudescence of the condemned doctrines; the leaders scattered to
Switzerland, Germany and England, while Beccarelli was tried by the
Inquisition of Venice and was condemned to seven years of
galley-service.[116]
Probably the latest victims who paid with their lives for their belief
in the efficacy of mental prayer and mystic death were a beguine named
Geltruda and a friar named Romualdo, who were burnt in a Palermitan atto
di fede, April 6, 1724, as impenitent Molinists after languishing in
gaol since 1699.[117]
[Sidenote: _FÉNELON AND BOSSUET_]
If, in the condemnation of Molinos, Mysticism was not wholly condemned,
what was lacking was supplied when the duel between the two glories of
the Gallican Church--Bossuet and Fénelon--induced an appeal to the Holy
See. Beyond the Alps, mystic ardor was not widely diffused in the
seventeenth century, yet there were those who revelled in the agonies
and bliss of the interior way. St. François de Sales, who died in 1622,
was beatified in 1661 and canonized in 1665, taught Quietism as
pronounced as that of Molinos, although he avoided the application to
sensuality. The soul abandoned itself wholly to God; when divine love
took possession of it, God deprived it of all human desires, even for
spiritual consolations, exercises of piety and the perfection of virtue.
He said that he had scarce a desire and, if he were to live again, he
would have none; if God came to him, he would go to meet him but, if God
did not come, he would remain quiescent and would not seek God. Freedom
of the spirit consisted in detachment from everything to submit to the
will of God, caring neither for places, or persons, or the practice of
virtue.[118] It followed that the soul, absorbed in divine love, had
nothing to ask of God; it rested in the quiet of contemplation, while
vocal prayer and all the received observances of religion were cast
aside, as fitted only for those who had not attained these mystic
altitudes. Then there was Antoinette Bourignon (1616-1680) who, in her
voluminous writings, taught the supremacy of the interior light, the
abandonment of the faculties to the will of God, and the utter
renunciation of self in the ardor of divine love.[119] There was Jean de
Bernières-Louvigny (1602-1659) whose writings had an immense circulation
and whose views as to mystic death were virtually the same as those of
Molinos.[120] All these and others taught and wrote without
interference, save from polemics, such as those of Pére Archange Ripaut,
Guardian of the Capuchin convent of S. Jacques in Paris, who devoted a
volume of near a thousand pages to their refutation and reprobation. If
we are to believe him, these superhuman heights of spirituality were
accompanied in France, as elsewhere, with sensuality.[121]
The condemnation of Molinos and the sixty-eight propositions attributed
to him naturally attracted attention to the more or less quietistic
developments of Mysticism, but it is probable that no action on the
subject would have been taken in France had not personal motives
suggested the persecution of one who chanced at the moment to be the
most prominent representative of the interior way--that very curious
personality, Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe Guyon, whose
autobiography, written with a frank absence of reserve, affords a living
picture of the self-inflicted martyrdom endured in the struggle to
emancipate the soul from the ties of earth. When she reached the final
stage she tells us that formerly God was in her, now she was in him,
plunged in his immensity without sight or light or knowledge; she was
lost in him as a wave in the ocean; her soul was as a leaf or a feather
borne by the wind, abandoning itself to the operation of God in all that
it did, exteriorly or interiorly. She acquired the faculty of working
miraculous cures and her power over demons was such that, if she were in
hell, they would all abandon it. At times the plenitude of grace was so
superabundant and so oppressive that she could only lie speechless in
bed; it so swelled her that her clothes would be torn and she could find
relief only by discharging the surplus on others.[122]
It is beyond our province to enter into the miserable story of her
persecutions, commenced by some of her relatives and carried on by
Bossuet, leading to her reclusion in convents and imprisonment in
Vincennes and the Bastile. It suffices for us that her influence
stimulated Fénelon's tendency to Mysticism and converted into bitter
hostility the friendship between him and Bossuet. A commission,
appointed to examine her doctrine and headed by Bossuet, drew up, in
1694, a list of thirty-four errors of Mysticism, which Fénelon willingly
signed and which Bossuet and Noailles, then Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne,
issued with instructions for their dioceses, including condemnations of
the _Guide_ of Molinos, the _Pratique facile_ of Malaval, the _Règle des
Associés de l'Enfant Jésus_, the _Analis_ of Lacombe and Madame Guyon's
_Moyen court_ and _Cantique des Cantiques_. By this time Madame Guyon
had been put out of the way, and the matter might have been allowed to
rest under the comprehensive definitions of the bull _Coelestis
pastor_, but Bossuet's combative spirit had been aroused and he was
determined to crush out all vestiges of Mysticism, heedless of what the
Church had accepted for centuries. He drew up an Instruction on the
various kinds of prayer, in which he pointed out, in vigorous terms, the
dangers attendant on contemplation. Noailles, now Archbishop of Paris,
signed it with him, and they invited Fénelon to join but he refused, in
spite of entreaties and remonstrances, for it attributed to Madame Guyon
all that was most objectionable in Illuminism.
