![What is systems thinking? 15
Cartesian thinking therefore lies at the roots of the silo mentality in organisa-
tions.This creates isolated pockets of expertise, separate from and suspicious of
outsiders and protecting domains of influence and expertise.A training depart-
ment is often one of the weaker silos, cut off from central operational func-
tions as a sub-department within human resources. This often gives it little
real political strength which might enable it to be proactive in identifying real
learning needs or reacting to demands for training where knowledge and skills
issues are not actually the real problem.
Cartesian thinking also creates a top-down dynamic,in which demands flow
downwards from the organisation to the individual. Hence learning activities
are seen as ‘training’, something which is ‘done to people’.4
The problem here
is that training staff often define themselves as people who transfer knowledge
and skills to the workforce and so confine what they do to activities which
live in this silo and do not necessarily see themselves as people whose role is
to facilitate learning,5
which opens up a whole range of other possibilities for
supporting organisational effectiveness.
The trap of Cartesian thinking
We can therefore start to see how reductionist thinking can create a trap. But
apart from these practical problems, there are some deeper philosophical issues
that it creates for us. First, reductionist thinking is so pervasive in modern life
that we probably do not think at all about there being any alternative. The
educational and professional development processes that we follow lead us to
specialise more and more narrowly, cutting off our opportunities to see things
from a different perspective.
Second, a reductionist way of thinking means that we tend to see the world
as being composed of‘machines’which are simply matter and have a fixed func-
tionality.HannahArendt,theAmerican social theorist,saw this as providing reas-
surance to us as humans:“the things of the world have the function of stabilising
human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that. . . men, their ever-changing
nature notwithstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is, their identity, by
being related to the same chair and the same table”.6
We therefore assume that
what is in the world appears the same to everyone. This means that we can
‘detach’ ourselves from the world and ascribe a fixed meaning to everything
around us.Seeing the man-made world around us as fixed is known as reification:
[R]eification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if
they were something other than human products – such as facts of nature,
results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies
that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world,
and, further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products
is lost to consciousness.7
But actually our reality is socially constructed; the interpretation we give of the
world around us being based on our experience of the world, right from the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-38-320.jpg)
![LUIS DE LEON
be burnt. In truth the question of the Vulgate was one of importance. The
new heresies were largely based on the assumption of its imperfection, and
sought to prove this by reference to the originals. Scholastic theology rested
on the Vulgate and, in self-defence, the Council of Trent, in 1546, had
declared that it was to be received as authentic in all public lectures,
disputations, preaching and expositions, and that no one should dare to
reject it under any pretext.[336] Yet it was notorious that, in the course of
ages, the text had become corrupt; the Tridentine fathers included in their
decree a demand for a perfected edition, but the labor was great and was not
concluded until 1592, when the Clementine text was issued, with thousands
of emendations. Meanwhile to question its accuracy was to venture on
dangerous ground and to invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one
of the calificadores, during Fray Luis’s trial, asserted “Catholic doctors
affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate, as
the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew and
Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the means of
confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free interpretation.”[337]
Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a lecture on the subject four
years before, he had maintained the accuracy of the Hebrew text,
contending that St. Jerome the translator was not inspired, nor were the
words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover that the Tridentine decree
in no way affirmed such verbal inspiration.[338]
On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously,
at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo
Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an
exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray
Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy,
which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular
versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous
proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by
charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory
dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon.
In December 1571, de Castro and Medina presented
formal denunciations of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez, to
the Salamanca commissioner of the Valladolid tribunal,
charging them with denying the authority of the Vulgate and preferring the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-56-320.jpg)
![interpretations of the rabbis to those of the fathers, while the circulation of
Canticles in the vernacular was not forgotten. Other accusers, including
students, joined in the attack, making thirteen in all, with a formidable body
of denunciations. Grajal was soon afterwards arrested and Fray Luis,
warned of the impending danger, presented himself, March 6, 1572, to
Diego González, the former inquisitor of Carranza, then on a visitation at
Salamanca, with a copy of his lecture on the Vulgate and the propositions
drawn from it, and also his work on Canticles. He asked to have them
examined and professed entire submission to the Church, with readiness to
withdraw or revoke anything that might be found in the slightest degree
objectionable.[339]
In any other land, this would have sufficed. The inculpated works would
have been expurgated or forbidden, if necessary. Luis would have retracted
any expressions regarded as erroneous, and the matter would have ended
without damage to the faith. Under the Inquisition, however, the utterance
of objectionable propositions was a crime to be punished, and the
submission of the criminal only saved him from the penalties of
pertinacious heresy. On March 26th the warrant for the arrest of Fray Luis
was issued and, on the 27th he was receipted for by the alcaide of the secret
prison of Valladolid. He was treated with unusual consideration, in view of
his infirmities and delicate health for, on his petition, he was allowed a
scourge, a pointless knife to cut his food, a candle and snuffers and some
books.[340] The trial proceeded at first with unusual speed. By May 15th the
fiscal presented the formal accusation, in which Fray Luis was charged with
asserting that the Vulgate contained many falsities and that a better version
could be made; with decrying the Septuagint and preferring Vatable and
rabbis and Jews to the saints as expositors of Scripture; with stating that the
Council of Trent had not made the Vulgate a matter of faith and that, in the
Old Testament, there was no promise of eternal life; with approving a
doctrine that inferred justification by faith, and that mere mortal sin
destroyed faith; with circulating an exposition of Canticles explaining them
as a love-poem from Solomon to his wife—all of which was legitimately
based on the miscellaneous evidence of the adverse witnesses.[341] This, as
required, Fray Luis answered on the spot, article by article, attributing the
charges to the malice of his enemies, denying some and explaining others
clearly and frankly.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-57-320.jpg)
![LUIS DE LEON
It was a special favor that he was at once provided with counsel and
allowed to arrange his defence—a favor which brought upon the tribunal a
rebuke from the Suprema, January 13, 1573, as contrary to the estilo, which
must be followed, no matter what might be the supplications of the accused.
