The Magic of Spain

Even so marvellous an orator as Emilio Castelar was at times carried away by the magnificent eloquence that flowed unfailingly from his lips. In the same way Lope de Vega could throw off a play in a few days. Over 2000 plays and autos are ascribed to him, and in the 450 that remain his most ardent admirers confess that there are arid tracts. And, ordinarily, this copiousness has been a fault, telling against Spanish literature, and it continues to be a fault: Señor Blasco Ibáñez writes his brilliant novels in evident haste; Señor Perez Galdós has entered on the fifth series of ten of his “Episodios Nacionales,” and his other novels and plays are very numerous. Such wealth of production could not but be harmful to critical judgment. In the nineteenth century Spain produced one or two excellent critics, especially Larra and Clarín, the pseudonym of Leopoldo Alas, author of “La Regenta,” one of the most striking psychological novels of the century. Generally, however, if German literary criticism is circular and, however illuminating the by-paths of its learning, wanders round the point without ever quite touching it, Spanish literary criticism is superficial, and either veils the point in a polite mesh of words, or is prevented by this very rhetoric from seeing the point at all. Even Valera, who so carefully limned his own prose, and whose verse, though not inspired, is always delicate and polished, was far from being a good critic. He praised effusively works that at best deserved silence, and this insincerity in literary matters is, it is to be feared, a common weakness in Spain.

The characteristic of Spanish literature that unites it in a special bond of sympathy with English literature is its large store of humour. It meets us in the “Poema del Cid,” in the character of the Cid, and in the quick detection of the ludicrous; the poems of the Archpriest of Hita are full of merriment and of humorous portrayal of character; the humour of the Archpriest reappears in “Lazarillo de Tormes,” but without his jovial gaiety; with Quevedo its vein becomes cruelly satirical. Humour did not desert Luis de León when ill and solitary in the dark Valladolid prison of the Inquisition; and it is to be found in a large majority of Spanish authors, being but another side of their direct, unclouded observation. In the most humorous of all books, even Don Quixote, the Knight of the Sad Countenance, is constrained to laugh: at the sight of Sancho, we read, his melancholy was not strong enough to prevent him from joining in his laughter—and the whole world laughs with, not at him.

It is because Spanish literature is intensely national that it has so universal an interest, and in its most recent phase, the novel, it has a local character that is full of charm. José María de Pereda, for instance, scarcely ever left his native Cantabrian province. He wrote of the places and people that he understood and loved. Yet no one who has read his great novels, “El Sabor de la Tierruca,” or “Sotileza,” or “Peñas Arriba,” will contend that they are provincial, or that their interest is merely local.[96] His characters are universal, and Pereda is another instance of the truth that he who digs a little land deep reaps a better reward than he who works shallowly over a wide extent. So Señor Blasco Ibáñez is read with most delight when he cultivates his own garden—the city and province of Valencia.

