Probably one of the first indications that the Inquisition had of the extent of the Reformed cause in Spain was through information supplied by its spies in Protestant Europe. It soon became evident that the number of Spanish Protestants was increasing, and that one of their most treasured desires was to provide their native land with the Word of God and other Reformed literature. Thus from 1557 onwards the Inquisition intensified its search for prohibited books, and eventually succeeded in capturing the man mainly responsible for their dissemination throughout Spain — Julián Hernández, familiarly known as Julianillo because he was small of stature and 'no more than skin and bone'. Of humble birth, Julianillo had trained as a printer's apprentice, which fact led to his spending time in Germany where his profession was more highly developed. The circumstances of his conversion are unknown to us, but his attachment to the Reformed faith inspired him to offer for the highly dangerous task of smuggling copies of the Spanish Scriptures and other Reformed literature into Spain. The Jesuit writer, Santiváñez, complains that Julianillo 'with incredible skill discovered secret entrances and exits, and the poison of the new heresy spread rapidly throughout all Castille and Andalusia ... He himself taught men and women in the evil doctrines of the reformers, attaining his aim all too successfully.' Julianillo's main deposit for the books he smuggled into Spain, hidden in wine casks, was the San Isidro monastery, and from there he travelled in a variety of disguises to place the books in the eager hands stretched out to receive them. Eventually he was arrested.

Brutally tortured for three whole years, Julianillo stood firm in his faith, and refused to reveal where or to whom he had distributed his books, upheld mightily by the Spirit of God, he scoffed at the friars and their doctrines, singing for the encouragement of his fellow-prisoners as he passed by their cells:

The friars are all defeated,
The wolves are put to flight.

In spite of Julianillo's valiant refusal to betray his fellow-believers, the Inquisitors finally hunted them down. In Valladolid they counted on the services of the fanatical wife of Juan Garcia, a Protestant silver­smith. Egged on by her confessor, she secretly followed her husband to the Protestant meeting-place, and betrayed all she learned to the Inquisition. In Seville, a member of the Protestant congregation, in a fit of insanity, had revealed the names of several hundred Protestants or sympathizers with Protestantism to the Inquisition. No immediate action was taken, but eventually all was ready for a concerted move on a national scale. All roads were watched, and in one night several hundreds of Protestants were seized and cast into the Inquisitorial jails. Several had managed to flee before the fatal day, in particular twelve of the monks of San Isidro, who made their separate ways to Geneva. An even smaller number succeeded in escaping from prison, due to the confusion caused by the seizure of so many prisoners. Notable among these were the priests Francisco de Zafra and Gonzalo de Montes, who both were later to wield their pens to describe the horrors of the Inquisition, and awaken the conscience of Europe against it.

The prisoners, many of them the flower of the nobility of Spain, and of her intellectual and religious life, underwent great suffering. Con­stantino Ponce de la Fuente was one of those who perished under the ill-treatment received. It is a searing indictment of the Inquisition that this distinguished Spaniard, of whom Charles V said,

You could not have condemned a greater man ... if Constantino is a heretic, he's a great one,' should have been reduced to cry out in his physical and mental agony, 'Oh my God! were there no Scythian or cannibals or even more savage pagans, that Thou hast permitted me to fall into the hands of these baptized devils?

The first auto-de-fé in which Protestants were brought to trial was held in Valladolid on 21 May, 1559, in the presence of Don Carlos, heir to the throne, the Queen Regent Joan, and a great assemblage of noble lords and ladies. To the eternal shame of the Pope, he had urged in a papal bull that no-one accused of Protestantism should be permitted to escape the death sentence through repentance — a thorough end should be made of such pestilential creatures. The procession was headed by the effigy of Leonor de Vivero who had had the audacity to offer her house for Protestant meetings, and the even greater effrontery to die peaceably before the Inquisitors could lay hands on her. As always, those who were to be put to death were handed over to the secular authorities, with the hypocritical request that they should be treated gently. Those who con­fessed to being in error received the special favour of being strangled and then thrown to the flames; those who remained obdurate were burned alive. In all, fourteen persons were burnt, while sixteen were admitted to reconciliation with various penances, mainly life imprisonment.

