398

Sadoleto, Contarini, and Pole

[1541-9 fundamental principle. Many no doubt were in frequent and friendly correspondence with the Reformers; but it must be borne in mind that the line of division between the Protestant bodies and the Church was very gradually determined, and that men long hoped for a speedy settlement of the existing divisions. Here again Sadoleto's letter illustrates their position. He recognises the existing evils in the Church, and will even grant that there are serious doctrinal errors; but even so, the evils of separation are greater; and to depart from the unity of the body of Christ is to court destruction. "Let us enquire and see which of the two is more conducive to our advantage, which is better in itself, and better fitted to obtain the favour of Almighty God: whether to accord with the whole Church, and faithfully observe her decrees and laws and sacraments, or to adhere to men seeking dissension and novelty. This, dearest brethren, is the place where the road divides: one way leads to life, the other to everlasting death." The letter is worthy of its occasion: so is the answer which it called forth from Calvin.

The failure of the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia, the death of Clement VII, and the secession of Caraffa, had dashed the reformers' hopes; but they did not lose heart. Contarini was still their leader; and it was probably on this account that he was sent as papal legate to the Colloquy of Ratisbon in 1541, whence he kept up a correspondence with Pole, Morone, and Foscarari, afterwards Bishop of Modena. For a time all went well, and an agreement was come to, not indeed without great difficulty, upon the point of Justification. But neither side really trusted the other; and Contarini himself was jealously suspected by many members of the Curia. Consequently, the effort (the last real effort to conciliate the reformers) came to nothing; Contarini returned in deep sadness to Italy, and died the year after at Bologna. His place as leader of the movement was taken by Reginald Pole, whose house at Viterbo, whither he went as papal governor in 1541, became their headquarters. Here met together for prayer and study Giberti and Soranzo, the former bishop of Verona, the latter before long of Bergamo, Flaminio, Luigi Priuli, Donato Rullo, Lodovico Beccatello, and others. It was probably Pole's influence which kept Flaminio from seceding to the Lutherans. Not less was his influence with Vittoria Colonna, to whom he was greatly devoted, and who found in him a wise spiritual guide when many others seemed to have gone astray. It was he who advised her to believe that we are justified by faith only, and to act as though we were to be justified by our works.

Little by little their hopes faded. At the Council of Trent, indeed, Pole was one of the Legates, and there were not a few Bishops and theologians who were with him in the matter of Justification. But it soon became clear that the Council and Curia were against him, and Pole left Trent before the decree on the subject was actually made. He relapsed into silence, waiting, and advising his friends to wait, for a more

1549-59]

The Reform in Spain

399

convenient season. It seemed as if this had actually come when, in November, 1549, Paul III died. The English Cardinal was beloved by some, respected by all. In the Conclave which followed it long appeared likely that he would be chosen; and the betting outside, based upon information from within, was much in his favour. But his views on Justification robbed him of the tiara. His rival del Monte was chosen, who took the name of Julius III; and Pole once more went into retirement until his mission to England in 1554. The accession of his enemy Caraffa as Paul IV was a still greater blow. Sadoleto's commentary on the Romans and Contarini's book on Justification were declared suspect; Pole ceased to be Legate and was for a time disgraced; Morone was actually imprisoned for heresy, and remained in prison until the death of the Pope in 1559. The Inquisition resumed its activity all over Italy. Although the total extinction of heresy was still long delayed, the end was only a question of time. For the springs were dried up, and no new ones burst forth.

II

SPAIN

Although one of the noblest leaders of the Italian Reform was a Spaniard, the movement never obtained such a hold upon Spain as upon Italy: in part because measures of repression were more promptly and more thoroughly applied-in part, perhaps, because many of the practical abuses had already been abated or removed, while the doctrinal abuses which called forth the protest had not yet prevailed in Spain so largely as elsewhere. Many of the best-known Spanish Reformers lived and died in Flanders or in some other foreign land; and in Spain itself the movement appears to have had little vitality excepting in and about two centres, Valladolid and Seville. Two autos-de-fé at Valladolid and two at Seville, of the thorough kind instituted by the Spanish Inquisition, sufficed to break up the Reformed in these centres. Many fugitives escaped and found refuge in Germany, England, or the Low Countries; and the few who remained were gradually swept away by the same drastic methods of the Inquisition.

