Studies in Luther The Unfortunate Fate of Luther in the Ibero-American World

Andrew L. Wilson

he matter of Luther’s reception in Ibero-America is ions, an overwhelming hegemony of “Catholic” culture, Tcorrupted. It is corrupted because Luther was never such that even when one is busy being irreligious or dif- received as a thinker, a theologian, a linguist, or a spiritual ferently religious, one is always at the same time very busy reformer, but as a heretic, an enemy, a devil, and a disease. not being Catholic. As we shall see, the particular kind The principal concern of those who knew anything of him of “Catholic” that took root here was forged in the anti- was to inoculate and expunge Luther’s necrotic, contagious Reformation fires of the second half of the sixteenth cen- cancer, whose very mention could ruin the unprecedented tury: hardly a neutral position from which to appreciate the opportunity of ruling an orthodox land free of heresy.1 father of all Protestants. This principally medical understanding of healthy doctrine Thus in speaking of “Luther” and “Ibero-America,” found a robust lodging in the powerful and self-reinforcing a host of matters arises: cultural synthesis, minority resis- religious identity of the great monarchs of southern Europe, tance, colonization, public discipline. Luther in Ibero- notably Portugal and Spain, and in the papacy itself. America is not a man, or even a heretical theologian; he is These two images—of a healthy, robust, intact, inte- a cipher when not an outright demon. If for the Germans grated body, and of a foreign infection—would endure Luther was Moses’s bronze serpent, held aloft to chase for centuries, reaching a height, if such could even be pos- away evil snakes and heal the sick in the wilderness, for sible, in the racial overtones evoked the Spanish he was rejected as a foul by the nineteenth-century critic and Luther in Ibero-America is and misleading idol, as happened nationalist Marcelino Menéndez to the same bronze serpent under Pelayo, whose Historia de los hetero- not a man, or even a heretical Hezekiah. doxos españoles glibly explains, over Only in the late twentieth century many thousands of pages, that the theologian; he is a cipher is there anything like a “scientific” Reformation and other heresies appreciation of the man and his never took root in his native land for when not an outright demon. work in Spain, that most Catholic of the simple fact that la lengua española realms, and nearly all of this after the no se forma decir herejes—“the Spanish tongue is not formed Second Vatican Council’s airing-out of the doctrinal attic. to utter heresies.”2 This a peculiar formulation, as it leaves So when we speak of Luther before the 1960s, we speak of undefined whether it is the well-formed Spaniard who a phantom, of ethnic enclaves, or of liberal revolutionaries. knows what orthodoxy is or whether a Spaniard knows This is itself fascinating, and we can learn a great deal, if himself automatically to be orthodox simply because he not about Luther, then about the societies that accepted or is Spanish. rejected him, as Alicia Mayer has thoroughly demonstrated The latter was certainly the case throughout Latin in cataloguing the strange life of Luther the archheretic in America’s history, at least in Hispanic America, where the iconic imagination of Counter-Reformation Mexico.4 Spanish purebloods staffed the clergy. Indeed they still do, In these images Luther is clearly an idea who is variously especially the episcopacy, where an indigenous bishop is as played by the devil, crushed by the wheels of the chariot rare as a Pentecostal indio is common. In many places such of orthodoxy (a theme of Peter Paul Rubens), or whose as southern Mexico and Guatemala, most of the indige- followers are struck dead by lightning bolts streaming from nous population has turned to the more freely adaptable a consecrated host. charismatic churches.3 So this subject cannot be addressed directly. The confes- Defining just what “Ibero”-America might encompass, sional divisions ossified even before news of Luther reached moreover, makes for an ever-receding horizon. For this Iberia, let alone Latin America. And this remained the region has, in addition to linguistic and colonial connect- case for three hundred years, until anticlerical revolution-