According to contemporary Roman sources, twelve or perhaps thirteen of those burnt first confessed their errors, and were strangled prior to burning. It is certainly true that some had yielded so far as to deny their faith, but it needs to be remembered for how long they were the objects of cruel tortures which, in some cases, owing to the weakness of the human frame, led them to confess with their lips what they repudiated in their hearts. Furthermore, some had confessions wrung out of them through the deceitful wiles of the Inquisitors, who thought nothing of assuring wives or parents that they would save their husbands or children by acknowledging their errors; or of breaking down the moral barriers of their female prisoners by making them the victims of their lusts. It also needs to be borne in mind that in the case of the more illustrious prisoners, the Romanists desired to be able to say that they had acknowledged their errors and sought reconciliation with the true church. Thus some of those who were at the last moment strangled as a sign of repentance, in all probability would have repudiated such a repentance had the opportunity to do so been given them. As for those who did indeed deny their Lord, especially those condemned to life imprisonment with its inevitable pangs of remorse, one can be sure they would find in the Lord they denied a more compassionate Judge than the Roman friars into whose clutches they had had the misfortune to fall.

One about whose heroism there is no doubt whatsoever was Antonio Herrezuelo, a learned lawyer of the city of Toro, near Valladolid. In spite of all threats, tortures, blandishments or promises, he remained firm in his faith, acknowledging himself to be not only a Protestant, but a teacher of Protestant doctrines. The only thing that moved him in the auto-de-fé was to see his young wife among those who had recanted and were condemned to life imprisonment. His only words to her, spoken in a tone of deep sadness, were 'Is this the way you appreciate the doctrines I have taught you for six years?' Until a gag was placed in his mouth, Herrezuelo did not cease to sing psalms or repeat passages of the Bible. Nor was his death in vain with regard to his wife. Conscious of how the Inquisition had deceived her, and bitterly lamenting her apostasy, she returned to her cell openly acknowledging her faith in Christ. For eight years she resisted all attempts to make her recant, and eventually she too went joyfully to the stake.

The second auto-de-fé in Valladolid [October, 1559] was graced with the presence of King Philip himself and numerous other personages of rank. A contemporary Roman writer calculated that there must have been a total of 200,000 people present to observe the proceedings. Twelve Protestants were executed, and fourteen condemned to other penances, mainly life imprisonment. The most outstanding, both for his rank and his personal qualities, as also for the firmness of his testimony, was Carlos de Seso. On being informed the night before that he was to be burnt to death as a heretic, he asked for paper and ink, and with deep feeling wrote a Reformed confession. Llorente comments: 'It would be difficult to express the vigour and energy of his writings which filled two sheets of paper, being as he was face to face with death.' On being paraded before the royal box, de Seso paused and asked Philip II how he could permit such injustice. The incredible fanaticism of the monarch is revealed in his reply: 'I myself would bring the wood to burn my own son if he were as bad as you'. Gagged for most of the ceremony, de Seso was unable to give verbal expression to his faith until the final moments at the stake when the gag was removed. Urged on by the friars to repent, de Seso merely answered,

If I had time I would show you that in not following my example you condemn yourselves. Light the fire as soon as possible that I may perish in it.

Seville also provided two great autos-de-fé, which though not graced with the presence of persons of royal rank, were more impressive because of the large numbers of sufferers. Contemporary sources disagree as to the exact number, but it seems there were over a hundred, of whom the majority were condemned as Lutherans. Noteworthy is the case of the celebrated prior, Dr. Blanco. From the moment he was arrested his theological acumen soon put an end to all the friars' attempts to convert him. He scoffed at their ignorance, telling them they were much more fit to be the drovers of a company of asses than to sit themselves down there to judge matters of the faith which they did not understand. Al­though he had to hobble to the stake with the aid of a stick, he revealed great joy in the Lord, and died heroically.

The auto-de-fé, of 22 December, 1560, was notable for the martyrdom of the colporteur, Julián Hernández, who, before being gagged, encouraged his fellow-prisoners to show themselves brave soldiers of Jesus Christ, and to rejoice in the eternal felicity they would enjoy but a few hours hence.

Infamous indeed was the Inquisition's condemnation of Nicholas Burton, an English merchant, whose execution seems merely to have served as a pretext for the confiscation of his valuable cargo. As a con­vinced Protestant, Burton refused to deny his faith, although he must have rued the day he set foot on Spanish soil. The burning of such a man shows all too clearly the stranglehold the Inquisition had, not only on the intellectual and religious life of the country, but even on its commercial activity. It is small wonder that Spain, in little more than a century, should cease to be the richest nation of Europe, and sink into the obscure poverty of a fifth-rate power.

Though there were Protestants who perished in later autos-de-fé the four already described were successful in completely extinguishing the infant Protestant church in Spain. Scarcely a single Spaniard appeared for well over two hundred years to raise the standard of Gospel truth in his native land. The Church of Jesus Christ can never die, but in Spain her adversaries came as close to quenching her life as it has ever been permitted to human agents to accomplish.

