A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
In pursuance of this policy he even descended to attempting to
propitiate Melchor Cano by offering to do whatever he would recommend.
Cano subsequently asserted, with customary mendacity, that Carranza
would have averted his fate had he adopted any of the means which he
devised and advised to save him, but it is difficult to imagine what
more he could have done.[160] Towards the close of November he wrote to
Valdés and the Suprema and to other influential persons professing his
submission. He explained the reasons which had led him to write his book
in the vernacular after commencing it in Latin; it could readily be
suppressed for, on reaching Valladolid, he had withdrawn the edition
from the printer; there were no copies in the bookshops and what he had
brought with him he would surrender, while the dozen or so that had been
sent to Spain could easily be called in as the recipients were all
known. Then, on December 9th, he proposed to the Suprema that the book
should be prohibited in Spanish and be returned to him for correction
and translation into Latin.[161] Had the real object of Valdés been the
ostensible one of preserving the faith, this would have amply sufficed;
the book would have been suppressed and the public humiliation of the
Archbishop of Toledo, so distinguished for his services to religion,
would have been an amply deterrent warning to all indiscreet
theologians. It was a not unnatural burst of indignation when, in a
letter to Domingo de Soto, November 14th, he bitterly pointed out how
the heretics would rejoice to know that Fray Bartolomé de Miranda was
treated in Spain as he had treated them in England and Flanders and
that, after he had burnt them to enforce the doctrines of his book, it
was pronounced in Spain unfit to be read.[162] Carranza's submission
brought no result save to encourage his enemies, who put him off with
vague replies while awaiting the success of their application to the
pope.
Meanwhile he had reached Toledo, October 13th, and had applied himself
actively to his duties. He was rigid in the performance of divine
service, he visited prisons, hospitals and convents, he put an end to
the sale of offices and charging fees for licences, he revised the
fee-bill of his court, he enforced the residence of parish priests and
was especially careful in the distribution of preferment--in short he
was a practical as well as theoretical reformer. His charity also was
boundless, for he used to say that all he needed was a Dominican habit
and that whatever God gave him was for the poor. Thus during his ten
months of incumbency, he distributed more than eighty thousand ducats in
marrying orphans, redeeming captives, supporting widows, sending
students to universities and in gifts to hospitals.[163] He was a model
bishop, and the resolute fidelity with which the chapter of Toledo
supported his cause to the end shows the impression made on a body
which, in Spanish churches, was usually at odds with its prelate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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