Fray Luis identified many of the witnesses—out of nineteen he recognized
eight—and he drew up six series of interrogatories, mostly designed to
prove his allegations of mortal enmity. Of these the inquisitors threw out
three as “impertinent” and the answers to the others were, to a considerable
extent, unsatisfactory, as was almost inevitable under a system which made
the accused grope blindly in seeking evidence. As time wore on in this
necessarily dilatory business, Fray Luis grew impatient at the stagnation
which seemed to preclude all progress, not being aware that in reality it had
been expedited irregularly.[342]
It would be wearisome to follow in detail the proceedings which dragged
their slow length along. Additional witnesses came forward, whose
depositions had to go through the usual formalities; Fray Luis presented
numberless papers as points occurred to him; he defended himself
brilliantly and, through the course of the trial there were few of the
customary prolonged intervals, for his nervous impatience kept him
constantly plying the tribunal with arguments and appeals which it received
with its habitual impassiveness. At length, after two years, early in March,
1574, it decided that there was no ground for suspicion against him in the
thirty articles drawn from the testimony of the witnesses, while he could not
be prosecuted criminally on the seventeen propositions extracted from his
lecture on the Vulgate, seeing that he had spontaneously presented them and
submitted himself to the Church. The fiscal, however, appealed from this to
the Suprema and his appeal must have been successful, for the trial took a
fresh start.[343]
After some intermediate proceedings, Fray Luis, on
April 1st was told to select patrones theólogos to assist in
his defence. He at once named Dr. Sebastian Pérez,
professor in the royal college which Philip II had founded at Párraces, in
connection with San Lorenzo del Escorial, and two days later he added
other names.
In place of accepting them the tribunal endeavored to compel him to take
men of whom he knew nothing and who, in reality, were the calificadores](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-58-320.jpg)
![who had already condemned his propositions. The struggle continued until,
on August 3d, the Suprema wrote that he could have Pérez, but his limpieza
must first be proved and Philip’s consent to his absence be obtained. We
have seen how prolonged, costly and anxious were investigations into
limpieza and, as Fray Luis remarked, this was to grant and to refuse in the
same breath. At last, after endless discussions, in October he despairingly
accepted Dr. Mancio, a Dominican and a leading professor of theology at
Salamanca. Mancio came in October, again towards the end of December,
and finally on March 30, 1575, while Fray Luis meanwhile was eating his
heart in despair. At length, on April 7th Mancio approved of Fray Luis’s
defence, declaring that he had satisfied all the articles, both the series of
seventeen and that of thirty, which had been proved against him or which he
had admitted having uttered.[344]
If Fray Luis imagined that this twelve months’ work to which such
importance had been attributed, had improved his prospects, he was
speedily undeceived. We hear nothing more of Dr. Mancio or of his
approval. The propositions, with the defence, were submitted again to three
calificadores (men who had been urged upon him as patrones) and it
illustrates the uncertainties of theology and the hair-splitting subtilties in
which the doctors delighted, that not only were the original seventeen
articles declared to be heretical for the most part, but five new ones, quite as
bad, were discovered in the defence which had elicited Dr. Mancio’s
approval, and these five thenceforth formed a third category of errors
figuring in the proceedings.[345] It is not easy for us to comprehend the
religious conceptions which placed men’s lives and liberties and reputation
at the hazard of dialectics in which the most orthodox theologians were at
variance.