Lutheran Forum 29 ary governments hoped that import- invoked his inflammatory name. tur, was so far beyond everybody out- ing German Protestants could help With all this posthumous slander side the ex-Jewish community that it bolster their emerging nations’ tech- and distant praise, it is easy for us was hobbled before it even went to nical expertise and democratic spirit.5 to forget the intimate connection of press—a hobbling made complete These revolutionary concerns have sixteenth-century Spain with the when five hundred of the initial six continued, peculiarly transformed, events of Luther’s Reformation. Sal- hundred exemplars went down with as the nineteenth century’s cultural utary reforms to religious life, many the ship on a voyage to Rome. philosophers Max Weber and Karl of them already flourishing in Spain Cisneros’s concerns in patron- Marx extended their enormous influ- before Luther, were simply jetti- izing Alcalá and the Polyglot Bible ence among Latin America’s church soned when they gained, after 1520, were peculiar, both distancing him intellectuals, who grappled with their the damning association with the and bringing him closer to the soon- theology of liberation to compre- “Lutheran” heresy. Several notable to-explode protesting movement up hend the forces that have rocketed the movements were diagnosed as being north. Like Luther’s later patron and northern hemisphere to recent wealth tainted with the Lutheran disease and protector Frederick the Wise, Cisneros and stability while, perhaps as a result thus were expunged outright or forced took up the humanist’s mantra to go their own fate has lagged considerably into attenuated and even clandestine ad fontes to attract fame to his city and behind. existence for the centuries to come.7 bring lagging Spain up to Renaissance As much as Luther has been snuff. But he also wanted secret knowl- defined as a heretic, Latin Ameri- edge, was bizarrely curious about the Humanism and Illuminism can Luther-interpreters have defined Kabbalah, and hoped in a way only their own Latin American context The first of these was Spain’s burgeon- an apocalyptic thinker could to crack not with reference to Catholic culture ing humanist movement, patronized the codes hidden within all those mys- but to the social and demographic by Franciscan cardinal and later regent terious Oriental tongues.9 position of their own enduring and to young Emperor Charles, Ximénez There were no reforms of hier- widespread political oppression and de Cisneros. His activism, peculiar for archy attached to this new learning, economic inequality. The sociohis- its hermetic and numerological ticks, but association with the high-minded torical and sociological readings of had as its crowning accomplishment Erasmus, also known as El Roterdamo, liberal Protestantism versus monar- the establishment of a new school at soon brought an end to that neutrality. chical Catholicism have tended to Alcalá de Henares, where the new And here Luther played a precipatory dominate discussions in our largely disciplines particularly of languages role. The Dominicans in the Inquisi- post-confessional age. Luther sits quite and philology were to be taught and tion sensed, half correctly, that these well amongst Latin America’s intellec- spread. It was a risky endeavor, less northern menaces had been fueled by tual elite, for the same reasons he was for its intellectual raciness than for the Erasmus the itinerant humanist, his championed in revolutionary Europe, overwhelming reliance of his project blatant calls for ecclesiastical reorga- as a hero of conscience, a coura- on instructors of very recent Jewish nization, and his haughty dismissal geous voice against an overlording ancestry. of much church practice as vain and hegemony.6 This is tiresome for the The new university’s greatest liter- meaningless. Erasmus’s own proposals weathered Luther scholar, but such ary production, sprouted from its rich were revolutionary, but in the toler- mythologies are as difficult to uproot and varied ethnic soil, was the so-called able manner of so much parlor ban- as they are powerful, especially where Complutensian Polyglot Bible. Polyglot ter. Even though he himself never there is still a strong connection with indeed, for it featured, in six columns mounted any organized rallying cry, ecclesiastical power and governmental of equal size, the Bible’s complete text the association with the nascent and elites. in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Ara- rebellious Reformation was quickly This trend of using Luther as a hero maic, and Coptic. This truly monu- seized by the Inquisition, which seems of conscience also for Latin America mental achievement, were it ever to to have been fairly chomping at the bit sidelines the heresy quibbles and uses have been promoted and used, could to relive the glory days of 1492 when him instead to diagnose an ecclesial have single-handedly