WEBVTT

1
00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:23.199
Hello and Welcome to Western CIV.
Episode two hundred and seventy eight. The

2
00:00:23.239 --> 00:00:30.600
Inquisition and the Reformation. It's likely, if not certain, that the Inquisition

3
00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:34.479
would have led a much more sheltered
existence had it not been for one thing,

4
00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:43.560
the Reformation. Suddenly there was heresy, real heresy, a lot of

5
00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:50.719
heresy, at least from the perspective
of the Roman Catholic Church. The Church,

6
00:00:51.159 --> 00:00:54.479
i guess, really, for the
first time ever, or at least

7
00:00:54.600 --> 00:01:00.640
for the first time in about twelve
hundred years, found itself on the defensive.

8
00:01:02.159 --> 00:01:10.280
Anything that was not strictly orthodoxy had
to go. Heresy had to be

9
00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:18.560
exercised from the land, root and
branch. For example, there was a

10
00:01:18.640 --> 00:01:23.640
movement in fifteenth century Spain that emphasized
a passive union between God and the soul.

11
00:01:25.799 --> 00:01:30.599
The method was known as abandonment,
but this highly mystical movement was much

12
00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:38.280
more often referred to as Illuminism and
its followers Illuminists absent the Reformation and Martin

13
00:01:38.359 --> 00:01:45.439
Luther. This movement probably just escapes
the notice of Rome, and it did

14
00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:51.280
for a long time. No one
cared. But with everything and everyone on

15
00:01:51.319 --> 00:01:59.280
a high alert, the Inquisition stepped
in and completely eviscerated the Illuminists in fifteen

16
00:01:59.359 --> 00:02:05.840
twenty four. Or I mentioned this
during the Galileo episodes, but it is

17
00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:10.639
worth remembering that the Reformation impacted all
of Europe, whether or not there were

18
00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:17.439
any Protestants in said kingdom. The
elimination of the Illuminists is a great example

19
00:02:17.439 --> 00:02:23.000
of this phenomenon. Oh and by
the way, nearly every person charged with

20
00:02:23.039 --> 00:02:30.680
heresy in the Illuminist controversy was a
converso to be clear, there had been

21
00:02:30.759 --> 00:02:38.599
nothing remotely Jewish about the Illuminist movement, which is interesting because stamping out secret

22
00:02:38.680 --> 00:02:45.400
Judaism was ostensibly what the inquisitors were
supposed to do. The threat, it

23
00:02:45.479 --> 00:02:52.639
seemed, had changed. The threat
was now Lutheranism, and as a result,

24
00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:59.719
one of Europe's leading intellectuals found his
works under increasing scrutiny in Spain Erasmus.

25
00:03:00.159 --> 00:03:05.199
His last surviving letter, directed to
the Spanish was in fifteen thirty three.

26
00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:12.599
He died three years later. While
never expressly banned, Erasmuicism was looked

27
00:03:12.639 --> 00:03:17.919
upon with suspicion by the Spanish Inquisition. To many, his movement and his

28
00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:25.280
ideas smacked too much of Protestantism to
be tolerated. This Lutheran threat, however,

29
00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:30.960
took a long time to develop.
In fifteen twenty, Luther had probably

30
00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:36.560
never been heard of in Spain.
Lutheran books were first sent to the Peninsula,

31
00:03:36.639 --> 00:03:39.960
with what result we do not know, by Luther's publisher in fifteen nineteen.

32
00:03:42.039 --> 00:03:46.000
The first Spaniards to come into contact
with his teachings were those who accompanied

33
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:50.560
the emperor to Germany. Some of
them, seeing him only as a reformer,

34
00:03:50.879 --> 00:03:55.520
were actually favorable to his ideas.
However, a full generation went by

35
00:03:55.919 --> 00:04:00.960
and Lutheranism failed to take brute in
Spain. There was in those years no

36
00:04:01.159 --> 00:04:09.199
atmosphere of restriction or repression. Before
fifteen fifty eight, possibly less than fifty

37
00:04:09.319 --> 00:04:15.240
cases of alleged Lutheranism among Spaniards came
to the notice of the inquisitors. In

38
00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:20.920
most of them it's difficult to identify
specifically Protestant beliefs. There was some curiosity

39
00:04:20.959 --> 00:04:25.639
about the heresies that Lutheran was propounding, but there was little sign that anyone

40
00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:30.120
took an active interest in his notions. What explanation can be offered for this

41
00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:38.199
astonishing inability of Protestant ideas to ever
come to Spain with its unreformed church A

