History of The Reign of Philip The Second King of Spain History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain Part 19

At the stake De Seso showed the same unshaken constancy, bearing his testimony to the truth of the great cause for which he gave up his life.

As the flames crept slowly around him, he called on the soldiers to heap up the f.a.gots, that his agonies might be sooner ended; and his executioners, indignant at the obstinacy--the heroism--of the martyr, were not slow in obeying his commands.[446]

The companion and fellow-sufferer of De Seso was Domingo de Roxas, son of the marquis de Poza, an unhappy n.o.ble, who had seen five of his family, including his eldest son, condemned to various humiliating penances by the Inquisition for their heretical opinions. This one was now to suffer death. De Roxas was a Dominican monk. It is singular that this order, from which the ministers of the Holy Office were particularly taken, furnished many proselytes to the Reformed religion.

De Roxas, as was the usage with ecclesiastics, was allowed to retain his sacerdotal habit until his sentence had been read, when he was degraded from his ecclesiastical rank, his vestments were stripped off one after another, and the hideous dress of the _san benito_ thrown over him, amid the shouts and derision of the populace. Thus apparelled, he made an attempt to address the spectators around the scaffold; but no sooner did he begin to raise his voice against the errors and cruelties of Rome, than Philip indignantly commanded him to be gagged. The gag was a piece of cleft wood, which, forcibly compressing the tongue, had the additional advantage of causing great pain, while it silenced the offender. Even when he was bound to the stake, the gag, though contrary to custom, was suffered to remain in the mouth of De Roxas, as if his enemies dreaded the effects of an eloquence that triumphed over the anguish of death.[447]

The place of execution--the _quemadero_, the burning-place, as it was called--was a spot selected for the purpose without the walls of the city.[448] Those who attended an _auto da fe_ were not, therefore, necessarily, as is commonly imagined, spectators of the tragic scene that concluded it. The great body of the people, and many of higher rank, no doubt, followed to the place of execution. On this occasion, there is reason to think, from the language--somewhat equivocal, it is true--of Philip's biographer, that the monarch chose to testify his devotion to the Inquisition by witnessing in person the appalling close of the drama; while his guards mingled with the menials of the Holy Office, and heaped up the f.a.gots round their victims.[449]

Such was the cruel exhibition which, under the garb of a religious festival, was thought the most fitting ceremonial for welcoming the Catholic monarch to his dominions! During the whole time of its duration in the public square, from six in the morning till two in the afternoon, no symptom of impatience was exhibited by the spectators, and, as may well be believed, no sign of sympathy for the sufferers.[450] It would be difficult to devise a better school for perverting the moral sense, and deadening the sensibilities of a nation.[451]

[Sidenote: PROSECUTION OF CARRANZA.]

Under the royal sanction, the work of persecution now went forward more briskly than ever.[452] No calling was too sacred, no rank too high, to escape the shafts of the informer. In the course of a few years, no less than nine bishops were compelled to do humiliating penance in some form or other for heterodox opinions. But the most ill.u.s.trious victim of the Inquisition was Bartolome Carranzo, archbishop of Toledo. The primacy of Spain might be considered as the post of the highest consideration in the Roman Catholic Church after the papacy.[453] The proceedings against this prelate, on the whole, excited more interest throughout Christendom than any other case that came before the tribunal of the Inquisition.

Carranza, who was of an ancient Castilian family, had early entered a Dominican convent in the suburbs of Guadalajara. His exemplary life, and his great parts and learning, recommended him to the favor of Charles the Fifth, who appointed him confessor to his son Philip. The emperor also sent him to the Council of Trent, where he made a great impression by his eloquence, as well as by a tract which he published against plurality of benefices, which, however, excited no little disgust in many of his order. On Philip's visit to England to marry Queen Mary, Carranza accompanied his master, and while in that country he distinguished himself by the zeal and ability with which he controverted the doctrines of the Protestants. The alacrity, moreover, which he manifested in the work of persecution made him generally odious under the name of the "black friar,"--a name peculiarly appropriate, as it applied not less to his swarthy complexion than to the garb of his order. On Philip's return to Flanders, Carranza, who had twice refused a mitre, was raised--not without strong disinclination on his own part--to the archiepiscopal see of Toledo. The "_nolo episcopari_," in this instance, seems to have been sincere. It would have been well for him if it had been effectual. Carranza's elevation to the primacy was the source of all his troubles.

