Not every Spanish protestant managed to escape the Spanish Inquisition in the sixteenth century, and for those who did, they were never truly safe. The Inquisition had their agents embedded throughout Europe, posing as protestants or as inquiring Catholics to infiltrate protestant communities as spies. They stalked their targets, relied on informants who were sympathetic to the Inquisition’s cause, and waited for the right moment to apprehend their targets, that is, when they stepped on land that was under papal jurisdiction.[1] What awaited the protestant faithful was a trial back in Spain, which almost always ended in a public execution.[2] But when patience was growing dim, and the threat of a particular reformer seemed too great, the Inquisition sought to drive their target away from his safe refuge by some means of political or relational manipulation. What happened with Casiodoro de Reina, the protestant theologian and translator of the first complete Spanish Bible, is an example of the latter.
From the Shadows
Shortly after Reina had settled in London, England, as a protestant refugee in 1558, he set out to find a church that could serve as a potential home for Spanish protestants. There was much work to be done in order to cultivate an expatriated Spanish reformation. Their protestant base in Seville had been ransacked by the Inquisition, and there only choice was to resume their work outside Spanish borders. His search, however, yielded nothing of promise. The Spanish were more-or-less equally dispersed amongst different ethnic congregations, and though Reina hosted a private gathering of Spanish protestants, there was no official Spanish church. Thus, recognizing the need for a distinctly Spanish congregation, Reina founded a Spanish church with the blessing of the Crown Secretary and the Bishop of London in 1560, consisting of members who were originally part of the London-based French, Fleming and Italian churches, the three of which formed the consistories, or church councils.[3]
Unbeknownst to him, the result of Reina’s initiative had upset the consistories and made himself a rival.[4] By establishing a Spanish church, he had effectively recruited Spaniards from the other churches, and had robbed the consistories of their flock. It was not Reina’s intention to harm the unity of the body of Christ, but the consistories cried foul due to a lack of communication between them. We should note that Reina’s sole desire was to establish a community which he hoped would serve as a base-camp for Spanish protestant refugees, and for a Spanish church to join the unity of the council as a consistory. In spite of his best intentions, however, he would encounter more obstacles than he would success.
Due to political struggles for power within the consistories, Reina’s congregation was restrained from gaining any momentum with his ecclesiastical projects, namely, the translation of the Old and New Testaments and other reformational publications. Gaining recognition as a Spanish consistory was itself a lengthy struggle for the church and was granted reluctantly by the consistories but not fully.[5] It was during this struggle that the Inquisition observed from afar the potential for manufacturing a forced departure for Reina. England was a safe refuge, and as long as Reina remained under the dominion of Queen Elizabeth, he would always be protected from the Inquisition. Their first attempt to force his departure was to accuse him of heresy according to the Protestant understanding of orthodoxy, and this meant marring his name with Servetian theology, that is, with the false doctrine of Unitarianism. This accusation Reina refuted by presenting the Spanish protestant Confesión de Fe (confession of faith) before the consistories, which was Calvinistic in nature, and affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity. But though helpful for his defense, Reina did himself no favors in befriending those with Servetian views; he may not have agreed with them doctrinally, but by association he had raised enough suspicion.[6] The 16th century was not a forgiving era to be friends with heretics, whether on the Catholic or Protestant side, and it was best to be as far away as possible in both person and teaching. But these theological quibbles were sufficient enough for Reina to handle; after all, he believed he had an orthodox understanding of Scripture, he was backed by the Bishop of London and the Queen of England, and the confession was accepted by the consistories in spite of their persistent questioning.