42
00:04:38.240 --> 00:04:44.800
somewhat backward clergy, and a decidedly
medieval institution i e. The Inquisition in

43
00:04:44.920 --> 00:04:50.319
full force. Spain should have been
ripe for conquest by the Reformation, but

44
00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:59.959
in one major respect, Spain was
peculiarly unfertile ground. Unlike England, France

45
00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:04.920
and Germany, Spain had not,
since the early Middle Ages experienced a single

46
00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:13.759
popular heresy. All its ideological struggles
since the reconquest had been directed against the

47
00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:21.079
minority religions Judaism in Islam. There
was consequently no native heresy like the followers

48
00:05:21.079 --> 00:05:28.279
of John Wycliffe in England, on
which German ideas could be built. Moreover,

49
00:05:28.639 --> 00:05:34.319
Spain was the only European country to
possess a national institution the Inquisition dedicated

50
00:05:34.319 --> 00:05:41.040
to the elimination of heresy. Because
of its vigilance and by coordinating its efforts

51
00:05:41.079 --> 00:05:46.680
throughout the peninsula, it's possible that
the Inquisition checked the seeds of heresy Lutheranism

52
00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:53.160
before they could be sown. In
the fifteen forties, possibly the only Spanish

53
00:05:53.199 --> 00:06:00.439
intellectuals to come directly into contact with
Lutheranism were those in foreign universities. Certainly,

54
00:06:00.519 --> 00:06:06.079
i'mong the peasant class Spaniards would occasionally
come into contact with immigrant workers from

55
00:06:06.279 --> 00:06:12.040
someplace like France or perhaps the Netherlands, who had direct contact with these new

56
00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:16.959
beliefs. But it seems that ideas
transmitted at this level were either confused,

57
00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:25.720
disorted, or just frankly unlikely to
strike root anywhere. But to Charles the

58
00:06:25.759 --> 00:06:30.360
Fifth, who by the middle of
the century was living in retirement, the

59
00:06:30.399 --> 00:06:35.199
threat was real. In May fifteen
fifty eight, he wrote a scathing letter

60
00:06:35.319 --> 00:06:40.560
to Juana, his daughter and regent
in the absence of Philip IOND in the

61
00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:46.839
Netherlands, that the only answer to
the Protestant menace was repression. I think

62
00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:51.839
the letter speaks for itself. Quote, I'm very satisfied with what you have

63
00:06:51.920 --> 00:06:57.240
written to the King informing him of
what is happening about the people imprisoned as

64
00:06:57.319 --> 00:07:00.879
Lutherans, more of whom are being
daily discovered. But believe me, my

65
00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:06.279
daughter, this business has caused and
still causes me, more anxiety and pain

66
00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:11.720
than I can express. For while
the King and I were abroad, these

67
00:07:11.759 --> 00:07:15.439
realms remained in perfect peace, free
from calamity. But now that I have

68
00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:21.040
returned here to rest and recuperate and
serve our Lord, this great outrage and

69
00:07:21.160 --> 00:07:28.920
treachery implicating such notable persons occurs in
my presence and in yours. You know

70
00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:32.199
that because of this I suffered,
and I went through great trials and expenses

71
00:07:32.360 --> 00:07:36.639
in Germany, and lost so much
of my good health. Were it not

72
00:07:36.839 --> 00:07:42.240
for the conviction I have that you
and members of your councils will find a

73
00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:48.319
radical cure to this unfortunate situation,
punishing the guilty throughout, to spreading and

74
00:07:48.439 --> 00:07:54.319
prevent it. I do not know
whether I could restrain myself leaving here to

75
00:07:54.319 --> 00:07:58.839
settle the matter. Since this affair
is more important for the service of our

76
00:07:58.879 --> 00:08:03.639
Lord and the good preservation of these
realms than any other, and since it

77
00:08:03.720 --> 00:08:07.439
is only in its beginnings with such
small forces that they can easily be put

78
00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:13.639
down, it is necessary to place
the greatest strength and weight on a quick

79
00:08:13.759 --> 00:08:18.560
renemedy and exemplary punishment. I do
not know whether it will be enough in

80
00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:24.000
these cases to follow the usual practice
by which, according to common law,

81
00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:28.600
all those who beg for mercy and
have their confession accepted are pardoned with a

82
00:08:28.680 --> 00:08:33.440
light penance. If it is a
first offense. Such people, if set

83
00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:37.600
free, are at liberty to commit
the same offense, particularly if they are

84
00:08:37.759 --> 00:08:43.120
educated persons. One can imagine the
evil consequences, for it is clear they

85
00:08:43.159 --> 00:08:48.000
cannot act without armed organization and leaders, and so it must be seen whether

