[1] The belief that, by prolonged meditation and abstraction from the phenomenal world, the soul can elevate itself to the Creator, and can even attain union with the Godhead, has existed from the earliest times and among many races. Passing through ecstasy into trance, it was admitted to the secrets of God, it enjoyed revelations of the invisible universe, it acquired foreknowledge and wielded supernatural powers. St. Paul gave to these beliefs the sanction of his own experience; ⁽²⁾ Tertullian describes the influence of the Holy Spirit on the devotee in manifestations which bear a curious similitude to those which we shall meet in Spain, ⁽³⁾ and the anchorites of the Nitrian desert were adepts of the same kind to whom all the secrets of God were laid bare. ⁽⁴⁾ These supernal joys continued to be the reward of those who earned them by disciplining the flesh, and the virtues of mental prayer, in which the soul lost consciousness of all earthly things, were taught by a long series of doctors--Richard of Saint Victor, Joachim of [2] Flora, St. Bonaventura, John Tauler, John of Rysbroek, Henry Suso, Henry Herp, John Gerson and many others. If Cardinal Jacques de Vitry is to be believed, the nuns of Liège, in the thirteenth century, were largely given to these mystic raptures; of one of them he relates that she often had twenty-five ecstasies a day, while others passed years in bed, dissolved in divine love; ⁽⁵⁾ and Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, who missed his deserved canonization, was fully acquainted with the superhuman delights of union with God. ⁽⁶⁾ These spiritual marvels are reduced to the common-places of psychology by modern researches into hypnotism and auto-suggestion. The connection is well illustrated by the Umbilicarii, the pious monks of Mount Athos who, by prolonged contemplation of their navels, found their souls illuminated with light from above. ⁽⁷⁾

Yet there were dangers in the pursuit of the via purgativa and the via illuminativa. The followers of Amaury of Bène, who came to be popularly known in Germany as Begghards and Beguines, invented the term Illuminism to describe the condition of the soul suffused with divine light and held that any one, thus filled with the Holy Ghost, was impeccable, irrespective of the sins which he might commit; he was simply following the impulses of the Spirit which can do no sin. Master Eckhart, the founder of German mysticism, was prosecuted for sharing in these venturesome speculations and, if the twenty-eight articles condemned by John XXII were correctly drawn from his writings, he admitted the common divinity of man and God and that, in the sight of God, sin and virtue are the same. ⁽⁸⁾ Zealots too there were who taught the pre-eminent holiness of nudity and, in imitation of the follies of early Christian ascetics, assumed to triumph over the lusts of the flesh by exposing themselves to the crucial temptation of sleeping with the other sex and indulging in lascivious acts. ⁽⁹⁾ The condemnation, by the Council of Vienne in 1312, of [3] the tenets of the so-called Begghards respecting impeccability ⁽¹⁰⁾ was carried into the body of canon law and thus was rendered familiar to jurists, when mysticism came to be regarded as dangerous and was subjected to the Inquisition.

That it should eventually be so regarded was inevitable. The mystic, who considered himself to be communing directly with God and who held meditation and mental prayer to be the highest of religious acts, was apt to feel himself released from ecclesiastical precepts and to regard with indifference, if not with contempt, the observances enjoined by the Church as essential to salvation. If the inner light was a direct inspiration from God, it superseded the commands of the Holy See and, under such impulse, private judgement was to be followed, irrespective of what the Church might ordain. In all this there was the germ of a rebellion as defiant as that of Luther. Justification by faith might not be taught, but justification by works was cast aside as unworthy of the truly spiritual man. The new Judaism, decried by Erasmus, which relied on external observances, was a hindrance rather than a help to salvation. Francisco de Osuna, the teacher of Santa Teresa, asserts that oral prayer is a positive injury to those advanced in mental prayer. ⁽¹¹⁾ San Juan de la Cruz says that church observances, images and places of worship are merely for the uninstructed, like toys that amuse children; those who are advanced must liberate themselves from these things which only distract from internal contemplation. ⁽¹²⁾ San Pedro de Alcántara, in his enumeration of the nine aids to devotion, significantly omits all reference to the observances prescribed by the Church. ⁽¹³⁾ In an ecclesiastical establishment, which had built up its enormous wealth by the thrifty exploitation of the text "Give alms and behold all things are clean unto you" (Luke, XI, 41), Luis de Granada dared to teach that the most dangerous temptation in the spiritual life is the desire to do good to others, for a man's first duty is to himself. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Yet these men were all held in the highest honor, and two of them earned the supreme reward of canonization.

[4] There was in this a certain savor of Lutheranism, but it was not until the danger of the latter was fully appreciated that the Inquisition awoke to the peril lurking in a system which released the devotee from the obligation of obedience to authority, as in the Alumbrado or Illuminated, who recognized the supremacy of the internal light, and the Dejado or Quietist, who abandoned himself to God and allowed free course to the impulses suggesting themselves in his contemplative abstraction, with the corollary that there could be no sin in what emanated from God. The real significance of that which had been current in the Church for so many centuries was unnoticed until Protestantism presented itself as a threatening peril, when the two were classed together, or rather Protestantism was regarded as the development of mysticism. In the letter of September 9, 1558, to Paul IV, the Inquisition traced the origin of the former in Spain farther back than to Doctor Egidio and Don Carlos de Seso; the heresies of which Maestro Juan de Oria (Olmillos?) was accused and of those called Alumbrados or Dejados of Guadalajara and other places, were the seed of these Lutheran heresies, but the inquisitors who tried those heretics were insufficiently versed in Lutheranism to apply the proper vigor of repression. ⁽¹⁵⁾ It is necessary to bear all this in mind to understand the varying attitude of the Inquisition in its gradual progress towards the condemnation of all mysticism.

The distinction at first attempted between the mysticism that was praiseworthy and that which was dangerous was complicated by the recognized fact that, while visions and revelations and ecstasies might be special favors from God, they might also be the work of demons, and there was no test that could be applied to differentiate them. The Church was in the unfortunate position of being committed to the belief in special manifestations of supernatural power, while it was confessedly unable to determine whether they came from heaven or from hell. This had long been recognized as one of the most treacherous pitfalls in the perilous paths of illumination and union with God. As early as the twelfth century, Richard of St. Victor warns his disciples to beware of it, and Aquinas points out that trances may come from God, from the demon or from bodily affections. ⁽¹⁶⁾ John Gerson wrote a special [5] tractate in which he endeavored to frame diagnostic rules. ⁽¹⁷⁾ The Blessed Juan de Avila emphatically admonishes the devout to beware of such deceptions, but he fails to guide them in discriminating between demonic illusions and the effects of divine grace. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Arbiol describes the uncertainty as to the sources of these manifestations as the greatest danger besetting the path of perfection, causing the ruin of innumerable souls. ⁽¹⁹⁾ When, in the eighteenth century, mysticism had become discredited, Dr. Amort argues that, even if a revelation is from God, there can be no certainty that it is not falsified by the operation of the fancy or the work of the demon. ⁽²⁰⁾ When to this we add the facility of imposture, by which a livelihood could be gained from the contributions of the credulous, we can appreciate the difficulty of the task assumed by the Inquisition, in a land swarming with hysterics of both sexes, to restrain the extravagance of the devout and to punish the frauds of impostors, without interfering with the ways of God in guiding his saints. It is merely another instance of the failure of humanity in its efforts to interpret the Infinite.

Apart from visions and revelations, there was another feature of mysticism which rendered it especially dangerous to the Church and odious to theologians. Though the mystic might not controvert the received doctrines of the faith, yet scholastic theology, on which they were founded, was to him a matter of careless contempt. Mystic theology, says Osuna, is higher than speculative or scholastic theology; it needs no labor or learning or study, only faith and love and the grace of God. ⁽²¹⁾ In the trial of Maria Cazalla, one of the accusations was that she and her brother Bishop Cazalla ridiculed Aquinas and Scotus and the whole mass of scholastic theology. ⁽²²⁾ When Gerónimo de la Madre de Dios was on trial, one of his writings produced in evidence was a comparison between mystic and scholastic theology, to the great disadvantage of the latter. Its learning, he says, is perfectly compatible with vice; its masters preach the virtues but do not practise them; they wallow in the sins that they denounce; they are Pharisees, [6] and this is so general a pest that there is scarce one who is not infected with the contagion. ⁽²³⁾

Medieval Spain had been little troubled with mystic extravagance. Eymerich who, in his Directorium Inquisitorum, gives an exhaustive account of heresies existing towards the close of the fourteenth century, makes no allusion to such errors, except in his denunciation of his special object of hatred Raymond Lully, to whom he attributes some vagaries of mystic illuminism, and the Repertorium Inquisitorum of 1494 is equally silent. ⁽²⁴⁾ Spiritual exaltation, however, accompanied the development of the fanaticism stimulated by the establishment of the Inquisition and its persecution of Jews and Moors. Osuna, in 1527, alludes to a holy man who for fifty years had devoted himself to recojimiento, or the abstraction of mental prayer, and already, in 1498, Francisco de Villalobos complains of the Aluminados or Illuminati, derived from Italy, of whom there were many in Spain, and who should be reduced to reason by scourging, cold, hunger and prison. ⁽²⁵⁾ This indicates that mysticism was obtaining a foothold and its spread was facilitated by the beatas, women adopting a religious life without entering an Order, or at most simply as Tertiaries, living usually on alms and often regarded as possessing spiritual gifts and prophetic powers. The first of the class to obtain prominence was known as the Beata de Piedrahita. A career such as hers was common enough subsequently, as we shall see, and the discussion which she aroused shows that as yet she was a novel phenomenon. The daughter of a fanatic peasant, she had been carefully trained in mystic exercises and was wholly given up to contemplative abstraction, in which she enjoyed the most intimate relations with God, in whose arms she was dissolved in love. Sometimes she asserted that Christ was with her, sometimes that she was Christ himself or the bride of Christ; often she held conversations with the Virgin in which she spoke for both. As her reputation spread, her visions and revelations won for her the character of a prophetess . Many denounced them as superstitious and demanded her suppression, [7] but Ximenes who, as inquisitor-general, had jurisdiction in the matter, argued that she was inspired with divine wisdom and Ferdinand, who visited her, expressed his belief in her inspiration. In 1510 the matter was referred to the Holy See, and Julius II appointed his nuncio, Giovanni Ruffo, and the Bishops of Burgos and Vich, as commissioners to examine her and to suppress the scandal if it proved to be only female levity. Peter Martyr, to whom we are indebted for the account, was unable to ascertain their decision but, as they discharged her without reproof, it may be assumed that their report was favorable, for it could scarce have been otherwise with such supporters as Ferdinand and Ximenes. ⁽²⁶⁾ Such success naturally stimulated imitation and was the foreshadowing of wide-spread delusion and imposture.

In this case there appears no trace of carnality, but it is the distinguishing feature of another soon afterwards, reported in 1512 to Ximenes by Fray Antonio de Pastrana, of a contemplative fraile of Ocaña "illuminated with the darkness of Satan." To him God had revealed that he should engender on a holy woman a prophet who should reform the world. He was a spiritual man, not given to women and, in his simplicity, he had written to Madre Juana de la Cruz, apparently inviting her coöperation in the good work. Fray Antonio, who was custodian of the Province of Castile, imprisoned the alumbrado and subjected him to treatment so active that he speedily admitted his error. ⁽²⁷⁾

