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
This fearless frankness was preserved in the examination that followed
on the charges not explained in his avowal. When asked whether he knew
these things to be heretical and if his intention was to oppose the
Church, he replied that in the form of the charges he held them to be
heretical, but he had uttered them only in the way he stated, with the
intention of a good Christian and for the instruction of others, but, if
he had erred, he begged mercy with penance, and was ready to make
whatever amends were required. His confessions were duly submitted to
calificadores who reported, reasonably enough, that he denied some,
explained others and left others as they were, but that as a whole he
deserved to be reprimanded and punished, because he exceeded his
functions without discretion and, if not restrained, he would come to
utter manifold errors and heresies. Under ordinary routine his
punishment would have been exemplary, but the tribunal was controlled by
the instructions of the Suprema and, on September 28th, he was duly
reprimanded and warned to abstain in future from such utterances, for
they would be visited with rigorous punishment. He promised to do this
and was dismissed.[362]
With any one else this narrow escape, which shows the strong
disinclination to deal harshly with him, would have ensured lasting
caution, and even on Sánchez it seems to have imposed restraint for some
years. The impression, however, wore away and the irrepressible desire
to manifest his contempt for theology and theologians, and to display
the superior accuracy of his wide learning, gradually overcame prudence.
In 1588, he printed a little volume entitled _De erroribus nonnullis
Porphyrii et aliorum_ which, when subsequently examined by
calificadores, was said to prove that the author was insolent, audacious
and bitter, as were all grammarians and Erasmists; that, if its
conclusions were true, we might burn all the theology and philosophy
taught by the schoolmen, from the Master of Sentences to Caietano, and
by all the universities, from Salamanca to Bologna. Another of his works
bore the expressive title of _Paradoxos de Theulugia_, which went to two
editions and was censured as requiring expurgation. Theology seems to
have had for him the fatal fascination of the candle for the moth and,
with his temperament, he could not touch it without involving himself in
trouble. He gradually resumed his free speech and repeated his old
assertions which he had promised to suppress, and to these he added new
ones, such as approving the remark of a canon of Salamanca that he who
spoke ill of Erasmus was a fraile or an ass, adding that, if there were
no frailes in the world, none of the works of Erasmus would have been
forbidden. From 1593 to 1595, Dr. Rosales, the commissioner at
Salamanca, repeatedly forwarded to the Valladolid tribunal reports and
evidence as to his relapse in these evil ways, and urged that he should
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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