86
00:08:48.039 --> 00:08:54.960
they can be preceded against as creators
of sedition, upheaval, riots and disturbance

87
00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:58.519
in the state. They would then
be guilty of rebellion and could not expect

88
00:08:58.519 --> 00:09:05.360
any mercy in this connection. I
cannot omit to mention what was and is

89
00:09:05.399 --> 00:09:11.200
the custom in Flanders. I wanted
to introduce the inquisition to punish the heresies

90
00:09:11.519 --> 00:09:16.519
that some people had caught from neighboring
Germany and England and even France. Everyone

91
00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:20.000
opposed this on the grounds that there
were no Jews among them. Finally,

92
00:09:20.279 --> 00:09:26.200
an order was issued declaring that all
people of whatever state and condition, who

93
00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:33.159
came under certain specified categories were to
be ipso facto burnt and their goods confiscated.

94
00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:37.519
Necessity obliged me to act in this
way. I do not know what

95
00:09:37.600 --> 00:09:41.080
the King, my son, has
done since then, but I think that

96
00:09:41.200 --> 00:09:46.879
the same reason will have made him
continue as I did, because I advised

97
00:09:46.159 --> 00:09:52.559
and begged him to be very severe
in dealing with these people. Leave me,

98
00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:56.080
my daughter. If so great an
evil is not suppressed and remedied without

99
00:09:56.120 --> 00:10:01.080
distinction of persons from the very beginning. Cannot promise that the King or anyone

100
00:10:01.120 --> 00:10:07.200
else will be in a position to
do it afterwards. End quote. This

101
00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:11.200
letter marks a turning point in Spanish
history, and frankly a turning point when

102
00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:18.320
we're talking about the relationship between governments
and religion. Thanks to the fear Charles

103
00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:24.120
expressed, anything outside one hundred percent
Catholic Orthodoxy was to be considered a dire

104
00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:30.960
threat and must be destroyed. Charles
just poured gasoline on the fires of the

105
00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:37.720
Inquisition, and the effect was rather
immediate. In fifteen sixty two alone,

106
00:10:39.320 --> 00:10:46.559
the Inquisition pursued eighty eight cases against
Protestants or alleged Protestants. Of these,

107
00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:54.639
eighteen were burned, a whopping twenty
point four percent of those charged. I

108
00:10:54.679 --> 00:11:00.840
suppose the proof was in the pudding, though from the Inquisition's perspective. With

109
00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:07.639
those burnings, Protestantism was almost completely
extinguished in Spain. The fifteen sixty two

110
00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:15.879
burnings also instilled within the Spanish population
a tremendous fear of Lutherans. They saw

111
00:11:15.960 --> 00:11:20.600
Lutherans everywhere, and they were not
shy about coming forward with accusations against their

112
00:11:20.639 --> 00:11:28.600
neighbors, especially if they were cavalier
enough to make anti clerical statements. Now

113
00:11:28.759 --> 00:11:33.480
they needn't be. Of course,
by the late fifteen sixties, neither Judaism

114
00:11:33.639 --> 00:11:39.000
nor Protestantism was much of a threatn
in Spain. Somewhat ironically, I suppose

115
00:11:39.799 --> 00:11:43.559
less people died in Spain as a
result of religious conflict in those years than

116
00:11:43.559 --> 00:11:48.080
elsewhere in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition
condemned to die just under one hundred people

117
00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:54.399
between fifteen fifty nine and fifteen sixty
six, and of those, remember,

118
00:11:54.519 --> 00:12:00.960
eighteen died in fifteen sixty two.
Bloody Mary executed three times that number in

119
00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:07.080
England, Henry the second twice as
many in France, and in the Netherlands

120
00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:13.480
over ten times that number would die. So oddly, I guess the Inquisition

121
00:12:15.159 --> 00:12:22.360
worked, though the real answer was
probably that Spanish society was simply more insular

122
00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:28.240
at this point than elsewhere in Europe. There were just less Protestants to begin

123
00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:37.200
with. Protestantism never developed in Spain. There were Spanish Protestants, of course,

124
00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:43.360
but most emigrated. You could find
pockets of Spanish Protestants dotted throughout Europe.

125
00:12:45.360 --> 00:12:48.159
The just weren't any in Spain,
at least none that we know of.