[Sidenote: _FÉNELON AND BOSSUET_]
The breach between the friends had commenced and it widened irrevocably
when Fénelon, in justification of himself, published, in February 1697,
his _Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie intérieure_, with a
letter to Madame de Maintenon animadverting sharply on Bossuet's
injustice. The book was based chiefly on the utterances of St. François
de Sales, but it carefully guarded the practice of Quietism from all
objectionable deductions. There was no self-abandonment to temptations
and no claim of impeccability; souls of the highest altitude could
commit mortal sin; they were bound daily to ask God for forgiveness, to
detest their sins and seek remission, not for the mercenary motive of
their own salvation but in obedience to the wishes of God. It is true
that they were not tied down to formal observances, but vocal prayer was
not to be decried,--though its value depended upon its being animated by
internal prayer. The indifference, which was the point most objected to
in Quietism, was greatly limited by Fénelon. The senseless determination
to wish for nothing was an impious resistance to the known will of God,
and to all the impulses of his grace; it is true that the advanced soul
wishes nothing for itself but it wishes everything for God; it does not
wish perfection or happiness for itself, but it wishes all perfection
and happiness, so far as it pleases God to make us wish for these
things, by the impulsion of his grace. In this highest state the soul
does not wish salvation in its own interest, but wishes it for the glory
and good pleasure of God, as a thing which he wishes and wishes us to
wish for his sake.
It is difficult to see what objection could be raised to a Quietism thus
strictly limited and guarded, and no one who compares the _Maximes des
Saints_ with the extravagance of the great mystic saints can fail to
recognize that the violent quarrel which arose was a purely personal
matter. In this Fénelon defended himself with dignity and moderation,
while the violence of Bossuet's attack sometimes bordered on truculence.
He was secure in the support of the court. Louis XIV had been won over,
and it soon became to him a matter of personal pride to overcome all
resistance to his will. Fénelon was banished to his diocese of Cambrai
and deprived of his position of preceptor to the royal children, showing
that he was in complete disgrace and warning all time-servers to abandon
him.
It was soon evident that the matter would have to be settled in Rome.
