Chapter 12
A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 4, by Henry Charles Lee, Book 8, Chapter 5, Spears of Action, Mysticism, Part 12. The Spanish Inquisition, which had so long carried on single-handed the struggle against mysticism, watched with satisfaction the Roman proceedings against Molinos. As we have seen, his arrest on July 3, 1685, was promptly followed, November 9, with the condemnation of the Guida, which for nine years had been allowed to circulate freely in Spain. The edict pronounced it to contain propositions ill-sounding, offensive to a pious ears, rash, savoring of the heresy of the Alunbrados, and some erroneous ones, and the title was denounced as misleading because it spoke only of the interior way. When the sentence of the Roman Inquisition was published September 3, 1687,
although as a rule the Spanish Holy Office paid no attention to its decrees, the 68 propositions were speedily translated into the vernacular and widely distributed. On October 11, 60 copies were sent to Valencia to be posted with orders to print more if they should be required. these were accompanied with an edict commanding obedience and threatening the most rigorous prosecution for remissness while all the persons were ordered to denounce within ten days contraventions of any kind coming to their knowledge The edict was to be published in all churches of the capitals of Partidos, and an authentic
record of such publication was to be affixed to the doors. In due time, when the bull coelistis pastor was issued, it was circulated with the same prescriptions. There was evidently a determination to make the most of this new alley in the struggle with mysticism.
The Seville Tribunal indeed had not waited for this, as it had already, April 24, 1687, arrested the canon of the Church of San Salvador, Josep Luis Navarro de Luna y Medina, who was a correspondent of Molinos and had sent him his autobiography in order to obtain instructions for his spiritual guidance. He had previously been deprived of his license as a confessor on charges of imprudent conduct as spiritual director of a nunnery, but Jaime de Palafox, archbishop of Seville, who was a warm admirer of Molinos, had restored the license, introduced him in all the convents, and adopted him as a confessor of himself and his family. For four years Navarro endured incarceration and a torture which was not spared, but he succumbed at last, confessed, and sought reconciliation.
His sentence declared him guilty of the errors of the Lutherans, Calvinists, Arians, Nestorians, Trinitarians, Valdenses, Agapetites, Bionists, and Alumbrados, besides being a dogmatizer of those of Molinus, with the addition that evil thoughts arising in prayer should be carried into execution, and also that when his disciples assembled in his house, the light would be extinguished and he would teach doctrines too foul for description. The tribunal itself could scarce have believed all this, for he was only required to objure, to be deprived of the benefices and functions, to be recluded for two years and to be exiled for six more. When the term expired, he returned to Seville and then until his death in 1725.
He passed his days in the churches, where the vulnerable sacrament was exposed for adoration, carrying with him a hinged stool on which he sat, gazing at the host. He was not the only Molinist in Seville, for in 1689, after three years' trial, Fray Pedro de San Jose was condemned as disciples of Molinos for committing obscenities with his penitence and foretelling his election as Pope and his suffering under Antichrist, who was already in Jerusalem twenty years old. He was sentenced to Objio di Vihimenti to undergo a circular discipline in his convent, to perpetual deprivation of teaching and confessing, and to six years' reclusion in a convent with customary disabilities.
Soon afterwards, there was penance in an auto, May 1860-92, a woman called Anaragusa, popularly known as La Pabeza, as an alumbrada and molinista. She had come from Palermo as a missionary to convert the wicked, probably in the train of Palafox, who had been Archbishop of Palermo. She called herself a bride of Christ. She had visions and revelations. She denied the efficacy of masses and fest, and she had the faculty of determining the conditions of conscience by the sense of smell. She escaped with two years of reclusion and six more of exile.
The condemnation of Molinos seems to have stimulated the inquisition to greater activity in the suppression of mysticism, for cases begin to appear more frequently in the records and henceforth the term Molinism, to a great extent, takes the place of Illuminism. We hear of a Molinist penance in a Caldova out of May 12, 1693, and he cannot have been the only one there, for Fray Francisco de Posadas of that city tells us that he was led to write his book against the carnal errors of Molinos by his experience in the confessional, showing that some of his penitents had been misled by them. The report of the Valencia Tribunal for 1695 contains three cases then on trial.
The Franciscan, Fray Vicente Seles, had been arrested in 1692. He had led a life exteriorly austere, practicing meditation and contemplation, and he freely admitted that when Molinus was condemned, he held that the Pope was wrongly informed. his over-award brain gave way under the stress of confinement at times he was full of religious emotion and solicitors as to his salvation while at others he was violently insane performing various crazy freaks on august twenty-fourth he attempted suicide by dashing his head against a projecting piece of iron causing a wound so serious that several pieces of skull were discharged
and on February 6, 1693, the surgeons reported his life to be still in danger. He remained melancholico, variable in mood, confessing and retracting, until on October 23, he confessed fully to Molinism, naming 11 women with whom he had relations in the confessional, and also admitting unnatural crime and other offenses. At the date of report, his trial was still unfinished.