126
00:12:48.159 --> 00:12:52.879
Of course, there must have been
some, we just don't know about

127
00:12:52.919 --> 00:12:58.519
them. The real brunt of the
attack of so called Lutheranism was born by

128
00:12:58.600 --> 00:13:05.200
foreign visitors like traders and sailors,
and by foreign residents in Spain. The

129
00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:11.759
heresy scare intensified xenophobia among many sections
of the population, and it made Spain,

130
00:13:11.879 --> 00:13:16.559
at least for a time, unsafe
for foreigners. The hole the Office

131
00:13:16.600 --> 00:13:22.000
had been active against foreigners from as
early as fifteen thirty. Spain's extensive trade

132
00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:26.000
with Northern Europe made contact with outsiders
inevitable, especially in the ports. The

133
00:13:26.039 --> 00:13:31.840
first Protestant foreigner to be burnt by
the Inquisition was young John Tack, an

134
00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:35.399
Englishman of Flemish origin. He was
burnt in Bilbao in May of fifteen thirty

135
00:13:35.480 --> 00:13:41.799
nine. Up until fifteen sixty nine, other foreigners were arrested and quote unquote

136
00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:52.720
reconciled by the inquisitioners. Throughout its
existence, the Spanish Inquisition remained almost inherently

137
00:13:52.159 --> 00:13:58.799
racist and xenophobic. It once pointed
the finger exclusively at the Moor, then

138
00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:05.919
the Jew, then at the Converso, and finally at the foreign Protestant though

139
00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:09.120
again, of course I hate to
keep pointing this out, but this was

140
00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:16.240
mainly in Castile. Even in Aragon, most of the inquisitors were Castilian,

141
00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:22.080
and there they tended to treat even
the native Aragonese with suspicion, especially those

142
00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:28.320
from Catalan or the Basque region.
Now, the failure of the Protestant cause

143
00:14:28.360 --> 00:14:35.399
in the Mediterranean inevitably raises the question
of why no Reformation occurred in Spain.

144
00:14:35.799 --> 00:14:41.559
Efficiency of repression can't be the only
answer. Of course, repression was,

145
00:14:41.799 --> 00:14:46.639
as we'll see, more efficient and
more brutal in some other countries, notably

146
00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:52.000
the Netherlands, but the persecution there
didn't end the Reformation. Now, Philip

147
00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:58.399
the second was convinced that it was
timely repression and continuous vigilance that kept the

148
00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:05.159
inquisition in Czech Consider what he wrote
in fifteen sixty nine quote, had there

149
00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:07.720
been no inquisition, there would be
many more heretics in the country would be

150
00:15:07.759 --> 00:15:11.279
much more afflicted, as are those
where there is no inquisition, as in

151
00:15:11.320 --> 00:15:18.200
Spain end quote. Perhaps this is
what the Spanish king believed, but historians

152
00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:24.360
don't think it's true, nor is
there any possibility to maintain that Spain was

153
00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:31.399
simply sealed off from heresy sort of
fortress Spain. The outdated image of an

154
00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:37.120
iron curtain or a great firewall of
China back in the sixteenth century of the

155
00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:39.360
Inquisition descending on the country and cutting
it off from the rest of the world

156
00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:46.480
simply bears no relation to reality.
In the fifteen sixties and fifteen fifties,

157
00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:50.600
very many Spaniards were traveling abroad.
More Spaniards than ever before, published,

158
00:15:52.519 --> 00:15:56.919
most of them their books in foreign
areas. Tens of thousands, mainly Castilians,

159
00:15:58.360 --> 00:16:02.559
served overseas in the army, where
they often rubbed shoulders with people of

160
00:16:02.639 --> 00:16:07.519
other faiths. The land frontier and
the Pyrenees was occasionally watched, sometimes because

161
00:16:07.559 --> 00:16:11.600
of the danger of military intervention by
the French, but it was never and

162
00:16:11.679 --> 00:16:15.440
it could never be closed. Indeed, there was never any great wall,

163
00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:22.440
nor ever even any Hadrian's wall across
the Pyrenees. Throughout the late sixteenth century,

164
00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:26.559
Spaniards drifted at will over the frontier. Some went to trade, some

165
00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:30.200
to be educated, some even wanted
to join the Calvinists in Geneva. At

166
00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:36.360
the same time, many foreigners,
principally artisans, came to Spain it was

167
00:16:36.399 --> 00:16:41.080
a handful of these men, through
careless actions, often on their part,

168
00:16:41.399 --> 00:16:45.879
again criticizing the clergy and open who
fell into the hands of the Inquisition.

169
00:16:48.679 --> 00:16:52.360
Now, the difficulty in controlling the
Pyrenees Frontier, which was Spain's chief overland

170
00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:57.600
link with the outside world, comes
through in the anxious correspondence of the ambassador

171
00:16:57.720 --> 00:17:02.360
of France in the fifteen sixties,
a man by the name of Francis Dealva.