Guadalajara and Pastrana were becoming centres of a group of mystics who attracted the attention of the Inquisition about 1521, when it commenced gathering testimony about them. The earliest disseminator of the doctrine appears to have been a sempstress named Isabel de la Cruz, noted for her ability in the exposition of Scripture, who commenced about 1512 and was a leader until superseded by Francisca Hernández, of whom more hereafter. The Seraphic Order of St. Francis naturally furnished many initiates, whose names are included among the fifty or sixty forming the group. The Franciscan Guardian of Escalona, Fray Juan de Olmillos, had ecstasies when receiving the sacrament and when preaching, in which he talked and acted extravagantly. When removed to Madrid, this attracted crowds to watch his contortions and he was generally regarded as a saint; he was promoted to the provincialate of Castile and died in 1529. The Marquis of [8] Villena, at Escalona, was inclined to mysticism, induced perhaps by Fray Francisco de Ocaña, who was stationed there and had prophetic visions of the reform of the Church. Villena, in 1523, employed as lay-preacher Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, one of the most prominent of the Guadalajara mystics, who seems to have converted all the members of the household. The name of Alcaraz appears frequently in the trials of the group; he was a married layman, uneducated but possessing remarkable familiarity with Scripture and skilled in its exposition, and he was an earnest missionary of mysticism. When sufficient evidence against him was accumulated, he was arrested February 26,1524, and imprisoned by the Toledo tribunal. The formal accusation, presented October 31st, indicates that the mysticism, of at least some of the accused, embraced Quietism or Dejamiento to the full extent, with its consequent assumption of impeccability, no matter what might be the acts of the devotee, that mental prayer was the sole observance necessary, that all the prescriptions of the Church-- confession, indulgences, works of charity and piety--were useless, and that the conjugal act was Union with God. There was also the denial of transubstantiation and of the existence of hell, which may probably be left out of account as foreign to the recognized tenets of mysticism. The latter, in fact, was presumably an exaggeration of an utterance of Alcaraz, who said that it was the ignorant and children who were afraid of hell, for the advanced served the Lord, not from servile fear but from fear of offending Him whom they loved, and moreover that God was not to be prayed to for anything--principles subsequently approved in S. François de Sales and condemned in Fénelon. There was no spirit of martyrdom in Alcaraz, and the severe torture to which he was exposed would seem a superfluity. He confessed his errors, professed conversion and begged for mercy. His sentence, July 22, 1529, recited that he had incurred relaxation but through clemency was admitted to reconciliation with confiscation, irremissible prison and scourging in Toledo, Guadalajara, Escalona and Pastrana, where he had disseminated his errors. This severity indicates the inquisitorial estimate of the magnitude of the evil to be suppressed but, after ten years, on February 20, 1539, the Suprema liberated him, with the restriction of not leaving Toledo and the imposition of certain spiritual exercises. ⁽²⁸⁾

[9] In the ensuing trials, pursued with customary inquisitorial thoroughness, the question of sexual aberrations constantly obtrudes itself and offers no little complexity. That the majority of the Spanish mystics were thoroughly pure in heart there can be no doubt, but spiritual exaltation, shared by the two sexes, had the ever-present risk that it might insensibly become carnal, when those who fancied themselves to be advancing in the path of perfection might suddenly find that the flesh had deceived the spirit. This was an experience as old as mysticism itself, and the eloquent warning which St. Bonaventura addressed to his brethren shows, by the vividness of its details, that he must have witnessed more than one such fall from grace. ⁽²⁹⁾ The danger was all the greater in the extreme mysticism known as Illuminism, with its doctrines of internal light, of Dejamiento, or abandonment to impulses assumed to come from God, and of the impeccability of the advanced adept, combined with the test of continence. Unquestionably there were cases in which these aberrations were honestly entertained; there were numerous others in which they were assumed for purposes of seduction, nor can we always, from the evidence before us, pronounce a confident judgement.

Of the trials which have seen the light several centre around the curious personality of Francisca Hernández, who succeeded Isabel de la Cruz as the leader of the mystic disciples. She seems to have possessed powers of fascination, collecting around her devotees of the most diverse character. We have seen how she entangled Bernardino de Tovar and how his brother, Juan de Vergara, became involved with the Inquisition, after detaching him from her. Francisco de Osuna, the earliest Spanish writer on mysticism and the teacher of Santa Teresa, was one of her disciples and so was Francisco Ortiz, a Franciscan of the utmost purity of heart. A devotee of a different stamp was Antonio de Medrano, cura of Navarrete, who had made her acquaintance in 1516 when a student at Salamanca. She was attractive and penniless but, through a long career, she always managed to live in comfort at the expense of her admirers. Though she claimed to be a bride of Christ, she practised no austerities; she was fastidious in her diet and slept in a soft bed, which she had no scruple in sharing with her male devotees. This required funds and she and Medrano persuaded an unlucky youth named Calero to sell his patrimony [10] and devote the proceeds to support the circle of Alumbrados whom she gathered around her. The episcopal authorities commenced investigations, ending with a sentence of banishment on Medrano, when the pair betook themselves to Valladolid, whither Tovar followed them, and where the Inquisition commenced proceedings in 1519; it was as yet not aroused to dealing harshly with these eccentric forms of devotion, and it merely forbade him and Tovar from further converse with Francisca; this they eluded, the tribunal insisted and Medrano went to his cure at Navarrete. She was kept under surveillance, but her reputation for holiness was such that Cardinal Adrian, after his election to the papacy, in 1522, ordered his secretary Carmona to ask her prayers for him and for the whole Church.

In 1525 the Inquisition again arrested her; she was accused of suspicious relations with men and, when discharged, was obliged to swear that she would permit no indecent familiarities. Meanwhile Medrano, at Navarrete continued his career as an Alumbrado, holding conversations with the Holy Ghost and declaring himself to be impeccable. In 1526 the Logroño tribunal arrested him and, after nearly eighteen months, he was discharged June 4, 1527, with the lenient sentence of abjuration de levi and such spiritual penance as might be assigned to him. This escape emboldened him to greater extravagance and to renewed devotion to Francisca, leading to another prosecution, in 1530, by the Toledo tribunal. There was evidence of highly indecent character as to their relations, but he stoutly denied it, asserting that he was so favored by God that all the evil women in the world and all the devils in hell could not move him to carnal sin--a grace which came to him after he knew Francisca; he could lie in bed with a woman without feeling desire and it gave him grace to do so with Francisca and to fondle and embrace her, which she enjoyed; he believed her to be free from both mortal and venial sin, and he held her to be a greater saint than any in heaven except Our Lady. Under torture, however, he confessed whatever was wanted--that when he told people that she could not sin, because she was illuminated by the Holy Ghost, it was to spread her reputation and gain money for them both; that he was jealous of all her other disciples, among whom he named Valderrama, Diego de Villareal, Muñoz, Cabrera, Gumiel, Ortiz and Sayavedra and his brother, showing that she had a numerous following. He admitted teaching that male and female devotees could embrace [11] each other naked, for it was not clothes but intention that counted. By this time the Inquisition was dealing harshly with these aberrations, and his sentence, April 21,1532, excused him from relaxation as an incorrigible heretic because he was only a hypocritical swindler whose object was to raise money for a life of pleasure: he was to retract his propositions in an auto de fe, to abjure de vehementi and to be recluded for life in a monastery, with two years' suspension from his sacerdotal functions, and was to hold no further communication with Francisca, under pain of impenitent relapse, but he was not deprived of his cure of Navarrete. In 1537 the Duke of Nájera interceded for his release, with what result the records fail to inform us. ⁽³⁰⁾

Francisca's strange powers of fascination were manifested by the influence which she acquired over a man of infinitely higher character than Medrano. Fray Francisco Ortiz was the most promising member of the great Franciscan Order, who was rapidly acquiring the reputation of the foremost preacher in Spain. He was not fully a mystic, but his pulpit exhortations, stimulating the love of God, caused him to be regarded as wandering near to the dangerous border. In 1523 he made the acquaintance of Francisca and his feelings towards her are emphatically expressed in a defiant declaration to the Inquisition during his trial.--"No word of love, however strong, is by a hundredth part adequate to describe the holy love, so pure and sweet and strong and great and full of God's blessing and melting of heart and soul, which God in his goodness has given me through His holy betrothed, my true Mother and Lady, through whom I hope, at the awful Day of Judgement, to be numbered among the elect. I can call her my love for, in loving her, I love nothing but God." There can be no doubts as to the purity of his relations with her whom he thus reverenced, but they were displeasing to his superiors who viewed with growing disquiet the distraction of one whom they regarded as a valuable asset of the Order. It was in vain that he was ordered to break off all relations with her; he replied vehemently that God was to be obeyed rather than man and that if he was to be debarred from seeing that beloved one of God he would transfer himself to the Carthusians. To effect the separation the Franciscan prelates induced the Inquisition to arrest Francisca, [12] but the unexpected result of this was that Ortiz, in a sermon before all the assembled magnates of the city April 7, 1529, arraigned the Inquisition for the great sin committed in her arrest. Such revolt was unexampled and he was forthwith prosecuted, not so much to punish him as to procure his retractation and submission, but he was obstinate and defiant for nearly three years. It was in vain that the Empress Isabel twice, in 1530, urged his liberation or the expediting of his case, and equally vain was a brief of Clement VII, July 1, 1531, to Cardinal Manrique, asking his discharge if his only offence was his public denunciation of the arrest of that holy woman, Francisca Hernández. ⁽³¹⁾ At length, in April 1532, Ortiz experienced a revulsion of feeling, and the same emotional impulsiveness that had led to his outbreak now prompted him to declare that God had given him the grace to recognize his errors and that he found great peace in retracting them. He escaped with public abjuration de vehementi, five years' suspension from priestly functions, two years' confinement in a cell of the convent of Torrelaguna, and absolute sundering of relations with Francisca. He betook himself to his place of reclusion and, although papal briefs released him from all restrictions and his prelates repeatedly urged him to leave his retreat, he seems never to have abandoned the solitude which he said had become sweet to him. Until his death, in 1546, he remained in the convent, the object of overflowing honor on the part of his brethren. ⁽³²⁾

Francisca herself seems to have been treated with remarkable leniency, in spite of her previous trials and the evidence of Medrano. Her arrest had been merely with the object of separating her from Ortiz, and her trial seems to have been scarce more than formal for, in September 1532, we find her merely detained in the house of Gutierre Pérez de Montalvo, at Medina del Campo, with her maid María Ramírez in waiting on her. ⁽³³⁾ Possibly this favor may have been earned by her readiness to accuse her old friends and associates, among whom were two brothers and a sister, Juan Cazalla, Bishop of Troy in partibus, Pedro Cazalla and Maria Cazalla, wife of Lope de Ruida. ⁽³⁴⁾ The trial of the latter is worth [13] brief reference as it throws some light on the confusion existing at the time between Illuminism and Protestantism.

María Cazalla was a resident of Guadalajara who visited Pastrana, where women assembled to listen to her readings and expositions of Scripture. When proceedings were commenced against the group, in 1524, she was arrested and examined but was discharged. For six years she remained undisturbed, when the testimony of Francisca Hernández caused a second prosecution, in which the heterogeneous character of the fiscal's accusation shows how little was understood as to the heresies under discussion. She was a Lutheran who praised Luther, denied transubstantiation and free-will, ridiculed confession, decried scholastic theology and held indulgences as valueless; she was an Alumbrada who regarded Isabel de la Cruz as superior to St. Paul, who rated matrimony higher than virginity, who wrote letters full of Illuminism and taught the Alumbrados their doctrines from Scripture, decrying external works of adoration and prayer; she was an Erasmist who pronounced Church observances to be Judaism, despised the religious Orders and ridiculed the preachers of sermons. ⁽³⁵⁾ She had been arrested about May 1, 1532, and her trial dragged on as usual. As a solvent of doubts she was tortured smartly and, on December 19, 1534, her sentence pronounced that the fiscal had not proved her to be a heretic but that, for the suspicions arising from the trial, she should abjure de levi and undergo solemn public penance in her parish church, she should avoid all intercourse with Alumbrados or other suspects and pay a fine of a hundred ducats. ⁽³⁶⁾

An affiliated group comes before us in Toledo, centering around Petronila de Lucena, an unmarried woman of 25, living with her brother, Juan del Castillo. She had a high reputation for sanctity and was credited with thaumaturgic powers; when the Duke del Infantazgo was mortally ill, she was sent for, but too late. We hear of María Cazalla, Bernardino de Tovar and Francisca Hernández; there are allusions to Erasmus, and Diego Hernández had included her in his denunciations of Lutheranism. Letters to her from her brother, Gaspar de Lucena, are mere mystical maunderings, showing the atmosphere in which they lived, but the other brother, Juan del Castillo, then on trial, admitted many [14] Lutheran doctrines--works were not necessary, Church precepts were not binding, man had not free-will, indulgences were useless and a book by Oecolampadius had led him to disbelieve in transubstantiation. Both Juan and Gaspar were on trial, and we hear of another prisoner, Catalina de Figueredo. Petronila was arrested, with sequestration, May 7,1534, and her trial pursued the ordinary course until March 20, 1535, when, as we have seen (Vol. III, p. 111), it was decided that, as the principal witness against her, Juan del Castillo, had revoked the evidence given under torture, she might be released on bail of a hundred thousand maravedís, which was promptly entered. In June she petitioned to be wholly discharged and that the sequestration be lifted; to this no attention was paid but a second application, October 20,1536 procured the removal of the sequestration. Gaspar de Lucena was sentenced to reconciliation and this was presumably the fate of Juan del Castillo unless he was impenitent. ⁽³⁷⁾

These cases show that the prevalence of the mingled heresies of Illuminism and Lutheranism was calling for repression, nor was this confined to Castile. In 1533, Miguel Galba, fiscal of the tribunal of Lérida, in a letter to Cardinal Manrique, declared that only the vigilance of the Inquisition prevented both kingdoms from being filled with the followers of the two heresies. ⁽³⁸⁾ There was of course exaggeration in this, but the fears of the authorities led them to see heresies everywhere. As Juan de Valdés, himself inclined to mysticism, says, when any one endeavored to manifest the perfection of Christianity, his utterances were misinterpreted and he was condemned as a heretic, so that there was scarce any one who dared to live as a Christian. ⁽³⁹⁾ Many suffered from the results of this hyper-sensitiveness. When Ignatius Loyola, after his conversion, came in 1526 to Alcalá to study, he was joined by four young men; they assumed a peculiar gray gown and their fervor brought many to the Hôpital de la Misericordia, where they lodged, to consult with them and join in their spiritual exercises. This excited suspicion and invited investigation. What was the exact authority of Doctor Miguel Carrasco, confessor of Fonseca Archbishop of Toledo, and of Alonso Mexia, who bore a [15] commission as inquisitor, does not appear, but they examined witnesses and the sentence rendered by the Vicar-general, Juan Rodríguez de Figueroa, was merely that the associates should lay aside their distinctive garments. After this the number who went to listen to Loyola continued to increase, and the women had a fashion of falling in convulsions, there was nothing of illuminism in his exhortations, but he was open to suspicion, and it was inadmissible that a young layman should assume the function of a director of souls. This time it was Vicar-general Figueroa who took the matter in hand and threw Loyola into prison, in 1527, finally sentencing him and his companions not to appear in public until they had assumed the ordinary lay garments, nor for three years to hold assemblages public or private and then only with permission of the Ordinary. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ It was this experience that drove Loyola to complete his studies in Paris, where he was not subject to the intrusion of excitable devotees.