The hatred of theologians has pa.s.sed into a proverb; and there would certainly seem to be no rancor surpa.s.sing that of a Spanish ecclesiastic. Among the enemies raised by Carranza's success, the most implacable was the grand-inquisitor, Valdes. The archbishop of Seville could ill brook that a humble Dominican should be thus raised from the cloister over the heads of the proud prelacy of Spain. With unwearied pains, such as hate only could induce, he sought out whatever could make against the orthodoxy of the new prelate, whether in his writings or his conversation. Some plausible ground was afforded for this from the fact, that, although Carranza, as his whole life had shown, was devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, yet his long residence in Protestant countries, and his familiarity with Protestant works, had given a coloring to his language, if not to his opinions, which resembled that of the Reformers.

Indeed, Carranza seems to have been much of the same way of thinking with Pole, Contarini, Morone, and other ill.u.s.trious Romanists, whose liberal natures and wide range of study, had led them to sanction more than one of the Lutheran dogmas which were subsequently proscribed by the Council of Trent. One charge strongly urged against the primate was his a.s.sent to the heretical doctrine of justification by faith. In support of this, Father Regla, the confessor, as the reader may remember, of Charles the Fifth, and a worthy coadjutor of Valdes, quoted words of consolation employed by Carranza, in his presence, at the death-bed of the emperor.[454]

The exalted rank of the accused made it necessary for his enemies to proceed with the greatest caution. Never had the bloodhounds of the Inquisition been set on so n.o.ble a quarry. Confident in his own authority, the prelate had little reason for distrust. He could not ward off the blow, for it was an invisible arm stronger than his own that was raised to smite him. On the twenty-second of August, 1559, the emissaries of the Holy Office entered the primate's town of Torrelaguna.

The doors of the episcopal palace were thrown open to the ministers of the terrible tribunal. The prelate was dragged from his bed at midnight, was hurried into a coach, and while the inhabitants were ordered not so much as to present themselves at the windows, he was conducted, under a strong guard, to the prisons of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The arrest of such a person caused a great sensation throughout the country, but no attempt was made at a rescue.

The primate would have appealed from the Holy Office to the pope, as the only power competent to judge him. But he was unwilling to give umbrage to Philip, who had told him in any extremity to rely on him. The king, however, was still in the Netherlands, where his mind had been preoccupied, through the archbishop's enemies, with rumors of his defection. And the mere imputation of heresy, in this dangerous crisis, and especially in one whom he had so recently raised to the highest post in the Spanish church, was enough, not only to efface the recollection of past services from the mind of Philip, but to turn his favor into aversion. For two years Carranza was suffered to languish in confinement, exposed to all the annoyances which the malice of his enemies could devise. So completely was he dead to the world, that he knew nothing of a conflagration which consumed more than four hundred of the princ.i.p.al houses in Valladolid, till some years after the occurrence.[455]

At length the Council of Trent, sharing the indignation of the rest of Christendom at the archbishop's protracted imprisonment, called on Philip to interpose in his behalf, and to remove the cause to another tribunal. But the king gave little heed to the remonstrance, which the inquisitors treated as a presumptuous interference with their authority.

In 1566, Pius the Fifth ascended the pontifical throne. He was a man of austere morals and a most inflexible will. A Dominican, like Carranza, he was greatly scandalized by the treatment which the primate had received, and by the shameful length to which his process had been protracted. He at once sent his orders to Spain for the removal of the grand-inquisitor, Valdes, from office, summoning, at the same time, the cause and the prisoner before his own tribunal. The bold inquisitor, loth to lose his prey, would have defied the power of Rome, as he had done that of the Council of Trent. Philip remonstrated; but Pius was firm, and menaced both king and inquisitor with excommunication. Philip had no mind for a second collision with the papal court. In imagination he already heard the thunders of the Vatican rolling in the distance, and threatening soon to break upon his head. After a confinement of now more than seven years' duration, the archbishop was sent under a guard to Rome. He was kindly received by the pontiff, and honorably lodged in the castle of St. Angelo, in apartments formerly occupied by the popes themselves. But he was still a prisoner.

[Sidenote: PROSECUTION OF CARRANZA.]

Pius now set seriously about the examination of Carranza's process. It was a tedious business, requiring his holiness to wade through an ocean of papers, while the progress of the suit was perpetually impeded by embarra.s.sments thrown in his way by the industrious malice of the inquisitors. At the end of six years more, Pius was preparing to give his judgment, which it was understood would be favorable to Carranza, when, unhappily for the primate, the pontiff died.

