A Church That Needed No Reformation
Apart from the Church, no power was left in Spain to stand against Charles. The Spanish Church, though a firm supporter of Catholicism, opposed the domination of the popes. Charles, like Ferdinand the Catholic, made it his aim to secure the Church's independence from the popes, and went so far as to claim the Church's appointments and revenues for himself. Spain, like France, did not need a religious reformation to bring the Church under state control. In the half of his reign that he spent in Spain, Charles came so strongly under the influence of the orthodoxy of the Spanish Church that in his last years nothing (except preserving the power of the Habsburg house) seemed to him more urgent than suppressing heresy and any departure from the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. At a time when the popes were trying to moderate the Inquisition, he kept strengthening it until his death. Convinced that the spread of Protestantism would draw the Low Countries into chaos and civil war, he spared no effort to keep the new religious ideas out of Spain.
The Inquisition's Reach
The harshness of the Spanish Inquisition eased under Charles, but its range of authority grew. It inspected presses and libraries and burned books it found at odds with Roman Catholic beliefs. It also supervised sexual conduct and punished offenders. To protect "purity of blood" it made rules closing important posts to repentant offenders. It kept a watchful eye on the mystics too, since some of them claimed that direct personal conversation with God left no place for attendance at church assemblies, and some behaved in ecstasy in ways that made the Church doubt their purity. An unofficial preacher, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, and a friar, Francisco Ortiz, taught things about spiritual union that the Inquisition judged improper (I leave out the book's particulars). The Inquisition treated them gently, keeping its severity for Spain's Protestants.
The First Spanish Protestants
In Spain, as in northern Europe, the fight of Protestants and their opponents began after disputes about how to reform the Church in the manner of Erasmus. A few enlightened, free-thinking church leaders had joined the humanists who denounced the clergy's misconduct. Ximénez and others had cleansed the Church of many abuses before Charles entered Spain. Luther's ideas apparently came into Spain with Charles's German and Flemish entourage. In 1524 a German was convicted of Lutheran leanings in Valencia, and in 1528 a Flemish painter who denied purgatory and the value of indulgences was jailed for life. Francisco de San Román, evidently the first Spaniard who followed Luther, was burned in 1542. Juan Díaz of Cuenca turned to Calvin's faith at Geneva. His brother Alfonso hastened to him to bring him back to Catholicism and, failing, killed him with his own hand (1546). At Seville Juan Gil, canon of the cathedral, was jailed for a year for speaking against the worship of images, intercession for the dead, and the need for good works to win salvation; after his death his bones were dug up and burned to ashes. His colleague Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, who spread his views, died in the Inquisition's dungeon. Fourteen of his companions and fellow thinkers, among them four friars and three women, were burned, many more were given varied penalties, and the house where they met was razed.
Valladolid and the Autos-da-fé of 1559
The Inquisition found another half-Protestant group, with influential nobles and high church leaders among its members, at Valladolid. Almost all its members were arrested, and several who tried to flee Spain were caught and brought back. Charles V, then at Yuste, ordered that no leniency be shown to the prisoners, that the repentant be beheaded and that those who persisted in their belief be burned. On 12 May 1559, which fell on "Trinity Sunday," fourteen of the condemned were put to death before a crowd that could hardly contain its joy. Thirteen who had repented were executed (the book's word is garbled), and Antonio de Herrezuelo, who stood firm in his belief, was burned alive; his twenty-three-year-old wife, Leonor de Cisneros, who was among the repentant, was sentenced to life in prison. After ten years in prison she regretted her repentance and asked to be burned as her husband had been, and her request was granted. Twenty-six more of the condemned were brought on 8 October 1559 before a crowd of 200,000, with Philip II at its head, and burned, and ten were strangled. (I give the numbers only; the book's detail is omitted.)
The Fall of Archbishop Carranza
The most famous victim of the Spanish Inquisition was Bartolomé de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo and leader of the Spanish Church. When he was only a friar he spared no effort to arrest opponents of the Catholic Church. Charles named him his representative at the Council of Trent and sent him to England for the wedding of Philip and Queen Mary. On the day he was chosen archbishop (1557), among the electors only he himself voted against himself. But soon after his election a group of Protestants jailed in Valladolid testified that Carranza had secretly worked with them; his letters with Juan de Valdés, a Spanish religious reformer living in Italy, came to light; and Melchor Cano, an influential and famous Spanish theologian, accused him of believing in salvation by faith (Luther's view).
Less than two years after his rise to the highest post in the Spanish Church he was arrested and jailed, which shows the Inquisition's power. He was held for seventeen years in various places of detention, and during that time his writings were closely examined in Toledo and Rome. Pope Gregory XIII judged his "guilt" serious, ordered him to declare his loyalty to sixteen propositions put to him, and suspended him from office for five years. Carranza humbly accepted the verdict and prepared himself to bear the penalty; but the pain of prison and the humiliation had so weakened him that he died five weeks later (1567, the book's date).
The End of Spanish Protestantism
With his death the Protestant movement in Spain fell silent. Between 1551 and 1600 close to two hundred people (four a year) were put to death in Spain on charges of Protestant leanings. The Spaniards, nursing hatred of Muslims and Jews, gathered in the Roman Catholic Church; Catholicism mixed with patriotic feeling, and within a generation or two the Inquisition easily held the Spanish people in check and kept them from leaning toward independent thought.