XVII

THE POEM OF THE CID

THE national hero of Spain has been presented in many guises, but is nowhere more intensely Spanish than in the “Poema del Cid.” Here are no marvellous events and miracles, no journeyings out of Spain to Paris and Rome; everything occurs naturally and simply in Spanish surroundings, and this the first great masterpiece of Spanish letters has a strong flavour of the soil. After winning a “victory marvellous and great” over the Moors in Spain, the Cid says, “I give thanks to God who is Master of the world; I was in want before, now I am rich, for I have goods and land and gold and honour.... Moors and Christians live in great fear of me. There, inland in Morocco, where the Mosques are, they look to have some night an inroad from me. It is but their fear, for I think not of it. I shall not go to seek them, in Valencia shall I be.” The Cid is chivalrous, brave, magnanimous, simple, with a strong sense of humour and love of fair-play. With simple good faith the poet sees no need to explain or excuse actions of his hero that may seem blameworthy to a later age, such as the deceit practised upon the two Jews. Though not historical, the poem has an air of truth and sincerity deeply impressive. It was probably composed in the middle of the twelfth century, not much more than fifty years after the Cid’s death in 1099. It has been attributed to the beginning of the thirteenth century, but intrinsic evidence warrants the earlier date. The language is more archaic than that of thirteenth-century writers. Traces of the Latin chrysalis appear. “To-morrow morning” is cras á la mañana, half Latin and half Spanish, and “each” in the same way is quiscadauno, while the word huebos, which frequently occurs in the sense of menester, is but the Latin opus thinly disguised. The poem, as it has come down to us incomplete, has nearly four thousand verses. It is written in long assonant lines of unequal number of syllables. “The poet,” as Tomas Antonio Sánchez, who first edited the “Poema del Cid” in 1779, remarks, “thought nothing of giving two or three syllables more to a line as his sentence might require,” and lines of eleven and lines of eighteen syllables occur indifferently. From beginning to end the story moves on without flagging; the style is so rapid and direct that it carries the reader with it. There is a joy and freshness in the narrative that have rarely been surpassed.[97] These events may not have happened, or may have happened differently, but that matters little, since, owing to the skill of the unknown poet, they stand out with a vividness that imprints them indelibly on the mind of the reader and proves that nothing is so real as that which has not happened. Who can forget, for instance, the arrival of King Alfonso and the Cid at Toledo, when the King passes on into the town, but the Cid remains on the further side of the Tagus, in the castle of San Serván (now a beautiful ruin with two Moorish windows still left, and surrounded by dwarf-asphodels in spring). He says to the King: “I with mine will rest in San Serván; this evening will my followers arrive. I will hold vigil in that holy place; to-morrow morning I will enter the city.” Here he and his followers “said matins and prime until the dawn,” and next day they enter Toledo, the Cid splendidly attired and accompanied by a hundred knights, riding across the bridge of Alcántara and up the steep and narrow street to the Court or Parliament.[98] Every detail of his dress is given, purple and gold and silver. But fresh and quaintly vivid details are frequent in the poem. When the counts of Carrión have outraged and abandoned their wives the poet pauses to exclaim, “What good fortune were the Cid Campeador to appear.” Félez Muñoz, on finding the Cid’s daughters almost at the point of death, brings them water in his hat: “new it was and fresh, and he had brought it from Valencia.” Mass is said “at half cock-crow, before the dawn.” The Moor Abengalvon upbraids the treachery of his guests in planning his murder as follows: “Tell me what have I done to you, Counts of Carrión? I serving you without guile, and you took counsel for my death, Hyo sirviendovos sin art, E vos conseiastes para mi muert.” Nothing could be more spontaneous and direct. With equal directness honest Pero Bermuez calls one of the Counts of Carrión “a tongue without hands,” “a mouth without truth,” and we read of Asur González, who “would breakfast before he went to prayer,” that “purple he came for he had breakfasted, and reckless was his speech.” The account of the battle is well known: “they clasp their shields before their breasts, they lower their lances with their banners, they bow their faces over the saddles, they went to smite them with bold hearts. With loud voice calls he who was born in happy hour, ‘Strike them, knights, for the love of charity. I am Ruy Diaz, the Cid Campeador of Bibar.’ All strike in the group where is Pero Bermuez. Three hundred lances are there, all with their banners. A Moor apiece they killed at a single blow, and as they turned about they kill as many more. There would you see many lances rise and fall, many a shield pierced and riddled, many a breastplate broken through, many white banners come out red with blood, many good steeds go without a rider. The Moors call on Mahomet, the Christians on St. James. In a short space a thousand and three hundred of the Moors are slain.” No version can give an idea of the vigour of the original. But it is not only battle scenes that are treated forcibly and thrown into high relief. We may take the arrival of the Cid at San Pedro de Cardeña as an example of the amazing vividness given to more quiet episodes: “The cocks are crowing and the dawn is trying to break, when the good Campeador arrived at San Pedro. The Abbot Don Sancho, servant of the Creator, was saying Matins for the return of dawn. And Doña Jimena, with five noble ladies, was praying St. Peter and the Creator: ‘O Thou who guidest all, be with my Cid the Campeador.’ He was calling at the gate and they heard the summons. Heavens! how glad was the Abbot Don Sancho! With lights and with candles they ran into the courtyard. With such joy they receive him who was born in happy hour. ‘I thank God, my Cid,’ said the Abbot Don Sancho, ‘since I see you here, accept my hospitality.’”

II. Valencia del Cid.

The poem opens abruptly with the exile of the Cid from Castille. He rides to his house at Burgos but finds all closed against him. Only a nine-year-old girl is found to tell him that “last night came the King’s letter. We dare not open or receive you, else would we lose our goods and houses, and moreover the eyes of our heads.”

