William Edward Collins

“ Many of the causes which led up to it were common to all Western Christendom; some, as for instance the demand for liberty of opinion and free enquiry, were even more characteristic of Italy than of Germany. Accordingly, vigorous attempts arose in many parts of southern Europe to bring about a reformation in the Church—attempts which were by no means a mere echo of the changes in the north. But they never obtained a really strong hold upon the affections of the common people, and never secured the friendship, or even the neutrality, of the civil power ”

“ In tracing the course of the Reform movements of southern Europe we are dealing with forces which became more widely divergent as time went on. Men at first acted together who ultimately found themselves violently opposed to one another; principles were adduced on the same side which proved in time to be sharply contrasted. The old-standing desire to curb the power of the Curia and to vindicate the authority of General Councils over the whole Church joined hands in the earlier stages of the movement with the wider, yet more individualistic, aspirations of the Renaissance. ”

“ Although one of the noblest leaders of the Italian Reform was a Spaniard, the movement never obtained such a hold upon Spain as upon Italy: in part because measures of repression were more promptly and more thoroughly applied-in part, perhaps, because many of the practical abuses had already been abated or removed, while the doctrinal abusés which called forth the protest had not yet prevailed in Spain so largely as elsewhere. ”

“ Enzinas answered, reasonably enough, that there was no law in Flanders against translating the Bible, and that if it was wrong to consort with the German doctors, then the Emperor himself and many more were to blame. As to the book, he denied roundly that he had ever published anything but the New Testament, a denial which it is very hard to accept. Ultimately he was committed to prison in Brussels for his civil offence, and thus was saved, evidently by Soto's desire, from the tender mercies of the Spanish Inquisition. ”

“ It centres round one great man, Juan de Valdés, whose position is thus described by Niccolo Balbini, minister of the congregation of Italian refugees at Geneva, in his life of Galeazzo Caracciolo: " There was at that time in Naples a Spanish gentleman, who having a certain knowledge of evangelical truth and above all of the doctrine of justification, had begun to draw to the new doctrines certain noble-born persons with whom he conversed, refuting the idea of justification by our own deserving, and of the merit of works, and exposing certain superstitions." ”

“ Nor was it difficult to do this; for his satirical writings against clerical abuses really did not apply to Spain. Elsewhere, all good men were agreed in corn-batting the evils against which he wrote. In Spain, the earnestness of his crusade was easily overlooked by those who had not lived abroad; on the other hand, nowhere was there so keen a scent for heresy. His liberal thought, and his ridicule of religious customs which, however liable to abuse, were in themselves capable of justification, seemed most dangerous to the orthodox Spanish mind ”

“ Venice was no doubt exceptional, and the state of feeling there was not that of Italy as a whole. Nevertheless, vigorous efforts after practical reform had begun in other parts of Italy long before this. Adrian of Utrecht, Bishop of Tortosa, the friend of Erasmus and the former tutor of Charles V, ascended the papal throne in 1522 with a firm resolve to set the Church in order, and to begin with his own household. In many ways he seemed well fitted for the task. A student of distinction, his uprightness, personal piety, and strictness of life were known to all men ”

“ According to the ambassador Francesco Contarini, the Lutherans of Germany boasted in 1535 that their sympathisers in Italy alone would make an army sufficient to deliver them from the priests, and that they had enough friends in the monastic orders to intimidate all who were opposed to them. This of course is a violent exaggeration, and in Italy also popular rumour magnified the danger; yet even so it was not slight. The Reforming movement was especially strong in certain well-defined centres, the chief being Venice and its territories, Ferrara, Modena, Naples, and Lucca. ”

“ The brethren are, he says, in the sorest need, and cannot improve their state whilst the Signory allows them no liberty. They have no public churches; each is a church to himself. There are plenty of apostles, but none properly called; all is disorder, and false teachers abound. Nevertheless, they adhere to Luther in doctrine as against the Sacramentaries, and do not despair, since " God can raise up new Luthers amongst them.1" But their appeals were in vain; the Lutheran Princes had their hands full already, and the Swiss were not likely to help those who sided with Luther against them. ”