172
00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:07.039
In fifteen sixty four and fifteen sixty
five, he sent reports to the

173
00:17:07.119 --> 00:17:11.799
King about booksellers in Saragosa, men
who had come to Leon and to loose

174
00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:15.759
to purchase books on law and philosophy
and then take them home. In one

175
00:17:15.799 --> 00:17:19.119
of the cases, he said the
bookseller had links to Geneva. This importation

176
00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:22.680
of foreign books, as we may
observe, was carried out in contravention of

177
00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:29.440
the laws of Castile. Alva also
confirmed that quote many books, catechisms and

178
00:17:29.480 --> 00:17:33.960
psalters in Basque had passed through to
loose to Spain end quote. I suppose,

179
00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:37.640
somewhat ironically, de Alva was a
Basque, so he understood what he

180
00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:42.480
was talking about. Books in Catalan, he also reported, had been taken

181
00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:48.839
into Catalonia and other heretical books had
gone to Pamblona. In those same weeks,

182
00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:52.359
the Archbishop of Bordeaux border a report
on a citizen of Burgos who had

183
00:17:52.440 --> 00:17:57.640
quote taken four or five loads of
heretical books in Spanish and in Latin through

184
00:17:57.680 --> 00:18:04.319
the mountains of Jaca. Despite the
open frontier, heresy failed to penetrate it

185
00:18:04.359 --> 00:18:11.279
all. The Reformation in the end, for Spaniards remained a phenomenon that did

186
00:18:11.319 --> 00:18:29.960
not affect them. For the balance
of today's show, I want to talk

187
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.680
about the Inquisition and its relationship to
the arts and sciences. Obviously the latter

188
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:40.839
has a lot of relevance when it
comes to Galileo. Now. Early on,

189
00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:47.240
there's some evidence of major book confiscations
throughout Spain, especially in a place

190
00:18:47.279 --> 00:18:52.359
like Salamanca. Clearly Hebrew books were
off limits and would be seized by the

191
00:18:52.359 --> 00:18:59.799
Inquisition. The inquisitors also seemed to
have frowned on magic and astrology, though

192
00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:04.519
it's not clear why. But it
was the printing press again I know again

193
00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:14.559
that really changed the game. Quickly
the Church and especially the Inquisition realized it

194
00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:19.359
had to be involved with the printing
process. Given the changes in scale,

195
00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:26.759
you could just produce so many more
books, so much quicker, And this

196
00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:33.279
was new. The advent of the
printing press brought the invention of pre publication

197
00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:40.640
censorship. It just didn't exist in
Europe prior to that invention. It didn't

198
00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:47.480
need to. The Council of Trent
gave bishops the right to oversee book production

199
00:19:48.359 --> 00:19:55.839
starting in fifteen sixty four, but
by then the various European states were already

200
00:19:55.960 --> 00:20:03.079
deeply invested in the policy of censorship. England passed censorship laws in fifteen thirty

201
00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:07.599
eight, and throughout Italy censorship had
become a mainstay by the end of the

202
00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:15.640
fifteen forties. Now, technically the
institution itself of the Inquisition had no power

203
00:20:15.720 --> 00:20:23.000
to license or prevent the licensing of
books. Everything it did was through other

204
00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:32.599
institutions. But it was very aggressive
in coming after books with which it disagreed.

205
00:20:33.319 --> 00:20:37.519
Now, generally, in what I'm
meant there, we're really talking about

206
00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:44.599
post publication. Starting in the fifteen
thirties and fifteen forties, the Inquisition attempted

207
00:20:44.599 --> 00:20:48.000
to stop the entry of heretical literature
into the Peninsula. And I hope it

208
00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:53.359
goes without saying, but every time
I say the word heretical literature throughout the

209
00:20:53.359 --> 00:20:59.880
rest of this episode. I mean
subjectively from the perspective of the Inquisition.

