In the course of the first year in which it was erected, the inquisition of
Seville, which then extended over Castile, committed two thousand
persons alive to the flames, burnt as many in effigy, and condemned
seventeen thousand to different penances. According to a moderate
computation, from the same date to 1517, the year in which Luther made
his appearance, thirteen thousand persons were burnt alive, eight thousand
seven hundred were burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine
thousand seven hundred and twenty-three were condemned to penances;
making in all one hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and
twenty-three persons condemned by the several tribunals of Spain in the
course of thirty-six years. There is reason for thinking that this estimate
falls much below the truth. For, from 1481 to 1520, it is computed that in
Andalusia alone thirty thousand persons informed against themselves, from
the dread of being accused by others, or in the hope of obtaining a
mitigation of their sentence. And down to the commencement of the
seventeenth century, the instances of absolution were so rare, that one is
scarcely to be found in a thousand cases; the inquisitors making it a point,
that, if possible, none should escape without bearing a mark of their
censure, as at least suspected de levi, or in the lowest degree.
It was to be expected that the inquisitors would exert their power in
checking the cultivation of biblical learning. In 1490, many copies of the
Hebrew Bible were committed to the flames at Seville by the order of
Torquemada; and in an auto-da-fe celebrated soon after at Salamanca, six
thousand volumes shared the same fate, under the pretext that they
contained judaism, magic, and other illicit arts. Deza, archbishop of
Seville, who had succeeded Torquemada as inquisitor-general, ordered the
papers of Lebrixa to be seized, and passed sentence against him as
suspected of heresy, for the corrections which he had made on the text of
the Vulgate, and his other labors in elucidation of the scriptures. “The
archbishop’s object (says Lebrixa, in an apology which he drew up for
himself) was to deter me from writing. He wished to extinguish the
knowledge of the two languages on which our religion depends; and I was
condemned for impiety, because, being no divine but a mere grammarian, I
presumed to treat of theological subjects. If a person endeavor to restore
the purity of the sacred text, and point out the mistakes which have vitiated
it, unless he will retract his opinions, he must be loaded with infamy,
excommunicated, and doomed to an ignominious punishment! Is it not
enough that I submit my judgment to the will of Christ in the scriptures?
must I also reject as false what is as clear and evident as the light of truth
itself? What tyranny! To hinder a man, under the most cruel pains, from
saying what he thinks, though he express himself with the utmost respect
for religion, to forbid him to write in his closet or in the solitude of a
prison, to speak to himself, or even to think! On what subject shall we
employ our thoughts, if we are prohibited from directing them to those
sacred oracles which have been the delight of the pious in every age, and
on which they have meditated by day and by night?