Another phase of this eccentric method of salvation is presented in the case of Vicente Hernan, a hermit of San Cristobal of Constantina, accused by three women of teaching them the way of bruising the head of the serpent by sleeping with them and resisting temptation, and of attempting indecency, which they denied permitting. He was arrested September 23, 1692, and in two audiences he was a negativo. Then on December 17, he asked for audience in which he said that for eight days some little flies and black pigeons had been biting him and reminded him of things forgotten, whereupon he told of the women whom he had got to sleep with him, sometimes two or three at a time, and he also mentioned numerous miraculous cues which he had wrote.
In January 1693, he said the demons with the voice of flies had been recalling his sins and he told of three other women. Doubts aroused as to his sanity and at the end of 1693, steps were taken to investigate it which was still in progress at the time of closing the report. The third case was that of Mosen Antonia Serra
whose doctrines the calificadores reported to be molinistic. He was arrested December 19, 1695, so that his trial had only begun. In 1705, the Toledo tribunal arrested Fray Manuel de Paredes, a contemplative fraylee, who encouraged mystic practices among his penitents, leading to several trials, which illustrate the increased severity vested upon these condemned forms of devotion.
The same tendency is visible soon afterward at Cordova, where a little conventicle of Molinistas Alumbra was discovered in the Dominican convent of San Pablo, on the leadership of a Beata named Isabel del Castillo. Her disciples abandoned to her their free will and their faculties. They had no need of fasts and penances, but could transfer their sins to her, and the path of salvation lay through sensual indulgence. In the out of April 24, 1718, there were seven of them penanced. Isabel being visited with 200 lashes and perpetual prison, the friars were reconciled, deprived of their functions and imprisoned, some irrevinsibly and some perpetually, while the laymen had penances of various degrees of severity.
During this period there occurred a case deserving of a consideration in some detail, not only because of the prominence of the culprit, but because it affords a clearer view than others of the strange intermixture of sensuality and spirituality, which was distinctly known as Molinism, and of the self-deception which enabled men and women to indulge their passions
while believing themselves to be living in mystic altitude of union with God. perhaps this may partly be explicable by the teachings of the lacks of morality current in the sixteenth century and known under the general name of probabilism and by the distinction between material and formal sin whereby that alone was mortal sin which the conscience recognized as such the conscious being still further eased by the refinement as to advertence and consent in the skilful hands of the casuists the boundaries between right and wrong became dangerously nebulous and arguments were plentiful through which men could persuade themselves that whatever they chose to do was lawful José Fernández de Toro was an inquisitor in Murcia, deeply imbued with quietistic mysticism. In 1686, he issued anonymously in Seville a little tract with significant title of
Remedio Facilissimo para la Nopeka en el Uso y Exercicio de la Oración, which in time duly found its way into the index. As inquisitor, he had manifested his tendencies when a prelate of high repute and station in a religious order was tried before him for solicitation atropia in the confessional. Guided by the light within, Torah was satisfied that it was merely a case of obsession by a demon. He persuaded the Suprema to accept this view, and the culprit escaped with suspension from celebrating Mass and hearing confessions until the obsession should pass.
In 1706, he was promoted to the Sea of Oviedo, of which he took possession October 1st. Unlucky for him, there was at Oviedo the Jesuit College of St. Matthias. His reputation for quietism seems to have preceded him, and the heads of the college resolved themselves into a cause of detectives. Professing the utmost friendship, they speedily acquired his confidence, and he talked with them freely. They were prompt in action, for in January 1707, Padre José del Campo drew off the inquisitor general an elaborate sacred denunciation,
setting forth how Torah in conversation had offered to explain to him the contemplation of Molinos. Since coming to Asturias, he had spoken to no one about these things, for he knew that they had occasioned much murmuring against him. But he described the mode in which the soul reached the summit of perfection in union with God, while the inferior sensual part might be abandoned to the foulest temptation.