The second attempt, however, was more explosive and damaging to Reina’s reputation, resulting in his forced departure. On the 31st of August, 1563, Casiodoro presented himself before the French Consistory in order to report that he had been accused of deceit, adultery and sodomy. The accusation came from Balthasar Sanchez, a Spaniard, who accused him of embezzling $200, of having relations with his wife, and of committing sodomy on a teenage boy, Jean de Bayonne. One might be ready to condemn him just by hearing these charges, after all, these were not minor offenses. Fortunately for Reina, the first two accusations were later dismissed as nothing more than gossip.[7] The accusation of sodomy, on the other hand, was a more serious allegation which took much longer to resolve. It had been reported that, prior to Reina’s marriage, he was staying at an apartment in the Bayonne house in Shoe Lane with Jean, his servant at the time.[8] Up unto this point, Reina affirmed these facts to be true, and he also reported that due to insufficient funds to acquire two beds, the only bed in the apartment was thus shared between the two men. A red flag should have been raised in Reina’s mind. The apostle Peter wrote in his first epistle that Christians are to “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12, ESV). Other translations put it as “Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors” (NLT) and “Keep your behaviour excellent among the Gentiles” (NASB). The apostle Paul, also when writing to Titus, advised “In everything, show yourself to be an example by doing good works. In your teaching show integrity, dignity, and wholesome speech that is above reproach, so that anyone who opposes us will be ashamed to have nothing bad to say about us” (Titus 2:7-8, BSB). In the sixteenth century, it was a common and lowly polemic to accuse someone of homosexuality, and thus one had to take great care so as to not give a false impression. It would destroy one’s reputability and result in severe personal losses. The scholar Gordon A. Kindler writes, “As so often in Western Europe, the mere hint of homosexuality was an infallible method of whipping up hysteria and creating suspicion… tongues were set wagging and the rumours grew.”[9] Reina should have been more diligent and wise in his private dealings; however, in his ignorance he placed himself in a position which had the Inquisition drooling at their mouths. Finally, the man who sought to translate the Bible into the vernacular Spanish tongue, in defiance of the Roman Catholic church, could be lured closer to their grasp by means of a scandal.
Scandal in the Church
In addition to the threefold accusation by Sanchez, there were other accusations brought against Reina, and in such a mounting fashion that it became clear that what the Inquisition had accomplished was a cascading effect. Those who disliked Reina had each thrown dirt to see what would stick, but as Kindle writes:
[The historical] documents provide accusations and hints of an amazing and unlikely combination of offences: dishonesty, embezzlement, immoral, or, at least, indiscreet conduct with certain female members of his congregation, sodomy with a seventeen-year-old youth (the son of one of the women concerned!), and a number of points of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice which differed from the strict Calvinism of the refugee churches, amongst all of which were also listed friendship with persons suspected of heterodoxy, and secrecy concerning the translation of the Bible on which he was engaged.[10]
What took centre stage, however, was the accusation of sodomy. It was, after all, considered one of the worst crimes alongside heresy in the 16th century.
As a result of these accusations, upon presenting himself to the French Consistory, Reina voluntarily stepped down from his pastoral position and refused to take up his post again until his name had been cleared and his person declared innocent. He did not believe it proper to continue pastoring, even if he had support from the Bishop of London, if his name had been tarnished, for it would have cast a shadow over the church and harmed its growth and development.
Let us consider at this point that it was Reina who stepped forward to announce the accusations, not the accuser. Furthermore, the accuser had not personally witnessed the events, instead, he had lured away a young man who was visiting Reina, as an informant would, and after their conversation was ready to accuse Reina of sodomy. This young man, Francisco de Abrego, was from Flanders, and reportedly claimed that the acts of sodomy took place when Bayonne was as young as fifteen and a half. Already in the records there is a discrepancy, because the accusation presented was that Bayonne was seventeen years old. As Kindle notes, “This introduces a time-lag into the affair which it is hard to justify in terms of anything other than a conspiracy.”[11]
When the victim was questioned twice, first by the accusers, and secondly by the court in Brussels, he claimed in both times that he had not been harmed and that such an act had never taken place. In fact, in all instances where it was claimed that the victim had admitted to being wronged, it was never directly from his mouth but from others who were looking to do away with Reina one way or the other. In a most telling confession of an apparent conspiracy, when questioned officially in Antwerp, Bayonne said he had no idea “what all the fuss was about, and that he supposed it was all trumped up of hatred for Casiodoro.”[12]
One might ask why Jean de Bayonne was questioned in Antwerp when he was a resident of London, England? When his father discovered that Reina was under investigation for violating his son, he feared for the worst and sent him away in spite of assurances by the Bishop of London of his protection.[13] At the time, sodomy was not punishable by capital punishment in England, but it appears that the accusers had sufficiently stoked up the father’s fears in order to drive his son away. The reason for this became clear, by having his son flee, Reina was led to believe that if found guilty, even against all the evidence of his innocence, then his life would be by no means spared. The consistories and the Bishop of London all knew that capital punishment was not on the table, it was nothing more than a lie by his accusers to force Reina to depart from the Protestant refuge of England. And in fact, when Reina escaped to Antwerp, the Inquisition’s agents followed closely behind in order to arrest him.[14] They weren’t successful in the end, Reina managed to stay hidden in Antwerp for a time and later escaped from there to Frankfurt with his wife, where he would continue his Bible translation.