210
00:21:00.319 --> 00:21:06.039
As the only Spanish tribunal with authority
over all of Spain, it was able

211
00:21:06.079 --> 00:21:11.119
to act in areas like seaports where
state officials could not. The government took

212
00:21:11.160 --> 00:21:18.559
no direct initiative over controlling literature until
the shock discovery of multiple Protestants in Spain

213
00:21:18.599 --> 00:21:23.519
in fifteen fifty eight. That event
stung the Regent Juana because Charles was absent

214
00:21:23.799 --> 00:21:30.119
into action. On the seventh of
September fifteen fifty eight, she issued a

215
00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:37.279
radical decree of control. The law
banned the introduction into cast Deal of all

216
00:21:37.400 --> 00:21:42.279
books printed in other realms in Spanish, obliged printers to seek licenses from the

217
00:21:42.319 --> 00:21:48.319
Council of cast Deal, and laid
down a strict procedure for the operation of

218
00:21:48.480 --> 00:21:55.759
censorship. Contravention of any of these
points would be punished by death and confiscation,

219
00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:00.759
not that you would care about the
latter given the former. At the

220
00:22:00.759 --> 00:22:04.359
same time, the Inquisition was allowed
to issue licenses when printing for its own

221
00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:11.039
purposes. According to the new rules, manuscripts were to be checked and censored

222
00:22:11.079 --> 00:22:15.920
both before and after publication, and
all booksellers were to keep by them a

223
00:22:15.920 --> 00:22:22.640
copy of the Index of prohibited books. So wide ranging was the decree of

224
00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:30.960
fifteen fifty eight that it remained theoretically
in force until the nineteenth century. Now

225
00:22:32.039 --> 00:22:36.400
Philip was in Brussels, Philip the
King of Spain, from which he wrote

226
00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:41.920
approvingly about all these measures taken by
his sister. Heresy was spreading, he

227
00:22:41.960 --> 00:22:45.839
said, throughout the European universities,
and so as a consequence, just before

228
00:22:45.839 --> 00:22:51.680
returning to Spain, the king banned
the Netherlands subjects from studying in France.

229
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:56.680
When he arrived in the peninsula in
fifteen fifty nine, he issued an order

230
00:22:56.720 --> 00:23:02.119
on the twenty second November to all
subjects of the Crown of Castile studying abroad

231
00:23:02.759 --> 00:23:07.400
or teaching abroad, that they must
return within four months. Of course,

232
00:23:08.119 --> 00:23:12.799
there were a few chinks in the
armor of this censorship, and it's really

233
00:23:12.839 --> 00:23:22.119
almost idea censorship legislation. First,
it only impacted Castilians. Philip could just

234
00:23:22.559 --> 00:23:27.279
order the legislation to be carried out
in Castile, but to do so in

235
00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:33.640
Aragon he would need to summon the
courtes which he refused to do so.

236
00:23:33.720 --> 00:23:41.359
The entire eastern half of the Iberian
Peninsula was exempt from all of these laws.

237
00:23:41.720 --> 00:23:49.160
Second, control over imports again applied
to Castile and Castile alone. Outside

238
00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:55.160
Castile, the government had to rely
solely on the inquisition and the methods within

239
00:23:55.240 --> 00:24:00.960
its disposal to oversee the book trade. Third, the fact of the matter

240
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:04.920
remained that even in the sixteenth century, Spain had virtually no printing industry of

241
00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:11.720
its own. It relied almost exclusively
on foreign imports for books. Hence,

242
00:24:12.119 --> 00:24:18.920
the Spanish government had a lot less
control over book printing because no books were

243
00:24:18.200 --> 00:24:25.759
actually being printed in Spain. And
reality, as you can probably tell,

244
00:24:26.319 --> 00:24:32.039
all of these laws amount to little
bit more than a trade embargo. But

245
00:24:32.119 --> 00:24:38.079
of course the biggest problem was enforcement. Most Spaniards simply ignored the law.

246
00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:44.759
It was an easy law to get
around, especially because it had a huge

247
00:24:44.759 --> 00:24:52.039
loophole. It did not cover reprints, so if you wanted to import a

248
00:24:52.039 --> 00:24:56.759
banned book, all you had to
do was branded as a reprint and it

249
00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:03.119
was exempt from censorship laws. So
you could make substantial changes to a book,

250
00:25:03.599 --> 00:25:07.519
call it a reprint, and you
were good. Imagine this, You

251
00:25:07.519 --> 00:25:14.799
could have a sixteenth century cookbook that's
been approved and then you just stuff Protestant

252
00:25:14.799 --> 00:25:18.319
literature into it, call it a
reprint, and you get exempted. You

253
00:25:18.359 --> 00:25:22.960
can see why this didn't work,
and in the end, of course,

254
00:25:22.200 --> 00:25:29.839
it didn't. Throughout Europe, the
Reformation generated both hopes and fears, ushering

255
00:25:29.880 --> 00:25:33.599
in a period of precaution. One
of the biggest changes the Reformation brought was

256
00:25:33.640 --> 00:25:41.200
the end of academic unity. The
old idea of an international, pan European

257
00:25:41.279 --> 00:25:48.359
community of men of letters simply melted
away. Academics now never left their home