Bossuet sent an advance copy of his Instruction to Innocent XII,
pointing out that he was applying in France the principles affirmed in
the condemnation of Molinos. Fénelon followed his example and, on April
27th, sent the _Maximes_, stating that he submitted it to the judgement
of the Holy See. The curia gladly accepted the task, rejoiced at the
opportunity of intervening authoritatively in a quarrel within the
Gallican Church. Fénelon was refused permission to go to Rome and
defend himself, but he had a powerful protector in the person of the
Cardinal de Bouillon, then French ambassador and a member of the
Congregation of the Inquisition, who loyally stood by him even at the
expense of a rebuke from his royal master. He also secured the support
of the Jesuits, whose Collége de Clermont had approved of the _Maximes_,
and who promised to manifest as much energy in his defence as they had
shown in procuring the condemnation of Cornelis Jansen. These weighty
influences might secure delay and discussion, but they could not control
the result against the overmastering pressure of such a monarch as Louis
XIV who, on July 27, 1697, wrote to the pope that he had had the
_Maximes_ examined and that it was pronounced "très mauvais et très
dangéreux," wherefore he asked to have judgement pronounced on it
without delay. Then, on May 16, 1698, the nuncio at Paris reported that
the king complained of the delay; it was in contempt of his person and
crown, and if Rome did not act promptly he would take such measures as
he saw fit. Threats such as this were not to be lightly disregarded, and
still more ominous was an autograph letter to the pope, December 23d,
expressing his displeasure at the prolongation of the case and urging
its speedy conclusion.
[Sidenote: _FÉNELON AND BOSSUET_]
To Bossuet's representative and grand-vicar, the Abbé Phelippeaux, we
owe a minute report of the long contest, which affords an interesting
inside view of the conduct of such affairs, showing how little regard
was paid to the principles involved and how completely the result
depended on intrigue and influence. The case passed through its regular
stages. A commission of seven consultors had been found, to whom, after
a struggle, three were added. These disputed at much length over
thirty-seven propositions extracted from the book and, when at length
they made their report to the Congregation of the Inquisition, they
stood five to five, showing that each side had succeeded in putting an
equal number of friends on the commission. In the Congregation, the
struggle was renewed and continued through thirty-eight sessions. Had
the fate of Europe been at stake, the matter could not have been more
warmly contested. At length the inevitable condemnation was voted, and
then came a fresh contest over the phraseology of the decree. Bossuet's
agents were not content with the simple condemnation of twenty-three
propositions and the prohibition of the book, and they struggled
vigorously for clauses condemning and humiliating Fénelon himself,
showing how purely personal was the controversy. In this they failed,
as well as in the endeavor to have the propositions characterized as
heretical; they were only pronounced to be respectively rash,
scandalous, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, pernicious in
practice and erroneous. The principal doctrine aimed at was that the
pure love of God should be wholly disinterested, and that its acts and
motives should be divested of all mercenary hope of reward. The brief
was finally agreed to, on March 12, 1699, and published on the 13th. It
was in the form of a _motu proprio_ which, under the rules in force in
France respecting papal decrees, precluded its acceptance and
registration by the Parlement, but Louis, ordinarily so tenacious about
papal intrusion, found indirect means of eluding the difficulty.
Fénelon, however, had not awaited this cumbrous procedure. In a
dignified letter of submission to the pope, April 4, 1699, he stated
that he had already prepared a _mandement_ for his diocese, condemning
the book with its twenty-three propositions, which he would publish as
soon as he should receive the royal permission. This was promptly given
and, on April 9th he issued it, forbidding the possession and reading of
the _Maximes_, and condemning the propositions "simply, absolutely and
without a shadow of restriction." Innocent XII, who had more than once
indicated sympathy with Fénelon, responded May 12th, in a brief
expressing his cordial satisfaction, bestowing on him his loving
benediction and invoking the aid of God for his pastoral labors.