Gossip-mongers Exposed
Reina’s departure from England would have left some thinking that he had admitted guilt, but the investigation hadn’t stopped, and his father stood before the consistories on his behalf. By 1579, all the evidence had been collated and the verdict had been passed. Jean de Bayonne’s testimony of Reina’s innocence, character witnesses testifying of Reina’s godly conduct, including Francisco de Farias, his former superior in San Isidro, coupled with the unusual silence of Abrego in accusing Reina after seventeen months of supposedly discovering the events in question, and the retraction of the accusation by Angel Victor, one of the accusers alongside Abrego and Sanchez – and later exposed as a gossip-monger[15] – resulted in Reina being declared innocent. After all this, and considering the Inquisition’s role behind the scenes, Kindle writes why Reina should be liberated once and for all from the shadows of these accusations:
To begin with, one is bound to acknowledge that, once a person was suspect, it was considered normal in the sixteenth century to accuse him of the worst crimes, for these were, after all, the logical outcome of the incipient errors, that could be discerned. The charges of sodomy and atheism (which often meant merely erroneous views about God) were particularly beloved of the sixteenth century polemicists.[16]
What We Can Learn
From the very moment that Reina founded a Spanish church in London with the intention of cultivating an expatriated Spanish reformation, he became a target of the Inquisition as a threat to the catholicity of Spain and Portugal. He did no wrong in respect to his mission and vision for the church, and so, in his persecution he could take great delight, for he suffered for Christ’s namesake (Matt. 5:10; 10:22); but had he taken more care with his appearances, he could have avoided the slander which had tarnished his name.
There are several lessons we might learn from these events. The first, as aforementioned, is the responsibility to live in such a way that no one could speak ill of us. We are to keep our “conduct honorable,” to “live properly,” to keep our “behaviour excellent” (1 Pt. 2:12), and “above reproach” (Titus 2:7-8). Reina should have never placed himself in a position where his opponents could slander his good name. In the same way, we are never to place ourselves in a situation where false accusations might be laid against us. If the sixteenth century was a time of notoriously low-blow polemicists who accused men of suspect with the worst of crimes, the anti-Christian hostility of the twenty-first century is no exception. All it takes is for one godly individual to be alone with another person of the opposite sex and anything can be said about him or her regardless of what did or did not take place. And given the increased normativity of homosexual activity, the same can be said about a godly individual being alone with another person of the same sex. It is for this reason why it is best for personal meetings or lodgings, for whatever reason they may be, to take place in some public area where there are several witnesses; or, for the individual to be accompanied by a third or fourth person who could serve as a witness. And as a matter of principle, men, do not lodge with a woman who is not your wife. And vice versa, women, do not lodge with a man who is not your husband. If a situation presents itself where wisdom is necessitated, seek pastoral counsel in order to protect your integrity and to seek to do what is right with a spirit of godliness. As Peter exhorts us, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pt. 5:8).