When Fray Luis was informed that five new heretical propositions had
sprouted from the hydra-heads of the old ones, he was dismayed. Sick and
exhausted, the prospects of ultimate release from his interminable trial
seemed to grow more and more remote. Arguments and discussions
continued and were protracted. New calificadores were called in, who
debated and opined and presented written conclusions on all three series of
propositions. It would be useless to follow in detail these scholastic
exercises, of which the chief interest is to show how, in these infinitesimal
points, one set of theologians could differ from another and how completely](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-59-320.jpg)
![LUIS DE LEON
the enmity of the two chief witnesses, Leon de Castro and Bartolomé de
Medina, was ignored. Thus wore away the rest of the year 1575 and the first
half of 1576. There was no reason why the case might not be continued
indefinitely on the same lines, but the inquisitors seem to have felt at last
that an end must be reached, and a consulta de fe was finally held, in which
Dr. Frechilla, one of the calificadores who had condemned the propositions,
represented the episcopal Ordinary.[346]
The case illustrates one incident of these protracted trials. During its
course it had been heard by seven inquisitors, of whom Guijano de Mercado
was the only one who served from the commencement to the end, and his
colleague in the consulta, Andrés de Alava, had appeared in it only in
November, 1575, and had not been present in any audiences after
December. There was, moreover, an unusual feature in the presence of a
member of the Suprema, Francisco de Menchaca, indicating perhaps that
the case was regarded as one of more than ordinary importance. There were
five consultors, Luis Tello Maldonado, Pedro de Castro, Francisco
Albornoz, Juan de Ibarra and Hernando Niño, but the two latter fell sick,
when the examination of the voluminous testimony was half completed, and
took no further part in the proceedings.
On the final decision, September 18, 1576, Menchaca,
Alava, Tello and Albornoz voted for torture on the
intention, including the propositions which the theologians
had declared that Fray Luis had satisfied, after which another consulta
should be held. They humanely added that it should be moderate in view of
the debility of the accused. Those better acquainted with the case, Guijano
and Frechilla, were more lenient. They voted for a reprimand, after which,
in a general assembly of professors and students, Fray Luis should read a
declaration, drawn up by the calificadores, pronouncing the propositions to
be ambiguous, suspicious and likely to cause scandal. Moreover his
Augustinian superior was to be told, extra-judicially, to order him privately
to employ his studies in other directions and to abstain from teaching in the
schools. The vernacular version of Canticles was to be suppressed, if the
inquisitor-general and Suprema saw fit.[347] Comparatively mild as this
sentence might seem, it gratified to the full the vindictiveness of his
enemies—it humiliated him utterly and destroyed his career.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-60-320.jpg)
![As there was discordia the case necessarily reverted to the Suprema,
which seems to have recognized that both votes assumed the nullity of the
laborious trifling, by which the calificadores had found dangerous heresies
in his acknowledged propositions. Discussion must have been prolonged
however, for the final sentence was not rendered until December 7th. This
fully acquitted Fray Luis of all the charges, but ordered a reprimand in the
audience-chamber and a warning to treat such matters in future with great
circumspection, so that no scandal or errors should arise. The Suprema
could scarce say less, if the whole dismal farce, of nearly five years, was
not to be admitted as wholly unjustifiable, and it enclosed the sentence in a
letter instructing the tribunal to order Fray Luis to preserve profound silence
and to avoid dissension with those whom he suspected of testifying against
him. It was probably on December 15th that the sentence was read and the
reprimand administered. Fray Luis took the necessary oaths, he made the
promises required, and was discharged as innocent after an incarceration,
incomunicado, which had lasted for four years, eight months and nineteen
days. His requests were granted for a certificate de no obstancia and for an
order on the paymaster of the schools to pay him his professorial salary
from the date of his arrest to the expiration of his quadrennial term.[348]
During this prolonged imprisonment, Fray Luis seems to have been
treated with unusual consideration. He was allowed to send for all the books
needed for his defence and for study—even for recreation, for we find him,
July 6, 1575, asking for the prose works of Bembo, for a Pindar in Greek
and Latin and for a copy of Sophocles.[349] He relieved the distractions of
his defence and the anxieties of his position by the composition of his De
los Nombres de Christo, which has remained a classic. Yet these were but
slender alleviations of the hardships and despairing tedium of his prison
cell. On March 12, 1575, he is begging for the sacraments; though he is no
heretic, he says, he has been deprived of them for three years. This petition
was forwarded to the Suprema, which replied by drily telling the tribunal to
complete the cases of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez as soon as opportunity
would permit.[350] At an audience of August 20th, of the same year, when
remanded to his cell, he paused to represent that, as the inquisitors well
knew, he was very sick with fever; there was no one in his cell to take care
of him, save a fellow-prisoner, a young boy who was simple; one day he
fainted through hunger, as there was no one to give him food, and he asked
whether a fraile of his Order could be admitted to assist him and to aid him](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-61-320.jpg)
![LUIS DE LEON
to die, unless they wished him to die alone in his cell. This was not refused
but, as the condition was imposed that the companion should as usual share
his imprisonment to the end, the request was in vain. Then, on September
12th, in his reply to the five propositions suddenly sprung upon him, he
feelingly referred to the years of prison and the sufferings caused by the
absence of comforts in his weakness and sickness, as a torture long and
cruel enough to purge all suspicions.[351] Even more pitiful was a petition
to the Suprema in November of the same year—“I supplicate your most
illustrious body, by Jesus Christ, on my giving ample security, to order me
to be placed in one of the convents of this city, even in that of San Pablo
(Dominican), in any way that it may please you, until sentence is rendered,
so that if, during this time, God should call me, which I greatly fear, in view
of my much trouble and feeble health, I may die as a Christian among
religious persons, aided by their prayers and receiving the sacraments, and
not as an infidel, alone in prison with a Moor at my bed-side. And since the
rancor of my enemies and my own sins have deprived me of all that is
desirable in life, may the Christian piety of your most illustrious body give
me this consolation in death, for I ask nothing more.”[352] It is perhaps
needless to say that this touching appeal did not even receive an answer.