“ The Bishop of Chieti was thereupon commissioned, by a brief of May 9, 1530, to proceed against Galateo; and from this time forward the extirpation of heresy was the ruling passion of his life. He it was who procured from Pope Paul III the bull Licet ab initia (July 21, 1542) reorganising the Roman Inquisition on the basis of that of Spain. He was its first head, and in 1555, as Pope Paul IV, he completed the extension of its power over the whole of Italy. Galateo was already in prison on suspicion of heresy for certain sermons preached "Bible in hand" at Padua ”

“ He became addicted to the Reform either under Carranza's instructions or in Germany, and was confirmed in his views by Carlos de Seso, a nobleman from Italy who had married a Spanish wife and had been made corregidor of Toro. Seso had heard of justification in Italy, and became an ardent propagandist; in fact it is clear that Toro, not Valladolid, was the real birthplace of the movement in New Castile. A large number of well-born persons accepted Seso's teaching, including the licentiate Herrezuelo, Fray Domingo de Rojas, many members of the Cazalla family, and many devout ladies ”

“ When I say faith alone, I do not mean, as those inventors of novelties do, a mere credulity and confidence in God, to the exclusion of love and other Christian virtues. This indeed is necessary, and forms the first access which we have to God ”

“ The rage against heresy regarded all learning, all evangelical teaching, with suspicion; to speak overmuch of faith or of inward religion might be a disparagement of works and of outward religion. Sooner or later most of the learned men of the day were cited on suspicion of heresy, or, if not actually cited, their actions and words were carefully watched. Fray Luis de Leon, poet and scholar, spent nearly five years in the prisons of the Inquisition whilst his works were being examined ”

“ Another who fell under suspicion was the great scholar Pedro de Lerma, who had lived at Paris over fifty years, had been dean of the faculty of Theology there, and had returned to Spain as Abbot of Compludo. In 1537 he was called upon to abjure eleven "Erasmian" propositions, one of which seems to have been justification by faith. He forthwith returned to Paris, at the age of over seventy years, accompanied by his nephew Francisco de Enzinas, in whose arms he died not long after. " Erasmianism" gradually died out in Spain. ”

“ Many of the best-known Spanish Reformers lived and died in Flanders or in some other foreign land; and in Spain itself the movement appears to have had little vitality excepting in and about two centres, Valladolid and Seville. Two autos-de-fé at Valladolid and two at Seville, of the thorough kind instituted by the Spanish Inquisition, sufficed to break up the Reformed in these centres. Many fugitives escaped and found refuge in Germany, England, or the Low Countries ”

“ Most of them were dead before 1566; but the pursuit of heresy ceased not at the grave, and those who during their lives were revered as the hope of the Church were impugned as suspects or as actual heretics in the famous process of Carnesecchi. This Catholic minority, for such it really was, grew out of the body of friends who centred round Contarini in Venice; it was reinforced by many who had sat at the feet of Valdés, or who had travelled in the north. The aim of this party was the reform of the whole ecclesiastical system ”

“ Alonso Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo, also took the part of Erasmus; and by the influence of Gattinara and other friends at the Court of Charles V a Bull was obtained from Clement VII imposing silence upon all who spoke or wrote against his writings, which "are contrary to those of Luther." Thus the erasmistas had won a complete victory, and for a time had things all their own way. But after the death of Fonseca in 1534 the tide turned. Juan de Vergara and his brother were cited before the Inquisition, accused, says Enzinas, of no crime but favouring Erasmus and his writings ”

“ LUCCA was the only other place where the movement assumed a really popular form; and here it centres round one man. Pietro Martire Vermigli, born of well-to-do parents at Florence in 1500, had joined the Austin canons at Fiesole in 1516, and learned from them to know his Bible well. He studied Greek and Hebrew at Padua and elsewhere, and being appointed to preach was soon well known throughout Italy. High honours fell to him: he became Abbot of Spoleto, and then Prior of the great house of San Pietro ad aram at Naples and Visitor-general of his Order. ”

