For a number of years the Lord in mercy sheltered the infant church in Spain. The Christians were in the habit of coming together with great secrecy, and breaking bread in private houses. On no other principle could we account for the truth spreading, the disciples multiplying, and the church being edified, and all in the very place where the king, the pope, and the Inquisition had sworn to keep Spain Roman Catholic. True, there were many individual cases of persecution and imprisonment, but nothing very definite, or on a large scale, was attempted till the year 1557.
The first thing which seems to have aroused the inquisitors from their security was the sudden disappearance of a number of persons, who were known to have settled in Geneva and different parts of Germany, where they were at liberty to worship God according to His holy word. This led to searching inquiries as to the cause of their departure; and, finding it was the question of religion, the inquisitors naturally suspected that those who had left were not the only persons who were disaffected, and immediately set their whole police in motion to discover their brethren who remained behind. Besides their vigilance at home, spies were sent to Geneva and Germany, that they might, through feigning themselves to be friends, obtain information as to those who had embraced Lutheranism.
This information, it is painful to relate, was obtained by the treachery of one of the preachers' wives through the wicked arts of the confessional. At Valladolid, Juan Garcia, a goldsmith, being aware of the influence of the priest over the superstitious mind of his wife, concealed from her both the time and place of their assembling. But this poor deluded woman, in obedience to her harlot-mother Jezebel, dogged her husband one night, and having ascertained the place of meeting, communicated the fact to the priest. Having made this important discovery, messengers were dispatched to the several tribunals throughout the kingdom; the ramifications of heresy were to be diligently traced, guards were to be placed at convenient places to seize such persons as might attempt to escape; and by a simultaneous movement the Protestants were seized in all parts of the country. In Seville and its neighborhood, two hundred persons were apprehended in one day; and, in a short time, the number increased to eight hundred. In Valladolid eighty persons were committed to prison, and similar numbers by other tribunals. The common prisons, the convents, and even private houses were crowded with the victims. The storm of persecution burst with equal fury on the monasteries and nunneries that were known to favor the Lutheran doctrines.
The cruel and heartless king, Philip II and his inquisitors, were now determined to strike terror into the minds of the whole nation, and consequently, the unoffending prisoners were treated with the view of accomplishing this fiendish end. Many suffered in body and mind from a long imprisonment; others from the severity of the tortures ended their days by a lingering and secret martyrdom; while some of the most distinguished, either for rank, or of the clerical order, were reserved for a public execution, or the Spanish auto-de-ff. But there was one family amongst the Protestants of Seville whose tragic history is so touching that we cannot withhold it from our readers.
"The widow of Fernando Nugnez, a native of the town of Lepe, with three of her daughters and a married sister, were seized and thrown into prison. As there was no evidence against them, they were put to the torture, but refused to inform against one another. Upon this the presiding Inquisitor called one of the young women into the audience-chamber, and, after conversing with her for some time, professed an attachment to her person. Having repeated this at another interview, he told her that he could be of no service to her unless she imparted to him the whole facts of her case; but if she entrusted him with these, he would manage the affairs in such a way as that she and all her friends would be set at liberty. Falling into the snare, the unsuspecting girl confessed to him, that she had at different times conversed with her mother, sisters, and aunt, on the Lutheran doctrines. The wretch immediately brought her into court, and obliged her to declare judicially what she had owned to him in private. Nor was this all: under the pretense that her confession was not sufficiently ample and ingenuous, she was put to the torture by the most excruciating engines-the pulley and the wooden horse; by which means evidence was extorted from her, which led, not only to the condemnation of herself and her relatives, but also to the seizure and conviction of others who afterward perished in the flames."
No language could describe the meanness, perfidiousness, fiendishness, of one in human form that could do such a thing, and the reader may easily imagine from the treatment of the widow, the fatherless children, and the aunt, what the victims of the Inquisition (which could be counted by thousands) had to endure, and all for the crime of believing the truth of God and rejecting the lies of Satan.