To obtain money the Cid fills two chests with sand, and on these “covered with red leather, and studded with nails well-gilt,” he obtains six hundred marks from the Jews Rachel and Vidas. They are not to open the chests for a year. On the wall in the cloister of the Cathedral at Burgos still hangs an ancient chest known as the Cofre del Cid. Thus furnished, the Cid leaves Castille, and he prays solemnly to God and the glorious Saint Mary, “for here I leave Castille, since the King is wrath with me, and I know not if in all my days I shall enter it again.” He takes leave of his wife and children at the Convent of San Pedro de Cardeña, and, after early Mass said by the Abbot Don Sancho, departs, wistfully turning his head to look back. Doña Jimena, his wife, prays for his safety to the “glorious Lord the Father, who madest Heaven and Earth, and thirdly, the sea, who madest stars and moon and the sun to give heat.” Already men were flocking to the Cid’s banner, and his first exploit is the capture of the town of Castejon. He lies in ambush before it: “The dawn is breaking, and morning was at hand. The sun went forth, Heavens! how beautiful it rose. In Castejon all were awaking. They open the gates, and quickly went forth to see their work in the fields and their possessions.” When they were all gone forth, the Cid took the town. The next town, Alcocer, he also captures by a wile. “The news grieves those of Teca, the men of Teruel it does not please; it pleases not the men of Calatayud.” A host of Moors besieges the Cid in Alcocer, and after three weeks, the provisions failing, he goes forth and gains a great victory. At the sound of the drums of the Moorish host “the earth was like to crack.” He pursues the enemy to the walls of Calatayud. Fata Calatayuth duró el segudar. He sends Alvar Fáñez to Castiella la gentil with a present of thirty horses for King Alfonso and money for Doña Jimena, and for a thousand masses at Santa María de Burgos. Zaragoza agrees to pay tribute to the Cid. Don Remont Berenger, Count of Barcelona, goes out against him, and persists in coming to an engagement, though the Cid sends him a message: “I have nothing of his, bid him let me go in peace.” The result is a crushing defeat of the “army of the Franks,” and the Count is taken prisoner. The account of his captivity is entertaining. The Count refuses all food: “‘I will not eat a mouthful for all there is in Spain. I will rather die (lit. lose my body and leave my soul) since such ill-equipped men have beaten me in battle.’ You will hear what said my Cid Ruy Diaz: ‘Eat, Count, of this bread and drink this wine; if you do as I say you shall be free, if not in all your days you shall not see Christian land.’” The Count eats nothing for three days: “They dividing these great spoils cannot make him eat a piece of bread.” Then the Cid renews his promise to give him liberty: “But of what you have lost and I won in the field know that I will not give you any part, but what you have lost I will not give you, for I have need of it for me and for my vassals, and will not give it you.” At length the Count yields. “The Count is eating, Heavens! with what good will. Over against him sat he who was born in happy hour: ‘If you eat not well, Count, and I am not satisfied, here we shall remain, we shall not part.’... The Cid, who is watching him, is satisfied, so quickly did Count Remont move his hands,” and he escorts him on his way. The Count takes his leave and “goes turning his head and looking back; with fear he went that the Cid will repent, that which he would not do for all that is in the world.” Fresh victories follow. The Cid carries the war “over against the salt sea” and takes among other towns Murviedro (the old Saguntum and modern Sagunto). Here he is besieged by the Valencians, but sallies forth and defeats them. Fata Valencia duró el segudar. For three years he continues to wage war and take towns. “The fame of my Cid, know well, is noised abroad.” “The inhabitants of Valencia know not what to do. From no quarter came bread, father and son are without counsel, friend cannot comfort friend. A bad thing, Sirs, it is to have a lack of bread.” After a siege of nine months the Cid takes Valencia. He establishes a Christian bishopric in his new town, and sends a present of a hundred horses to King Alfonso. Alvar Fáñez on his return escorts Doña Jimena and her daughters Elvira and Sol to Valencia. The Cid bids them welcome to the city: “‘You, loved and honoured wife, and both my daughters, my heart and my soul, enter with me the city of Valencia, the possession that I have won you.’ Mother and daughters kissed his hands, with such honour entered they Valencia. My Cid went with them to the Citadel: he led them up to the highest part. Velvet eyes glance on all sides. They look at Valencia, how the city lies, and on the other side they have the sea. They look on the plain, luxuriant, and large. They raise their hands to pray to God. So glad is my Cid and his companions for this good and great spoil. The winter is departing, and March is about to come in....” The Moorish King Jucef, with “fifty times a thousand” Moors, comes up against the Cid, but is defeated with great slaughter. “There escaped not more than a hundred and four.” A fresh present of two hundred horses is sent to King Alfonso. The Counts of Carrión now determine to ask for the Cid’s daughters in marriage, and the King proposes an interview with the Cid “above the Tagus, which is a principal river.” The marriage is arranged, and the Counts return with the Cid to Valencia, where the wedding festivities last a full fortnight. The guests depart laden with presents from the Cid. “Rich return to Castille those who had come to the wedding.” And here there is a very definite division in the poem. “The verses of this song have here an ending. May the Creator be with you and all his Saints” (lines, 2286, 7). The remainder of the poem tells of the treachery and punishment of the Counts of Carrión. It begins with the incident of the lion. A lion that was kept in the court of the Cid’s house escaped one day as the Cid lay asleep. His trusty followers drew round him to keep him from harm, but of the Counts of Carrión one scrambled under the Cid’s bench, the other ran out by the door crying: “I shall not see Carrión,” and hid behind the beam of a wine-press, so that his cloak and doublet were all soiled. The Cid, having cowed the lion, “asked for his sons-in-law, but found them not. They call aloud for them, but none answers. When they found them and they came, they came all pale. You have not seen such jests as went about the Court. My Cid the Campeador ordered that they should cease.” Further events showed the small spirit and treachery of the Cid’s sons-in-law, and his daughters are ultimately betrothed to nobler men, the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon. The poem, as we have it, ends with a prayer that God may give Paradise to him who wrote (i.e. copied) it, and with a request for money or a glass of wine for its reciters: “Dat nos del vino si non tenedes dineros.”