Bossuet, with the royal assistance, had triumphed, at the cost of a
stain on his reputation; what the Church had gained, in condemning the
sublimated speculations of a rarefied and impracticable Mysticism, it
would be hard to say.[123]
Yet, as though to indicate that there is no finality in these matters,
Pius VI, in 1789, beatified the Blessed Giovanni Giuseppe della Croce
([dagger symbol] March 5, 1734), who was much given to contemplation and to
union with God, in which all his faculties were lost, as completely as
in the trances of his prototype, San Juan de la Cruz, or as in the
mystic death of Molinos. That his Mysticism did not forfeit the favor of
heaven was shown by his possessing the gift of bilocation--of being in
two places at one time--of which numerous instances were cited in the
beatification proceedings.[124]
* * * * *
The Spanish Inquisition which had so long carried on single-handed the
struggle against Mysticism, watched with satisfaction the Roman
proceedings against Molinos. As we have seen, his arrest, on July 3,
1685, was promptly followed, November 9th with a condemnation of the
_Guida_ which, for nine years, had been allowed to circulate freely in
Spain. The edict pronounced it to contain propositions ill-sounding,
offensive to pious ears, rash, savoring of the heresy of the Alumbrados,
and some erroneous ones, and the title was denounced as misleading
because it spoke only of the interior way.[125] When the sentence of the
Roman Inquisition was published, September 3, 1687, although as a rule
the Spanish Holy Office paid no attention to its decrees, the
sixty-eight propositions were speedily translated into the vernacular
and widely distributed. On October 11th, sixty copies were sent to
Valencia to be posted, with orders to print more if they should be
required. These were accompanied with an edict, commanding obedience and
threatening the most rigorous prosecution for remissness, while all
persons were ordered to denounce, within ten days, contraventions of any
kind coming to their knowledge. This edict was to be published in all
churches of the capitals of _partidos_ and an authentic record of such
publication was to be affixed to the doors. In due time, when the bull
_Coelestis pastor_ was issued, it was circulated with the same
prescriptions.[126] There was evidently a determination to make the most
of this new ally in the struggle with Mysticism.
[Sidenote: _MOLINISM_]
The Seville tribunal, indeed, had not waited for this, as it had
already, April 24, 1687, arrested a canon of the church of San Salvador,
Joseph Luis Navarro de Luna y Medina, who was a correspondent of
Molinos and had sent him his autobiography, in order to obtain
instructions for his spiritual guidance. He had previously been deprived
of his licence as confessor, on charges of imprudent conduct as
spiritual director of a nunnery, but Jaime de Palafox, Archbishop of
Seville, who was a warm admirer of Molinos, had restored the licence,
introduced him in all the convents and adopted him as confessor of
himself and his family. For four years Navarro endured incarceration and
the torture which was not spared, but he succumbed at last, confessed
and sought reconciliation. His sentence declared him guilty of the
errors of the Lutherans, Calvinists, Arians, Nestorians, Trinitarians,
Waldenses, Agapetæ, Baianists and Alumbrados, besides being a dogmatizer
of those of Molinos, with the addition that evil thoughts arising in
prayer should be carried into execution, and also that, when his
disciples assembled in his house, the lights would be extinguished and
he would teach doctrines too foul for description. The tribunal itself
could scarce have believed all this, for he was only required to abjure,
to be deprived of benefice and functions, to be recluded for two years
and be exiled for six more. When the term had expired he returned to
Seville and then, until his death, in 1725, he passed his days in the
churches, where the Venerable Sacrament was exposed for adoration,
carrying with him a hinged stool on which he sat, gazing at the
Host.[127] He was not the only Molinist in Seville for in 1689, after
three years' trial, Fray Pedro de San José was condemned as a disciple
of Molinos, for committing obscenities with his penitents and
foretelling his election as pope and his suffering under Antichrist, who
was already in Jerusalem, twenty years old. He was sentenced to abjure
_de vehementi_, to undergo a circular discipline in his convent, to
perpetual deprivation of teaching and confessing, and to six years'
reclusion in a convent, with the customary disabilities.[128] Soon
afterwards there was penanced in an auto, May 18, 1692, a woman named
Ana Raguza, popularly known as _la pabeza_, as an Alumbrada and
Molinista. She had come from Palermo as a missionary to convert the
wicked, probably in the train of Palafox, who had been Archbishop of
Palermo. She called herself a bride of Christ, she had visions and
