James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

“ Pacheco, indeed, regarded Luis de Leon as something of a universal genius: an expert in mathematics, in jurisprudence, in medicine—and, though self-taught as a painter—an artist of considerable skill. ”

“ The mystic poet proved to be a formidable fighting-man. Before very long it must have dawned upon the Inquisitionary deputies at Valladolid that they had caught a Tartar. Unversed in the ways of the world, Luis de Leon came of a legal stock, and was thoroughly at home in a law-court. A master of dialectics, he was always alert, always prompt to criticize the evidence, always ready to deal with every point as it arose, always prepared to furnish elaborate written or verbal explanations as to every detail concerning which the tribunal could harbour a reasonable doubt. ”

“ He is, indeed, always sound and competent in these respects; but artistry is not his supreme virtue as a poet. He is ever prone to be a little rugged in his manner, and this ruggedness has proved something of a trap to the unwary. Luis de Leon has no real mannerisms, and is no more to be parodied than is Shakespeare. Yet it is sometimes difficult to distinguish him at his worst from his imitators at their best. Though withheld so long from the public, Luis de Leon's poems, while still in manuscript, were repeatedly imitated—especially by Augustinians. ”

“ He was by no means the earliest of devout writers to use Spanish as a literary medium. There is a long and illustrious bead-roll of authors from Bernardino de Laredo to Saint Theresa to prove the contrary. Much less was Luis de Leon the first post-Renaissance scholar to recognize that Spanish had a great future before it. Yet, if we take leave to assume that Luis de Granada was an ascetic rather than an extatic, we may account Luis de Leon as perhaps the first professional scholar to perceive that Spanish was adequate to convey the subtleties of theology and the ravishments of mysticism. ”

“ It is not strange that the self-expression of a personality so fine, so complex, so rich, so rare, should produce the series of compositions which {232}entitle Luis de Leon to rank among the very greatest of Spanish poets, and beside the most glorious figures in the history of any literature. He stands a little apart from the rest of Spanish poets in a splendid solitude which befits him; he must perforce be solitary, dwelling as he most often does at altitudes inaccessible to ordinary mortals. ”

“ Somewhat later, while still suffering from fever, Luis de Leon begged that, on his providing satisfactory bail, he might be transferred from his prison-cell to some neighbouring monastery, where he could be detained till the end of his trial. So depressed was he at{50} this moment that he even welcomed the idea of being placed in a Dominican monastery; it was true that the Dominicans were hostile to him, yet if he died among them, he should be dying like a Christian, surrounded by religious—not like a heathen with a blackamoor at his bedside. ”

“ Luis de Leon has his weak points. He does not attain to the angelic melody of St. John of the Cross. He is apt to be indifferent to sheer beauty of form; though he often reaches it, this success seems with him to be a happy accident. Lucidity is not his main object; though he uses simple terms, his immense range of knowledge tempts him at whiles to indulge in allusions which it might tax all the ingenuity of commentators to explain. Commentators of Luis de Leon have a sufficiently heavy task before them in reconstructing the text of his poems—the heavier because the originals no longer exist. ”

“ An opinion backed by the weight of classical authority must reach us with irresistible force, must it not? However this may be, the predominant influence in De los nombres de Cristo, as in all Luis de Leon's prose, is Scriptural and Christian. In maturity of development, in intellectual force, in beauty of expression, and in general adequateness, De los nombres de Cristo exhibits Luis de Leon's prose at its culmination. The book is dedicated to Pedro Portocarrero, [267] Bishop of Calahorra, who had previously twice been rector of Salamanca University. ”

“ His evidence against Luis de Leon, though fluent and clear, is not{62} what we should expect from a man of talent, who recognized the gravity of the charges against the prisoner. His testimony, such as it is, has less intellectual substance than the testimony of Castro and Medina; it turns mainly on petty personal questions or on points of morbid scrupulousness. The more closely his evidence is scrutinized, the more difficult is it to avoid the suspicion that Zúñiga was not a perfectly trustworthy witness. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Luis de Leon was a very competent Latin scholar; neither is there any doubt that he had a profound admiration {217}for Horace. At his best, his Horatian versions, if somewhat lacking in polish, are remarkably faithful and vigorous. But when we find him in his translation of the eighteenth ode of the Second Book rendering salis avarus by de sal avariento—the second person singular of the present indicative of the verb salire being mistaken for the genitive of the substantive sal [271] —we may perhaps conclude that a boyish exercise has somehow escaped destruction. ”