XVIII

A PRISONER OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION

THE poetry of Luis de León is not voluminous; he has no great variety of theme; he sings “the quiet life of him who shuns the world’s uproar;” but there is, as has been said, scarcely a line of it that is not exquisite. And if, as a lyric poet, Luis de León stands in the front of Spanish literature, as a writer of eloquent and well-moulded Castilian prose he has had few equals. His “Nombres de Cristo” is one of the masterpieces of the Spanish language. The sentences are perhaps occasionally too prolix, lengthening out in a rich profusion of words and images. He had, as Ticknor said, a Hebrew soul, and he delighted in similes. It is indeed partly this that gives to his style a colour and a sound which rank him among the greatest prose-writers of any age. But as a writer Luis de León is too well known to need comment. And to himself his literary works were of a secondary importance, and held a subordinate place in his strenuous and energetic life. Born in 1527, of a well-known family at Belmonte in La Mancha, he was sent by his father at the age of fourteen to the University of Salamanca with the advice to “follow the common opinion in letters, que siguiese la opinión comun en las letras.” The precept was not unneeded in that age, for the Reformation had unhinged men’s beliefs and left them a prey to many fears. Intolerance on the side of reformers was answered by fresh intolerance. In Spain one might least expect any dissent from the accepted religion. Even in Spain, however, the general ferment of the rest of Europe had found an echo, the spirit of doubt and inquiry had penetrated to the Spanish Universities, and men’s minds were opening to new lines of thought. There was indeed ample scope for reform. Scholasticism had become a dry and stilted system, well qualified to call down ridicule on all learning. Its professors delighted in hairsplitting and quibbles. Luis de León speaks with a scathing sarcasm of the type of professor who said that he was ... “content with a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints ... and had no wish for any new learning (novedades);” of those who “flatter themselves and fancy that, because they have in their rooms a score of books covered with dust, and have obtained the degree of master of arts, they have well earned the name of men of letters, and may for the rest give themselves up quite securely to sleep and good living ... and they consider that the mere fact of having the books and dipping into some part of them once a year bestows on them a knowledge of St. Thomas and the Saints.” But the new spirit of inquiry and reform led those who belonged to the old school to fence themselves the more closely with narrow and bigoted beliefs, to cling to conventionalities of dogma, and to cry out on the most innocent innovations. Violent attacks on Scholasticism had the effect of showing more moderate attempts at reform in an odious light. Suspicions were everywhere rife, and it required no little care to avoid the accusation of being anxious for “new things.” The highest ecclesiastics were not exempt from attack. Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo, had spent a certain number of years in England. In 1556 he had visited Oxford and found it Catholic, la encontró católica, but in the following year at Cambridge he burnt many heretical books and English Bibles. On his return to Spain he was thought to have been contaminated by contact with so many heretics, though he boasted that he had done more than any other in discovering them.