injected a vital- it oversaw the cleanup after the expul- body sickened not by heresy but by the ity into textual criticism that was not sion of the Jews and Muslims. Luther complacency of bourgeois structures to be seen for decades, even in book- came on the scene just in the nick of in the church. So although Luther’s saturated northern Europe.8 But such time to save an institution in the full theological presence was always atten- linguistic wealth relied almost exclu- throes of an identity crisis.10 uated, even this modest use heightens sively upon the truly prodigious intel- Another movement sprang up the ever-present distinction between lectual inheritance of Spain’s converso around the same time: illuminism. understanding what Luther meant in minority. And this multi-volumed Heavy with converso participation, this se and what he signified to those who tome, despite its full-fledged imprima- spiritual movement popularized fairly

30 Winter 2013 standard monastic contemplation. Spain’s brightest, corrupted by Alcalá Juan Pérez de Pineda hunkered down But in divorcing it from the sacramen- and its humanist currents, sought to in friendly Geneva for years, hoping to tal and other rigors of the cloister, it further their formation abroad and ignite the Spanish populace from afar brought the whole superstructure of made their respective grand tours to with his evangelical tinder, translating priestly mediation under question. sundry hotbeds of both publishing and and arranging clandestine shipments With prayer, and even Scripture, these reform—Basel, Strasbourg, Mainz, of hot books via trusted colporteurs.16 “mystics” sought direct contact with Geneva, and even Wittenberg itself.15 Others sought refuge closer to home God through the Holy Spirit.11 This is Francisco de Enzinas made his way but equally safe. Juan Valdés, brother a habit we know to have had a great all the way to Wittenberg to perfect to royal advisor Alfonso, was part of influence on the young Martin Luther, his Greek under Philip Melanchthon. an intellectual dynasty and directed whose first publication, in 1516, was Then, after working his way through his keen mind and high style to cate- a preface to the Theologica Germanica, the New Testament, he had it printed chetical work. In his Renaissance dia- a book-length exhortation and dem- and even presented an exemplar to logues, he limited the sacraments to onstration of precisely this kind of Emperor Charles himself in Antwerp three, uplifted the centrality of Scrip- renewed life through prayer. Luther in 1539, who received it thankfully, ture, and called for the end of priestly always praised Bernard of Clairvaux, apparently unaware that any foul had celibacy.17 His sources seem to have long after bashing most other school- been more Erasmian than Lutheran. men to bits, because he saw in his The Inquisition was But Carlos Gilly has shown that his example of sacramentally-disciplined connection with the Reformation was illumination just the antidote needed chomping at the bit likely much tighter than this. Whole to the dry bean-counting of spiritual passages of his Alfabeto Cristiano, for merit inherent in late scholastic pur- to relive the glory their portrayal of the Christian before gatorial theology. The degree to which God, could have been lifted straight Luther himself was what we now call days of the cleanup out of Luther’s Large Catechism, and a “mystic” has only recently come to they probably were.18 prominence, and it certainly places the after the expulsion of It is impossible to control fully him much closer to his Spanish coun- peoples’ thoughts or their private terparts than previously imagined.12 Jews and Muslims. lives. And so even within the healthy But Luther’s didn’t remain a draw- Spanish body tumorous conventicles ing-room exercise, like much of illu- Luther came on the again sprouted amidst the tumult of minism, and his meteoric rise as the the 1540s. They sprung from various latest archheretic ensured the demise scene just in the nick origins: some were ladies’ circles con- of Spain’s otherwise anemic move- tinuing that age-old tradition of spirit- ment. From 1520 on, the Inquisition of time to save an ual gurus and the heady patronage exercised ceaseless vigilance over the of “free thought,” perhaps as a loose slightest symptom of this latest and institution in an continuation of certain illuminist per- most contagious plague.13 Books were suasions. No one knows how wide- much more closely regulated, foreign identity crisis. spread they were, for they might not travel and trade much more suspect, have differed much from official mys- and