A reform of the Spanish clergy, regular and secular, had taken place before Luther arose. It had begun, so far as the regulars were concerned, nearly a century before; for example, the Cistercians had been reformed by Fray Martino de Vargas in the time of Pope Eugenius IV, and afterwards Cardinal Mendoza had worked in the same direction. But the chief agent in it was Fray Ximenez de Cisneros of the Order of St Francis, to be better known as Cardinal Ximenez. At the request of Ferdinand and Isabella he drew up a report on the state of all the

400

Reforms of the Orders and the clergy [1494-1520

The

monasteries of Spain. Thereupon a Bull was sought from Alexander VI in 1494, by which Cisneros was empowered to visit and set in order all the regulars of Spain; and he inaugurated the most drastic reformation, perhaps, that Religious Houses ever sustained. His action was in general submitted to; but his own Order, which was the worst of all, resisted strenuously, and obtained a Bull of prohibition against him. On further information the Pope annulled this, and the work went on. monasteries were disciplined, their "privileges" burned, and their rents and heritages taken away and given to parishes, hospitals, &c. A large number of monks who were scandalous evil-livers, and who seemed irreformable, were deported to Morocco, and the work was complete. With the seculars Cisneros was less successful. But by degrees the regulars reacted healthfully upon them; Bishops and provincial synods took them in hand; and the earlier Inquisitors, especially Adrian of Utrecht, did much to put away abuses amongst them. Without doubt, therefore, the moral state of the Spanish clergy in the sixteenth century, especially that of the monks and friars, was immeasurably superior to that of the clergy in any other part of Western Christendom.

Moreover, the purging of the Spanish clergy had been accompanied, or followed, by a revival of learning. Ximenez was a scholar and a munificent patron of scholarship; and under his fostering care the University of Alcalá had become famous throughout Europe as a centre of theological and humane learning. The Cretan Demetrios Ducas taught Greek; Alfonso de Zamora, Pablo Coronel, and Alfonso de Alcalá were expert Hebraists; and amongst other scholars there were the two Vergaras, Lorenzo Balbo, and Alfonso de Nebrija. The greatest monument of the liberality and enterprise of Ximenez was the famous Complutensian Polyglott, which was in preparation at the very time when Erasmus was working at the first edition of his Greek Testament, though it did not begin to appear till 1520.

These facts have no little bearing upon the way in which the writings of Erasmus were received in Spain. To some he was a literary colleague whom they with all the world were proud to honour to others he was a rival, whose work was to be depreciated wherever possible. Nor was it difficult to do this; for his satirical writings against clerical abuses really did not apply to Spain. Elsewhere, all good men were agreed in combating the evils against which he wrote. In Spain, the earnestness of his crusade was easily overlooked by those who had not lived abroad; on the other hand, nowhere was there so keen a scent for heresy. His liberal thought, and his ridicule of religious customs which, however liable to abuse, were in themselves capable of justification, seemed most dangerous to the orthodox Spanish mind; and only the more largehearted were able to discern the genuine depth of his piety.

Nowhere, therefore, did Erasmus' writings rouse such feelings as in Spain. Diego Lopez de Stúñiga and Sancho Carranza de Miranda

1526-37

Erasmistas and anti-erasmistas

401

inveighed against him, the former repeatedly, accusing him of bad scholarship, of heresy, of impiety, calling him not only a Lutheran but the standard-bearer and leader of the Lutherans. Erasmus replied, publicly and privately, with comparative moderation; and by degrees the controversy died away. Meanwhile he had many personal friends in Spain, through whose influence some of his writings were translated into Spanish, the first being the Enchiridion, which appeared in 1526 or 1527 with a dedication to Manrique the Inquisitor, and bearing his imprimatur. Some spoke against it, including Ignatius Loyola, who says that when he read it (in Latin) it relaxed his fervour and made his devotion grow cold; nevertheless it had a wide popularity. This brought its author into still greater prominence; and a contemporary writer says that his name was better known in Spain than in Rotterdam.