“ Luis de Leon was not in a position to counteract the manœuvres of his opponents. It is not certain that he could have done so, had he been continuously in Salamanca at this time: as it happened, he was absent at Belmonte from the beginning of 1571 till the month of March, and on his return he fell ill. All this while, Medina and Castro were free to go about sowing tares, making damaging suggestions, and collecting such corroborative evidence as could be gleaned from ill-disposed colleagues and garrulous or slow-witted students. ”

“ Even in his lifetime Luis de Leon was recognized by men of exceptional genius as one of themselves. His poems, which were not published till forty years after his death, must have been handed about in manuscript long before. In 1585 Cervantes in his Galatea introduced Luis de Leon into the Canto de Caliope. It cannot well be maintained that Cervantes had been impressed by Luis de Leon's Latin treatises, by De los nombres de Cristo, and by La perfecta casada. ”

“ In the ensuing discussion his vanquished opponent, Domingo de Guzman, intervened, and with unnecessary acerbity declared that Montemayor's views were heretical. Nothing would have been easier than for Luis de Leon to keep out of the fray, especially as he himself held, and had always taught, opinions opposed to those advanced by Montemayor. If, as Pacheco reports, Luis de Leon was the most taciturn of men, he was chivalrous to the point of quixotism. ”

“ Whatever his motive may have been, Castro gave place to a younger and far abler man, the well-known Dominican, Bartolomé de Medina, whose relations with Luis de Leon, never cordial, had grown strained, owing to various checks and disappointments. Medina honestly differed from Luis de Leon's views as regards Scriptural interpretation; he would have been a good deal more (or less) than human if he had not been galled by a series of small personal mortifications. ”

“ In judging the action of Leon de Castro and his allies we must endeavour to adjust ourselves to the sixteenth-century point of view. Matters would seem to have developed somewhat as follows. In 1569 a committee{15} was formed at Salamanca for the purpose of revising François Vatable's version of the Bible; both Luis de Leon and Leon de Castro were members of this committee, [38] and as they represented different schools of thought, there were lively passages between the two. It is customary to lay at Castro's door all the blame for the sequel. ”

“ He was a partisan of Boscan's innovating methods: so much might be expected from a man of his period. It is to be noted that, in his best poems, he shows a decided preference for liras, a form apparently invented by Bernardo Tasso before it was transplanted to Spain by Garcilasso de la Vega. Luis de Leon was of opinion that those who violate poetry, using it for purposes of a meretricious kind, deserved punishment as public corrupters of two most sacred things: poetry and morals. ”

“ The most damaging witnesses—Medina, Castro, and Zúñiga—had been called at a very early stage of the proceedings. These heavy guns had been fired without destroying the adversary. There was nothing for it now but to hope for the worst from the reports of the official calificadores, Dr. Cáncer, Fray Nicolas Ramos, and Dr. Frechilla, who did their utmost to fulfil expectations. ”

“ Whatever flaws are revealed in Luis de Leon's manner, he is nearly always vital, nearly always has something elevating, illuminating and beautiful to say. As a human being, too, he is not above criticism. There is an unpleasant savour in the story that he asked Antonio Perez to let him have the Chrysostom manuscript {231}which he proposed to translate in Paris, the profits to be divided. We need not believe this perhaps calumnious little tale. Antonio Perez is open to suspicion of being an assassin and a traitor ”

“ So great were his intellectual gifts that he seemed more meet to teach every one than to learn things from anybody. On matters concerning government his judgement was sound; he was highly esteemed by prominent men both in Spain and out of it; Philip II was wont to consult him in difficult cases, and would send messengers from Madrid to Salamanca; when he visited Madrid on University business he was admitted to private audience and received signal marks of royal favour ”

“ No doubt the explanation is that none of the Valladolid judges was sufficiently independent to set a precedent of his own.
Large allowances must be made for those unhappy men. They cannot reasonably be blamed for not taking it upon themselves to alter the established procedure of the Court in which they sat. Their position was always difficult, and it did not become easier as time went on. They had good reason to know that a vocal group of influential persons in Salamanca confidently expected them to condemn Luis de Leon ”

“ It is not free from doubt because, though some of the witnesses, whose testimony is given in Documentos inéditos, vol. X, pp. 146-174, are doubtless in good faith in their evidence as to Luis de Leon's Jewish descent, they refer to events which happened long before; and their memories are apt to play them false and their narratives are muddled. ”