Carranza offered a mark too vulnerable to be spared. He was inclined to mysticism, and there were many passages in his unfortunate Comentarios which, separated from their context, afforded material for reprehension. The keen-sighted Melchor Cano was able to cite isolated texts to prove that he held the alumbrado doctrines of impeccability, of interior illumination, of the supreme merits of contemplation, of despising all exterior works and observances--in short that he defended the errors of the Begghards and Beguines, of Pedro Rúiz Alcaraz and of the Alumbrados who figured in the autos of Toledo. ⁽⁴¹⁾ It is significant of the advanced position of Spanish orthodoxy on the subject of mysticism that these accusations had no weight with the Council of Trent, which approved the Comentarios, nor with Pius V, when he permitted the publication of the book in Rome. When, at last in 1576, Gregory XIII yielded and condemned the book and its author, of the sixteen propositions which he was required to abjure only three bore any relation to mysticism, and these were on the border line between it and Protestantism--that all works without charity are sins and offend God, that faith without works suffices for [16] salvation, and that the use of images and veneration of relics are of human precept. ⁽⁴²⁾

In this inquisitorial temper it was a matter of chance whether a devotional writer should be canonized or condemned and mayhap both might befall him, as occurred to San Francisco de Borja, whose Obras del Cristiano was put on the Index of 1559, though it disappeared after that of Quiroga in 1583. ⁽⁴³⁾ Santa Teresa herself, the queen of Spanish mystics and, along with Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, was confined in a convent by the Nuncio Sega, who denounced her as a restless vagabond, plunged in dissipation under pretext of religion, and an effort was made to transport her to the Indies, which were a sort of penal settlement. But for the accident that Philip II became interested in her, she would probably have come down to us as one of the beatas revelanderas whom it was the special mission of the Inquisition to suppress. When, in 1575, she founded a convent of her Barefooted Carmelites in Seville, they were denounced as Alumbradas; the inquisitors created a terrible scandal by going to the house with the guards to investigate, but they could substantiate nothing to justify prosecution. So, when in 1574 her spiritual autobiography was denounced to the Inquisition, it was held for ten years in suspense, and the Duchess of Alva, who possessed a MS. copy, was obliged to procure a licence to read it in private until judgement should be rendered--although finally, in 1588, it was printed by Fray Luis de Leon at the special request of the empress. Even after canonization her Conceptos del Amor divino, when printed with the works of her disciple Jerónimo Gracian, were put on the Index and remained there. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Her most illustrious disciple, San Juan de [17] la Cruz, escaped prosecution, though repeatedly denounced to the Inquisition, and his writings were not forbidden, but he was most vindictively persecuted as an Alumbrado, first by his unreformed Carmelite brethren and then by the Barefooted Order, and he ended his days in disgrace, recluded in a convent in the Sierra Morena. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ Yet Francisco de Osuna, the preceptor of Santa Teresa, although his writings are of the highest mysticism, escaped persecution himself, and his Abecedario Spiritual incurred only a single expurgation. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

The Venerable Luis de Granada was not canonized, for the proceedings were never completed. He was one of the most moderate of those who taught the supreme virtues of recojimiento and his Guia de Pecadores ranks as one of the Spanish classics, yet his works were prohibited in the Index of 1559. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Melchor Cano declared that his books contained doctrines of Alumbrados and matters contrary to the faith, while Fray Alonso de la Fuente, who was a vigorous persecutor of illuminism, endeavored to have him prosecuted and pronounced his De la Oracion the worst of the books which presented these errors so subtly that only the initiated could discover them. It illustrates the difference between Spanish and Roman standards, at this period, that his writings were translated and freely current in many languages and that, in 1582, Gregory XIII wrote to him eulogizing them in the most exuberant terms and urging him to continue his labors for the curing of the infirm, the strengthening of the weak, the comfort of the strong and the glory of both Churches, the militant and the triumphant. When he died, in 1588, it was in the odor of sanctity, and he subsequently appeared to a devotee arrayed in a cloak of glory, glittering with innumerable stars, which were the souls of those saved by his writings. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Ignatius Loyola was inclined to mysticism, and the mental prayer which he taught--the Ejercicio de las tres Potencias or exercise of the memory, intellect and will--differed little from [18] the meditation which, with the mystics, was the prelude to contemplation. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Yet he was sceptical as to special graces vouchsafed to mystic ardor; such things were possible, he said, but they were very rare and the demon often thus deludes human vanity. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ His disciples were less cautious and indulged in the extravagance of the more advanced school, producing many adepts gifted with the highest spiritual graces. Luis de la Puente, who died in 1624, at the age of 69 may be mentioned as an example, for in him the intensity of divine love was so strong that in his ecstasies he shone with a light that filled his cell; he would be elevated from the floor and the whole building would shake as though about to fall; during his sickness, which lasted for thirty years, angels were often seen ministering to him; he had the gift of prophecy and of reading the thoughts of his penitents and, when he died, his garments were torn to shreds and his hair cut off to be preserved as relics. He taught the heretical doctrine that prayer is a satisfaction for sin, while his views as to resignation to the will of God approach closely to the Quietism which we shall hereafter see condemned by the Holy See. Yet he escaped condemnation and his works have continued to the present time to be multiplied in innumerable editions and translations. ⁽⁵¹⁾

It was probably the impossibility of differentiation between heresy and sanctity that explains the vacillation of the Inquisition. During the active proceedings of the Toledo tribunal, the Suprema, in 1530, issued general instructions that there should be appended to all edicts requiring denunciation of prohibited books a clause including mystics given to Illuminism and Quietism. ⁽⁵²⁾ There seem to be no traces of any result from this and the whole matter appears to have ceased to attract attention for many years, until the animosity excited by the Jesuits led to an investigation of the results of their teachings. Melchor Cano, who hated them, denounced them as Alumbrados, such as the Devil has constantly thrust into the Church, and he foretold that they would complete what the Gnostics had commenced. ⁽⁵³⁾

[19] The warning was unheeded and, some ten years later, another Dominican, Fray Alonso de la Fuente, was led to devote himself to a mortal struggle with Illuminism, and with the Society of Jesus as its source. In a long and rambling memorial addressed, in 1575, to Philip II, he relates that, in 1570, he chanced to visit his birth-place, la Fuente del Maestre, near Cuidad Rodrigo, and found there a Jesuit, Gaspar Sánchez, highly esteemed for holiness, but who was blamed for perpetually confessing certain beatas and granting daily communion. Sánchez appealed to him for support and he preached in his favor, which brought to him numerous beatas, whose revelations of their ecstasies and other spiritual experiences surprised him greatly. This led him to investigate, when he found that the practice of contemplation was widely spread, but its inner secrets were jealously guarded, until he persuaded a neice of his, a girl of 17, to reveal them. She said that her director ordered her to place herself in contemplation with the simple prayer, "Lord I am here, Lord you have me here!" when there would come such a flood of evil thoughts, of filthy imaginings, of carnal movements, of infidel conceptions, of blasphemies against God and the saints and the purity of the Mother of God, and against the whole faith, that the torment of them rendered her crazy, but she bore it with fortitude, as her director told her that this was a sign of perfection and of progress on the path. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Thenceforth Fray Alonso devoted himself to the task of investigating and exterminating this dangerous heresy, but the work of investigation was complicated by the concealment of error under external piety. Before discovering a single false doctrine, we meet, he says, a thousand prayers and disciplines and communions and pious sighs and devotions. It is like sifting gold out of sand; to reach one heresy you must winnow away a thousand pious works. So it is everywhere in Spain where there are Jesuits and thus we see what great labor is required to overcome it, since there are not in the kingdom three inquisitors who understand it or have the energy and requisite zeal. Yet he penetrated far enough into it, after sundry prosecutions, to draw up a list of thirty-nine errors, some of which, like those ascribed to witchcraft, suggest the influence of the torture-chamber in extracting [20] confessions satisfactory to the prosecutor. Not only are the adepts guilty of all the heresies of the Begghards, condemned in the Clementines, and of teaching that mental prayer is the sole thing requisite to salvation, but the teachers are great sorcerers and magicians, who have pact with the demon, and thus they make themselves masters of men and women, their persons and property, as though they were slaves. They train many saints, who feel in themselves the Holy Ghost, who see the Divine Essence and learn the secrets of heaven; who have visions and revelations and a knowledge of Scripture, and all this is accomplished by means of the demon, and by magic arts. By magic, they gain possession of women, whom they teach that it is no sin, and sometimes the demon comes disguised as Christ and has commerce with the women.

If Fray Alonso found it difficult to inspire belief in these horrors, it is easily explicable by his account of the origin of the sect in Extremadura, the region to which his labors were devoted. When Cristóbal de Rojas was Bishop of Badajoz (1556-1562) there came there Padre González, a Jesuit of high standing, who introduced the use of Loyola's Exercícios; there were already there two priests, Hernando Alvarez and the Licentiate Zapata, who were familiar with it, and the practice spread rapidly, under the favor of the bishop and his provisor Meléndez, and none who did not use it could be ordained, or obtain licence to preach and hear confessions, for the bishop placed all this in the hands of Alvarez; and when he was translated to Córdova (1562-1571) and subsequently to Seville (1571-1580) he continued to favor the Alumbrados. He was succeeded in Badajoz (1562-1568) by Juan de Ribera, subsequently Archbishop of Valencia, who was at first adverse to the Alumbrados, but they won him over, and he became as favorable to them as Rojas had been, especially to the women, whose trances and stigmata he investigated and approved and rewarded. If any preacher preached against Illuminism, Ribera banished him and, under this protection, the sect multiplied throughout Extremadura. It is true that Bishop Simancas, who succeeded Ribera (1569-1579) was not so favorable, and his provisor, Picado, at one time prosecuted a number of Alumbrados, who took refuge in Seville under Rojas, among whom was Hernando Alvarez, but the Llerena tribunal took no part in this and the great body of the sect was undisturbed.

It is easy to conceive, therefore, the obstacles confronting Fray [21] Alonso, when he commenced his crusade in 1570. He relates at much length his labors, against great opposition, especially of the Jesuits, and he found no little difficulty in arousing the Llerena inquisitors to action, for they said that it was a new matter and obscure, which required instructions from the Suprema. It is true that, in February 1572, they lent him some support and made a few arrests, but nothing seems to have come of it. He wished to go to Madrid and lay the matter before the Suprema, but his superiors, who apparently disapproved of his zeal, sent him, in October 1572, to Avila, to purchase lumber, and then to Usagre, to preach the Lenten sermons of 1573. After this his prior despatched him to Arenas about the lumber, and it was a providence of God that this business necessitated action by the Council of Military Orders, so that he had an excuse for visiting Madrid. There he sought Rodrigo de Castro--the captor of Carranza---to whom he complained of the negligence and indifference of the Llerena inquisitors, and gave a memorial reciting the errors of the Alumbrados. This resulted in the Suprema sending for the papers, on seeing which it ordered the arrest of the most guilty, when Hernando Alvarez, Francisco Zamora and Gaspar Sánchez were seized in Seville, where they had taken refuge. This produced only a momentary effect in Extremadura, where the Alumbrados comforted themselves with the assurance that their leaders would be dismissed with honor.