Gradually two hostile camps were formed, of erasmistas and antierasmistas. In 1526 the Archdeacon Alfonso Fernandes, the translator of the Enchiridion, wrote to Coronel that certain friars were preaching against its author, and suggesting that they should be censured; on the other hand, the friars demanded that certain theses selected from Erasmus' writings should be condemned. In the ecclesiastical juntas which met at Valladolid in Lent, 1527, a formal enquiry was begun before Manrique and a body of theologians; but no agreement was reached, and Manrique dissolved the enquiry, leaving things as they were. Alonso Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo, also took the part of Erasmus; and by the influence of Gattinara and other friends at the Court of Charles V a Bull was obtained from Clement VII imposing silence upon all who spoke or wrote against his writings, which "are contrary to those of Luther." Thus the erasmistas had won a complete victory, and for a time had things all their own way. But after the death of Fonseca in 1534 the tide turned. Juan de Vergara and his brother were cited before the Inquisition, accused, says Enzinas, of no crime but favoring Erasmus and his writings; and although they were ultimately acquitted, it was only after years of detention. Fray Alonso de Virués was condemned. for depreciating the monastic state and was immured in a convent; but the charges were so preposterous that Charles V, whose chaplain he was, came to his rescue; and the sentence was annulled by the Pope. Mateo Pascual, professor of theology at Alcalá, was less fortunate; he had expressed a doubt as to purgatory in a public discussion, was imprisoned, and his goods were confiscated. Another who fell under suspicion was the great scholar Pedro de Lerma, who had lived at Paris over fifty years, had been dean of the faculty of Theology there, and had returned to Spain as Abbot of Compludo. In 1537 he was called upon to abjure eleven "Erasmian" propositions, one of which seems to have been justification by faith. He forthwith returned to Paris, at the age of over seventy years, accompanied by his nephew Francisco de Enzinas, in whose arms he died not long after.

C. M. H. II.

26

402

Francisco de Enzinas

[1543-5 "Erasmianism" gradually died out in Spain. Elsewhere it either died out, or took a line of its own (as in the case of Juan de Valdés), or became merged in Protestantism. Pedro de Lerma was on the borderline; his nephews crossed it. Francisco de Enzinas (or Dryander as his name was frequently rendered) was the younger brother of that Jaime who was burnt at Rome in 1547; they were sons of rich and noble parents at Burgos, and were educated at Louvain and Paris. On the death of de Lerma Francisco became a matriculated student of Wittenberg University, where there were about that time four other Spanish students, one of whom, Mateo Adriano, was professor of Hebrew and medicine. The young man lived in the house of Melanchthon, becoming so dear to him that he was often spoken of as "Melanchthon's soul"; and it was by his advice that Enzinas translated the New Testament into excellent Spanish. Having finished it he went to the Low Countries; and from this point we are able to follow his steps by means of his Narrative. The edicts of Charles V against heresy were being put into force, but he felt safe, as he had many friends. He presented his version to the theolog ical faculty of Louvain for their imprimatur; but they replied that they had no power to give this, and could not judge of its accuracy. So he himself published it at Antwerp, with a dedication to the Emperor, in which he defended the translating of the Scriptures (against which, he said, he knew no law) and placed his own version under Charles' protection. On November 23, 1543, he arrived at Brussels to present it in person, and was introduced to the Emperor's presence by the Bishop of Jaen. After a conversation of which Enzinas has left a rather partial account, the Emperor promised to accept the dedication provided that the version was satisfactory; and it was submitted to his confessor, Fray Pedro de Soto.

Soto was disposed to be friendly, but took the precaution of making enquiries. The following day he sent for the young man, set before him the dangers of the unguarded reading of the Scriptures, as demonstrated by Alfonso de Castro in his De Haeresibus, and added that Enzinas had broken the law by publishing an unlicensed work; also, that he was still more to blame for consorting with heretics at Wittenberg, and for publishing a heretical book based upon Luther's De servo arbitrio. Enzinas answered, reasonably enough, that there was no law in Flanders against translating the Bible, and that if it was wrong to consort with the German doctors, then the Emperor himself and many more were to blame. As to the book, he denied roundly that he had ever published anything but the New Testament, a denial which it is very hard to accept. Ultimately he was committed to prison in Brussels for his civil offence, and thus was saved, evidently by Soto's desire, from the tender mercies of the Spanish Inquisition. There he remained,in easy confinement, until February 1, 1545, when, by the negligence, or more probably connivance, of his gaolers, he escaped and made his way to Wittenberg, and thence to Strassburg, Basel and elsewhere. In disgust at the discords amongst