“ By his contemporaries Luis de Leon was perhaps more esteemed as a theologian or a scholar than as a man of letters. This judgement has been reversed by posterity mainly on the strength of the Spanish poems which were little known during the author's lifetime beyond a small circle of his personal friends. [263] Experts tell us that as a theologian he ranks below his master Melchor Cano; and in the annals of scholarship Luis de Leon is less conspicuous than Benito Arias Montano and than Francisco Sanchez (el Brocense) . ”

“ Luis de Leon was not behindhand: he sought to have Zumel disqualified on technical grounds, and further accused his opponent of breaking the law governing elections. In the heat of conflict, the very best of men seem able to persuade themselves that the most extravagant assertions are true. ”

“ An attempt is made here to picture the man as he was, full of fortitude, yet not exempt from human weakness. I trust that I have avoided the temptation to go to the opposite extreme, and lay the blame—as{vii} has been done—for the irregularities of the trial at Luis de Leon's own door.
In dealing with his Spanish poems, I have tried not to put his claims to consideration too high. Laboulaye, in La Liberté religieuse, calls Luis de Leon 'le premier lyrique de l'Europe moderne'. ”

“ Possibly few have existed who were so good and so great that they{2} can afford to have the whole truth told about them. At any rate, it is easier to convey a picturesque general impression than to collect all the available evidence with the untiring persistence of a model detective and to present it with the impartial acumen of a competent judge. ”

“ Meanwhile Luis de Leon (who, like Domingo de Guzman, was perfectly innocent of any share in these clandestine manœuvres) had taken possession of the Biblical Chair at Salamanca by reading himself in on December 7, 1579. Hitherto his reputation, great as it was, had been more or less local: that is to say, it depended mainly on his University lectures, which were exploited by certain unscrupulous persons. It was not till 1580 that, at the express command of his superior, Fray Pedro Suarez, [215] he issued his first book: a Latin commentary on the Song of Songs. ”

“ According to an anonymous contemporary, whom Gallardo conjectured to be a Jesuit, Luis de Leon made a sort of triumphal entry into Salamanca, accompanied by a procession which marched along to the sound of timbrels and trumpets. ”

“ Meanwhile in 1583 appeared Los nombres de Cristo and La perfecta casada. The theologian, philosopher, and poet was also a man of affairs. That he was so esteemed by his colleagues is proved by the fact that he was nominated by them to take in hand, and settle, a long-standing suit between the University of Salamanca and the Colegios Mayores which had secured from Rome two concessions that were held to be injurious to the interests of the University. This suit, begun in 1549, was taken charge of by Luis de Leon in January 1585 ”

“ The work, printed seventy-three years ago, is not within easy reach of every reader; and of those who have access to it not all are patient enough to read steadily through so large a mass of somewhat incoherent matter. ”

“ To all who saw Luis de Leon at this time it must have occurred that his career was drawing to a close. He had never been robust; his sedentary habits, his ascetic practices, and his prolonged imprisonment combined to wear him down. His last years were packed with troubles. The Inquisition {179}watched him with suspicious eyes; he had always regarded the Dominicans and Jeromites as his enemies; he had contrived to increase the forces hostile to him by alienating the Carmelites. Doria was not without the power to make his resentment felt ”

“ It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as the case developed, the attitude of the Valladolid judges became less and less favourable to Luis de Leon. Judges are mortals and liable to error. The very pertinacity of the prisoner may have impressed them badly. ”

“ His titles to remembrance are that he was learned, and that he may rank with Miguel Sanchez, with Alonso de Espinosa, and with Benito Arias Montano as among the least unsuccessful of Luis de Leon's followers. They often follow his lead with undeniable adroitness. ”

“ With regard to Mancio, he complained of his patrono's omission to confer with him, expressed some suspicion that Mancio might have become a party to Medina's plot, declined to accept as valid Mancio's excuse for not attending—that he had to lecture in Salamanca—and vehemently declared that Mancio's negligence amounted to very grave sin. [144] These phrases can scarcely have been used in their natural sense, for Luis de Leon concluded his written petition by stating that he was still willing to accept Mancio as his patrono, if Mancio were able to be present at Valladolid. ”

“ Mas no todas las verdades se han de sacar á plaza, ni todos los oyentes son capaces dellas; y por doctrina suelen sacar errores y escándalo, y tal es esto: porque el oficio del teólogo en públicas lecciones no era desnudar sino vestir cuanto pudiese la edicion que el concilio aprueba, y no dejarla tan en los huesos como la deja, que es todo lo posible sin ser hereje, ni tener nota de error, temeridad ó sospecha en la fe, ni ser proposiciones escandalosas. ”