After the term of his professorship had expired, about
March 1, 1573, his special enemy, Bartolomé de Medina,
was elected in his place and was promoted, in August
1576, to the leading chair in theology, while Fray García del Castillo
succeeded to that of Durandus. On Fray Luis’s return, he was warmly and
honorably received in an assembly of the Senate, convoked for the purpose,
where the Commissioner of the Inquisition declared that the Holy Office
had ordered his restoration to honor and to his professorship. Luis however
refused to disturb Castillo and, in January 1577, an extraordinary chair on
the Scriptures was created for him. The next year, on the chair of moral
philosophy falling vacant, he obtained it and subsequently he became
regular professor of Scripture—one of the highest positions in the
University. His colleague Grajal had been less fortunate, having perished in
prison before the termination of his trial.[353]
Fray Luis’s mental vigor was unimpaired, although his delicate frame
never wholly recovered from the effects of his long imprisonment. Such an
experience of the dangers attendant on the discussions of the schools might](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-62-320.jpg)
![seem sufficient to dampen his disputatious ardor, but in a theology, which
sought to reduce to hard and fast lines all the secrets of the unknown
spiritual world, there was risk of heresy in every speculation. In an acto of
the University, held January 20, 1582, the debate widened into a discussion
upon predestination and free-will, in which Fray Luis and Fray Domingo de
Guzman were bitterly opposed to each other. It was continued in another
theological Act the next week; the students became excited and called upon
Father Bañez to repress these novelties, which he did in a lecture declaring
that the views of Fray Luis savored of Pelagianism. The latter was angered
and the next day, in an assembly of all the faculties, the question under
debate was: If God confers equal and sufficing grace on two men, nothing
else interfering, can one be converted and the other reject the aid? The
discussion between Fray Luis and Bañez was hot, and the excitement
increased. Then on January 27th there was another assembly which
wrangled over the intricate questions involved in prevenient aid and human
coöperation.[354]
This was the commencement of the long debate De Auxiliis, between
Jesuits and Dominicans, which lasted for a century, until both sides were
silenced by the Holy See, without either being able to claim the victory.
Fray Luis had excited many enmities—though not as many as he was in the
habit of claiming—and the occasion was favorable for striking at him and at
those whom he supported. Fray Juan de Santa Cruz drew up an account of
the discussions, with a censure of the erroneous and heretical propositions
defended; it was not a personal denunciation of any one, but he declared
that the agitation and disquiet of the schools demanded a settlement by the
Inquisition. This he presented, February 5th, at Valladolid, to the inquisitor,
Juan de Arrese and, from the marginal notes, it appears that, besides Fray
Luis, two Jesuits and a Benedictine were marked for prosecution. In March,
Inquisitor Arrese came to Salamanca on a mission to suppress astrology and
took the opportunity to gather testimony on the scholastic quarrel. Various
witnesses, some of them Augustinians, came forward spontaneously with
evidence, and the Mercenarian, Francisco Zumel presented a series of
propositions, purporting to be drawn from a lecture by Fray Luis on
predestination, of which the worst was that Christ on the cross was destitute
of God and was provoked to sin. Zumel was a bitter enemy of Luis, who
had defeated him, four years before, in competition for the chair of moral](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-63-320.jpg)
![LUIS DE LEON
philosophy; both had their partizans and their quarrels were the cause of
much trouble.[355]
Fray Luis’s experience of the Inquisition naturally led
him to seek exculpation. Three times he appeared
voluntarily before Arrese and made verbal and written
statements, in which he rendered an account of his share in the debates. He
admitted that he had defended a position opposite to what he had previously
taught, which was not without a certain temerity, as differing from the
ordinary language of the schools, and not proper for public debate, as it was
delicate, difficult of comprehension and liable to lead the hearers into error.
