Augustino de Cazalla

Auto-da-fé of Doctor Cazalla, in Valladolid.^[1]

Augustino de Cazalla (1510-1559), or Dr. Agustín Cazalla, was a Spanish clergyman, with a humanist and Erasmist tendency, who was accused of starting a Protestant sect in Valladolid. He was the son of Pedro de Cazalla, a royal accountant, and Leonor de Vibero, or Vivero, (both 'converso' families), nephew of Bishop Juan de Cazalla and brother of María de Cazalla (of the group of illuminati in Guadalajara in 1525). He studied at the University of Valladolid with Bartolomé Carranza (also later tried by the Spanish Inquisition) and at the University of Alcalá de Henares, where his uncle Juan, the former chaplain to Cardinal Cisneros, maintained a reputation as a renowned humanist and erasmist. In Alcalá he was a classmate of Diego Laínez (a founding member of the Society of Jesus).

He was a canon in the cathedral of Salamanca. As chaplain to the Emperor Charles V, he accompanied him throughout Europe. On his return to Valladolid in 1552, he joined a so-called "Conventicle", whose religious views were considered heretical, and despite discrete practice and strict limitation to within elite circles (among these was the corregidor of Toro, Carlos de Seso who had been in contact with Juan de Valdés in Italy) he was discovered.

Trial and Conviction

Contemporary illustration of the auto-da-fé of Valladolid, in which fourteen Protestants were burned at the stake for their faith, on May 21, 1559

Cazalla was subjected to a carefully controlled trial by the Inquisitor General Fernando de Valdés, who communicated his findings to King Philip II. After obtaining his confession, the prisoner was condemned to be burnt at the stake, in a solemn auto-da-fé that was celebrated in Valladolid on May 20, 1559. By abjuring his errors, he was granted the mercy of being strangled before burning. His brothers Francisco de Buiero, Beatriz and Pedro were also prosecuted and sentenced to the stake. Two other brothers, Costanza de Buiero and Juan Buiero, were condemned to wear the Sanbenito and perpetual prison (in all, they were ten brothers). The corpse of his mother Doña Leonora de Buiero was dug up and thrown into the fire and as the conventicles of Lutheran "heretics" had been in her house, it was to be razed to the ground, and a marble column of infamy was erected in its place. An inscription, prohibited rebuilding of the house, or removal of plaque under penalty of excommunication and banishment from the Spanish realms.^[2]

Scabrous details of doubtful plausibility emerged which excoriated Cazalla and the "conventicle" activities:

"A cleric named José Cazalia [sic] lives in a certain city of Castile; He had planted a false and diabolical doctrine among the ignorant, and he summoned them to his house at dusk, a porter opened door to each caller, who man or woman alike, on giving the name 'Cazuela', was admitted; being assembled he would give his lecture, and extinguishing the lights he would say: "Hallelujah, each with his own". And so each man would grab the woman that chance destined him, or that malice placed next to him."

... there was a case of a boy of thirteen or fourteen years, that every night after he had gone to bed, his mother had left home. Unable to find out where she was going, one night he had followed her, and seeing that she came to the house and that calling and giving the name entered ... he decided to call giving the same name as the others and enter. And having entered and seen everything that happened, and when it came to the extinguishing of the lights, he did as the others; moved by curiosity he had cut a piece of the "basquine" (tight-fitting bodice) of the woman who he had touched, to see if he could come to know one day where he had been that night; the boy went home understanding nothing of what he had seen, but noticing that the basquine of his mother was missing the piece he had cut in the house of Cazalla, he understood that his mother was the woman he had known carnally. The next day he had confessed his guilt, and so the King's doctor came to be discovered, imprisoned and punished by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the house was sown with salt, and a stone plaque erected as an example and lesson to others for centuries to come.

An anecdote collected in a moralizing sermon of the 17th or 18th century:^[3] Given the alternative that was offered (being burned alive), a good part of the bibliography, especially that of critical orientation (Juan Antonio Llorente), considers the sincerity of Cazalla in his retraction is doubtful, although he expressed it vehemently (those present, as his confessor Antonio de la Carrera or the chronicler Antonio de Illescas take it for granted), and tried to persuade his companions torture and execution, to do the same most of whom also recanted, except the bachelor Antonio Herrezuelo (lawyer de Toro, married to Leonor de Cisneros, who was among the "reconciled" and was harshly recalled by her husband for it). Herrezuelo responded to Augustino Cazalla in the following way:"Doctor, I would like to cheer for now, not for another time; and I never judged myself less than this judge." Hearing him speak in such manner a halberdier silenced him by wounding him with his weapon. He was burned alive.

One account attributed Cazalla's "heresy" to:

ambition and malice that so corrupted him, he was intent on disturbing the peace and tranquility of the realm with such novelties, and he believed he would be worshiped by all as another Lutheran in Saxony and that his disciples would continue the name of Cazalla.^[4]

In one of the various accounts of Cazalla's last words he addresses Princess Juana of Austria (sister of Philip II, regent in his name) who had presided over the auto-de-fé, saying: "I gave you good doctrine; I preached well to you but for myself I chose the worst, I thought that this corruption was a golden mitre; and because of my evil works, I deserve what I get. Merciful Lady, remember my nephews, the children of the accountant Hernando Ortiz." After crying out to the executioner, "Oh brother, I believe, I believe," he kissed the cross and died.^[5]

Memorial

Augustino Cazalla is considered a Protestant martyr and especially as a precursor for Spanish Protestants.

In Valladolid, the site of his house and the column of infamy was preserved until 1776, when it was replaced (the original presumably had deteriorated) by a tombstone with a rectangle surmounted by a triangle, or semicircle, and the inscription:

Paul IV presiding over the Church of Rome and Philip II reigning in Spain, The Holy Office of the Inquisition condemned to demolition and razing of this house of Pedro Cazalla and Dona Leonor Vibero, his wife, as Lutheran heretics who met to conspire against our Sta. Fe ch. and Church of Rome in the year 1559 on the 21st of May.

With the arrival of the Liberal Regime in 1820 the house was rebuilt on its original site, and the street was renamed 'Doctor Cazalla street'. His reputation was re-evaluated as an opponent of the Inquisition. Although the tombstone has not been preserved and no drawings exist, several copies of the text survive, some from the plate when it was dismantled and others from the City Council archives. Preserved texts attest the sign was replaced in 1776 due to deterioration. One text describes "a stone wall containing a sign manifesting his crime and his grief."^[6] A description thought to have been by an eyewitness, relates; "The first paragraph is written in a triangle and the second in a rectangle, so it is assumed that the plate had a semicircular shape at the top. Sangrador who wrote in Gothic script, says the sign was in a small hollow and closed by a wall.^[7][8] Leonor de Vivero, Cazalla's mother was erroneously named as his wife, due to a confusion of Pedro the father with Agustín the son of Pedro and Leonor.^[9][10]

References