Secondly, as the life of Reina testifies, we are to trust that the Lord God will acquit us of all wrongdoing if we are truly innocent, whether in this earthly life or upon the return of Christ. Reina had committed no crime, and the Lord in his just providence had brought to light the truth in order to acquit his servant before the consistories and the court. By doing so, he exposed the accusations as nothing more than falsity and cast shame upon his accusers. It is unquestionable, given the historical evidence, that the Inquisition had been working tirelessly behind the scenes to expel Reina from his safe haven, and in spite of their best efforts, their slander had failed to stick. Reina had cleared his name by 1579, and though some of his relationships in Europe had soured, there was still an ample group of protestant reformers who would support him financially, defend him from Inquisitorial agents and false accusations, and work with him in the translation of the Bible into the vernacular Spanish tongue. As we reflect on these events, we witness the will of God as delivering Reina from his persecutors, abdicating his character from guilt, and enabling him to deliver the Bible to the Spanish-speaking world for the advancement of God’s kingdom.
It would be wise not to say, upon reading this, that all our problems will be resolved within our lifetimes as with Reina, because, for example, many protestants were martyred according to the same will of God. But what can be said is that God is faithful and just, and whatever persecution we may undergo for Christ’s namesake, as we proclaim and apply his gospel, whether it ends positively as it did with Reina, or negatively as with the martyrs, in the end God is glorified and we have the privilege of bringing glory to his name. We must therefore trust in Him, for he who has started a good work within us shall accomplish his purpose (Phil. 1:6). And who are we as the potter’s clay to challenge the potter (Rom. 9:21)? As Jesus taught his disciples, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). And as Peter wrote to the church, “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pt. 4:13). There is a morally sufficient reason as to why God allows evil to occur, and no matter how difficult it is for us to understand, in the end, upon the culmination of history, he will be glorified and we will be with him to glorify him.
Thirdly, in light of Reina’s perseverance, we too are to persevere in our efforts to advance God’s kingdom in the midst of trials and tribulations. Scripture encourages us that, “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). Though Reina had left England in fear of suffering an unjust punishment for a crime he had never committed, he had never fled the investigation. His father agreed to stand in his stead, and Reina willingly subjected himself to the questionings of the court outside of England.[17] He endured, not retreated, pressed through, not whimpered. And as he did so, he continued his translation of the Bible. As Kindle writes, “He had a far more pressing task in hand translating the Bible, and he preferred to devote his time to that, undistracted by back-biting.”[18]
In light of Reina’s declared innocence by the courts and the consistories, his life serves as an admirable testimony of perseverance. Though he could have tangled himself up with the back-biting and mud-slinging, he instead chose to answer his accusers only when required, and while the legal and ecclesiastical proceedings were underway, he focused his energies on reforming the Spanish-speaking church through the delivery of God’s sovereign word. The Inquisition could have tried all that they could, Reina was determined to fulfill his calling as a Spanish protestant reformer. His life was by no means perfect, and at many times we would shake our head in disappointment, but in his weakness and imperfection, we witness the glory of the saving grace and bountiful mercy of God.
[1] Collection de Chroniques Belges (Brussels, 1882), I, 478.
[2] Gordon A. Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina: Spanish Reformer of the Sixteenth Century (London, UK.: Tamesis Books Limited, 1975), 27.
[3] Ibid., 21.
[4] Ibid., 34.
[5] Ibid., 23.
[6] A.A. van Schelven, Kerkeraads-Protocollen der Nederduitsche Vluchtelingen-Kerkte Londen 1560-1563 (Amsterdam, 1921), 131.
[7] Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina, 35.
[8] R.E.G. Kirk & E.F. Kirk, Returns of Aliens dwelling in the City & Suburbs of London, 4 Volumes (Aberdeen, 1902-1908), Vol. 10 of Huguenot Society of London Publications, I, 281, 291.
[9] Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina, 34.
[10] Ibid., 28.
[11] Ibid., 29.
[12] Memoires anonymes sur les troubles des Pays-Bas (Brussels, 1869), V, 58f. ; Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina, 33.
[13] Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina, 32.
[14] Edward Boehmer, Bibliotheca Wiffeniana: Spanish Reformers of Two Centuries from 1520, 3 volumes (Strassburg/London, 1883-1904), II, 172.
[15] Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London (London, 1937), 57; Actes du Consistoire, fol. 136f.
[16] Kindle, Casiodoro de Reina, 34-35, 36.
[17] Ibid., 34.
[18] Ibid., 29.