It had been proposed to remove the tribunal from Llerena to Plasencia, where houses had been bought for it, but, early in 1574, Fray Alonso remonstrated with the inquisitor-general, pointing out that the land was full of Alumbrados, many of them powerful, and what preaching had been done against them, under the protection of the Inquisition, would be silenced if it was removed. This brought a summons and in May he appeared before the Suprema, where his revelations astonished the members and they asked his advice. He urged a visitation of the district, to be made by the fiscal Montoya, who had studied the matter and understood it, while the inquisitors did not comprehend the subtile mysteries and distinctions involved. It was so ordered, and Montoya commenced his visitation at Zafra, where, on July 25th he published the Edict of Faith, and a special one against Illuminism and Quietism. At first he was much disconcerted in finding among the Alumbrados nothing but fasts and disciplines, prayers, contemplation, hair-shirts, confessions and communions or, if traces [22] appeared of evil doctrines, so commingled with the words of God and the sacraments that evil was concealed in good. Fray Alonso however encouraged him to investigate the lives and conversation of those who enjoyed trances and visions and the stigmata, when it became evident that all was magic art, the work of Satan and of hell. For four months Montoya gathered information and sent the papers to the Suprema, which ordered the arrest with sequestration of five persons, four of the adepts and a female disciple. Towards the close of December he returned to Llerena, to resume the visitation in March, 1575. During the interval Fray Alonso was summoned to Madrid, where he was ordered to accompany Montoya, and the inquisitors were instructed to pay him a salary; this at first they refused to do and then assigned him four reales a day for each day on which he should preach, but the Suprema intervened with an order on the receiver to pay him a certain sum that would enable him to perform the duty. The visitation lasted from March till the beginning of November, and comprised sixteen places, in which Fray Alonso tells us that there were found great errors and sins. Unfortunately he omits to inform us what were the practical results or what was done with the culprits arrested the previous year, and he concludes his memorial by assuring us that the Jesuits and the Alumbrados are alike in doctrine and are the same, which is so certain that to doubt it would be great sin and offence to God.

Fray Alonso might safely thus attack the children of Loyola in Spain, but he made a fatal error when his zeal induced him to carry the war into Portugal. In the following year, 1576, he addressed memorials to the Portuguese ecclesiastical authorities, ascribing to the Jesuits all the Illuminism that afflicted Spain; they taught, he said, that their contemplation of the Passion of Christ was rewarded with the highest spiritual gifts, including impeccability, with the corollary that carnal indulgence was no sin in the Illuminated, while in reality their visions and revelations were the work of demons, whom they controlled by their skill in sorcery. The Jesuits, however, by this time were a dominant power in Portugal; Cardinal Henry, the inquisitor-general, transmitted the memorials to the Spanish Inquisition, with a request for the condign punishment of the audacious fraile. It was no more than he had openly preached and repeatedly urged on the Suprema, but the time was fast approaching for the absorption of Portugal under the Castilian crown, and Cardinal Henry [23] was to be propitiated. Fray Alonso was forced to retract, and was recluded in a convent, but this did not satisfy the Cardinal, who asked for his extradition, or that the matter be submitted to the Holy See, when the opportune death of the fraile put a happy end to the matter. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Yet, in Spain, Fray Alonso exerted a decisive influence on the relations of the Inquisition to mysticism and, before this unlucky outburst of zeal, he had the satisfaction of seeing the indifference of the Llerena tribunal excited to active work. In 1576, while preaching in that city, he said that he had heard of persons who, under an exterior of special sanctity, gave free rein to their appetites. On this, an imprudent devotee, named Mari Sanz, interrupted him, exclaiming "Padre, the lives of these people are better and their faith sounder than your own" and, when he reproved her, she declared that the Holy Spirit had moved her. This was a dangerous admission; she was arrested, and her confessions led to the seizure of so many accomplices that the tribunal was obliged to ask for assistance. An experienced inquisitor, Francisco de Soto, Bishop of Salamanca, was sent, who vigorously pushed the trials until he died, January 29, 1578, poisoned, as it was currently reported, by his physician, who was long detained in prison under the accusation. How little the sectaries imagined themselves to have erred is seen in the fact that one of them, a shoemaker named Juan Bernal, obeyed a revelation which directed him to appeal to Philip II, to tell him of the injustice perpetrated at Llerena and to ask him why he did not intervene and evoke the matter to himself--hardihood which earned for him six years of galley-service and two hundred lashes.

The evidence elicited in the trials showed the errors ordinarily attributed to Illuminism, including trances and revelations and sexual abominations unfit for transcription. After three years spent in this work, an auto was held, June 14, 1579, in which, among other offenders, there appeared fifteen Alumbrados--ten men and five women. Of the men, all but the unlucky shoemaker were priests, and among them we recognize Hernando Alvarez, against whom there appeared no less than a hundred and forty-six witnesses. Many were curas of various towns and naturally the illicit relations were principally between confessors and their spiritual daughters. From a doctrinal standpoint, their [24] offence seems not to have been regarded as serious, for none of them were degraded, and the abjurations were for light suspicion, but this leniency was accompanied by deprivation of functions, galley-service, reclusion and similar penalties, while the fines inflicted amounted to fifteen hundred ducats and eight thousand maravedís. The unfortunate Mari Sanz, who had caused the explosion, expiated her imprudence by appearing with a gag and a sentence to perpetual prison, two hundred lashes in Llerena and two hundred more at la Fuente del Maestre, her place of residence. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ From the number of those inculpated it may be assumed that this auto did not empty the prisons, and that it was followed by others, but if so, we have no record of them. The impression produced by the affair was wide and profound. Páramo, writing towards the end of the century, speaks of it as one in which the vigilance of the Inquisition preserved Spain from serious peril. ⁽⁵⁷⁾

In fact, it marks a turning-point in the relations of the Inquisition to Spanish mysticism, of which the persecution became one of its regular and recognized duties. Even before the auto of 1579, the Suprema, in a carta acordada of January 4, 1578, ordered the tribunals to add to the Edict of Faith a section in which the errors developed in the trials were enumerated. These consisted in asserting that mental prayer is of divine precept and that it fulfils everything, while vocal prayer is of trivial importance; that the servants of God are not required to labor; that the orders of superiors are to be disregarded, when conflicting with the hours devoted to mental prayer and contemplation; decrying the sacrament of matrimony; asserting that the perfect have no need of performing virtuous actions; advising persons not to marry or to enter religious Orders; saying that the servants of God are to shine in secular life; obtaining promises of obedience and enforcing it in every detail; holding that, after reaching a certain degree of

[25] perfection, they cannot look upon holy images or listen to sermons, and teaching these errors under pledge of secrecy. ⁽⁵⁸⁾

It is noteworthy that here there is no allusion to ecstasies or trances or to sexual aberrations, as in subsequent edicts, although Páramo, some twenty years later, in his frequent allusions to the Alumbrados, dwells especially on the latter and on the dangers to which they led in the confessional. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ That this danger was not imaginary is indicated by the case of Fray Juan de la Cruz, a discalced Franciscan, so convinced of the truth of alumbrado doctrine that, in 1605, he presented himself to the Toledo tribunal with a memorial in which he argued that indecent practices between spiritual persons were purifying and elevating to the soul, and resulting in the greatest spiritual benefit when unaccompanied with desire to sin. He was promptly placed on trial and six witnesses testified to his teaching of this doctrine. Ordinary seduction in the confessional, as will be seen hereafter, when the culprit admitted it to be a sin, was treated with comparative leniency, but doctrinal error was far more serious, and the unlucky fraile, who maintained throughout the trial the truth of his theories, was visited with much greater severity. Humiliations and disabilities were heaped upon him; he received a circular scourging in a convent of his order and a monthly discipline for a year, with six years of reclusion. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ Simple mysticism, however, even without the advanced doctrines of Illuminism and Quietism, was becoming to the Inquisition an object of pronounced hostility. The land was being filled with beatas revelanderas; mystic fervor was spreading and threatening to become a part of the national religion, stimulated doubtless by the increasing cult paid to its prominent exemplars, for Santa Teresa was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622, while San Pedro de Alcántara was beatified in the latter year. Apart from all moral questions, the mystic might at any moment assert independence; his theory was destructive to the intervention of the priest between man and God, and Illuminism was only a [26] development of mysticism. The Inquisition was not wholly consistent, but its determination to stem the current which was setting so strongly was emphatically expressed in the trial of Padre Gerónimo de la Madre de Dios by the Toledo tribunal in 1616.

The padre was a secular priest, the son of Don Sánchez de Molina, who for forty-eight years had been corregidor of Malagon. He had entered the Dominican Order, had led an irregular life and apparently had been expelled but, in 1610, had been converted from his evil ways by a vision and, in 1613, obeying a voice from God, he had come to Madrid and taken service in a little hospital attached to the parish church of San Martin. His sermons speedily attracted crowds, including the noblest ladies of the court; his fervent devotion, the austerity of his life, the rigor of his mortifications and the self-denial of his charities won for him the reputation of a saint, which was enhanced by the trances into which he habitually fell when celebrating mass, and popular credulity credited him with elevation from the ground. There is absolutely no evidence that in this there was hypocrisy or imposture, and the most searching investigation failed to discover any imputation on his virtue. All that he received he gave to the poor, even to clothes from his back, and his sequestrated property consisted solely of pious books, rosaries and objects of devotion. He speedily gathered around him disciples, prominent among whom was Fray Bartolomé de Alcalá, vicar of the Geronimite convent; the number of their penitents, all espirituales was large, and these usually partook of the sacrament daily or oftener; many of them had revelations and were consulted by the pious as being in direct relations with God, from whom they received answers to petitions.

In all this there was nothing beyond the manifestations of devotional fervor customary to Spanish piety, but an accusation was brought against Padre Gerónimo, September 20,1615, for teaching that the soul could reach a state of perfection in which it would be an act of imperfection to ask God for anything. This, which was one of the refinements of mysticism, was subsequently proved by the calificadores to be subversive of existing observances, because the saints in heaven were in a state of perfection and, if they could ask nothing of God, what would become of their suffrage and intercession and what would be the use of the cult and oblations offered to them? Still, at the time, the tribunal took no action beyond examining a few witnesses, and Gerónimo would probably [27] not have been disturbed in his useful career had he not written a book. In his mystic zeal he imagined himself inspired in the composition of a work entitled El Discípulo espiritual que trata de oración mental y de espíritu, which he submitted to several learned theologians, whose emendations he adopted. This had considerable currency in MS.; a demand arose for its printing, and he laid it before the Royal Council for a licence, when he was informed that the approbation of the episcopal provisor of Toledo was a condition precedent. After sending it to that official and receiving no answer for six months, he submitted a copy to the Suprema, October 20, 1615, explaining what he had done and asking for its examination; if there was in it anything contrary to the faith, he desired its correction, for he wished the work to be unimpeachably orthodox and would die a thousand deaths in defence of the true religion.

He waited some seven months and, on May 17, 1616, he ventured an inquiry of the Suprema, but a month earlier three calificadores had reported on it unfavorably, the Suprema had ordered the Toledo tribunal to act and, on May 28th, the warrant for his arrest with sequestration was issued. A mass of papers, MS. sermons, tracts and miscellaneous accumulations were distributed among fifteen calificadores, who, as scholastic theologians, were not propitiated by his contempt for schoolmen. They performed their task with avidity and accumulated an imposing array of a hundred and eighty-six erroneous propositions--many of them the veriest trifles, significant only of their temper, but, after all his explanations, there was a formidable residuum of twenty-five qualified as heretical, twenty-nine as erroneous, three as sacrilegious, and numerous others as scandalous, rash and savoring of heresy.

Despite the piteous supplications of his aged father, his trial lasted until September, 1618--some twenty-seven months of incarceration, during which his health suffered severely. Throughout it all he never varied from his attitude of abject submission; kneeling and weeping he begged for penance and punishment, as he would rather be plunged in hell than commit a sin or give utterance to aught offensive to pious ears. This availed him little. He was sentenced to appear in the auto of September 2, 1618, as a penitent, to abjure de vehementi and to retract publicly a list of sixty-one errors. He was forbidden for life to preach or to hear confessions, or to write on religious subjects; he was recluded for [28] a year in a designated convent and for five more was banished from Madrid and Toledo, and a public edict commanded the surrender of all his writings. Thus he was not only publicly proclaimed a heretic, but his career was blasted, he was virtually deprived of the means of subsistence, yet his first act on reaching his place of confinement was to write humbly thanking the inquisitors for their kindness. Seven months later he appealed to them, saying that he was sick and enfeebled, he had been bled four times and he begged for the love of God that he might be spared the rest of his reclusion and be allowed to comfort his aged father. To this no attention was paid and we hear nothing more of him.