He protested that he had not intended to offend Catholic doctrine and, if he
had said anything inconsiderately, he submitted it to the censure and
correction of the holy tribunal. He also laid much stress on the notorious
hatred of the Dominicans towards him, and the manner in which they lost
no opportunity of decrying his doctrine, his person and his morals.[356]
Inquisitor Arrese returned to Valladolid with the evidence, after which
there was pause before the case of Fray Luis was taken up. There would
seem to have been some hesitation concerning it, for the Suprema took the
unusual step of summoning him before it, from which he excused himself
on the plea of illness and forwarded a physician’s certificate in justification.
The next document in the case is a letter of August 3d, from the Suprema to
the tribunal, calling for the papers in the cases of the Salamanca
theologians, with its opinion concerning them. In its reply the tribunal said
that Fray Luis had confessed to everything testified against him, submitting
himself to correction, and conceding that what he had said was not devoid
of temerity; he had evidently spoken with passion and after the debate had
begged pardon of Domingo de Guzman for telling him that what he
advocated was Lutheran heresy. In view of all this the tribunal proposed to
call him before it and examine him when, if nothing further resulted, he
should be gravely reprimanded and, as the school of Salamanca was gravely
excited and, as some Augustinians were boasting that his utterances had
been accepted by the tribunal as true, he should be required publicly to read
in his chair a declaration drawn up for him censuring the propositions, and
also to declare that he had spoken wrongly when he had characterized the
opposite as heresy.[357]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-64-320.jpg)
![FRANCISCO
SANCHEZ
This would have been a profound humiliation for the proud and
domineering theologian, but again Quiroga seems to have interposed to
save him. There is a blank in the records for eighteen months, explicable by
the affair being in the hands of the Suprema. What occurred during the
interval is unknown, but the outcome appears in the final act of the trial,
February 3, 1584, at Toledo. There Fray Luis stood before Inquisitor-
general Quiroga who reprimanded and admonished him charitably not in
future to defend, publicly or privately, the propositions which he had
admitted were not devoid of temerity, adding a warning that otherwise he
would be prosecuted with all the rigor of the law, to all of which Fray Luis
promised obedience.[358] That he had in no way lost the respect of his
fellows is seen in his election to the Provincialate of the Augustinian Order,
in 1591, shortly before his death.
In addition to their exhibiting the attitude of the Inquisition towards the
most distinguished intellects of the period, these two trials of Fray Luis
illustrate its arbitrary methods, operating as it did in secret. His fault, if fault
there was, was the same in both cases—the enunciation of opinions on
which the most learned doctors differed. In both cases he denounced
himself, freely confessed what he had spoken or written, and submitted
himself unreservedly to the judgement of the church. In the first case he
was arrested; he endured nearly five years of incarceration and only escaped
torture or the ruin of his career through the kindly interposition of Quiroga.
In the second, there was no arrest, the case was decided on the sumaria, or
suspended, and although Quiroga probably again intervened, it was only to
save the accused from a humiliation which would have gratified
malevolence. Judged by its own standard, the Inquisition abused its powers
—either, in one case, by unpardonable severity or in the other by excessive
moderation, but it was responsible to no one and had no public opinion to
dread.
Just as the case of Fray Luis was ending, prosecution
was commenced against another Salamanca professor, of
equal or even greater distinction. As a man of pure letters,
no one at the time was the peer of Francisco Sánchez, known as el
Brocense, from his birth-place, las Brozas. Vainglorious, quarrelsome,
caustic and reckless of speech, he made numerous enemies, but probably he](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-65-320.jpg)
![would have escaped the Inquisition had he confined himself to his chair of
grammar and rhetoric. He delighted however in paradoxes, and he held
himself so immeasurably superior to the theologians, and was so confident
in the accuracy of his own varied learning, that he could not restrain himself
from ridiculing their pretensions, from exposing the errors of pious legends
and denouncing some of the grosser popular superstitions, thus rendering
himself liable to inquisitorial animadversion, whenever malice or zeal
might call the attention of the tribunal to his eccentricities. He flattered
himself that he did not meddle with articles of faith, but he failed to realize
how elastic were the boundaries of faith, and that, in attacking vulgar errors,
he might be regarded as undermining the foundations of the Church.