the nativist know-nothing ten- been committed. Beyond the Iberian ticism of the more heroic kind, such dency, brought to perfection by the Peninsula, there was clearly much as that exhibited by exonerated con- purge of 1492, found renewed ener- more freedom, even amongst Span- temporaries Teresa of Avila and John gies. A new and foreign threat loomed, iards. of the Cross. These two are not cho- and it’s not hard to imagine that many Some other exiles, however, made sen at random, for they, like so many inquisitors were in some backward more strident protests, translating suspicious people, shared in common way pleased to have a new object to and even organizing themselves to a Jewish ancestry; their eventual beati- expunge.14 smuggle works into Spain by outright fication was hardly a done deal. heretics like Luther and Calvin. They These pious circles found them- clearly still held out hope that the spir- selves buoyed by Erasmus, who played “Lutherans” in Exile itual state of Spain was just as ripe for similar parlor games with rich fami- and Pious Circles reform as the Holy Roman Empire, lies. But despite the ubiquity of these On account of energetic persecutions, and they were certainly aided in this circles, it was the treacherous qualities the next generations saw both exile conviction by Charles v’s swinging of being converso or Erasmian—that and clandestine activity as the locus political alignments during the years is, having “foreign” taints—that were for reforming minds. A handful of leading up to the Schmalkaldic War. later invoked at the trials that saw the

Lutheran Forum 31 end of these privileged groups.19 de Carranza.21 These ideas are of the Inquisition’s own judgment on the Others were more deliberately broad-minded humanist persuasion, matter, that Mexico’s Nahua and secretive rather than merely private. though, and there’s no reason to look Zacatecas natives learned their Chris- They imported banned books and took for conspiratorial plagiarism. Erasmus tian basics from a “Lutheran” heretic. grand tours of the Protestant north, was the spring from which many of But so much of this genealogical returning to tend the glowing coals of the “real” Protestant reformers drank spelunking takes as its starting point personal faith in the spiritual freezer deeply as well. what a century of scholarship has of the Catholic south. We know little Constantino made enemies at court, tried to chip away, namely, the notion of their inner workings, but their spirit though, and despite—or perhaps of an intact Catholic bastion beat- and plight seems well enough por- because of—his intimate connection ing off all foreign contagions. We can trayed by Miguel Delibes in his very with Charles v’s son Phillip ii (he was now see in the first decades of the well-received historical novel on the the young king’s private confessor), sixteenth century the same liveliness subject, El Hereje, in which a monkish the preacher was imprisoned for being among Spain’s urban religious elite Protestant convert faces trial under the a “Lutheran” and died in a damp cell that was the case in the lands to the Inquisition.20 Partly indigenous, partly before his death sentence could be north. It is, quite ironically, the spec- real agents of a foreign threat, these commuted. Whether Constantino ter of Luther the archheretic and clandestine “Protestants” became the or his influential teacher Juan Gil (or the separatist Reformation itself that eventual prototype for all future for- Egidio) were “Lutheran” as accused, triggered the repression of nascent eign “infections.” or whether they were “mere” Eras- and parallel movements for ecclesias- mian proponents of inner religious tical reform in Spain. And while the experience, is a matter of philologi- now more distinctly than ever Roman Constantino Ponce de la Fuente cal discussion. Constantino certainly Catholic church launched its own sin- and the New World’s Luther shared “Lutheran” commitments to cere and far-reaching efforts to reform One figure in particular illustrates the preaching, cutting down on the num- itself in body and members, the tim- confusion wrought upon these vari- ber of sacraments, cultivating per- ing was too late. The decrees of Trent, ous movements by the interruption sonal prayer and devotional life, and but even more its Jesuit agents abroad, of Luther, the heretic. Constantino even reading Scripture. If he did fol- were dead set to inoculate the as-yet- Ponce de la Fuente was brilliant priest low Luther, it was not in the details of innocent New World against any pos- of converso stock, whose booming voice his proposed spiritual regimen