Fray Luis de León: A Biographical FragmentFitzmaurice-Kelly, James
History
Fray Luis de León: A Biographical Fragment
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, James
León, Luis de, 1527-1591
Though he was notoriously in weak health, the prisoner does not seem
to have received any special consideration. On the other hand, it
cannot be maintained that, at the outset, his judges treated him with
inhumanity. That Luis de Leon was nervous about himself, and that he
believed it possible he might die without warning is the impression
conveyed by a fervent act of faith which, though undated, was probably
written almost as soon as his imprisonment began. On March 31, Luis de
Leon asked for various things besides four books: one of them a box of
powder with which he was usually provided by a nun named Ana de
Espinosa to alleviate his heart-attacks.[58] This petition was
granted. Luis de Leon's request for a knife to cut his food with was
so clearly against all prison regulations that he can scarcely have
expected a favourable reply.[59] The Inquisitors met him half-way by
ordering that he should at once be supplied with a rounded spoon,
sufficient for his purpose, though useless to a prisoner of suicidal
tendencies.[60] At this stage, it cannot be said that Luis de Leon was
treated with any want of lenity. There was no reason why he should be.
He was arrested mainly on suspicion of being concerned in the (purely
imaginary) Jewish propaganda imputed to his colleagues Grajal and
Martinez de Cantalapiedra; the evidence against him was second-hand
and meagre.
Before long matters began to take a graver aspect. A definite
charge[61] emerged that some ten or eleven years earlier[62] Luis de
Leon had translated from the Hebrew into Spanish the _Song of
Solomon_, to which he appended a commentary, also in Spanish. This he
did at the request of a nun whose name is incidentally revealed as
'Doña Isabel Osorio, monja de Sancti Espíritu de Salamanca'.[63] That
Luis de Leon's proceeding was most imprudent is undeniable. With
characteristic courage and candour, in his first _confesion_ of March
6, he volunteered the admission that he had made such a rendering.[64]
At this moment he was apparently unaware that the existence of this
rendering had been already brought to the notice of the Inquisition by
Medina.[65] Nobody questions Luis de Leon's good faith. Nevertheless
one gets the impression that he felt this to be a weak point in his
case. It was. He had committed a serious indiscretion by infringing
the general prohibition of vernacular versions of any part of
Scripture. No doubt it might be contended that his rendering of the
_Song of Solomon_, and his commentary on it, were originally meant to
be used by only one private person; that the prohibition referred to
the circulation of vernacular versions; that this particular version,
made for the exclusive use of Doña Isabel Osorio, did not amount to
circulation (within the four corners of the general prohibition); and
that such circulation as had taken place had occurred against the will
of the translator. This is not mere sophistry. What seems to have
happened was this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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