II.—Salamanca University

In the Universities especially accusations of every kind hung fire over men marked out by their position or abilities. The University of Salamanca had always been eminently conservative. Popes and Kings were anxious for its welfare. Philip II. saw in the University a stronghold of religion and loyalty. Pedro Chacon tells how “in the year 1560, on the return of our sovereign Don Philip to Spain after an absence of several years spent in reducing and governing the kingdom of England, he at once confirmed all the privileges which the University had received from his predecessors.” He intervened personally in the general affairs and particular disputes of the University, and seems to have considered no trouble too great to preserve the ancient purity of its opinions. Luis de León became deeply attached to the University, “the light,” as he said, “not of Spain only, but of all Europe,” and to Salamanca as student and professor he devoted his entire life. He entered the Augustinian order a few months after arriving at Salamanca, and by so doing renounced a very considerable income which he would otherwise have inherited as his father’s eldest son. His success was rapid. He obtained the chair of philosophy, and afterwards that of theology, and this latter chair he still held when he was arrested in the beginning of 1572 and detained for nearly five years in the prison of the Inquisition at Valladolid. The most serious charges against him were that he had translated the Song of Solomon into the vulgar tongue, and that he had depreciated the authority of the Vulgate. But it was a question primarily between two schools of thought in the University, between the rival Greek and Hebrew scholars, between the members of the order of St. Dominic and the members of the order of St. Augustine, and the case only came under the authority of the Inquisition through the denunciations of Luis de León’s enemies, such as León de Castro. León de Castro was a professor of the old school. He was an excellent Latin and Greek scholar, and was possessed of great energy and perseverance. By his learning, and partly by sheer force of character, he had won a position of high authority in the University, and he guarded his authority with a jealous care. Intolerant of opposition, he sought to crush all who by their talents or popularity might throw him into the shade. He wished to reign supreme. He was easily roused to such a pitch of anger that he lost all control of himself; “when engaged in a dispute,” says Luis de León, “he does not know what he is doing or saying.” He was hasty in his judgment of men and opinions, and supplied deficiencies in his own knowledge by a fierce positiveness. It is said that if he found an opinion in the work of a saint or philosopher, he would at once say, “This is the opinion of all the saints, of all the philosophers.” To him the Vulgate was the final and irrefragable authority, and he opposed with the utmost vigour those scholars who went back to the Hebrew original. Such Hebrew scholars he called “Jews,” a name that smelt of fire in that age. (Against Luis de León the accusation was actually brought of being a Jew, and descended from Jews.) If it was shown that the Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate, Castro answered that the Hebrew text had been altered by the “Jews” since the translation had been made. His position was thus impregnable. He would listen to no arguments, but shouted down his opponents. In a narrow age he might persuade himself that in thus asserting his opinions he was doing good service to the Church. His influence was without doubt great, and it needed no little courage to oppose him. Luis de León, however, was not a man to lie flat and love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature, even to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness for reform was not afraid of making enemies. When he took his degree he attacked certain abuses in a Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another occasion he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with the heresies of their order, and the thrust seems to have gone home, for he himself says that they felt it keenly, “sintieronse fieramente.” Above all, he had no sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was impossible that two men of characters so different should not come into collision, and in fact the discussions between professors were often marked by boisterous disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling and discourtesy that sometimes strangely enough creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one occasion Luis de León threatened to have Castro’s book—a commentary on Isaiah—burnt by the Inquisition. On this book Castro had spent much trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to the quick, so that he answered that he would have Luis de León himself burnt. And such threats were not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an idle hour. That Luis de León had many malignant enemies was amply shown at his trial.

III.—In a Valladolid Dungeon.