revelations, she denied the efficacy of masses and fasts, and she had
the faculty of determining the condition of consciences by the sense of
smell. She escaped with two years of reclusion and six more of
exile.[129]
[Sidenote: _MOLINISM_]
The condemnation of Molinos seems to have stimulated the Inquisition to
greater activity in the suppression of mysticism, for cases begin to
appear more frequently in the records and henceforth the term Molinism,
to a great extent, takes the place of Illuminism. We hear of a Molinist
penanced in a Córdova auto of May 12, 1693,[130] and he cannot have been
the only one there for Fray Francisco de Possadas of that city tells us
that he was led to write his book against the carnal errors of Molinos
by his experience in the confessional, showing that some of his
penitents had been misled by them.[131] The report of the Valencia
tribunal, for 1695, contains three cases then on trial. The Franciscan,
Fray Vicente Selles, had been arrested in 1692. He had led a life
exteriorly austere, practising meditation and contemplation, and he
freely admitted that when Molinos was condemned he held that the pope
was wrongly informed. His overwrought brain gave way under the stress of
confinement; at times he was full of religious emotion and solicitous as
to his salvation, while at others he was violently insane, performing
various crazy freaks. On August 24th he attempted suicide by dashing his
head against a projecting piece of iron, causing a wound so serious that
several pieces of skull were discharged and, on February 6, 1693, the
surgeons reported his life to be still in danger. He remained
_melancolico_, variable in mood, confessing and retracting until, on
October 23d, he confessed fully to Molinism, naming eleven women with
whom he had had relations in the confessional and also admitting
unnatural crime and other offences. At the date of the report his trial
was still unfinished. Another phase of these eccentric methods of
salvation is presented in the case of Vicente Hernan, a hermit of San
Cristóbal of Concentayna, accused by three women of teaching them the
way of bruising the head of the serpent by sleeping with them and
resisting temptation, and of attempting indecencies, which they denied
permitting. He was arrested September 23, 1692, and in two audiences he
was a _negativo_. Then on December 17th he asked for an audience in
which he said that for eight days some little flies and black pigeons
had been biting him and reminding him of things forgotten, whereupon he
told of the women whom he had got to sleep with him, sometimes two or
three at a time, and he also mentioned numerous miraculous cures which
he had wrought. In January 1693, he said that the demons with the voice
of flies had been recalling his sins, and he told of three other women.
Doubts arose as to his sanity and, at the end of 1693 steps were taken
to investigate it, which were still in progress at the time of closing
the report. The third case was that of Mosen Antonio Serra, whose
doctrines the calificadores reported to be Molinistic. He was arrested
December 19, 1695, so that his trial had only begun.[132]
In 1708 the Toledo tribunal arrested Fray Manuel de Paredes, a
contemplative fraile, who encouraged mystic practices among his
penitents, leading to several trials, which illustrate the increased
severity visited upon these condemned forms of devotion.[133] The same
tendency is visible soon afterwards at Córdova, where a little
conventicle of _Molinistas alumbrados_ was discovered in the Dominican
convent of San Pablo, under the leadership of a beata named Isabel del
Castillo. Her disciples abandoned to her their free-will and all their
faculties; they had no need of fasts and penances but could transfer
their sins to her and the path of salvation lay through sensual
indulgence. In the auto of April 24, 1718, there were seven of them
penanced, Isabel being visited with two hundred lashes and perpetual
prison; the friars were reconciled, deprived of their functions and
imprisoned, some irremissibly and some perpetually, while the laymen had
penances of various degrees of severity.[134]
During this period there occurred a case deserving of consideration in
some detail, not only because of the prominence of the culprit but
because it affords a clearer view than others of the strange
intermixture of sensuality and spirituality, which was distinctly known
as Molinism, and of the self-deception which enabled men and women to
indulge their passions while believing themselves to be living in the
mystic altitude of Union with God. Perhaps this may partly be
explicable by the teachings of the laxer morality, current in the
sixteenth century and known under the general name of Probabilism, and
by the distinction between material and formal sin, whereby that alone
was mortal sin which the conscience recognized as such, the conscience
being still further eased by refinements as to advertence and consent.