258
00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:56.519
countries, and what was tolerated varied
dramatically from kingdom to kingdom. Institutions began

259
00:25:56.599 --> 00:26:00.039
to give classes in the vernacular now
rather than Latin, because there was no

260
00:26:00.200 --> 00:26:07.039
need for a universal language. The
frontiers, of course, between France and

261
00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:11.400
Spain in reality, never really closed, given that Castilians were the only ones

262
00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:17.720
ever subject to these new restrictions.
Hence, in the late fifteen forties,

263
00:26:18.039 --> 00:26:23.640
a veritable storm of unlicensed Bibles flooded
into Spain. Between fifteen fifty one and

264
00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:29.440
fifteen fifty two, the Inquisition finally
stepped in and it tried to crack down

265
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:34.079
on these unlicensed publications, and the
sheer scale of what they found proved how

266
00:26:34.119 --> 00:26:41.440
pointless the endeavor was. In Seville
alone, the inquisitors rounded up four hundred

267
00:26:41.480 --> 00:26:48.680
and fifty illegal volumes, and clearly
this was a tip of the Iceberg situation.

268
00:26:49.400 --> 00:26:56.920
Exasperated, the Inquisition simply issued a
blanket prohibition of sixty five unlicensed editions

269
00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:03.160
in fifteen fifty four. Once again, the evidence suggests this did nothing to

270
00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:11.160
stem the tide of new bibles,
and censorship encouraged a practice which soon became

271
00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:17.319
common, the burning of books.
Book burning was not new, and Burr

272
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:22.799
Constantine had burned all Aryan books that
he could find in the fourth century CE.

273
00:27:23.119 --> 00:27:29.960
The Medieval Inquisition had followed suit.
In the sixteenth century. The practice

274
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.720
of book burning was common in both
France and Italy. In fifteen sixty one,

275
00:27:36.200 --> 00:27:40.160
an inquisitor wrote a letter asking what
to do with all the books that

276
00:27:40.200 --> 00:27:42.559
he had rounded up. There were
many books of hours, he said,

277
00:27:42.559 --> 00:27:48.559
which could be easily corrected and resold, But the inquisition replied, quote,

278
00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:56.359
burn them. And what of the
bibles? Burned them? And the books

279
00:27:56.359 --> 00:28:03.559
of medicine, many with superstitious materials, burn them end quote. This drastic

280
00:28:03.640 --> 00:28:08.079
solution, luckily, was not always
applied. As I mentioned, the flow

281
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:12.720
of books was impossible to stop completely, since Spain depended on imports for much

282
00:28:12.759 --> 00:28:18.240
of its literature. Quote. From
one hour to the next, books keep

283
00:28:18.359 --> 00:28:23.680
arriving from Germany end quote, commented
the Inquisition. In fifteen thirty two,

284
00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:30.119
its officials were ordered to keep watch
at seaports. Special attention was paid to

285
00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:34.920
the Basque coast. In fifteen fifty
three, for perhaps the first time,

286
00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:41.519
detailed instructions were issued to inquisitors about
how to carry out visits to foreign ships

287
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:47.839
in Spanish ports, but few heretical
books were ever found. The real victims

288
00:28:47.839 --> 00:28:52.200
of the vigilance were the booksellers.
From fifteen fifty nine, when a shipment

289
00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:57.079
of three thousand books destined for Alcala
was seized on a French vessel in San

290
00:28:57.200 --> 00:29:04.000
Sebastian, booksellers in Spain had to
put up with wholesale embargoes of their imports.

291
00:29:04.759 --> 00:29:11.359
In general, the shipments were neither
confiscated nor censored. They were simply

292
00:29:11.400 --> 00:29:17.680
delayed until the bureaucracy had decided that
no illegal imports were taking place. In

293
00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:22.319
fifteen sixty four, the Inquisition ordered
its officials in Bilbao and San Sebastian to

294
00:29:22.359 --> 00:29:27.839
send on to booksellers in Medina two
hundred and forty five bales of books imported

295
00:29:27.839 --> 00:29:34.599
from Lyon three years later. Both
books hadn't moved, they were still in

296
00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:41.359
their ports. Hence, the impact
on Spaniards on the ability to acquire literature

297
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:48.640
and books was dramatic, while the
impact on howretical literature was negligible to nil.