The order of imprisonment was issued on the 26th of February, 1572. His goods were to be confiscated with the exception of a bed and forty ducats to provide for his food in prison. He was to be seized, wherever found, “in church, monastery, or other sacred place,” and he was to bring with him nothing but clothes and linen. A curious clause adds that “beasts of burden to carry him and his bed, etc., are to be provided at the customary price, and the price is not to be raised.” He was thus arrested and conducted to Valladolid. The following description of the prison is given in the trial of Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, who had been confined there some ten years before. “The prison consisted of two rooms, one for him and one for two servants. They were so remote that the Archbishop heard nothing of a fire which broke out on the 21st of September, 1561, and, lasting for a day and a half, consumed more than four hundred houses, some of them close to the secret prison. The stench was so intolerable that they were obliged at times to beg that the doors might be opened, or they would be suffocated. The infection of the place rendered both master and servants seriously ill, and the doctors of the Holy Office reported that it was indispensable to bathe the apartment in pure air morning and evening. In consequence the Inquisitors arranged that a grating should be made in the door, a device which the Archbishop scorned as adding insult to injury. The rooms were not swept ... the shutters of the windows were kept closed, and on some days the Archbishop had to light a candle at nine in the morning. The food was brought on broken plates; the sheets served as table-cloth....” In a letter written to Philip II., after two years of imprisonment, the Archbishop says, “I fear and expect death daily, and to this end my treatment seems to have been directed ever since I came here.” The loss of sun and light, and the actual dirtiness and horror of the place must have been utterly repulsive to a man of Luis de León’s temperament. In one of his writings, “La Perfecta Casada,” he says, “Is not cleanliness the fountain head of beauty—the first and greater part of it?” He loved the open air, and was wont to regret the loss of liberty which even his duties as professor at Salamanca entailed. But to the actual and severe hardships to be undergone there was added, for the devout Catholic, the more subtle and indefinite torture of the mind. For he could not be certain that by some involuntary sin he had not incurred degradation in this life, and punishment unceasing in the next, and in the loneliness and gloom of the prison these doubts would often recur. Luis de León acknowledged the full authority of the Inquisition, and his unqualified submission was not forced or hypocritical, but the fruit of a sincere conviction. The extreme clearness of his intellect was his safeguard, and, though he bowed himself in all things to the will of the Church, he was well assured of his own innocence. Shortly after his arrest he drew up a profession of faith, declaring that he lived and died “now and in the future in the faith and belief of the Holy Catholic Church, and confessing his sins con entrañable dolor.” His defence was conducted throughout in a masterly way. During these five years of suffering he showed a fine sincerity and a clearness of argument that remind one very strongly of Pascal. Never was his style more trenchant and lucid, his reasoning more subtle than in the numerous “Unpublished Documents” that have come down to us. On no occasion was the patience and humility of the man more clearly shown. It is a strange reflection that many of these documents, in accordance with the secrecy of the Inquisition’s proceedings, were kept hidden from Luis de León himself, and that he probably never knew, as we know, that he came within a little of being examined upon the rack. In spite of his ingenious and elaborate defence, Luis de León’s trial was a long one, and one must shudder to think of the sufferings and despair of men of weaker metal and less subtle intellect, such as his intimate friend Grajal, who died in prison. The Inquisition proceeded as usual in an extremely slow and thorough fashion. “Recato y secreto,” caution and secrecy, were indeed its watchwords. Witnesses concerning Luis de León’s case were examined in many parts of Spain, and even at Cuzco, in Peru. It were easy to declaim against the cruelty and tyranny of the Inquisition, but on closer view it would seem unjust to lay the blame entirely at its door. The times, as we have noted, called for the utmost vigilance on the part of the upholders of the true and Catholic faith. They might hold themselves bound to investigate with unwearied diligence the most trifling disputes concerning the doctrine of the Church. Already unorthodox books had been filtering into Spain. A translation of the Psalms had been received at Cadiz, and one man alone, a kind of sixteenth-century Borrow, had brought two bales of heretical books to Seville. The life of the bookseller was rendered anxious and difficult by such proceedings. In a letter to the Inquisitors of Valladolid we read: “The booksellers of this town (Salamanca) have received and continue daily to receive bales of books from France and other parts. These they dare not open for sale without permission.” The evil must be stopped before it spread contagion through the country. It may be argued plausibly that the firmness of the Inquisition saved Spain from the religious dissensions that raged so fiercely in France, Germany, and England, nor may it be forgotten that the centuries of the Inquisition’s most rigorous power were the centuries of Spain’s greatest literary glory.

