The Story of Seville. Gallichan Walter Matthew
penalty, but his estates were taken by the tribunal.
Rodrigo's relations now strove to dissuade him from renewing his endeavours to reform the Church. What could one helpless man achieve against the whole weight of authority? But Rodrigo was full of zeal. He began again to denounce the teaching of the clerics, inspired by the belief that others would soon follow him. For the second time he was arrested on a charge of heresy and sentenced to imprisonment for life.
In the Church of St. Salvador, where Rodrigo was taken on days of festival, the fervent youth would rise after the sermon and condemn the teaching of the pulpit. Only his rank saved him from the flames. He was eventually imprisoned in a monastery of San Lucar, where he died at the age of fifty. Valer's sanbenito was displayed for a long time in the metropolitan church of Seville. It was inscribed: 'Rodrigo de Valer, a citizen of Lebrixia and Seville, an apostate, and false apostle, who pretended to be sent of God.'
The teaching of Valer was not without fruit. He was the founder of a small, but fervent, sect of Lutheran Christians in Seville, whose doctrines gradually found acceptance among a number of the people. One of the reformed party was Juan Gil, known as Doctor Egidius, preacher in Seville Cathedral, who was joined by Vargas and the celebrated Constantine Ponce de la Fuente. M'Crie says that 'the small society in Seville grew insensibly, and became the parent stock, from which branches were taken and planted in the adjacent country.' Persecution was inevitable. Egidius was denounced and thrown into prison, while Vargas was murdered, and Ponce de la Fuente banished. After a long incarceration, Egidius returned to Seville; but he caught a fever, and died in a few days. De Montes says that the writings of Egidius, which were never printed, were worthy of praise. The Doctor wrote commentaries on Genesis and the Psalms, and while in prison he composed an essay on 'Bearing the Cross.'
Protestantism spread in Seville at this time. There was a church under the care of Doctor Christobal Losada, which met in the house of a lady of rank, Isabel de Baena, and was attended by the nobles Don Juan Ponce de León and Domingo de Guzman. In the Dominican Monastery of St. Paul, in the Nunnery of St. Elizabeth, and especially in the Convent of San Isidro del Campo, the new doctrines found disciples.
One of the victims of the Inquisition was Torrigiano, the Florentine sculptor, whose statue of St. Jerome is in the Museo Provincial at Seville. The monument of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey is the work of this artist, who ended his days in the cells of the Inquisitors' prison in Seville, in 1552. There is no doubt that many of the hapless prisoners died of diseases contracted in the insanitary dungeons of Seville and Triana, for Olmedus, one of the sufferers, describes the dens as vile in 'nastiness and stench.' The ordinary gaols were crowded, and many persons were immured in the Castle of Triana, and in the convents of the city.
At Triana resided Gonzales-Munebrega, Archbishop of Tarragona, whose name was coupled with that of Torquemada as a ruthless persecutor. This officer of the Inquisition might be seen by the trembling populace walking in the castle gardens, accompanied by a guard of servants. Munebrega wore rich clothes of purple and silk, and maintained great pomp. He exhibited extreme cruelty, and scoffed at the sufferings and cries of the tortured.
Llorente and Bernaldez relate some sickening details of the savage modes of torment imposed upon the victims of the Inquisition in Seville. It is not necessary that the tales of horror should be retold here. The first auto-da-fé celebrated in the city was in 1559, when Don Juan Ponce de León and several other apostates were committed to the flames in one of the chief plazas. Ponce de León was described as 'an obstinate Lutheran heretic.' The heroic Doctor Juan Gonzalez, of Moorish ancestry, was burnt upon the same day for preaching Protestant doctrines. We see him leaving the Triana gaol on the morning of execution, 'cheerful and undaunted,' though he was accompanied by his two sisters, both of whom were condemned to the stake, and had left behind in the prison his mother and two brothers. The Doctor sang the 109th Psalm, and attempted to console his sisters, whereupon a gag was thrust into his mouth.
