A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
Tridentine fathers included in their decree a demand for a perfected
edition, but the labor was great and was not concluded until 1592, when
the Clementine text was issued, with thousands of emendations. Meanwhile
to question its accuracy was to venture on dangerous ground and to
invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one of the
calificadores, during Fray Luis's trial, asserted "Catholic doctors
affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate,
as the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew
and Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the
means of confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free
interpretation."[337] Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a
lecture on the subject four years before, he had maintained the accuracy
of the Hebrew text, contending that St. Jerome the translator was not
inspired, nor were the words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover
that the Tridentine decree in no way affirmed such verbal
inspiration.[338]
On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously,
at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo
Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an
exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray
Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy,
which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular
versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous
proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by
charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory
dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon.
[Sidenote: _LUIS DE LEON_]
In December 1571, de Castro and Medina presented formal denunciations of
Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez, to the Salamanca commissioner of the
Valladolid tribunal, charging them with denying the authority of the
Vulgate and preferring the interpretations of the rabbis to those of the
fathers, while the circulation of Canticles in the vernacular was not
forgotten. Other accusers, including students, joined in the attack,
making thirteen in all, with a formidable body of denunciations. Grajal
was soon afterwards arrested and Fray Luis, warned of the impending
danger, presented himself, March 6, 1572, to Diego González, the former
inquisitor of Carranza, then on a visitation at Salamanca, with a copy
of his lecture on the Vulgate and the propositions drawn from it, and
also his work on Canticles. He asked to have them examined and professed
entire submission to the Church, with readiness to withdraw or revoke
anything that might be found in the slightest degree objectionable.[339]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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