Perhaps the harm of the Inquisition was, rather, not that it affected original thought and research, but that it created in everyday life an intolerable spirit of suspicion and distrust. It was to the animosity of their private enemies that the imprisonment of both Archbishop Carranza and Luis de León was due, and it is difficult to believe in the sincerity of the witnesses who, “without being cited” and “for the discharge of their conscience,” laid their accusations before the Inquisition. In the University of Salamanca there was much prying and spying, fostered by the rivalries and enmity of the professors. The professors were elected by the votes of the students after a public discussion between the candidates on a given theme, and this system naturally led to considerable ill-feeling and many abuses. During discussions in the University there would be always some one on the watch for any specious subject of accusation. Thus, when Luis de León maintained that “marriage was not in itself an evil but only a less blessed state than celibacy,” León de Castro had written it down in order to denounce it to the Inquisition, and in the same way another professor had gone hastily out during a discussion in order to fetch pen and ink. On one occasion, when Zuñiga was in Luis de León’s cell at Salamanca, the latter mentioned a book which his friend, the celebrated Arias Montano, had sent him. Zuñiga thereupon displayed suspicions of Montano which Luis de León resented. A few days afterwards, to quote Luis de León’s own words, “he seemed to me to be still suspicious and, knowing that he was of a morose spirit and ever inclined to see things in their worst light, I said to him laughingly: ‘You are indeed a pessimist; it seems you still think ill of Montano.’ He said, ‘No; of the man I do not think ill, but I am not certain that it is not my duty to denounce the book.’” Luis de León goes on to say that more than two years afterwards he also “had a fit of pessimism, and, considering the number of heretics who had been discovered and were being discovered daily in Spain,” determined himself to lay the matter before the Inquisition—a common way of forestalling an accusation. Again, Medina examined with most holy zeal (con santísimo celo) Luis de León’s lectures and other papers. The result would be all the more fruitful in that he would not omit the notes taken by students at the lectures, and, as Luis de León was well aware, “ignorant students often put a quite wrong interpretation on what the lecturer said.” Medina did, in fact, call a meeting of students in his cell and inquired of them if they had heard or knew of any suspicious or perverted doctrines of Luis de León. Such methods must multiply means of attack and further spin out a trial. Of one witness Luis de León, in his defence, said, “This witness is the Bachelor of Arts Rodríguez, nicknamed ‘Doctor Subtle’ in the University. I think it is he because he says I left him without an answer, and he was the only person of that University with whom this happened. For as he was a man of unsound judgment and sometimes asked impertinent questions and from what he heard and did not understand collected nonsensical answers, I grew angry and called him a fool. And at other times, in order not to become angry and out of humour on his account, I would give him no answer but flee from him. And he is so witless and importunate that I remember trying to escape him both indoors and in the Schools and in the streets, he following and asking absurd questions, I hurrying on without answering, until at last some of my companions or other students would push him aside and hold him back by force.” A little picture of academic life which for vividness it would be hard to surpass. Luis de León, indeed, was not sparing in his criticism of his various accusers. Their names, in accordance with the custom of the Inquisition, were kept from him, but on reading the anonymous accusations, he referred each one to its true author with unfailing judgment and was thus enabled to refute them with a sure hand. Of one of the witnesses who belonged to his own order he said: “He is known among us as a man who never speaks the truth except by accident.” Of another he speaks satirically as “most spiritual,” espiritualísimo, and says that the words “kisses,” “embraces,” “bright eyes,” and other words in the Spanish rendering of the Song of Songs scandalized him; words, that is, which had not struck him when he read them in Latin, shocked him now that they were written in the romance. Luis de León was not unaware that the worst interpretation would be put on his sayings, or reported sayings, and he was led by this fear himself to lay many trivial details before the Inquisition. Thus he confessed that at a lecture “the students furthest from me bade me speak louder, for I was hoarse and they could not hear me well, and I said: ‘I am hoarse and, you know, it is better to speak low that the gentlemen of the Inquisition may not hear.’” He was full of life and humour, and many a chance word spoken in jest might be twisted by the malicious to an uncatholic implication. He felt in prison that he was fighting blindfold against many enemies and asked more than once to be brought face to face with his accusers. “And thus,” he says, “they speak from afar as men in safety and free, while I, blind and in prison, cannot see who is attacking me.” Many absurd charges were brought against him. According to one witness he “always said low mass, even on a feast day, and no one could hear what he said as he mumbled ‘tu, tu, tu,’ and made an end very speedily.” Another accusation seems to have been based on a mere quibble between the words vino, “wine,” and vinó, “came.” For at a dinner some one seems to have asked for wine and Fray Luis to have said that it was doubtful if it had come; but, according to the witness, all understood his answer to refer to the coming of Christ! Another witness said that he was “a very clever theologian, but somewhat bold in his lectures”—a charge less petty than the preceding, but from its vagueness scarcely less ridiculous. In the same spirit Castro “had heard say,” “thought that he had heard”; Medina “thought that he saw in Fray Luis an inclination to new things.” Such charges coming from enemies made his innocence, as he said, “clearer than the light of noon.” Minute points were elaborately dealt with. For instance, the sale of Castro’s book on Isaiah had been spoilt, he said, by the Jews (Luis de León and his friends); according to Luis de León, the real reason of its failure was its size and costliness. As to the accusation of being, in fact, by descent a Jew, it would appear that Fray Luis’ great-grandmother, or rather the second wife of his great-grandfather, was of Jewish origin.

The one serious charge was, indeed, that he did not give due authority to the Vulgate. It is probable that his attitude had been inopportune at a time when the Vulgate was being attacked on all sides by the heretics, and that the numerous students who attended his lectures were apt to exaggerate his doctrine.