Scandal was a convenient word which bridged over the line between the
profane and the sacred.[359]
His habitual intemperance of speech was stimulated by a custom in the
Salamanca lecture-rooms of students handing up questions for the lecturer
to answer, and it would appear that malicious pleasure was felt in thus
provoking him to exhibit his well-known idiosyncrasies. It was an occasion
of this kind that prompted the first denunciation, January 7, 1584, by Juan
Fernández, a priest attending the lectures. Others followed, and the
character of his utterances appears in the propositions submitted to the
calificadores:—That Christ was not circumcised by St. Simeon but by his
mother the Virgin.—That there ought to be no images and, but for apparent
imitation of the heretics, they would have been abolished.—That those were
fools who, at the procession of Corpus Christi, knelt in the streets to adore
the images, for only Christ and his cross were to be adored.—Only saints in
heaven were to be adored and not images, which were but wood and plaster.
—Christ was not born in a stable, but in a house where the Virgin was
staying.—That the eleven thousand virgins were only eleven.—Doubts
whether the Three Kings were kings, as Scripture speaks only of Magi.—
That the Magian kings did not come at Christ’s birth, but two years after,
and found him playing with a ball.—That theologians know nothing.—That
many Dominicans thought the faith was based on St. Thomas Aquinas; this
was not so and he did not care a —— for St. Thomas.—When asked why
St. Lucia was painted without eyes, he said that she had not torn them out,
but she was reckoned the patron saint of eyes from her name—Lucia a
lucere.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-66-320.jpg)
![That these free-spoken propositions should be duly characterized by the
calificadores as heretical, rash, erroneous, insulting and so forth was a
matter of course and, on May 18th, the consulta de fe voted for
imprisonment in the secret prison with sequestration, subject to
confirmation by the Suprema. The latter delayed action until August 29th
and then manifested unusual consideration for the eccentricities of Sánchez,
which were doubtless well known. He was merely to be summoned before
the tribunal, to be closely examined and to be severely reprimanded, with a
warning to give no further occasion for scandal, as otherwise he would be
treated with all rigor.[360]
His first audience was held on September 24th. There is a refreshing and
characteristic frankness in his reply to the customary question whether he
knew the cause of his summons. He supposed it was because, about
Christmas-time, in his lecture-room, he was asked why St. Lucia was
painted with her eyes on a dish and why she was patron saint of eyes, when
he replied that she was not such a fool as to tear out her eyes to give them to
others; the vulgar believed many things that had no authority save that of
painters, and it was on account of her name that she was patron saint of
eyes. Then, he added, some days later he was asked why he talked against
what the Church holds; this angered him and he told them they were great
fools who did not know what the Church is; they must think that sacristans
and painters are the Church; he would be speaking against the Church if he
spoke against the Fathers and Councils. If they saw eleven thousand virgins
painted in a picture, they would think that there were eleven thousand, but
in an ancient calendar there was only undecim M. virgines—there were ten
martyrs and Ursula made the eleventh. Then, some three years ago, the
Circumcision was represented in the cathedral of Salamanca, where
appeared the Virgin, Simeon and the child Jesus. He said to many of those
present that it was a pity such impertinences were permitted in Salamanca;
that the Virgin did not go to the temple until the forty days were expired,
and no priest was required for the circumcision, for it is rather believed that
the Virgin performed it in her own house. He mentioned various other
criticisms which he had made on pictures, such as the Last Supper, where
Christ and the apostles should be represented on triclinia, and the Sacrifice
of Abraham where Isaac should be a man of 25. For this all he was called in
Salamanca a rash and audacious man, and he supposed this was the cause of
his summons; if there was more, let him know it and he would obey the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-67-320.jpg)
![FRANCISCO
SANCHEZ
Church; if in what he had said he had caused scandal, he was ready to
retract and to submit to the Church.[361]
This fearless frankness was preserved in the
examination that followed on the charges not explained in
his avowal. When asked whether he knew these things to
be heretical and if his intention was to oppose the Church, he replied that in
the form of the charges he held them to be heretical, but he had uttered them
only in the way he stated, with the intention of a good Christian and for the
instruction of others, but, if he had erred, he begged mercy with penance,
and was ready to make whatever amends were required. His confessions
were duly submitted to calificadores who reported, reasonably enough, that
he denied some, explained others and left others as they were, but that as a
whole he deserved to be reprimanded and punished, because he exceeded
his functions without discretion and, if not restrained, he would come to
utter manifold errors and heresies. Under ordinary routine his punishment
would have been exemplary, but the tribunal was controlled by the
instructions of the Suprema and, on September 28th, he was duly
reprimanded and warned to abstain in future from such utterances, for they
would be visited with rigorous punishment. He promised to do this and was
dismissed.[362]
With any one else this narrow escape, which shows the strong