The Holy Office, stung by the prospect of its failure, now strained every nerve to influence the mind of the new pope, Gregory the Thirteenth, to a contrary decision. New testimony was collected, new glosses were put on the primate's text, and the sanction of the most learned Spanish theologians was brought in support of them. At length, at the end of three years further, the holy father announced his purpose of giving his final decision. It was done with great circ.u.mstance. The pope was seated on his pontifical throne, surrounded by all his cardinals, prelates, and functionaries of the apostolic chamber. Before this august a.s.sembly, the archbishop presented himself unsupported and alone, while no one ventured to salute him. His head was bare. His once robust form was bent by infirmity more than by years; and his care-worn features told of that sickness which arises from hope deferred. He knelt down at some distance from the pope, and in this humble att.i.tude received his sentence.

He was declared to have imbibed the pernicious doctrines of Luther. The decree of the Inquisition prohibiting the use of his catechism was confirmed. He was to abjure sixteen propositions found in his writings; was suspended from the exercise of his episcopal functions for five years, during which time he was to be confined in a convent of his order at Orvieto; and, finally, he was required to visit seven of the princ.i.p.al churches in Rome, and perform ma.s.s there by way of penance.

This was the end of eighteen years of doubt, anxiety, and imprisonment.

The tears streamed down the face of the unhappy man, as he listened to the sentence; but he bowed in silent submission to the will of his superior. The very next day he began his work of penance. But nature could go no further; and on the second of May, only sixteen days after his sentence had been p.r.o.nounced, Carranza died of a broken heart. The triumph of the Inquisition was complete.

The pope raised a monument to the memory of the primate, with a pompous inscription, paying a just tribute to his talents and his scholars.h.i.+p, endowing him with a full measure of Christian worth, and particularly commending the exemplary manner in which he had discharged the high trusts reposed in him by his sovereign.[456]

Such is the story of Carranza's persecution,--considering the rank of the party, the unprecedented length of the process, and the sensation it excited throughout Europe, altogether the most remarkable on the records of the Inquisition.[457] Our sympathy for the archbishop's sufferings may be reasonably mitigated by the reflection, that he did but receive the measure which he had meted out to others.

While the persecution of Carranza was going on, the fires lighted for the Protestants continued to burn with fury in all parts of the country, until at length they gradually slackened and died away, from mere want of fuel to feed them. The year 1570 may be regarded as the period of the last _auto da fe_ in which the Lutherans played a conspicuous part. The subsequent celebrations were devoted chiefly to relapsed Jews and Mahometans; and if a Protestant heretic was sometimes added to this list, it was "but as the gleaning of grapes after the vintage is done."[458]

Never was there a persecution which did its work more thoroughly. The blood of the martyr is commonly said to be the seed of the church. But the storm of persecution fell as heavily on the Spanish Protestants as it did on the Albigenses in the thirteenth century; blighting every living thing, so that no germ remained for future harvests. Spain might now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled the hem of her garment. But at what a price was this purchased! Not merely by the sacrifice of the lives and fortunes of a few thousands of the existing generation but by the disastrous consequences entailed for ever on the country. Folded under the dark wing of the Inquisition, Spain was shut out from the light which in the sixteenth century broke over the rest of Europe, stimulating the nations to greater enterprise in every department of knowledge. The genius of the people was rebuked, and their spirit quenched, under the malignant influence of an eye that never slumbered, of an unseen arm ever raised to strike. How could there be freedom of thought, where there was no freedom of utterance? Or freedom of utterance, where it was as dangerous to say too little as too much?

Freedom cannot go along with fear. Every way the mind of the Spaniard was in fetters.

His moral sense was miserably perverted. Men were judged, not by their practice, but by their professions. Creed became a subst.i.tute for conduct. Difference of faith made a wider gulf of separation than difference of race, language, or even interest. Spain no longer formed one of the great brotherhood of Christian nations. An immeasurable barrier was raised between that kingdom and the Protestants of Europe.

The early condition of perpetual warfare with the Arabs who overran the country had led the Spaniards to mingle religion strangely with their politics. The effect continued when the cause had ceased. Their wars with the European nations became religious wars. In fighting England or the Netherlands, they were fighting the enemies of G.o.d. It was the same everywhere. In their contest with the unoffending natives of the New World, they were still battling with the enemies of G.o.d. Their wars took the character of a perpetual crusade, and were conducted with all the ferocity which fanaticism could inspire.