And so the trial dragged on. Luis de León began to lose patience. “If only,” he exclaims, “the sun were divided fairly between me and my accusers”—a metaphor borrowed from duelling. He complains frequently of unnecessary delay. He writes to the Inquisitors, “You are delaying the conclusion of my trial without just cause,” “without cause and to the one end of lengthening out my imprisonment, and with the wish to put a term to my life, since you find me without fault.” He begs that there be no more delay “considering the length of time I have been here, and the small cause there was for bringing me here, and the enmity and notorious calumnies that began and occasioned this scandal.” His imprisonment, he says, is “a long, harsh and cruel torment.” Partly constant communications between Valladolid and Madrid caused delay. Thus a request of Fray Luis, made on the 20th of August, did not receive an answer from the Supreme Tribunal at Madrid till the 20th of September. Partly, too, it must be admitted that after the scandal and excitement caused by his imprisonment at Salamanca, where he had a host of friends and followers, it would seem almost as if the Inquisitors were unwilling to release him with the confession that the whole matter had been smoke without a fire; and the longer the trial continued the greater, naturally, would become their embarrassment.

He was allowed some books and a few other articles. Thus he asks for a crucifix, a brass candlestick, a knife, “to cut what I eat,” the works of St. Leon, a Hebrew Bible, a Sophocles in Greek, a Pindar in Greek and Latin, etc. He complains that he is not properly attended, and “it has happened that I have fainted with hunger from having no one to give me food, and I beg that I may be given a monk of my order to serve me if you do not wish to allow me to die alone between four walls.” He was not allowed the use of the Sacraments, and in his frequent illness this was a constant torture. “You persist,” he says, “in keeping me in prison as if I were a heretic, deprived of the use of the Sacraments, with manifest danger to my life and to my soul, though you bring no fresh charge against me.” He therefore begs them, pending the sentence, to “allow me at least a free death among my monks.” Seeing that the conclusion of his case was delayed from day to day he implores, in another petition, to be transported to some monastery in Valladolid that he may die there as a Christian. “This is the only thing that I solicit or desire, since the passion of my enemies and my own sins have taken from me all that one desires in life.”

IV.—Ex Forti Dulcedo.

On the 28th September, 1576, the sentence is at length pronounced. The majority of the judges “are of opinion that Fray Luis de León be put to the torture as to his meaning, and as to what has been witnessed against him, and as to the propositions that have been noted as heretical, in spite of the fact that the theologians profess finally to be satisfied with them and to give them the meaning that Fray Luis would have them bear; and that the torture to be applied to him be moderate, seeing that the accused is of delicate health; and that the results obtained be then further examined.” This was the verdict of four out of the seven judges; one gave no decision; the remaining two were of opinion that the accused should be reprimanded in the Court of the Holy Office, and that in the general hall of the greater Schools of Salamanca, in the presence of the students and other persons of the University, he should declare his propositions to be suspicious and ambiguous; that he should be forbidden to lecture in the Schools or elsewhere, and that his translation of the Song of Solomon should be prohibited and withdrawn from circulation.

The superior and more impartial tribunal of Madrid quashed the sentence, and Luis de León was not questioned on the rack. It ordered (7th December, 1576) that Fray Luis de León should be acquitted and admonished in the Court of the Holy Office to be careful in future how he treated of matters so dangerous as those implicated in the trial. The sentence pronounced runs as follows: “We find, in accordance with the decrees and on the merits of the said suit, that it is our duty to absolve and we do absolve the said Fray Luis de León from the burden of this trial.” He requested and obtained a declaration that he had been acquitted without penance or stain whatsoever, and was free to exercise all his duties in the University.

Luis de León’s health had never been robust, and the hardships of his imprisonment broke it completely. That he survived is probably due to his fortitude and mystic faith. In a dedication to Cardinal Quiroga, he says: “When I was on trial, owing to the intrigues of certain of my enemies, and was branded as suspicious in the faith, and was cut off not only from the conversation but from the intercourse and very sight of men, and was buried in a prison for five years, in the midst of all this I felt a peace and joyfulness of spirit which I often miss now that I am restored to the light of day and to my friends.”

These years spent in prison were not passed in idleness. Besides the business of his defence, he wrote several of his poems during this time and his long treatise “Los Nombres de Cristo.” Many know his short poem beginning, “Here falsehood and wrong kept me imprisoned,” and ending with the line so often quoted in Spanish literature, “ni envidiado ni envidioso.” And we may refer to this time of his imprisonment such passages as “No pinta el prado aquí la primavera”—

Or the beautiful poem beginning “Virgen que el sol más pura”—