In the skilful hands of the casuists, the boundaries between right and
wrong became dangerously nebulous, and arguments were plentiful through
which men could persuade themselves that whatever they chose to do was
lawful.
[Sidenote: _BISHOP TORO OF OVIEDO_]
Joseph Fernández de Toro was an inquisitor in Murcia, deeply imbued with
quietistic Mysticism. In 1686 he issued anonymously in Seville a little
tract with the significant title of "Remedio facilissimo para no pecar
en el uso y exercicio de la Oracion," which in time duly found its way
into the Index.[135] As inquisitor he had manifested his tendencies,
when a prelate of high repute and station in a religious Order was tried
before him for solicitation _ad turpia_ in the confessional. Guided by
the light within, Toro was satisfied that it was merely a case of
obsession by the demon; he persuaded the Suprema to accept this view,
and the culprit escaped with suspension from celebrating mass and
hearing confessions until the obsession should pass. In 1706, he was
promoted to the see of Oviedo, of which he took possession October 1st.
Unluckily for him there was at Oviedo the Jesuit college of San Mathias;
his reputation for Quietism seems to have preceded him, and the heads of
the college resolved themselves into a corps of detectives. Professing
the utmost friendship, they speedily acquired his confidence and he
talked with them freely. They were prompt in action for, in January
1707, Padre José del Campo drew up for the inquisitor-general an
elaborate secret denunciation, setting forth how Toro in conversation
had offered to explain to him the contemplation of Molinos; since coming
to Asturias, he had spoken to no one about these things, for he knew
that they had occasioned much murmuring against him, but he described
the mode in which the soul reached the summit of perfection in Union
with God, while the inferior sensual part might be abandoned to the
foulest temptation. These dangerous speculations were reported in full
detail and were accompanied by a long and skilful argument to prove that
Toro was in every sense a Molinist.
Other Jesuits drew up similar denunciations, or attested their truth,
and the case was fairly before the Holy Office. It was too serious for
hasty action and investigation was made in Murcia, where his female
accomplices were arrested, and ample confirmatory evidence was obtained
from their confessions and from eighteen of his letters. The Carranza
case had taught the lesson that bishops could be reached only through
papal authority and, on November 7, 1709, Inquisitor-general Ybáñez
forwarded to Clement XI the accumulated evidence, to which the pope
replied, March 8, 1710, that the matter would be thoroughly examined and
the necessary action be taken. Toro had at first been disposed to make a
contest, asserting that God would work miracles in defence of the women,
and that their imprisonment was a martyrdom; that the light infused in
him by God rendered him superior to the Inquisition, and that he was
illuminated above all other men. By this time, however, he realized his
position; on February 8, 1710, he made, through his confessor, a partial
confession, and he followed this with several letters to the pope,
begging permission to come to Rome for judgement. Then a papal brief of
June 7th ordered Ybáñez, within three years and under the advice of the
Suprema, to frame a prosecution, for which full powers were granted; if
the evidence sufficed, Toro was to be arrested and the case carried on
up to the point of sentence, when all the documents were to be
transmitted to Rome, where the pope would render the decision.
Toro was duly imprisoned and his trial proceeded. Ybáñez died, September
3, 1710 and was succeeded by Giudice, who was empowered, by a brief of
October 3, 1711, to carry on the process. Toro was found to be
_diminuto_ on a hundred and four of the articles of accusation; he was
reticent and refused to answer interrogations, begging earnestly to be
sent to Rome. His request was granted, by a brief of June 7, 1714, but
his departure was delayed, and it was not until June 11, 1716, that he
reached Rome and was lodged in the castle of Sant'Angelo. Andrés de
Cabrejas, fiscal of the Suprema, accompanied him, to represent the
Spanish Inquisition in the trial which proceeded slowly. Toro's
confessions and letters were a rich mine for the calificadores, who
extracted from them four hundred and fifty-five propositions of various
degrees of error--some of them being identical with those of Molinos.