[Sidenote: RECEPTION OF ISABELLA.]

The same dark spirit of fanaticism seems to brood over the national literature; even that lighter literature which in other nations is made up of the festive sallies of wit, or the tender expression of sentiment.

The greatest geniuses of the nation, the masters of the drama and of the ode, while they astonish us by their miracles of invention, show that they have too often kindled their inspiration at the altars of the Inquisition.

Debarred as he was from freedom of speculation, the domain of science was closed against the Spaniard. Science looks to perpetual change. It turns to the past to gather warning, as well as instruction, for the future. Its province is to remove old abuses, to explode old errors, to unfold new truths. Its condition, in short, is that of progress. But in Spain, everything not only looked to the past, but rested on the past.

Old abuses gathered respect from their antiquity. Reform was innovation, and innovation was a crime. Far from progress, all was stationary. The hand of the Inquisition drew the line which said, "No further!" This was the limit of human intelligence in Spain.

The effect was visible in every department of science,--not in the speculative alone, but in the physical and the practical; in the declamatory rant of its theology and ethics, in the childish and chimerical schemes of its political economists. In every walk were to be seen the symptoms of premature decrepitude, as the nation clung to the antiquated systems which the march of civilization in other countries had long since effaced. Hence those frantic experiments, so often repeated, in the financial administration of the kingdom, which made Spain the byword of the nations, and which ended in the ruin of trade, the prostration of credit, and finally the bankruptcy of the state.--But we willingly turn from this sad picture of the destinies of the country to a more cheerful scene in the history of Philip.

CHAPTER IV.

PHILIP'S THIRD MARRIAGE.

Reception of Isabella.--Marriage Festivities.--The Queen's Mode of Life.--The Court removed to Madrid.

1560.

So soon as Philip should be settled in Spain, it had been arranged that his young bride, Elizabeth of France, should cross the Pyrenees. Early in January, 1560, Elizabeth,--or Isabella, to use the corresponding name by which she was known to the Spaniards,--under the protection of the Cardinal de Bourbon and some of the French n.o.bility, reached the borders of Navarre, where she was met by the duke of Infantado, who was to take charge of the princess, and escort her to Castile.

Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, fourth duke of Infantado, was the head of the most ill.u.s.trious house in Castile. He was at this time near seventy years of age, having pa.s.sed most of his life in attendance at court, where he had always occupied the position suited to his high birth and his extensive property, which, as his t.i.tle intimated, lay chiefly in the north. He was a fine specimen of the old Castilian hidalgo, and displayed a magnificence in his way of living that became his station.

He was well educated, for the time; and his fondness for books did not prevent his excelling in all knightly exercises. He was said to have the best library and the best stud of any gentleman in Castile.[459]

He appeared on this occasion in great state, accompanied by his household and his kinsmen, the heads of the n.o.blest families in Spain.

The duke was attended by some fifty pages, who, in their rich dresses of satin and brocade, displayed the gay colors of the house of Mendoza. The n.o.bles in his train, all suitably mounted, were followed by twenty-five hundred gentlemen, well equipped, like themselves. So lavish were the Castilians of that day in the caparisons of their horses, that some of these are estimated, without taking into account the jewels with which they were garnished, to have cost no less than two thousand ducats![460]

The same taste is visible at this day in their descendants, especially in South America and Mexico, where the love of barbaric ornament in the housings and caparisons of their steeds is conspicuous among all cla.s.ses of the people.

Several days were spent in settling the etiquette to be observed before the presentation of the duke and his followers to the princess,--a perilous matter with the Spanish hidalgo. When at length the interview took place, the cardinal of Burgos, the duke's brother, opened it by a formal and rather long address to Isabella, who replied in a tone of easy gaiety, which, though not undignified, savored much more of the manners of her own country than those of Spain.[461] The place of meeting was at Roncesvalles,--a name which to the reader of romance may call up scenes very different from those presented by the two nations now met together in kindly courtesy.[462]