“ But in spite of individual divergences, here was a real line of division, in southern Europe as in the north.
I. THE REFORMATION IN ITALY.
So far as the movement was one of protest against practical abuses, the need for Reform was not less widely felt in Italy than in Germany. Rodrigo Nino, the imperial ambassador to the Doge and Signory, wrote in 1535 that there were few in Venice who were not more Lutheran than Luther himself with regard to such matters as the reform of the clergy and their secular state. ”

“ If he could proceed against them as was done in Spain, a lucrative harvest was ready to hand. Accordingly, early in 1581 the King instructed Bras Neto, his agent in Rome, to apply to the Holy See for a Bull establishing the Inquisition in Portugal on the lines of that of Seville, and urged him to use every means in his power to this end, since it would be for the service of God and of himself, and for the good of his people. ”

“ Another Spaniard who adopted the Reformed views about this time was Francisco de San Roman, a rich merchant from Burgos. In 1540, going from Antwerp to Bremen on business, he went by chance into a Lutheran church where Jakob Speng, formerly prior of the Austin canons at Antwerp, was preaching. Although he knew no German, he was attracted by the preacher, stayed at his house, and adopted his views. He at once began to preach and to write in Spanish, with the eagerness of fanaticism and the self-confidence of ignorance. ”

“ Giulio della Rovere, an Austin Friar of Milan, got into trouble at Bologna in 1538 for a course of sermons preached there. Three years later he came to Venice, and preached at San Cassiano in Lent, staying in the house of Celio Seconde Curione, of whom more presently. His doctrine was attacked; he abjured, and was sentenced to be imprisoned and then banished. He escaped and fled to the Grisons, where the Reform movement had already taken root, the main impulse coming from the Swiss Cantons. Here he ministered, generally at Poschiavo, until his death in 1571. ”

“ In the main he agrees with that of Luther, but he resolutely asserts the freedom of the will, and repudiates the Lutheran teaching on this subject; and although he speaks strongly against particular abuses, he does not undervalue the Church system of his day. The old man was thrown into prison in 1543, escaped six years afterwards by the help of two Anabaptists and joined their party, and subsequently made a formal recantation in prison. But Speziale stands alone; and it is clear that the doctrinal revolt as a whole came from the north.
The intercourse between Italy and Germany was very close ”

“ There were many who were ready to adopt them, in whole or in part. A hermit who inveighed against " priests and friars " at Venice in 1516 can hardly be called a Lutheran; but Fra Andrea of Ferrara, who preached at Christmas, 1520, at San Marco and in the open air, is expressly said to have "followed the doctrine of Martin Luther." So did a Carmelite friar, Giambattista Pallavicino, who preached at Brescia in Lent, 1527, and others elsewhere. There were three "heretics" at Mirandola in 1524 of whom nothing else is known ”

“ By the courage and resourcefulness of Julianillo two great tuns filled with copies were safely smuggled into Seville, despite the watchfulness of the Inquisition. Little by little the Inquisition got through its work, drawing its net closer and closer about the chief offenders and allowing lesser persons to go free on doing penance. At an auto-de-fe celebrated in the Plaza de San Francisco on September 24, 1559, fourteen persons were burnt to death for heresy, including four friars and three women. ”

“ When the enlightened Alessandro Farnese became Pope as Paul III (1534) , he found this group of zealous men ready to his hand. Contarini was made a Cardinal at his first creation, and Sadoleto, Caraffa, and Pole received the purple in the following year. In 1537, when he appointed a commission to suggest measures for the reform of the Church, most of its members were chosen from this quarter, the names being those of Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Pole, Fregoso, Aleander, Giberti, Cortese, and Tommaso Badia. ”