Finally he abandoned all defence and acknowledged that he had been a
dogmatizing heretic, a soliciting seducer, a blasphemer against the
purity of God, Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin, a reviver of the
filthy sects of the Begghards, Illuminists and Molinists and subject to
the same penalties.
[Sidenote: _MOLINISM_]
In fact he seems to have recognized his errors and to have confessed
with a freedom indicative of sincere repentance. Much of his confessions
is unfit for transcription, but a brief extract will indicate the
self-deception that reconciled the grossest sensuality with aspirations
for perfection. Thus of one of his accomplices he says that, believing
himself to be illuminated in the sacrifice of the mass, he had written
that none of her directors could estimate her spiritual state as regards
her perfection and Union with God, in spite of the concussions of her
inferior part, excited by obsession, through which those could be
deceived who were unable to understand her interior virtues and perfect
state. Although in obscene acts the woman might seem externally to be a
sinner, yet, by asserting that she had not yielded consent, she might
internally be perfect and be in Union with God. That, as the Incarnate
Word did not contract original sin in his union with humanity, so with
persons annihilated, purged and perfected, God could direct them to
supernatural operations in such wise that the operations of the inferior
part worked no prejudice to their state of perfection, and that the
woman's obscene acts might proceed from obsession, and she be passive
without consent.... That he had believed this doctrine to be infused in
him by God, and thus to be true, like the doctrine of the Church, to be
held unhesitatingly, especially by those obsessed, and he had written
that he was ready to give his life in its defence.... That he had
believed the indecencies committed with this same woman might be an
exercise and martyrdom sent by God for the humiliation and purification
of both, but nevertheless he made confession of them, and took care that
she should do so. She was accustomed to say that, in the inferior part,
she was without sensuality and in the superior part was absorbed in
contemplation and love of God.... That in his oratory after mass and her
communion he had embraced her and told her that she received the light
and that this was the love of God for his creatures.... That Jesus was
in him and worked in him, because neither he nor the woman experienced
sensuality in what they did nor did it from corrupt intention.... That
he had had this belief for seven years prior to his episcopate, and had
maintained it subsequently up to July 1708, but then, in confessing his
sins, a worthy confessor enlightened his blindness, and since then he
had detested his errors and had followed the way of Catholic truth.
At length the pope designated July 27, 1719 for pronouncing sentence.
Cabrejas had the records of Carranza's condemnation looked up, and the
same ceremonial was observed. Toro was brought from the castle of
Sant'Angelo to one of the halls of the papal palace, and there the
sentence was read. It deposed him from his bishopric and all other
benefices, it incapacitated him from holding any preferment, and
suspended him perpetually from sacerdotal functions; it required him to
abjure his heresy and errors, it called upon him to pay for pious uses,
as far as he could, all revenues accrued since his lapse into heresy,
and it burdened his see with a pension for his support, to be determined
by the pope; it condemned him to reclusion, in some convent outside of
Spain, when he was to perform perpetual penance, on the bread of sorrow
and water of grief, and it prescribed certain spiritual observances.