'When they were brought to the place of execution,' writes M'Crie, 'the friars urged the females, in repeating the creed, to insert the word Roman in the clause relating to the Catholic Church. Wishing to procure liberty to him to bear his dying testimony, they said they would do as their brother did. The gag being removed, Juan Gonzalez exhorted them to add nothing to the good confession which they had already made. Instantly the executioners were ordered to strangle them, and one of the friars, turning to the crowd, exclaimed that they had died in the Roman faith.' Doctor Christobal Losada, the pastor of the Protestant church in Seville, suffered death courageously upon the same day.
Isabel de Baena, who allowed meetings of the Protestants in her house, and Maria de Bohorques were among the women of high birth who were burned in Seville. The story of the last-named lady has been told in a romance by a Spanish writer, entitled Cornelia Bororquia. Maria de Bohorques came into the grip of the Holy Office before the age of twenty-one. She was a pupil of Egidius, and a diligent student of the Scriptures. When seized and tortured by the Inquisition, she refused to name those of her friends who shared her belief. Doña Maria was then sent to the stake.
Llorente recounts that two Englishmen were burned at one of the autos of Seville. Nicholas Burton, a merchant of London, who traded with Spain, arrived with his vessel at San Lucar while the persecution was raging in Seville. Somewhat imprudently, Burton spoke contemptuously of the Inquisition, though M'Crie states that the accusation of insolence was false. Burton was burnt alive, together with William Burke, a seaman of Southampton, and a Frenchman, named Fabianne. The Holy Office then seized Burton's cargo; but a part of it belonged to a London tradesman, who sent one John Frampton to Seville, with a power of attorney, to recover the goods. Frampton failed to make good his claim after four months of negotiation, and he returned to England to find greater powers. When he landed again in Spain, the agent was arrested, put in chains, and thrown into the dungeon of Triana. The charge against him was that he had a volume of Cato in his bag. He was questioned as to his creed, and ordered to repeat the Ave Maria. Subjected to the torture of the rack, the wretched man was forced to confess anything that his torturers desired. Frampton was imprisoned for two years, and then granted his freedom. His 'Narrative' is to be found in Strype's Annals.
The unfortunate Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, who was one of the most active members of the reformed church in Seville, was seized by the Inquisition, and confined in an underground cell for two years, when dysentery put an end to his sufferings. In 1781 the last martyr perished in the flames at Seville. 'I myself,' writes Blanco White, 'saw the pile on which the last victim was sacrificed to human infallibility. It was the unhappy woman whom the Inquisition of Seville committed to the flames, under the charge of heresy, about forty years ago. She perished on a spot where thousands had met the same fate.' A traveller in Spain, named Wiffen, says: 'In the year 1842, whilst travelling in that country, I found myself in the Alameda Vieja of Seville, in front of the house formerly occupied by the Inquisition, where several of the prisoners were confined who were burned at the auto-da-fé of 1560.'
Such is the story of the Inquisition in Seville. I have not willingly dwelt upon this dark page in the history of the fair city. But it has been necessary to refer to the chronicles of this reign of terror; for the institution of the Holy Office in Seville is a matter of historic importance, and no record of the town could be in any sense complete if the annals of the Inquisition were overlooked. And in changing to a happier theme it is necessary that I should point out the repugnance that masses of the people of Seville exhibited towards the introduction of this engine of persecution in the city. Llorente, the Spanish historian of the Inquisition, tells us that when Fernando and Isabel commanded the Governors of the provinces to supply inquisitors and assistants to the royal capital, the inhabitants regarded the arrival of the agents of the Holy Office with extreme dissatisfaction, and that difficulty was experienced in collecting together 'the number of persons whose presence was necessary to the legal opening of their assembly.'
Let us view the city of Isabella the Catholic in a brighter aspect. In the year 1490 an ambassador from Lisbon came to the Alcázar of Seville to confer with the Queen concerning a proposed marriage between young Alonso, heir to the Portuguese throne, and Isabel, the Infanta of Castile, and the dearly-loved namesake of the royal mother. It was with mingled sentiments of joy and sadness that Isabel consented to the union. The month of April was chosen for the ceremony of betrothal, and it was arranged that feasts