From Roncesvalles the princess proceeded, under the strong escort of the duke, to his town of Guadalajara in New Castile, where her marriage with King Philip was to be solemnized. Great preparations were made by the loyal citizens for celebrating the event in a manner honorable to their own master and their future queen. A huge mound, or what might be called a hill, was raised at the entrance of the town, where a grove of natural oaks had been transplanted, amongst which was to be seen abundance of game. Isabella was received by the magistrates of the place, and escorted through the princ.i.p.al streets by a brilliant cavalcade, composed of the great n.o.bility of the court. She was dressed in ermine, and rode a milk-white palfrey, which she managed with an easy grace that delighted the mult.i.tude. On one side of her rode the duke of Infantado, and on the other the cardinal of Burgos. After performing her devotions at the church, where _Te Deum_ was chanted, she proceeded to the ducal palace, in which the marriage ceremony was to be performed. On her entering the court, the princess Joanna came down to receive her sister-in-law, and, after an affectionate salutation, conducted her to the saloon, where Philip, attended by his son, was awaiting his bride.[463]

[Sidenote: RECEPTION OF ISABELLA.]

It was the first time that Isabella had seen her destined lord. She now gazed on him so intently, that he good-humoredly asked her "if she were looking to see if he had any gray hairs in his head?" The bluntness of the question somewhat disconcerted her.[464] Philip's age was not much less than that at which the first gray hairs made their appearance on his father's temples. Yet the discrepancy between the ages of the parties in the present instance was not greater than often happens in a royal union. Isabella was in her fifteenth year,[465] and Philip in his thirty-fourth.

From all accounts, the lady's youth was her least recommendation.

"Elizabeth de Valois," says Brantome, who know her well, "was a true daughter of France,--discreet, witty, beautiful, and good, if ever woman was so."[466] She was well made, and tall of stature, and on this account the more admired in Spain, where the women are rarely above the middle height. Her eyes were dark, and her luxuriant tresses, of the same dark color, shaded features that were delicately fair.[467] There was sweetness mingled with dignity in her deportment, in which Castilian stateliness seemed to be happily tempered by the vivacity of her own nation. "So attractive was she," continues the gallant old courtier, "that no cavalier durst look on her long, for fear of losing his heart, which in that jealous court might have proved the loss of his life."[468]

Some of the chroniclers notice a shade of melancholy as visible on Isabella's features, which they refer to the comparison the young bride was naturally led to make between her own lord and his son, the prince of Asturias, for whom her hand had been originally intended.[469] But the daughter of Catherine de Medicis, they are careful to add, had been too well trained, from her cradle, not to know how to disguise her feelings. Don Carlos had one advantage over his father, in his youth; though, in this respect, since he was but a boy of fourteen, he might be thought to fall as much too short of the suitable age as the king exceeded it. It is also intimated by the same gossiping writers, that from this hour of their meeting, touched by the charms of his step-mother, the prince nourished a secret feeling of resentment against his father, who had thus come between him and his beautiful betrothed.[470] It is this light gossip of the chroniclers that has furnished the romancers of later ages with the flimsy materials for that web of fiction, which displays in such glowing colors the loves of Carlos and Isabella. I shall have occasion to return to this subject when treating of the fate of this unhappy prince.

When the nuptials were concluded, the good people of Guadalajara testified their loyalty by all kinds of festivities in honor of the event,--by fireworks, music, and dancing. The fountains flowed with generous liquor. Tables were spread in the public squares, laden with good cheer, and freely open to all. In the evening, the _regidores_ of the town, to the number of fifty or more, presented themselves before the king and queen. They were dressed in their gaudy liveries of crimson and yellow velvet, and each one of these functionaries bore a napkin on his arm, while he carried a plate of sweetmeats, which he presented to the royal pair and the ladies of the court. The following morning Philip and his consort left the hospitable walls of Guadalajara, and set out with their whole suite for Toledo. At parting, the duke of Infantado made the queen and her ladies presents of jewels, lace, and other rich articles of dress; and the sovereigns took leave of their n.o.ble host, well pleased with the princely entertainment he had given them.[471]

At Toledo preparations were made for the reception of Philip and Isabella in a style worthy of the renown of that ancient capital of the Visigoths. In the broad _vega_ before the city, three thousand of the old Spanish infantry engaged in a mock encounter with a body of Moorish cavalry, having their uniforms and caparisons fancifully trimmed and ornamented in the Arabesque fas.h.i.+on. Then followed various national dances by beautiful maidens of Toledo, dances of the Gypsies, and the old Spanish "war-dance of the swords."[472]

[Sidenote: MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES.]