disinclination to deal harshly with him, would have ensured lasting caution,
and even on Sánchez it seems to have imposed restraint for some years. The
impression, however, wore away and the irrepressible desire to manifest his
contempt for theology and theologians, and to display the superior accuracy
of his wide learning, gradually overcame prudence. In 1588, he printed a
little volume entitled De erroribus nonnullis Porphyrii et aliorum which,
when subsequently examined by calificadores, was said to prove that the
author was insolent, audacious and bitter, as were all grammarians and
Erasmists; that, if its conclusions were true, we might burn all the theology
and philosophy taught by the schoolmen, from the Master of Sentences to
Caietano, and by all the universities, from Salamanca to Bologna. Another
of his works bore the expressive title of Paradoxos de Theulugia, which
went to two editions and was censured as requiring expurgation. Theology
seems to have had for him the fatal fascination of the candle for the moth
and, with his temperament, he could not touch it without involving himself](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-68-320.jpg)
![FRANCISCO
SANCHEZ
in trouble. He gradually resumed his free speech and repeated his old
assertions which he had promised to suppress, and to these he added new
ones, such as approving the remark of a canon of Salamanca that he who
spoke ill of Erasmus was a fraile or an ass, adding that, if there were no
frailes in the world, none of the works of Erasmus would have been
forbidden. From 1593 to 1595, Dr. Rosales, the commissioner at
Salamanca, repeatedly forwarded to the Valladolid tribunal reports and
evidence as to his relapse in these evil ways, and urged that he should be
summoned and corrected and told not to meddle with theology but to
confine himself to his grammar, for he knew nothing else.[363]
The tribunal had these various charges submitted to calificadores, who
duly characterized them in fitting terms, but it took no action until May 18,
1596, when it commissioned Rosales to put in shape the informations
against Sánchez. Rosales was replaced by Francisco Gasca de Salazar, who
was instructed, September 17th, to finish the matter without delay. He
returned the papers as completed, September 29th, adding that Sánchez was
so frank that he said these things publicly, as a man unconscious of error
and, if examined, would tell the truth and give his reasons; he did not seem
to err with pertinacity but like the grammarians, who usually deal in
paradoxes, for which reason Gasca said that he had taken no notice of them.
[364]
Probably some restraint exercised by the Suprema
explains why, after these preparations, four years were
allowed to pass without action. If so, this restraint was
suddenly removed, for there is no evidence that any fresh imprudences on
the part of Sánchez stimulated the tribunal when, September 25, 1600, it
took a vote that, in view of the previous warning and continued repetition of
the same propositions and additional ones, and especially of the De
Erroribus Porphyrii and other books suspect in doctrine, he should be
summoned to the tribunal and a house be assigned to him as a prison, while
all his books and papers should be seized. The Suprema confirmed this; on
October 20th the summons was issued and, on November 20th, the books
and papers were forwarded. On November 10th Sánchez appeared before
the tribunal and, with kindly consideration, the house of his son, Dr.
Lorenzo Sánchez, a physician residing in Valladolid, was assigned as his
prison. Three audiences were held, on November 13th, 16th, and 22d, in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-69-320.jpg)
![which he said that, if he had uttered or done anything contrary to the faith,
he was ready to confess it and reduce himself to the unity of the Church. As
the charges were not as yet made known to him, he tried to explain various
matters which were not contained in them, such as denying free-will, as
holding the opinion that Magdalen was not the sister of Lazarus, and that
Judas did not hang himself.[365]
No more audiences were held. The next document is a petition, dated
November 30th, in which Sánchez set forth that he was mortally sick and
given over by the physicians; that he had through life been a good
Christian, believing all that the Holy Roman Church believes, and now, at
the hour of death, he protested that he died in and for that belief. If, having
labored for sixty years in teaching at Salamanca and elsewhere, he had said
or was accused of saying anything against the holy Catholic faith, which he
denied, if yet by error of the tongue it was so, he repented and begged of the
Inquisition pardon and penance in the name of God. When taking pen in
hand he had always recommended himself to God and, if in his MSS. there
should be found anything ill-sounding, he desired it stricken out and, if
there were useful things, he asked the Inquisition to permit their printing, as
he left no other property to his children, and also that his enemies and rivals
might be confounded. Finally, as he was in prison, by order of the
Inquisition, he supplicated that he might have honorable burial, suitable to
his position, and that the University of Salamanca be ordered to render him
the customary honors.[366]
Thus closed, in sorrow and humiliation, the career of one of the most
illustrious men of letters that Spain has produced. Under the existing system
the Inquisition could do no otherwise than it had done, and its treatment of
him had been of unexampled forbearance. That forbearance, however,
seems to have ceased with his death. The records are imperfect, and we
have no knowledge of the course of his trial which, as usual, was
prosecuted to the end, but the outcome apparently was unfavorable. On