or even sible heretical infection. and rhetorical gifts won him the pres- his call to ecclesiastical reform—top- tigious position of Seville’s cathedral ics freely discussed at the time—but in A New Reception of Luther? preacher—at the time, a rather inde- his trenchant critique of Rome.22 And pendent sort of religious job with lots this was enough for the Inquisition to Much has passed between then and of public acclaim. A much calmer ver- condemn him and his entire oeuvre as now: the whole modern world, in sion of Savonarola, Constantino man- infected by “Lutheran” contagion. fact. As ubiquitous secularism and our aged to warm the hearts of Seville’s There’s a strange bridge in all this peculiar form of postmodern trans- elite, who formed small groups to between the Old World and the New, humance (one side of globalization) prolong the excitement of his Bible- constructed from the remains of Con- perforate, well, just about everything, based expositional sermons. His ora- stantino’s condemned Catechism. It the old confessional saws are more tions were published to great acclaim was not the peninsular Dominicans tired than ever—at least among the as Doce dudas, which reflected his previ- running the inquisitors’ courts but the mobile elite. But on the ground, the ously published Catechism. missionaries of newly discovered ter- trenches between católicos and cristia- For those in the know, his works ritories who recognized the need for a nos (a distinction even Latin Ameri- had to have been quite suspicious: fresh and vigorous catechism. And so can Catholics generally accept!) are he argued for the proper distinction while Constantino’s work died a last- continually dug ever deeper, scoring between law and gospel, justification ing European death in the flames of points off each other in an anachron- by faith, and a hierarchy-light empha- Valladolid’s 1558–59 auto-da-fé, it lived istic game of pope vs. Bible. One can sis on three sacraments—baptism, a second life in the New World, where certainly hear it blasting from store- communion, and confession—as did large sections were lifted out directly front churches all over Latin Ameri- also Valdés and Erasmus. Tellechea and put to work in the field under the ca’s slums. Idígoras has traced these strikingly sim- name of the great Franciscan bishop The current pope’s openness to ilar passages to one of Melanchthon’s Juan de Zumárraga. It even inspired the rapprochement may bear ecumeni- Loci communes, which the preacher may fiercely Counter-Reformation Jesuits cal fruit. And if there does exist an also have borrowed from yet another in Brazil and Goa!23 So it’s quite pos- opportunity to salve the wounds kept controversial colleague, Bartholomé sible, at least if we take seriously the open by centuries of dutifully main-

32 Winter 2013 tained confessional conflict, as well Also in this issue of lf, see her article “Specters La repressión del protestantismo en España 1517– as to address a democratic “context” of Luther, Heresiarch of Colonial Mexico,” 1648, and Los protestantes y la Inquisición en España pp. 64, 58–63. en tiempos de Reforma y Contrarreforma (Leuven: increasingly incredulous of authority 5. See Protestantes, liberales y francmasones, Leuven University Press, 2001), make abun- (whether confessional or hierarchical), sociedades de ideas y modernidad en América latina, dantly clear with reams of statistical data that it will be aided by investigating afresh siglo xix, 4th ed., ed. J.-P. Bastian (Mexico City: the chief target of inquisitors—and by a very the spiritual roots of the Reforma- Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), and J.-P. large margin—was foreignness. They profiled. tion in certain strains of late-medieval Bastian, Le protestantisme en Amérique latine, une 15. An informally canonized group of piety. It is here that Lutherans them- approche socio-historique (Geneva: Labor et Fides, these were publicized in the nineteenth cent- 1994). ury in the twenty-four volumes of Reformistas selves can see the broader swath of 6. Even Ricardo Garcia Villoslada’s Antiguos Españoles, edited by the Englishman movements that came to be institu- admirable and otherwise patient Martin Lutero Benjamin Wiffen and his Spanish colleague tionalized in their own public wor- (Madrid: Editorial Católica, 1976) harbors Luís Usóz y Río. From their efforts we know ship, education, and family devotional many of these existential tropes that Luther the likes of Juan Valdéz, Juan Pérez de Pineda, life; and Catholics can appropriate scholars have struggled hard to leave behind. Francisco Enzinas, and Constantino Ponce de 7. The