After listening to his sentence, Toro made the required abjuration,
accepted the penance and disappeared from view.[136]
Another prominent culprit was the priest, Don Francisco de Leon y Luna,
a Knight of Santiago and member of the Council of Castile, who was tried
by the tribunal of Madrid for Molinism and formal solicitation. As a
_negativo_ he was liable to relaxation but, on November 24, 1721, it was
voted to give him nine audiences, in which the inquisitors, with some
calificadores, should exhort him to confession and conversion, under
threat of administering the full rigor of the law. He seems to have
yielded and, on August 11, 1722, his sentence _con méritos_ was read in
the presence of twelve members of the Councils of Castile, Indies,
Orders and Hacienda. He was required to abjure _de vehementi_, he was
deprived perpetually of confessing men and women, of guiding souls and
instructing them in prayer, and of the honors of the Order of Santiago;
half of his property was confiscated, and he was recluded for three
years with suspension of all sacerdotal functions, to be followed by
five years of exile.[137]
[Sidenote: _MOLINISM_]
Llorente gives, in great detail, an account of a Molinist movement
which, soon after this, afforded ample occupation to the tribunals of
Logroño and Valladolid. Juan de Causadas, a prebendary of Tudela, was an
ardent disciple of Molinos and propagator of his doctrines. He was burnt
at Logroño, but whether for pertinacity or denial we are not informed.
His nephew, Fray Juan de Longas, of the Barefooted Carmelites, was also
a dogmatizer and was sentenced, in 1729, to two hundred lashes and ten
years of galleys, followed by perpetual prison. This severity seems not
to have discouraged the proselytes who, apparently, were not betrayed by
Longas. The principal among them was Doña Agueda de Luna, who had
entered the Carmelite convent of Lerma in 1712, with the reputation of a
saint. Her ecstasies and miracles were spread abroad by Juan de Longas,
by the Prior of Lerma, by the Provincial of the Order, Juan de la Vega,
and by the leading frailes, who found their account in the crowds of
devotees seeking her intercession. Juan de la Vega himself acquired the
name of _el extático_ and was represented as the holiest mystic since
the days of Juan de la Cruz. A convent was founded at Corella for Madre
Agueda, of which she was made prioress, and the nuns were fully
indoctrinated in the principles and practice of Molinism. By Madre
Agueda, Juan de la Vega had five children who were strangled at birth
and, with other untimely fruits of the prevailing licence, were buried
in the vicinity. After a long course of iniquity and deception, Madre
Agueda was denounced to the Logroño tribunal; her accomplices and
disciples were arrested and their trials were pushed with unsparing
severity. She perished under torture and, in 1743, the frailes were
recluded in various houses and the nuns were distributed among convents
of their Order.[138] Madre Agueda's case had been decided some years
previously for, in the Supplement to the Index of 1707, published in
1739, the first entry relates to her, "of whom the apocryphal life has
been written, and of whom are circulated stones, cloths, medals and
papers as relics," all of which were to be surrendered as well as
relations of her prodigies and virtues. The stones here alluded to are
evidently those described by Llorente, made of brick-dust and stamped
with a cross on one side and a star on the other, which were said to be
voided by her with child-birth pains, and were universally treasured as
amulets. It may be assumed that this case led to the issue, in 1745, by
the Inquisition of an edict directed against five Molinist errors.[139]
Cases still continued to occur, but infrequently and of minor
importance. The inquisitors had begun to merge immoral mysticism with
solicitation in the confessional, of which more hereafter, while the
more harmless kinds were classified as _embusteros_ (impostors) or
_ilusos_ (deluded). There is a Mexican case, however, which is so
illustrative of the abuses to which inquisitorial methods were liable,
that it deserves mention. The Franciscan, Fray Eusebio de Villaroja, was
distinguished for learning, eloquence and blameless life. He was
inclined to mysticism and had written a work entitled _Oracion de Fe
interior_, which the Inquisition admitted to contain no reprobated
doctrine but yet to be dangerous for popular use. The convent at Pachuca
obtained his assignment there and in 1783, at the age of 38, he arrived
in Mexico, where his kindly earnestness speedily won universal regard.
After two or three years he happened to assume the spiritual direction
of two girls, Gertrudis and Josefa Palacios, who were adepts in the
mystic devices of ecstasies and revelations. Gertrudis died and
Villaroja became completely engrossed in Josefa. He reduced to writing
her visions and prophecies, until he had filled seventy-six books and,
in his ardor, he committed freaks attracting undesirable attention. The
convent physicia
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