These dangerous speculations were reported in full detail and were accompanied by a long and skillful argument to prove that Thoreau was in every sense a Molinist. Other Jesuits drew up similar denunciation or attested their truths, and the case was fairly before the Holy See. It was too serious for haste action. An investigation was made in Murcia, where his female accomplices were arrested and ample confirmatory evidence was obtained from their confessions and from 18 of his letters. The Carranza case has taught the lesson that bishops could be reached only through paper authority, and on November 7, 1707, Inquisitor General Ibanez forwarded to Clement XI the accumulated evidence to which the Pope replied, March 8, 1710, that the matter would be thoroughly examined and the necessary action be taken. Toro had at first been disposed to make a contest, asserting that God would work miracles in defense of the women, and that their imprisonment was martyrdom.
That the light infused in him by God rendered him superior to the Inquisition, and that he was illuminate above all other men. By this time, however, he realized his position. On February 8, 1710, he made through his confessor a partial confession, and he followed this with several letters to the Pope, begging permission to come to Rome for judgment. then on paper brief of june seventh ordered ibernias within three years and under the advice of the suprema to frame a prosecution for which full powers were granted if the evidence sufficed toro was to be arrested and the case carried up to the point of sentence when all the documents were transmitted to rome where the pope would render the decision Toro was duly imprisoned and his trial proceeded.
Ibanez died September 3, 1710 and was succeeded by Giudice, who was empowered by a brief of October 3, 1711 to carry on the process. Toro was found to be diminuto under 104 of the articles of accusation. He was reticent and refused to answer interrogation, begging honestly to be sent to Rome. his request was granted by a brief of june seventh seventeen fourteen but his departure was delayed and it was not until june eleventh seventeen sixteen that he reached rome and was lodged in the castle of santa angelo andres de cabrejas fiscal of the suprema accompanied him to represent the spanish inquisition in the trial which proceeded slowly
torah's confessions and letters were rich in mind for the calificadores who extracted from them four hundred and fifty five propositions of various degrees of error some of them being identical with those of Molinos. Finally, he abandoned all defense and acknowledged that he had been a dogmatizing heretic, a soliciting seducer, a blasphemer against the purity of God, Jesus Christ and blessed virgin, a reviver of the filthy sects of the baggots, Illuminist and Molinist and subject
to the same penalties. In fact, he seems to have recognized errors and to have confessed with the freedom indicative of sincere repentance. Much of his confessions is unfit for transcription, but a brief extract will indicate the self-deception that reconciles the grossest sensuality with aspiration for perfection. Thus, of one of his accomplices, he says that, believing himself to be illuminated in the sacrifice of the mass, he had written that
none of her directors could estimate her spiritual state as regards her perfection and union with God, in spite of the concussions of her inferior part, excited by confession, through which those could be deceived who were unable to understand her interior virtue and the perfect state. Although in obscene acts the woman might seem externally to be a sinner, yet by asserting that she had not yielded consent, she might internally be perfect and be union with God.
That as the incarnate world did not contract original sin in its union with humanity, so with persons annihilated, purged, and perfected, God could direct them to supernatural operations in such ways that the operation of the inferior part worked no prejudice to their state of perfection, and that the women's obscene act might proceed from obsession and should be passive without consent. That he had believed his doctrine to be infused in him by God and thus to be true,
like the doctrine of the Church, to be held unhesitatingly especially by those obsessed, and he had written that he was ready to give his life in its defense. That he had believed in these senses committed with this same woman might be an exercise and martyrdom sent by God for humiliation and purification of both, but nevertheless he made confession of them and took care that she should do so.
She was accustomed to say that the inferior part, she was without sensuality and in the superior part was observed in the contemplation and love of God. that in his oratory after mass and her communion he had embraced her and told her that she received the light and there was the love of god for his creatures that jesus was in him and worked in him because neither he nor the woman experienced the sensuality in what they did nor did it from corrupt intention that he had had this belief for seven years prior to his episcopate and had maintained it subsequently up to july seventeen o eight but then in confessing his sins a worthy confessor enlightened his blindness
and since then he had detested his errors and followed the way of catholic truth at length the poff designated july twenty seventh seventeen nineteen for pronouncing sentence cabrejas had a record of caranza's condemnation looked up and the same ceremonial was observed toro was brought from the castle of sant angelo to one of the halls of the papal palace and there the sentence was read it deposed him from his bishopric and all other benefices it incapacitated him from holding any preferment and suspended him perpetually from sacerdotal functions it required him to abjure his heresy and errors it called upon him to pay for pious uses as far as he could all revenues accrued since his lapse into heresy and it burdened his see with a pension for his support to be determined by the pope it condemned him to reclusion in some convent outside of spain when he was to perform perpetual penance on the bread of sorrow and the water of grief and it prescribed certain spiritual observances
After listening to his sentence, Toro made the required abjuration, accepted the penance, and disappeared from view.