For us the interest of the case lies not so much in the cruelty with which the bruised reed was broken, as in the revelation of the silent revolution in the Spanish Church with regard to mysticism. In the sixty-one condemned propositions there were one or two properly liable to censure, the most dangerous being that ascribed to the Begghards--that the perfected soul enjoys the spirit of liberty, going at will without laws or rules, and that in this state God gives it the power of working miracles. Another which asserted that devotion to images, rosaries, blessed beads etc. was an error so great that souls so employed could have no hope of salvation was scarce more than an exaggeration of the precepts of Francisco de Osuna and Juan de la Cruz. For the most part, the condemned propositions were merely the common-places of the great mystics of the sixteenth century--that the perfected soul enjoys absolute peace, for the appetites and passions are at rest and the flesh in no way contradicts the spirit--that trances are the highest of God's gifts--that the supreme grade of contemplation becomes habitual, and that the soul at will can thus enter God's presence--that, in the trance, God can be seen--that the perfected soul should ask only that God's will be done. Other condemnations were directed against the claims of inspiration and revelation, against the suspension of the faculties in mental prayer, against the Union with God which had been the aim of all the mystics. In short, it was a condemnation of the doctrines and practices which, for centuries, had been recognized by the Church as manifestations of the utmost holiness. Had Francisco de Osuna, Luis de Granada, San Pedro de Alcántara, Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz and their disciples been judged by the same standard, they would have shared the fate of Padre Gerónimo unless, indeed, [29] their convictions had led them to refuse submission, in which case they would have been burnt. ⁽⁶¹⁾ This was shown at Valladolid when, in 1620, Juan de Gabana, priest of San Martin de Valverri and Gerónima González, a widow, were prosecuted for mysticism. He died in prison, pertinacious to the last and was duly burnt in effigy, in 1622. She was less firm and was voted to reconciliation, but the Suprema ordered her to be tortured; this she escaped by dying, and her effigy was reconciled. ⁽⁶²⁾

Yet the mystic cult was too firmly planted in the religious habits of Spain to be readily eradicated, nor was the Inquisition prepared to be wholly consistent. While Padre Gerónimo was thus harshly treated for unpublished writings, the Minim Fray Fernando de Caldera was allowed undisturbed to publish, in 1623, his Mística Teología, perhaps the craziest of the mystic treatises. It is cast in the form of instructions uttered by Christ, in the first person, and teaches Illuminism and Quietism of the most exalted kind. The intellect is to be suspended and the will abandoned to God, who does with it as he pleases, infusing it with divine light and admitting it to a knowledge of the divine mysteries. Lubricious temptations, if they come from the flesh are to be overcome with austerities; if from pride, with humility; if they are passive, they are to be met with patience and resignation, for God who sends them will remove them at his own time and with great benefit to the soul. ⁽⁶³⁾ No teaching more dangerous is to be found in Molinos but, although a translation of the work appeared in Rome in 1658, it escaped condemnation both there and in Spain.

During this time there was a storm gathering in Seville which enabled the Inquisition to impress its definite policy on the mystically inclined. We have seen how mysticism flourished there under the patronage of Archbishop Rojas, and the persecution in Extremadura seems not to have extended to Andalusia, so that it continued unrepressed. While Padre Gerónimo was awaiting his doom in Toledo, a much more extravagant performer was enjoying the cult of the devout in Seville. A priest named Fernando Méndez had a special reputation for sanctity; when celebrating mass he fell into trances and uttered terrible roars; he taught his disciples to invoke his intercession, as though he were already a saint in heaven; fragments of his garments were treasured [30] as relics; he gathered a congregation of beatas and, after mass in his oratory, they would strip off their garments and dance with indecent vigor--drunk with the love of God--and, on some of his female penitents, he would impose the penance of lifting their skirts and exposing themselves before him. His disciples were not drawn merely from the lower classes, for we are told that as many as thirty coaches could be counted of a morning around the gate of the Franciscan convent to which he had retired. ⁽⁶⁴⁾

This hysteric contagion spread through Seville, affecting a considerable portion of the population. There was no concealment and evidently no thought that it involved suspicion of heresy, or that it departed in any way from orthodoxy. A special group of mystics, known as la Granata, under successive spiritual directors, had long held their meetings in the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Granada, without exciting animadversion or calling for interference from the Inquisition. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ When, however, the imperious Pacheco, in 1622, assumed the office of inquisitor-general, he speedily ordered the Seville tribunal to investigate and report as to the mystic extravagances current in the city, and there could have been no difficulty in collecting ample material for condemnation according to the new standard. This resulted in the publication of a special Edict of Grace, May 9, 1523, granting the customary thirty days in which those feeling themselves inculpated could denounce themselves and their accomplices and be admitted to absolution with salutary penance and without confiscation or disabilities affecting their descendants. That all might understand what these new heresies were, the edict embodied a list of seventy-six errors ascribed to the Alumbrados, which marks the advance made since 1578 in suppressing mysticism in general and in attributing to it additional evil practices. There was a fuller condemnation of the beliefs common to all mystics, which had so often earned canonization--that their trembling or burning or fainting was a sign of grace and of the influence of the Holy Spirit--that a stage of perfection could be reached in which they could see the Divine Essence and the mysteries of the Trinity and that, in this state, grace drowned all the faculties-- that they were governed directly by the Holy Spirit in what they did or left undone--that in contemplation they dismissed [31] all thought and concentrated themselves in the presence of God --that, in the state of Union with God, the will is subordinated-- that in trances God is clearly seen in his glory--that mental prayer renders other works superfluous--that other duties, both religious and worldly, can be neglected to devote oneself wholly to this supreme devotion.

Besides these, there was an enumeration of the errors commonly attributed to the Alumbrados with more or less justice--impeccability--the elevation of mental prayer to the dignity of a sacrament--communion with more than one wafer--promiscuous intercourse among the elect--indecent actions in the confessional regarded as meritorious--teaching wives to refuse cohabitation-- forcing girls to take vows of chastity or to become nuns--requiring vows of absolute obedience to the spiritual director--breathing on the mouths of female penitents to communicate to them the love of God--violation of the seal of the confessional--that the perfected have power of absolution even in reserved cases--that those who follow this doctrine will escape purgatory and that many who refused to do so have returned to beg release, when they give them an Evangelio and see them fly to heaven. One article would indicate that among the devotees, as was usually the case, there was at least one who boasted of bearing the stigmata, of conversing with God and of living solely upon the sacrament, while a clause requiring the surrender of all statutes and instructions for their congregations and assemblies shows that they were organized into more or less formal associations. ⁽⁶⁶⁾

The audacious assumption of power in this pronouncement was forcibly pointed out by Juan Dionisio Portocarrero, in an opinion furnished to the Archbishop Pedro de Castro y Quiñones. There was gross disrespect shown to him, who had been kept in ignorance, though it was known that an edict was in preparation, of which the nature was sedulously concealed until it was suddenly published in all the churches. Inquisitors could not decide cases without the participation of the Ordinary, while here the cases were tried and the parties admitted to reconciliation, without calling in the episcopal authority. Similar usurpation was manifested [32] in the definition of heresies, which was the attribute of the Holy See and of general councils, not of the Inquisition. No general council could do more than the inquisitor-general had done in defining the seventy-six errors, and to say that these errors were widely disseminated in Seville, not without fault of those permitting it, and to do so without calling upon the archbishop to explain the condition of his flock, was to condemn him without a hearing. These seventy-six propositions were all styled matters of faith, although many of them were rather matters of discipline, pertaining to the Ordinary, yet all were reserved to the Inquisition. Moreover, the inquisitor-general was not competent to decide the disputed question whether the power assured to bishops to absolve for secret heresy was annulled by the bull in Coena Domini. Then Portocarrero proceeded to examine one by one a considerable portion of the condemned propositions and showed that some of them expressed the accepted teaching of the Church, while many were not cognizable by the Inquisition, because they had nothing to do with faith, and others again he omitted as being unintelligible. He urged the archbishop to vindicate his jurisdiction quietly, without causing scandal, and that the edict be examined and qualified by learned men, not Dominicans, for it had originated with them--the truth being that the inculpated mystics were mostly under the direction of Franciscans and Jesuits and that, in the bitter hatred between the Orders, the Dominicans had stirred up the matter to strike a blow at their rivals. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

The poor old archbishop, who died in December of the same year, of course did nothing. The edict was published on June 4th and again on the llth, when the most pious circles in Seville suddenly found themselves arraigned for heresy. Mysticism had become fashionable, especially among the women, from the noblest to the lower classes, and they rushed at once to obtain the pardon promised within the thirty days. A Seville letter of June 15th says that an inquisitor with a secretary established himself in San Pablo (the Dominican church used in autos de fe), eating and sleeping there, and on duty from 5 A.M. until 10 P.M., with an hour's intermission for meals, but that he could not attend to a twentieth part of the applicants, and that another thirty days [33] would have to be granted. In this there is doubtless exaggeration, but another authority states the number of those inculpated at 695. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ There had of course been no intentional heresy and there were no pertinacious heretics, although among them were impostors who had traded upon popular credulity and love for the marvellous. Still, an auto de fe was necessary to confirm the impression and it was held on November 30, 1624, in which eleven Alumbrados appeared, but eight of them were confessed impostors. Of the remaining three, one was the Padre Fernando Méndez, who in dying had distributed his garments and his virtues among his disciples; no special punishment was decreed against his memory, but his effigy was displayed in the auto, his revelations, trances, visions and prophecies were declared to be fictitious, and his disciples were required to surrender the articles which they had treasured as relics. Another was a mulatto slave named Antonio de la Cruz, who had united to his mysticism some unauthorized speculations respecting the power of Satan; he escaped with abjuration de levi and deprivation of the sacrament except at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. The third was Francisco del Castillo, a priest whose trances were so frequent and uncontrollable that they would seize him in the act of eating; he was at the head of a congregation, the members of which he boasted were all saved, and through which the Church was to be reformed, he being possessed of the spirit of Jesus Christ and his disciples of that of the Apostles--all of which had not prevented him from maintaining improper relations with his female penitents. He was sentenced only to abjuration de levi, perpetual deprivation of confessing and reclusion for four years in a convent, with exile from Seville-- the usual penalty, as we shall see, for solicitation ad turpia in the confessional--with warning of severer punishment if he did not abandon his visions and revelations. ⁽⁶⁹⁾

Evidently the object of the Edict had been to warn rather than to punish; but few examples were deemed necessary, and in these the mildness of the penalties indicates a recognition of the fact that these so-called heresies had not previously been regarded as culpable. It sufficed to set an impressive stamp of reprobation on mysticism without unnecessary severity.

Seville, however, was not yet cleansed of the infection. At an auto held some two years later, on February 28, 1627, there were [34] two conspicuous mystics, Maestre Juan de Villalpando, a priest in charge of one of the city parishes, and Madre Catalina de Jesus, a Carmelite beata. Notwithstanding the Edict of 1623, Villalpando had maintained a congregation of both sexes, who obeyed him implicitly in all things, temporal and spiritual. No less than two hundred and seventy-five erroneous propositions were charged against him, and he was required to retract twenty-two articles. He was deprived of his priestly functions, recluded for four years in a convent and confined subsequently to the city of Seville, with a fine of two hundred ducats. Madre Catalina, for thirty-eight years, had been sick with the love of God, and her continued existence was regarded as a miracle by her numerous disciples, who treasured as relics whatever had touched her person. She was accused of improper relations with a priest--probably Villalpando--who reverenced her as his guide and teacher, and she was a dogmatizer, for her writings, both MS. and printed, were required to be surrendered. On the testimony of a hundred and forty-eight witnesses, she was sentenced to reclusion for six years in a hospital, where she was to earn her support by labor. ⁽⁷⁰⁾

This shows increasing severity, and a still more deterrent example was furnished, in 1630, by an auto in which eight Alumbrados, as we are told, were burned alive and six in effigy. There were also sixty reconciliations, of which some were doubtless for the same heresy. ⁽⁷¹⁾ We have no further details of this auto, save that Bernino characterizes the victims as obstinate; possibly they may have been relapsed but, as we have seen, the abjurations had been for light suspicion, which did not entail relaxation for relapse. Be this as it may, the affair would indicate that Illuminism was now regarded as formal heresy, not as merely inferring suspicion, and that pertinacity incurred the stake.