Spanish Reformers Outside Spain⤒🔗

In the mercy of God some Spaniards succeeded in escaping from the Inquisition, and received hospitable welcomes, particularly in England, Germany and Geneva. Two of them in particular bear names which form part of the heritage of every Spanish-speaking Protestant to the present day — Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera, the translator and reviser respectively of the most widely-used version of the Holy Scriptures in Spanish. Both were friars of the San Isidoro monastery, and fled Spain with several others of their order in the year 1557 or shortly afterwards.

De Reina, in the course of the next forty years, occupied various pastorates in England, Switzerland, France and Germany. While in England he was responsible for drawing up a Confession of Faith 'of certain Spanish believers fleeing from the abuses of the Roman Church and the cruelty of the Inquisition'. This Confession, which gained the Spanish refugees permission to hold their own services in London, contained, according to de Reina, 'all the articles or fundamentals of our religion, which the world now calls Lutheran, novel, heretical, etc., and we call Christian, primitive, catholic, so necessary for men that without them there is no salvation.'

But de Reina's greatest work was that of translating the whole Bible into Spanish. In 1569 the first edition of 2600 copies was printed: by 1596 they were all sold. In his preface de Reina tells us:

We have been engaged in this work for twelve whole years. Apart from the time lost through sickness, travels, or other activities resulting from our exile and poverty, we may confidently say that for nine of these our pen has not left our hand, nor have we been slack in our studies while we have enjoyed strength of body or mind.

Throughout his life as a believer de Reina was under surveillance by the spies of the Inquisition, special efforts being made to get him to move from England to the Netherlands, and thence to a funeral pyre in Spain. But God's hand was on his servant, and he was able to complete his priceless work, and thus make available for his persecuted Spanish brethren the Word of Life in their own tongue.

Cipriano de Valera, after a brief spell in Geneva, made his way to England, where he spent the remainder of his life, making it the consuming passion of his life to serve his exiled countrymen in the Gospel, and to make works of pure doctrine available to the inhabitants of Spain. As work after work flowed from his pen, the Inquisitors had reason to rue the day they let him slip from their fingers. They dubbed him el hereje espanol, the Spanish heretic par excellence. His name is best-known today as the reviser of de Reina's version of the Bible: certain improve­ments are due to him, but he gladly acknowledges his debt to de Reina whose version he describes as 'in the opinion of all who know it, excellent.'

De Valera incurred the wrath of the Inquisition, in particular for his Two Tracts, published in London in the very year of the Spanish Armada, 1588. The first deals with the Pope, showing him from Scripture and history to be a false priest, while the second treats of the Mass, contrasting its unbiblical ritual with the simple solemnity of the Lord's Supper, particularly as it was observed in the French Calvinist churches. De Valera's most eloquent writing is found in his Tract 'written to strengthen the poor captives in Barbery, in their ancient Catholic faith and Christian religion, and to console them with the Word of God in the afflictions which they suffer for the Gospel of Jesus Christ'. It is to be hoped that de Valera's words reached those in Algiers and elsewhere for whom they were intended: Boehmer affirms that among the Spanish prisoners there, there had been an evangelical revival. De Valera, wishing to strengthen their faith against Popery, Judaism and Mahometanism, expounds Bible doctrine to them, exhorts them to live exemplary lives among the heathen, and — significant note! — he urges them at the end to pray for Spain. Mention may finally be made of de Valera's translation into Spanish of Calvin's Institutes.

With de Valera we reach the seventeenth century, for although we know neither the place nor year of his death, his translation of the Bible bears the date 1602. The Reformation in Spain had been brutally and success­fully quenched. The new century dawned with only a few unknown saints remaining on Iberian soil, and with the almost complete disappearance of the valiant band of Spaniards in exile.

Causes for the Failure of the Spanish Reformation←⤒🔗

There is one final question that seeks an answer as one contemplates the quality of the Spanish Reformation, the purity of its doctrine, and the valour of its confessors. Why did it not succeed? In certain other lands and periods it has been shown that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, but in Spain this was not the case. The Protestant church vanished, and when it made an appearance again over two hundred years later, it was the result of Anglo-Saxon testimony in Gibraltar, and in­directly of Waldensian testimony in Italy.

Dr John A. Mackay, in his book, The Other Spanish Christ has demonstrated the utter fallacy of the idea that Protestantism as a religion runs counter to the genius of the Spanish race and temperament. He proceeds to suggest three reasons why the Inquisition was able to quench the reforming spirit.