298
00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:52.880
The greatest damage of all in any
system of censorship, or this one,

299
00:29:53.440 --> 00:30:00.559
was suffered by the book itself.
Some books probably disappeared altogether, exclusively

300
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:03.279
through the fault of the Inquisition.
A report drawn up for them at the

301
00:30:03.359 --> 00:30:07.960
end of the sixteenth century says that
quote many, to avoid taking their books

302
00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:12.759
to the inquisitors, burn not only
those prohibited and to be expurged, but

303
00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:18.039
even those that are approved and harmless, or else get rid of them or

304
00:30:18.079 --> 00:30:22.000
sell them for a pittance. In
this way, an infinite number are neither

305
00:30:22.079 --> 00:30:26.680
examined nor corrected, but are eventually
lost to nobody's advantage. For their owners

306
00:30:26.680 --> 00:30:32.240
suffered the great losses, and what
is more important, a great many books

307
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:36.839
disappear end quote. And this brings
us to one of the myths of the

308
00:30:36.880 --> 00:30:41.160
Inquisition, that it's set out to
crush intellectuals. Sure, it was inevitable

309
00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:45.839
that an independent minded thinker and a
body designed to ensure a unitary system of

310
00:30:45.880 --> 00:30:51.680
thought would have conflict, as it's
going to with Galileo. But those conflicts

311
00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:56.400
were surprisingly few and far between.
And I have to admit, after reviewing

312
00:30:56.440 --> 00:31:02.680
all the evidence on the Inquisition,
by and large, which science wasn't its

313
00:31:02.759 --> 00:31:11.480
target, Protestantism was now in part, the lack of conflict was because writers

314
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:17.519
simply steered clear of the Inquisition,
while its inquisition tried to deal sensibly with

315
00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:23.200
most authors. As we're going to
see with Galileo, he met multiple times

316
00:31:23.680 --> 00:31:32.319
with different officials and had every opportunity
to publish his book from their perspective the

317
00:31:32.400 --> 00:31:37.839
correct way. He simply didn't.
And so in that way, Galileo is

318
00:31:37.839 --> 00:31:44.680
very much an exception to the rule. There are two distinct opinions about the

319
00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:49.759
impact of the Inquisition on literature.
One, strongly supported by traditionalists, denies

320
00:31:49.839 --> 00:31:56.519
any negative influence at all. Historian
Menendez de Perro asserted that quote never was

321
00:31:56.559 --> 00:32:00.799
there Moore written in Spain, or
better written then in the two golden centuries

322
00:32:00.839 --> 00:32:07.960
of the Inquisition end quote. The
other, reflected in many modern studies claims

323
00:32:07.079 --> 00:32:13.599
that the Spaniards virtually ceased to write
and think. Another historian argued, quote,

324
00:32:13.839 --> 00:32:17.480
it would seem superfluous to insist that
a system of severe repression of thought

325
00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:22.680
by all the instrumentalities of the Inquisition
and state is an ample explanation for the

326
00:32:22.759 --> 00:32:30.640
decadence of Spanish learning and literature end
quote. For the English Catholic historian Lord

327
00:32:30.680 --> 00:32:35.680
acton the injury inflicted on literature by
the Inquisition, quote was the most obvious

328
00:32:35.720 --> 00:32:40.359
and conspicuous fact of modern history.
End quote. Another historian put it rather

329
00:32:40.400 --> 00:32:45.640
succinctly that quote not to think,
or learn or read became habitual for Spaniards

330
00:32:46.039 --> 00:32:51.119
faced by the sadism and lust for
plunder of those of the Holy Office end

331
00:32:51.160 --> 00:32:57.319
quote. These, of course,
are extreme views, and the evidence doesn't

332
00:32:57.359 --> 00:33:02.920
support either one of them. Both
assume, of course, that censorship functioned

333
00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:08.079
effectively in Spain, which it didn't. One view claims it worked for the

334
00:33:08.079 --> 00:33:13.799
better purging heresy, the other that
it worked for the worse, suppressing creativity.

335
00:33:15.160 --> 00:33:21.880
In reality, it did neither.
It simply wasn't effective or efficient enough

336
00:33:22.319 --> 00:33:28.319
to do so in the early modern
period. Next time we start to take

337
00:33:28.319 --> 00:33:31.400
a look at the Inquisition, itself, how did it function, what were

338
00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:37.160
its systems like? And that will
allow us to segue back to Galileo and

339
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:40.920
his infamous trial. As always,
if you'd like more content, check out

340
00:33:40.920 --> 00:33:44.839
the links in the show notes.
Got a link to the website there,

341
00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.319
Got to link to all kinds of
free trials of Patreon pages in westerns of

342
00:33:49.359 --> 00:33:52.599
two point zero, All kinds of
good stuff which is there for the taking

343
00:33:52.640 --> 00:34:01.359
if you so choose. No