Obstinacy, in fact, converts into formal heresy what may be otherwise regarded as light suspicion, as it infers disobedience to the decisions of the Church. This is seen in an interesting review of the whole subject by an inquisitor about 1640. He describes the evidence customarily brought against alumbrado confessors and preachers, of teaching sensuality under cover of mortification. Some hold that indecent handling and sleeping with a woman [35] are meritorious as trampling on the devil and overcoming temptation; so it is with making the penitent strip and stand against a wall with arms outstretched, and other details that may well be spared. There is also teaching that obedience is better than the sacrament and that it excuses what would otherwise be evil, or that God has revealed to them that such things are not sin, or that interior impulses are to be followed in doing or not doing anything. Such persons, he tells us are confined in the secret prison, without sequestration, although, if there is suspicion of heresy, there is sequestration. If, as usually occurs, they confess to these teachings, extenuating them as the result of thoughtlessness or ignorance without errors of belief, and if they are priests or frailes, the sentence is read in the audience-chamber and the punishment is the same as for solicitation in the confessional--that is to say, reclusion in a monastery for a term of years and deprivation of the faculty of confessing. But, if this evil doctrine has caused much injury, as at Llerena, they appear in a public auto with some years of galley-service and, if they are priests owning property, they are fined at discretion.

If there should be obstinacy and rejection of the arguments of the theologians deputed to reason with them, there is postponement for some months to allow time for conversion, as happened in Logroño with a certain priest, and in Valladolid with a fraile. The priest taught his female penitents that there was no sin in kisses and in indecent handling and in sleeping with a woman so long as the final act was omitted. He revoked repeatedly and varied between submission and persistence, but was convinced at last and appeared in a public auto, abjured de vehementi, was verbally degraded with five years of galleys and ten more of exile, besides perpetual deprivation of confessing. If the culprit is impervious to argument and will not abandon errors of belief, he must be treated as a heretic and be relaxed even if he denies intention. There was one who abjured de vehementi and relapsed. It was alleged by his Order that he was insane, for he was a person of high repute for virtue and learning; he was given secret penance, but so severe that he was never heard of again. ⁽⁷²⁾

From this statement it would appear that the extreme position assumed by Pacheco had not been maintained and that simple mysticism was tolerated unless it was complicated with the [36] follies of Illuminism, especially as concerned the relations between the sexes. The policy of the Inquisition, in fact, was by no means uniform; for a time many harmless mystics were allowed to enjoy in peace the veneration of their disciples while, if there was scandal or imposture or some ulterior motive, prosecution was easy. One such case was that of Fray Francisco García Calderón whom we have seen (Vol. II, p. 135) concerned with the case of the nuns of San Placido and the Marquis of Villanueva, in 1630. A contemporary was Doña Luisa de Colmenares, popularly known as Madre Luisa de Carrion, a nun of the convent of Santa Clara, at Carrion de los Condes, who, at the age of seventy, had passed fifty-three years in a cloister. She was not strictly an Alumbrado but a mystic of the type of Santa Teresa, and her case is instructive as showing how general was the belief attributing supernatural powers to beings favored by God, how profitably this belief could be exploited by shrewd management, and how effectively the Inquisition could intervene, in the face of the most intense popular opposition. There is no reason to suppose that Madre Luisa was consciously an impostor; she was merely an ignorant old woman, hypnotically habituated to trances and visions like so many others, and the Franciscan Order, to which she belonged, saw in her a speculative value of which they made the most. Philip IV venerated her and popes were her correspondents; there was an immense demand for objects sanctified by her--crosses, beads, images of the Christ-child and similar trifles--the sales of which brought in large profits and, between these and the offerings of pilgrims, the Order was said to have realized two hundred thousand crowns and to look forward to much more if it could secure her canonization after death.

Suddenly, in 1635, the Inquisition undertook to investigate her. There had been nothing exceptional in her career, except its success and, under Franciscan management she had been mostly kept clear of the errors condemned in Pacheco's edict. The motive for action is obscure, and the most probable suggestion is that the opponents of Count-Duke Olivares had sought, after the fashion of the time, to make use, for political ends, of the boundless popular veneration of which she was the object. Yet there was significant caution in the preliminaries. Juan Santos, senior Inquisitor of Valladolid, was ordered to examine her, when he pretended a visit to the Bishop of Falencia and on the road stopped for a fortnight at Carrion. It was not difficult to involve an untutored [37] nun in erroneous theological speculations, and a warrant for her arrest followed; she was placed in a carriage with a female relative of one of the inquisitors, when her journey to Valladolid was a triumphal procession. A pillar of light, changing into a cross, was seen in the sky; everywhere the population gathered in mass, and the precaution of entering Valladolid at night was unavailing, for the crowds were so great that she was with difficulty carried in safety, through the surging mob striving to gather some fragment of her dress as a talisman. She was housed in the Augustinian convent, where she was the object of veneration to the nuns, who declared her destined to be the most powerful saint in the annals of the Church; but it was observed that she no longer had ecstasies, although at Carrion they had been of daily occurrence and were celebrated by sounding the organ, when everyone rushed to see them.

The Franciscans officially undertook her defence; the population of Valladolid, with the bishop at their head, were so demonstrative in her favor that the tribunal hesitated, and the Suprema had to send a special commissioner, who was no other than our old acquaintance Juan Dionisio Portocarrero, soon afterwards rewarded with the bishopric of Guadix. It was easy to make her convict herself of heresy, for she was foolish and ignorant, full of vain-glory, and merely a tool of the rapacious friars who had exploited her. Papers signed by her were in circulation in which she declared that she had seen the Divine Essence, that she was confirmed in grace, that at six years of age Christ had removed her heart of flesh and substituted his own, that he had given her an apple of paradise by which she would remain immortal until the Day of Judgement, when she would accompany Enoch and Elias in the war with Antichrist; that God sustained her without food, and much more that testifies to the incredible credulity of the people, and to the unscrupulous audacity of the friars. Under examination, she declared that she had seen the Divine Essence, but she proved herself wholly ignorant of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and uttered a thousand follies, including a revelation from God that all who possessed her crosses, beads, rosaries or other objects of devotion would be saved unconditionally and could rest secure of their predestination.

The fore-ordained condemnation was preceded by an edict of October 23, 1636, requiring the surrender of all letters, portraits, crosses, beads etc., which were so numerous that in a few days the [38] cura of the parish of San Miguel had a room full of them. The poor old crone was blind, toothless and exhausted with a life of hysteria; the shock of these experiences was too great for her feeble vitality, and she died in November. This was, of course, no impediment to her trial, and the tribunal was justly incensed to learn that the bishop had buried her without its permission. When summoned to answer for this he threatened a popular uprising, but the tribunal held good, exhumed the body and verified its identity, after which the Suprema ordered a second exhumation and burial under its authority.

It seems that no formal sentence was ever rendered. The Franciscans talked of appealing to the pope, but were only laughed at. Madre Luisa had ceased to be of importance, but that her devotees had not lost all veneration for her is shown by the Inquisition, in 1638, forbidding all discussion of the case. In 1643 it was referred to Arce y Reynoso, together with that of San Placido and, in 1644, he was said to be pushing it with energy, but probably it was wisely allowed to be forgotten, without reaching a conclusion. Yet, notwithstanding the inquisitorial edict, her crosses were not all surrendered and continued to be regarded as enriched with indulgences, for we find them condemned by the Roman Congregation of Indulgences in 1668 and again in 1678. ⁽⁷³⁾

But for the presumably political motive prompting her prosecution it may be assumed that Madre Luisa would have been enrolled in the calendar of saints. Her career was no more extravagant than that of her contemporary, the Blessed María Ana de Jesus, a Madrileña, who was born in 1565 and died in 1624. She belonged to the Order of La Merced, and her biography was written in 1673, by Fray Juan de la Presentacion, official historiographer of Philip IV, who informs us that, when an infant at the breast, she gave evidence of her future sanctity; at the age of four she was constantly at prayer, and at six she had ecstasies, visions and revelations. She says herself that her soul was ordinarily illuminated by God, who manifested his will to her unmistakably. The effort for her canonization began shortly after her death and [39] as renewed at intervals, until she was beatified in 1783. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ Another contemporary of María Ana de Jesus was she of Peru, known as la Azucena de Quito. Born in 1618 and dying in 1645, her miracles commenced before her birth, and she began to mortify the flesh by refusing to suckle before noon-day. It was in vain that, in her humility, she prayed to be denied the favor of visions and miracles. Efforts were commenced, in 1670, to procure her canonization, but it was not until 1850 that she was beatified by Pius IX. ⁽⁷⁵⁾

These saintly mystics, with their direct communications from God, wielded an influence which we can scarce realize. They had become so numerous and their revelations were so unhesitatingly accepted, that Spain was enveloped in an atmosphere of mysticism, in which the divine guidance was sought, rather than the councils of human wisdom. Olivares might well fear any adverse utterances of Madre Luisa, for his downfall, in 1643, was accelerated by visions enjoyed by Don Francisco de Chiribaga, although the Jesuit Padre Galindo, who was concerned in making them known, was imprisoned by his superiors for acting without their permission. ⁽⁷⁶⁾ When the affairs of the Spanish monarchy were at their lowest ebb at this time, it is a curious revelation of the impulses under which it was governed to find Philip IV complaining of the perplexities to which he was exposed by the visions brought to him by the frailes; this matter of revelations, he says, is one which requires much consideration, especially when he is told that God orders him to punish those who have rendered him good service, and to elevate those whose methods have not earned them a good reputation. All that is lacking to complete this picture of unreasoning superstition is found in the fact that this utterance is made to another mystic to whom he appeals for guidance and for intercession with God to send him light. ⁽⁷⁷⁾

María de Jesus, commonly known as Sor María de Agreda, to whom Philip thus turned for counsel, was too strongly entrenched in the royal favor to be in danger from the Inquisition yet, notwithstanding that favor, her revelations were rejected by Rome, thus furnishing another example of the difficulty of differentiating [40] between sanctity and heresy. She had practised mental prayer from the time when she was able to use her reason, and she was in constant communication with God, the Virgin and the angels. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ Her fame filled the land, and her voluminous writings, which claim to be inspired, still form part of the devotional literature of the faithful. She so captured the confidence of Philip that he made her his chief adviser; for twenty-two years, until her death in 1665, four months before his own, he maintained constant correspondence with her by every post. Her influence thus was almost unbounded, but she seems never to have abused it; her advice was usually sound, and she never sought the enrichment of the impoverished convent of Agreda, of which she was the superior.

With all the power of the Franciscan Order and of the Spanish court to sustain her claims to sanctity, the canonization of such a personage would seem almost a matter of course, and it would doubtless have been effected if she had not reduced her revelations to writing. However they might suit the appetite of Spanish piety, nourished so long on mystic extravagance, they did not appeal to the sober judgement of the rest of the Catholic world. In spite of their divine inspiration, her Letanía y nombres misteriosos de la Reina del Cielo and her Mística Ciudad de Dios were condemned in Rome, and the decree as to the latter was posted on the doors of St. Peter's, August 4, 1681. The Mística Ciudad was eminently popular in Spain and, at the instance of the Spanish court, its prohibition was suspended. The Inquisition took advantage of this, in 1686, to issue a decree permitting its circulation, at which the Congregation of the Index was naturally offended and, in 1692, the papal decree of condemnation appeared in the Appendix to the Index of Innocent XI, in spite of which the book was formally permitted by the Spanish Inquisition. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ When, in 1695, a translation by Père Thomas Croset appeared in France, the Sorbonne, by decree of September 27, 1696, condemned it as containing propositions contrary to the rules of ecclesiastical modesty, and many fables and dreams from the Apocrypha, exposing Catholicism [41] to the contempt of the heretics. ⁽⁸⁰⁾  The Spanish court labored earnestly to obtain a renewal of the suspension and finally succeeded, so that the book was omitted from the 1716 Index of Clement XI. Then in 1729, the subject was again taken up, when, after a long debate, the book was permitted, though Dr. Eusebius Amort tells us that in Rome, in 1735, he was shown a decree of Benedict XIII renewing the prohibition and asserting that its withdrawal had been obtained fraudulently; still, the book has never since reappeared in the Index. ⁽⁸¹⁾ There was a similar struggle over the Letanía, which was still included in the 1716 Index of Clement XI and the first Index of Benedict XIV, in 1744, but has disappeared from all succeeding issues. ⁽⁸²⁾ Less successful thus far has been the persistent effort to procure the canonization of Madre María, leading to a papal decree of April 27, 1773, forbidding all future proceedings in the case. Notwithstanding this, Leo XIII, on March 10, 1884, ordered the Congregation of Rites to consider in secret whether this prohibition could be removed. To suggest such a discussion is almost equivalent to prejudging it affirmatively but, before the decision was reached, chance led to the publication in the Deutscher Merkur of December 29, 1889, of the whole secret history of the case, which has probably put an end, at least for the present, to the prospect of enrolling in the calendar of saints one whose revelations have been so repeatedly condemned as illusory or as emanating from Satan.