• In the first place, the Spanish reforming tendency was for reform within the unity of Catholicism;

• in the second place, the religious consciousness of the Spanish advocates of reform was not possessed by a great revolutionary idea such as Luther's Justification by Faith, or Calvin's Sovereignty of God;

• in the third place, the doctrines of the Reformation did not take hold of the common people as they did in other European countries where the movement won.

It is a remarkable fact that the leading Spanish reformers were nearly all priests, canons and professors of the Roman church. Their desire was indeed to carry out reformation within the established church, and in this they followed Luther in his early stages. Constantino Ponce is an instructive case in point. Thoroughly evangelical in doctrine, and godly in life, he preached scriptural truth for years in Seville Cathedral, but still observed the outward trappings of Romanism. When arrested, he succeeded for a long time in keeping the Inquisitors at bay in their interrogations; no doubt his extensive knowledge of the Church Fathers gave him material with which to defend himself. The Inquisitors were at a loss how to condemn him as a heretic, until they stumbled on a secret cache in a house they searched which contained papers written by Constantino in which he demonstrated from Scripture that the mass was a blasphemy and the Pope was Antichrist. Now Constantino, because of his intellectual and oratorical skill, may well have been able to maintain an evangelical position in the Cathedral, speaking truth and yet hiding his sentiments on controversial issues so that he could remain within the pale of the Roman church. But the people in general would be unable to understand the fine difference between hypocrisy and caution, nor would they have the ability to stand firm as Protestants within the Roman church, or to avoid perjuring themselves if they tried to speak as Catholics while believing as Protestants. Constantino seems to have felt that the truth veiled was better than the truth silenced in dungeons or in the flames. But we may legitimately wonder what would have happened if a concerted, clear-cut proclamation of evangelical truth, completely free from the shackles of Rome, had taken place in Spain.

Of Dr Mackay's three reasons for the failure of the Spanish Reformation, perhaps the second is the least convincing. The Spanish Reformers were quite clear on the doctrine of justification by faith, and were firm believers in the sovereignty of God. Certainly they did not have a Luther to proclaim the one as a revolutionary personal experience, nor did they have a Calvin to expound so lucidly the other. But neither did the Netherlands nor the Scandinavian lands! A watchword can indeed serve to rally a people, but the success of a cause does not depend on it.

Dr. Mackay's final reason is, however, one of undoubted importance: the Reformation in Spain did not take hold of the common people. It did indeed count among its members men of humble station, but it was in large measure an aristocratic movement. Yet there is no evidence that the leaders desired to maintain such a state of affairs: on the contrary, they sought to win people of every rank for the Gospel. But some of them may have felt that with such illustrious adherents it was likely that the new faith would eventually be accepted on a national scale, without appreciating how vital a factor is the role of the people at large in the success of such movements. The contrast between Spain and Scotland in this respect is highly striking.

But in the last analysis, these are all merely reflections made of necessity after the time and from a distance. None can constitute a final reason as to why the Reformation failed in Spain. The immediate human cause was the Inquisition, which no land where Protestantism triumphed had to endure, though persecutions abounded. But the final answer must remain with God himself.

Yet did the Reformation fail in Spain? Certainly it was extinguished as a movement, and a dark night of over two centuries descended on the land. But thousands of Spaniards rejoice around the throne of God and of the Lamb, whose redemption took place on Spanish soil. The writings of the Spanish Reformers were wonderfully preserved from the Inquisi­torial flames, and have been lovingly re-edited in more recent days. In the present decade a fine new version of Calvin's Institutes has gone forth for Spanish readers, complete with de Valera's eloquent preface. And, most glorious of all, there is a direct line from the penuries of de Reina's and de Valera's exile, to the millions of the redeemed who today in Spain and her former dominions beyond the sea sing the praise of the God of all grace, and do so from the pages of the Reina-Valera Bible, to an extent that its authors could never have hoped for in their wildest dreams. In 1677, Diodati, the translator of the Bible into Italian, asserted that 'Valera's Bible has produced incredible effects in Spain, no less than 3,000 copies having penetrated by secret ways into the very bowels of the kingdom.' We can believe that some Spaniards were brought in secret to a knowledge of the truth, though there was no evangelical church with which they could associate, but even so, Diodati's description seems somewhat overdrawn. Today, however, the thousands have become millions, and the last word can well remain with Cipriano de Valera:

Our adversaries have done all they could to quench this light of the Gospel, and then they have outraged many in Spain by the loss of property, of life and of honour. And it is to be observed that the more they outrage, the more they scourge, expose in sanbenitos, send to the galleys or to perpetual imprisonment and into the flames, so much the more do the evangelicals multiply, for the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.