main sources are Marcel Batil- la Fuente. many of their own great lights as part- lon’s Erasme et l’Espagne, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Droz, 16. For examples of this trade, see Carlos ners with the Protestant reformers in 1998), and José Nieto, El Renacimiento y la otra Gilly, Spanien und der Basler Buchdruck bis 1600: a quest to make the Christian faith España: Visión cultural socioespiritual (Geneva: ein Querschnitt durch die spanische Geistesgeschichte more rigorous, mystical, and heartfelt. Droz, 1997). aus der Sicht einer europäischen Buchdruckerstadt Here there’s ample room to reopen 8. See Basel Hall, “The Trilingual College (Basel: Helbing and Lichtenhahn, 1985). the study of Ibero-America’s own of San Idelfonso and the Making of the Com- 17. See Jose C. Nieto, Juan de Valdes and plutensian Polyglot Bible,” Studies in Church the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation rich tradition of indigenous religious History 5, ed. J. G. Cuming (Leiden: Brill), (Geneva: Droz, 1970), or better, the expanded reformers and so to avoid contracting, 114–46. Spanish edition, Juan de Valdés y los orígenes de la as Derrida described, yet another even 9. See also Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Reforma en España e Italia (Mexico City: Fondo more self-obsessed sickness, the mal “Cardinal Cisneros as a Patron of Printing,” in de Cultura Económica, 1979), which has God and Man in Medieval Spain: Essays in Honour added the appendix, “El Espectro de Lutero y d’archive. LF of J. R. L. Highfield, eds. Derek W. Lomax and las Máscaras de Erasmo en España,” 543–63. David Mackenzie (Warminster: Aris and Phil- 18. Carlos Gilly, “Juan de Valdés, traduc- Andrew L. Wilson is the Production lips, 1989). tor y adaptor de los escritos de Lutero en su Editor of Lutheran Forum and an inde- 10. See José Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Diálogo de doctrina Cristiana,” Miscelánea de estu- pendent scholar working on a book Tiempos recios: Inquisición y heterodoxias: El peso de dios hispánicos; homenaje a los hispanistas de Suiza, about Luther. An earlier version of los días, vol. 2 (Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977). Ramon Sugranyes de Franch, ed. Luis López this essay was delivered at the Luther 11. Especially the unfortunately dated work Molina (Monserrat: Grafiques Badalona, of Melquíades Andrés Martín, “Adversarios 1982), 85–106. Congress in Helsinki, Finland, in españoles de Lutero en 1521,” Revista española 19. Again, see Bataillon, Erasme et August 2012. de teología 12 (1959): 175–85; and “Alumbrados, l’Espagne. Erasmistas, ‘Luteranos’ y misticos, y su común 20. Miguel Delibes, El Hereje (Barcelona: Notes denominador: el riesgo de una espiritualidad Ediciones Destino, 1998). 1. See Martin Nesvig, “‘Heretical Plagues’ más ‘intimista,’” Inquisición Espanola y mentalidad 21. J. Ignacio Tellechea Idígoras, Melanch- and Censorship Cordons: Colonial Mexico inquisitorial: Ponencias del Simposio Internacional thon y Carranza: Préstamos y afinidades, Bibliotheca and the Transatlantic Book Trade,” Church His- sobre Inquisición, ed. Ángel Alcalá et al. (Barce- Oecumenica Salmanticensis 4 (Salamanca: tory 75/1 (2006): 1–37. lona: Ariel, 1983). Centro de Estudios Orientales y Ecuménicos 2. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de 12. Notably via the efforts of Volker Lep- Juan xxiii/Universidad Pontífica, 1979). los heterodoxos españoles, vol. 1 (Madrid: Católica, pin. See, for example, Gottes Nähe unmittelbar 22. Nieto, El Renacimiento y la otra España, 1978 [1880]), 47. erfahren. Mystik im Mittelalter und bei Martin Luther, 313. 3. See most recently Allan H. Anderson, To eds. Berndt Hamm und Volker Leppin (Tübin- 23. José Ramón Guerrero, Catecismos españ- the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Trans- gen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). oles del siglo xvi: La obra catequética del Dr. Con- formation of World Christianity (Oxford: Oxford 13. See Augustin Redondo, “Les premiers stantino Ponce de la Fuente, Colección de estudios University Press, 2013), 172. ‘illumines’ Castillans et Luther,” Aspects du lib- del instituto superior del pastoral, Universidad 4. Alicia Mayer, Lutero en el Paraíso: La Nueva ertinisme au xvi Siècle (Paris: Librairie Philoso- Pontíficia de Salamanca 1 (Madrid: Instituto España en el Espejo del Reformador Alemán (Mexico phique J. Vrin, 1974), 93–103. Superior de Pastoral, 1969), 335–9. City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005). 14. The twin volumes by Werner Thomas,

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