While, as we shall see, the pest of beatas revelanderas and more or less conscious impostors continued to afflict the land, the cases recognized as Alumbrados are comparatively few during the remainder of the seventeenth century. In a Toledo record, commencing in 1648, the first one occurs in 1679, when the Franciscan Fray Francisco de Toledo was convicted. In this the offence is treated as formal heresy, requiring reconciliation, and the punishment was extremely severe. He was to receive a circular discipline [42] in his convent; he was to be confined in a cell for two years and for two years more was to be recluded, during which time he was to be occupied in works of humility. In addition, he was perpetually suspended from orders, deprived of active and passive voice, and reduced to lay communion. It is possibly to this, or to some movement in which Fray Francisco bore a part, that Miguel Molinos refers, in a letter of February 16, 1680, to the Jesuit General Oliva, saying that when, in 1679, Satan sought to revive the sect of Illuminists in Spain, and they had applied to him, he had given an opinion so contrary to their follies that it frightened them and stopped the attempt. ⁽⁸³⁾

While Spain had thus been combatting Mysticism, Rome had remained comparatively indifferent, for in Italy it had not developed into a popular mania to be suppressed irrespective of the immoral extravagances to which it sometimes led. In the Edict of the Inquisition requiring denunciation of all offences subject to its jurisdiction, there is no mention of Mysticism or Illuminism. ⁽⁸⁴⁾ The elaborate folios of the writers on the Holy Office--Carena, Del Bene, Lupo, Dandino--are silent as to its eccentricities. Yet these were by no means unknown to the Roman Holy Office, which took cognizance of them when brought to its notice. Occasionally some book too extravagant in its teachings was put upon the Index. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ Cardinal Scaglia (1639), a member of the Congregation of the Inquisition, in his little manual of practice, which was circulated only in MS., when treating of the troubles customary in nunneries, says that through giddiness of brain, or vain-glory, or illusion, nuns often claim to have celestial visions and revelations and intercourse with God and the saints when, if the confessor is imprudently given to spirituality, he reduces their utterances to writing and, if he is learned, he defends them, very often with propositions punishable by the Inquisition. Sometimes, he adds, sensuality is involved, leading to the assertion that carnal acts are not sinful but meritorious, when, if the confessor desires to take advantage of this, he seeks with revelations and false doctrines to prove that they are lawful. Cases of this kind [43] have occurred in the Holy Office, when priests who so justify themselves become liable to the penalties of heresy. Such cases also occur between women assuming to be spiritual and their confessors, who so teach them, even without revelations and visions, leading their spiritual daughters to believe these to be works of merit and mortification. ⁽⁸⁶⁾

Bernino tells us that, early in the seventeenth century, Illuminism was widely diffused throughout Italy, where abjurations enforced by the Inquisition were frequent, but this is probably the exaggeration so frequent with heresiologists. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ A well-marked case, however, startled Florence in 1640, when the Canon Pandolfo Ricasoli, a highly respected member of the noble house of the Barons of Trappola and a man of wide learning and handsome fortune, was arrested with his chief accomplice Faustina Mainardi, her brother Girolamo, and the Maestro Serafino de' Servi, Dottor Carlo Scalandrini, the priest Giacomo Fantoni, Andrea Biliotti, Francesco Borgeschi and two others, Mozzetti and Cocchi. Some nuns of Santa Anna sul Prato were also implicated, but if they were prosecuted no knowiedge of it was allowed to reach the public. They seem to have formed a coterie of Illuminists to whom Ricasoli taught that all manner of indecent acts conduced to purity, if performed with the mind fixed on God; they claimed special relations with heaven and were free from sin in whatever they did for the greater glory of God. This continued for eight years; rumors spread abroad and were conveyed to the Inquisition, when Ricasoli came forward and denounced himself with expressions of contrition. A public atto di fede was held, November 28, 1641, in the great refectory of the convent of Santa Croce, attended by the Grand Duke, the Cardinal de' Medici, the nuncio and other notabilities. One of the culprits, Serafino de' Servi, had died in prison and appeared in effigy, the rest abjured de vehementi. Ricasoli, Faustina and Fantoni were condemned to perpetual irremissible prison, others to prison with the privilege of asking for pardon, while two, Cocchi and Borgeschi, had a private atto di fede and were confined in the Stinche prison at the pleasure of the Inquisition. Ricasoli, as he was led away, declared that he had acted foolishly and ignorantly, and he asked [44] pardon of the people for the scandal which he had caused; he lingered in his prison until July 1657, when he died at the age of 78, protesting to the end that he had erred through ignorance and not through lust; there was some question as to his interment, but finally he received Christian burial. The inquisitor, Fra Giovanni Muzzarelli, was sternly rebuked for misplaced mercy by the Roman Congregation and was speedily replaced by one of severer temper. ⁽⁸⁸⁾

Impostors likewise were not unknown, as appears in the career of Francesco Giuseppe Borri, a brilliant but dissolute scion of a noble Milanese house. A misadventure in Rome forced him to take asylum in a church where, in recognition of the mercy of God, he changed his life. He soon had visions and revelations, from which he constructed a new theology, showing an intimate acquaintance with the mysteries of the Trinity and of the universe. That St. Anne was conceived by the operation of the Spirit and the Virgin consequently was Deity, was one of the twenty errors set forth in his sentence. Moreover he had been selected to found the Kingdom of the Highest, in which all mankind would be brought under papal rule, and the world would live in peace for a thousand years; the philosopher's stone, of which he had the secret, would furnish the means of raising the papal armies, in the leadership of which he would be guided by St. Michael. Rome soon became dangerous for the new prophet and, in 1655, he transferred his propaganda to Milan, where he founded a secret mystical Order, the members of which were trained in meditation and mental prayer, pledged themselves to shed their blood in the execution of the work and, what was more to the purpose, contributed all their property to the common fund. The Milanese inquisitor got wind of the new sect and arrested some of the members; Borri thought of raising a tumult but decided in favor of the safer alternative of flight. His case was transferred to the Roman Congregation, which cited him, March 20, 1659, to appear within ninety days and then tried him in absentia, with the result that his effigy, with all his impious writings, was burnt on January 3, 1661. His dupes were duly prosecuted, but seem not to have been severely punished.

[45] Meanwhile he was starting on a fresh career in Northern Europe, as a man possessed of all the secrets of alchemy and medicine, with a success that even Cagliostro might have envied. Strassburg and Amsterdam had reason to repent of his seductive arts. In Hamburg, Christina of Sweden furnished him with means to prosecute the work of the Grand Arcanum. Frederic III of Denmark lavished large sums on him and even made him chief political adviser, which aroused the hatred of the heir-apparent, Christian V, on whose accession, in 1670, he was obliged to save his life by flight. He sought to find refuge in Turkey, but in Moravia, when within a day's journey of the frontier, he was arrested by mistake, on suspicion of complicity in a conspiracy in Vienna. There the papal nuncio recognized and claimed him, but Leopold I, whose favor he had speedily acquired by his chemical marvels, surrendered him only on condition that his life should be spared. Before the Inquisition he confessed his errors and attributed them to diabolical inspiration, and his sentence, September 25, 1672, was merely to perpetual prison and certain spiritual penances. Even here his good luck befriended him, for Cardinal d'Estrées, the influential ambassador of Louis XIV, in dangerous illness, asked to consult him and, on recovery, procured his transfer to easier confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, where he was allowed special privileges and sometimes to go out and visit the sick. There he remained until his death, August 20, 1695--just a century before Cagliostro came to the same end. ⁽⁸⁹⁾
 

Although the Roman Inquisition issued no general denunciations, there was a surveillance kept over the votaries of mental prayer and contemplation, in view of the extravagances to which they might be led when, abandoning themselves wholly to God, they felt themselves irresponsible for what God might cause them to do, in the rapture of Quietism. There was a little community of this kind formed in Genoa, where they were known as Sequere me, from the phrase used when addressing those whom they elected to join them. Under the lead of a Trinitarian friar, they bought a house in the suburbs, where they lived in the utmost austerity, devoting themselves to contemplation. Thus came visions and revelations that the Church was to be reformed through them by [46] a new pope, of whom they were to be the apostles. One of them communicated this to a vicar of the Inquisition who promptly reported to the tribunal. They were all summoned before it; some went into ecstasies and, as a body, they threatened the inquisitor with the vengeance of God and were thrown into prison. The Congregation of the Inquisition ordered their prosecution, which resulted in their being adjudged to be crazy rather than evil-minded. The friar was deprived of active and passive voice in his Order and the rest were dismissed with threats of the galleys if they reassembled and continued to wear the habit which they had adopted. ⁽⁹⁰⁾

More persistent was the sect known as the Pelagini which, about 1650, developed itself in the Valcamonica and spread throughout Lombardy. Giacomo Filippo di Santa Pelagia was a layman of Milan, highly esteemed for conspicuous piety. From Marco Morosini, Bishop of Brescia (1645-1654) he obtained permission to found conventicles or oratories in the Valcamonica, but it shows that mental prayer was regarded as a dangerous exercise when Morosini imposed the condition that it should not be practised in these little assemblies. The prohibition was disregarded and the devotees largely gave themselves up to contemplation, with the result that they had trances and revelations; they threw off subjection to their priests and were accused of claiming that mental prayer was essential to salvation, that none but Pelagini could be saved, that those who practised it became impeccable, that laymen could preach and hear confessions, that indulgences were worthless and that God through them would reform the world. In 1654, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (afterwards Alexander VIII) obtained the see of Brescia and by accident discovered some colporteurs distributing the Catechism of Calvin, along with the tracts of the Pelagini. In March, 1656, he sent to the Valcamonica three commissioners with verbal instructions and armed with full powers, who temporarily suppressed the oratories and made a number of arrests, but the Inquisition intervened, taking the affair out of his hands and prosecuting the leaders. ⁽⁹¹⁾

We hear nothing more of Filippo, except that he never was condemned. He probably died early in the history of the sect [47] and his memory was cherished as that of a saint with thaumaturgic power. In 1686, the Archpriest of Morbegno, in the Valtelline, was found to be distributing relics of him and collecting materials for his life and miracles, all of which he was obliged to abandon, after obeying a summons from Caichi, the Inquisitor of Como. There were also inquiries made of the Provost of Talamona as to his motives in keeping a picture of Filippo and whether it was prayed to. ⁽⁹²⁾

After Filippo's disappearance we hear of Francesco Catanei and of the Archpriest Marc Antonio Ricaldini as leaders of the sect, but Agostino Ricaldini, a brother of the latter and a married layman, was really the centre around which it gathered. In Ottoboni's prosecution, he was imprisoned in 1656 and thrice tortured, and, on September 19, 1660, he was sentenced by the Brescia tribunal to exile from the Valcamonica and was relegated to Treviso. Persisting in his errors, he was again tried in Treviso, obliged to abjure de vehementi and sentenced to perpetual prison, while a book which he had written was publicly burnt. How long his imprisonment lasted does not appear but, in 1680, we find him living in Treviso, under surveillance of the episcopal vicar-general. ⁽⁹³⁾

If Ottoboni and the Inquisition fancied that they had crushed the sect, they were mistaken. It maintained a secret existence for over twenty years, which enabled it to spread far beyond its original seat and, about 1680, it had associations and oratories for mental prayer established in Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Pesaro, Lucca and doubtless many other places, while its votaries expected it to spread through the world. Ricaldini, at Treviso, was busy in corresponding with the heads of the associations and receiving their visits. In Brescia, Bartolommeo Bona, priest of S. Rocco, presided over an oratory of sixty members and was even said to have six hundred souls under his direction. They were called Pellegrini di S. Rocco, they practised mental prayer assiduously and had even procured an episcopal licence for the association. In Verona, Giovanni Battista Bonioli guided a membership of thirty disciples, many of them persons of high consideration. For the most part the devotees seem to have been quiet and pious folk, humbly seeking salvation by the interior way, [48] but there were some who were given to extravagance. Margarita Rossi had visions and revelations, strangely repeating portions of the fantastic theology of Borri, and when written out by a believer, Don Giovanni Antonio, it was not difficult to extract from them a hundred and thirty-four errors, concerning which she was tortured as to intention as well as in caput alienum. Two others, Cosimo Dolci and Francesco Nigra had visions and prophetic insight, for which the latter was sentenced, in 1684, to five years' incarceration. ⁽⁹⁴⁾

The sect could not continue spreading indefinitely without discovery. In 1682 the Inquisition suddenly awoke to the necessity of action and it repeated an edict which it had issued in 1656, forbidding all oratories and assemblages for mental prayer. Ricaldini felt his position critical, for he had abjured de vehementi and was liable to the stake for relapse. He disappeared from Treviso and all that the Inquisition could learn was that he was somewhere on the Swiss border. At length, in 1684, his retreat was found to be Chiuro, in the Valtelline, and Antonio Ceccotti, Inquisitor of Brescia, made fruitless attempts to induce the authorities of the Valtelline and the Podestà of Brescia to unite in procuring his extradition, but in March, 1685, Ceccotti had the mortification to learn that he had died on the previous October 6th, having received all the sacraments and with the repute of a most pious Christian. ⁽⁹⁵⁾

The prominent Pelagini were duly prosecuted, but there seems to have been little vindictiveness aroused in regard to them and little heresy attributable to them. The punishments inflicted were light, for we hear, in 1685, of Bona, one of the leaders, having returned to his district and living in retirement, and of Belleri, another, being in the Valcamonica, where the bishop had appointed him missionary for the whole district. Evidently the disciples must have escaped with a warning. What the ecclesiastical authorities objected to was not Mysticism and its long-accepted practices, but organization, more or less secret, under leaders outside of the hierarchy and free from its supervision, when heated brains, under divine inspiration, indulged in dreams of regenerating the Church. It was not until the case of Molinos had called attention to other dangers that there came from Rome [49] strict orders for the suppression of all oratories and of the practice of mental prayer--that rapture of meditation which had been the distinguishing habit of mystics through the ages. ⁽⁹⁶⁾

Miguel de Molinos was a Spaniard, born probably about 1630 at Muniesa (Teruel). After obtaining at Coimbra the degree of doctor of theology, he came to Rome in 1665, in connection with a canonization--probably of San Pedro Arbués, who was beatified in 1668. There he speedily acquired distinction as a confessor and spiritual director. Innocent XI prized him so highly as to give him apartments in the papal palace; the noblest women placed themselves under his care; his reputation spread throughout Italy and his correspondence became enormous. On the day of his arrest it is said that the postage on the letters delivered that day at his house amounted to twenty-three ducats; he made a small charge to cover expenses and, in the sequestration of his property, there were found four thousand gold crowns derived from this source. The letters seized were reported variously as numbering twelve or twenty thousand, of which two hundred were from Christina of Sweden and two thousand from the Princess Borghese. The mysticism which proved so attractive, when set forth by his winning personality, had in it-- ostensibly at least--nothing that had not long since received the approbation of the Church in the writings of the great Spanish mystics and of St. François de Sales. It is true that Molinos dropped the machinery of ecstasies and visions, which loom so largely in the writings of Santa Teresa, and confined his way of perfection to the Brahmanical ideal of the annihilation of sense and intellect, the mystic silence or death, in which speech and thought and desire are no more and in which God speaks with the soul and teaches it the highest wisdom. ⁽⁹⁷⁾ This spiritualized hypnotism was in no way original with Molinos, but was the goal which all the mystic saints sought to attain. To reach it he tells [50] us the soul must abandon itself wholly to God; it must make no resistance to the thoughts or impulses which God might send or allow Satan to send; if assailed by intruding or sensual thoughts, they should not be opposed but be quietly contemned and the resultant suffering be offered as a sacrifice to God. ⁽⁹⁸⁾

This was the Quietism--the Spanish Dejamiento--which was subsequently condemned so severely; there is no question that it had its dangers if the senses were allowed to control the spirit, and the adversaries of Molinos made the most of it, but he taught that the soul must overcome temptation through patience and resignation. When souls have acquired control of themselves, he says, if a temptation attacks them they soon overcome it; passions cannot hold out against the divine strength which fills them, even if the violence is continued and is supported by suggestions of the enemy; the soul gains the victory and enjoys the infinite resultant benefit. ⁽⁹⁹⁾

All this Molinos was allowed to teach for years in the Holy City with general applause, though it had been persecuted in the Pelagini. In 1675, at the height of his popularity, he embodied his doctrine in the Guida spirituale, a little volume which came forth with the emphatic approbation of five distinguished theologians--four of them consultors or censors of the Inquisition and all of them men of high standing in their respective Orders of Franciscans, Trinitarians, Jesuits, Carmelites and Capuchins. The book had an immediate and wide circulation and was translated into many languages. Even in Spain there was a Madrid edition in 1676, one at Saragossa in 1677 and another at Seville as late as 1685, without exciting animadversion. Yet such a career as that of Molinos could not continue indefinitely without exciting hostility, none the less dangerous because prudently concealed. His immense success was provocative of envy and, if mystic contemplation was largely adopted as the surest path to salvation, what was to be the result on the infinite variety of exterior works to which the Church owed so much of its power and wealth? It was found that in many nunneries in Rome, whose confessors had adopted his views, the inmates had cast aside their rosaries and chaplets and depended wholly on contemplation. It was observed that at mass the mystic devotees did not raise their eyes at the elevation of the Host or gaze on the holy images, but pursued uninterruptedly their mental prayer. Molinos gave further occasion [51] for criticism by a tract on daily communion, in which he asserted that a soul, secure that it was not in mortal sin, could safely partake of the sacrament without previous confession--a doctrine which, however, theologically defensible, threatened, if extensively practised, largely to diminish the authority of the priesthood, while encouraging the sinner to settle his account directly with God.

To attack as a heretic a man so universally respected and so firmly entrenched as Molinos might well seem desperate, and it is not surprising that the credit for the work was attributed to the Jesuits, as the only body daring and powerful enough. The current story is that, having resolved upon it, they procured Père La Chaise to induce Louis XIV to order his ambassador, Cardinal d'Estrées to labor unceasingly for the removal of the scandal caused by the teaching of Molinos. Whether this was so is doubtful, but it is certain that the first attack came from the Jesuits, and that d'Estrées, who had professed the warmest admiration for Molinos, became his unrelenting persecutor. The campaign was opened in 1678, when Gottardo Bell' Uomo, S. J., issued at Modena a work on the comparative value of ordinary and mystic prayer, which was duly denounced to the Inquisition. Molinos had been made to recognize in various ways the coming storm, and he sought to conjure it in a fashion which revealed his conscious weakness. February 16, 1680, he addressed to the Jesuit General Oliva a long exculpatory letter. He had not attacked the Society but had always held it in the highest honor, and when, in Valencia, the University had forbidden the Jesuit College to teach theology, he was the only one who had disobeyed the order and had come to its aid. He had never decried the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola, but had recognized the vast good accomplished by them, though he held that, for those suited to it, contemplation was better than meditation. He had for some years been persecuted and stigmatized as a heretic, in writing and preaching, by the most distinguished members of the Society, but he rejoiced in this and only prayed God for those who reviled him nor, in his defence of the Guida, had he sought aught but the glory of God and, so far from defending the Begghards and Illuminati, he had always condemned them. Evidently the work of the Jesuits in discrediting him had been active and better organized than the records show, and he thought it wiser to disarm, if possible, rather than to struggle with adversaries so powerful. Oliva's [52] answer of February 28th was by no means reassuring. He complimented Molinos on his Christian spirit in returning good for evil and on the flattering terms bestowed on the Society and its founder. He had never read the books of Molinos and could not speak of them with knowledge but, if they corresponded with his letter, his disciples were doing him great wrong in applying his system of contemplation, of which only the rarest souls were capable, indiscriminately to nuns and worldly young women. Finally, he could not understand why so distinguished a member of the Society as Padre Bell' Uomo should have been brought before the Congregation of the Index, and he gave infinite thanks to God for defending him before it.

Promptly on the next day, February 29th, Molinos replied to this discouraging epistle. At much length he disculpated himself for writings and sayings falsely attributed to him. He held meditation in the highest esteem as an exercise suited to all; the loftiest form of contemplation was a gift of God bestowed on the rare souls fitted for it. He again spoke of the persecution to which he was exposed and, as for Padre Bell' Uomo, whom he did not know, if his doctrine was as sound as represented by Oliva, God would enlighten his ministers to recognize it. Oliva's rejoinder to this, on March 2d, would appear to be written in a style of studied obscurity, saying much and meaning little, but one passage reveals a source of Jesuit enmity, in alluding to the number of convents which had passed out of the direction of the Society to practise the new method. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

The effort of Molinos to propitiate his enemies had only encouraged them by its confession of weakness. Their next step was a dextrous one. Padre Paolo Segneri was not only the most popular Jesuit preacher in Italy, but his favor with Innocent XI was almost as great as that of Molinos. He was selected as the next athlete and, in 1680, he issued a little volume--" Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell' oratione," in which he argued that the highest life is that which combines activity with contemplation. He was promptly answered by Pietro Matteo Petrucci, an ardent admirer of Molinos, who was rewarded by Innocent with the see of Jesi. Segneri rejoined in a "Lettera di riposta al Sig. Ignacio Bartalini" and the controversy was fairly joined. A more aggressive antagonist was the Minorite Padre Alessandro Reggio whose [53] "Clavis Aurea qua aperiuntur errores Michaelis de Molinos" appeared in 1682 and boldly argued that the Guida revived the condemned errors of the Begghards, that Quietism destroyed all conceptions of the Trinity, while the practice of prayer without works was destructive of all the pious observances prescribed by the Church, and the teaching that temptation should be endured without resistance was dangerous and contrary to Scripture and to the doctors. Petrucci responded vigorously, while Molinos remained silent. He had, at least, the advantage of official support, for Bell' Homo's book was forbidden donec corrigatur; Segneri's "Lettera" and the "Clavis Aurea" were condemned unconditionally, and Segneri's ''Concordia," while it escaped the Index, was quietly forbidden and he was instructed to revise it. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾

The Jesuits, however, were not the only body interested in the downfall of Molinos. There is a curious anonymous tract devoted to explaining what it calls the secret policy of the Quietists, assuming their main object to be the destruction of all the religious Orders and especially of the Dominicans and Franciscans. Apparently taking advantage of the development of the Pelagini about this time, it asserts that the Quietists had organized conventicles and oratories throughout Italy; that they had a common treasury in which 14,000 ducats were found; that they flattered the secular clergy and sought to unite them in opposition to the regulars, whom they systematically decried, raking together all the stories of their corruption and ignorance. In short, Quietism was a deep-laid conspiracy, through which Molinos expected to revolutionize the Church and reduce the religious Orders to impotence. ⁽¹⁰²⁾ The only importance of the tract is as a manifestation of the attitude of the regulars towards Molinos and the hostility aroused by his success in winning from them, for his disciples, the directorship of souls which was their special province.

The enormous influence of the elements thus combining for his destruction left little doubt of the result. The first open attack was made in June, 1682, when Cardinal Caraccioli, Archbishop of Naples, a pupil of the Jesuits, reported to the pope that he found his diocese deeply infected with this new Quietism, subversive [54] of the received prescriptions of the Church, and he asked instructions for its suppression, nor was he alone in this for similar appeals came from other Italian bishops. Molinos was too firmly established in the papal favor for this to dislodge him, but the hostile forces gradually gathered strength and, in November, 1684, the Congregation of the Inquisition formally assumed consideration of the matter. At its head was Cardinal Ottoboni, a fanatic whose experience with the Pelagini, when Bishop of Brescia, had sharpened his hatred of mysticism. The spirit in which he conducted the inquest is revealed in a memorandum in his handwriting of the points to be elaborated in the next day's meeting of the Congregation--that this heresy is the worst of all and if left alone will become inextinguishable; that it is spreading in Spain through the Archbishop of Seville and in France with many books of the most dangerous nature, that it destroys the Catholic faith and all the religious Orders; that in Jesi the canons and the cura of the cathedral keep a school for its propagation; that a rich and powerful citizen of Jesi threatens the witnesses and that a vigorous commissioner must be sent there; that the monasteries of Faenza and Ravenna are infected and one in Ferrara has a Quietist confessor; that this pestilence calls for fire and steel. ⁽¹⁰³⁾ In a court presided over by so bitter a prosecutor, the judgement was foreordained.

For awhile the contending forces seem to have been equally balanced and eight months were spent in gathering testimony sufficient to justify arrest. At last, on July 3, 1685, at a meeting of the Congregation, Cardinal d'Estrées insisted that no one should leave the chamber until the arrest was ordered and executed. This was agreed to; the sbirri were despatched and Molinos was lodged in the prison of the Inquisition. ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ Yet when, on November 9th the Spanish Holy Office condemned the Guia espirituale as containing propositions savoring of heresy and Illuminism, the Congregation addressed to the pope a vigorous protest against its action on a matter which was still under considera