December 11th the calificadores who examined his papers made an
unexpectedly moderate report. There was a certain amount of minute and
captious verbal criticism, but the summing up was that he seemed
somewhat free in his expositions of Scripture, attaching himself too much
to human learning and departing too readily from received opinions, but he](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-70-320.jpg)
![JOSEPH DE
SIGUENZA
was easily excusable as these were private studies and mostly unfinished, so
that his final opinions could not be assumed.[367]
Notwithstanding this, his dying requests were not granted. The interment
was private and without funeral honors. As regards the University of
Salamanca, Dr. Lorenzo Sánchez reported, on December 22d, that his father
had many enemies there, that there was much excitement and scandal, and
it was proposed not to render him the customary honors, to the great injury
of his children’s honor, wherefore he petitioned for orders to pay the honors
and also the salary for the time of his detention. To this supplication no
attention was paid, and the same indifference was shown when, long
afterwards, on June 25, 1624, another son, Juan Sánchez, a canon of
Salamanca, represented that malicious persons asserted that his father had
died in the secret prison, wherefore he petitioned for a certificate that his
father had not been imprisoned in either the secret or public prison, and that
no sentence had been rendered against him. The influence of all this on the
fortunes of his descendants can readily be estimated. As for the MSS. which
had occupied the dying man’s thoughts, the final judgement passed upon
them left little to be delivered to the children.[368]
Another contemporaneous case is worthy of mention if
only because the Geronimite Joseph de Sigüenza has
customarily been included among the victims of the
Inquisition, in place of which he sought its jurisdiction in order to protect
himself against the machinations of his brethren. At an early age he had
entered the Order, where his talents and varied learning gained him rapid
advancement. When the Escorial was completed, Philip II sent for him to
preach the first sermon in the church of San Lorenzo; since then he had
preached oftener than any one else and many of the gentlemen and ladies of
the court had selected him as their confessor. Philip placed him in charge of
the royal archives and of the sagrarios and reliquaries of the two libraries,
which brought him into frequent communication with the king, and he had
utilized this to cause appointments and dismissals, and to institute reforms
in the college of Párraces. This caused jealousy and enmity, and Diego de
Yepes, the prior of his convent of San Lorenzo, endeavored to procure his
removal. Then he incurred the hostility of the prior of the college, Cristóbal
de Zafra, who was a florid preacher. In a sermon before the king on the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-71-320.jpg)
![Cristóbal de Zafra was noted for bringing fables and poetry into his
sermons, and that Fray Justo de Soto, who had accused him of saying that
Jews and Turks could be saved, was an ignoramus, knowing little of
grammar and nothing of theology.
It was not until October 22d that was held the consulta de fe, which
voted unanimously for acquittal; the Suprema confirmed the sentence, on
January 25, 1593, when Fray Joseph was probably absent, for it was nearly
a month before he appeared, on February 19th to hear it read. At his request
a copy of it was given to him and thus ended a case in which the Inquisition
was the protector of innocence against fraternal malignity.[369]
The extent to which Spanish intellect wasted itself in interminable
controversies over the infinitely little, and the dangers to which all men
were exposed who exercised the slightest originality, are illustrated in the
case of Padre Alonso Romero, S. J., lector, of theology in the Jesuit college
of Valladolid. For a proposition concerning the intricate question whether a
man violates the law of fasting by eating nothing on a fast-day, his fellow-
Jesuit, Fernando de la Bastida, with a number of students, denounced him to
the Inquisition, August 29, 1614. The main proposition, and a number of
others, on which it was based, or which were deduced from it, were
pronounced by the calificadores, or at least by some of them, to be false,
scandalous, rash and approximating to error. No less than seventeen
witnesses were examined against him and when, on January 9, 1615, he
presented himself, he admitted uttering the proposition, but said that he had
consulted many learned men and the principal universities and he offered in
defence the signatures of many Jesuits and of professors of Salamanca,
Alcalá and Valladolid, to the effect that it was not subject to theological
censure. The case proceeded to a vote in discordia, October 15th, when the
Suprema ordered his confinement in a Jesuit house, that he should cease
lecturing, and that the papers in his cell should be examined. On October
29th, while he was detained in the audience-chamber, his keys were taken
and his papers were seized, although during this audience he stated that,
when he found that many learned men condemned his proposition, he had
retracted it publicly and had defended the opposite, which he offered to do
again. To the ordinary mind this would appear to render further proceedings](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-74-320.jpg)
![THE PULPIT
superfluous, but the assumed injury inflicted on the faith demanded
reparation, and the case went on.
Thirty-three propositions, dependent on the first one, were submitted to
calificadores and condemned as before, while nineteen others, extracted
from his papers, were explained by him and dropped. Drearily and slowly
the proceedings dragged along. On March 3, 1616, the accusation was
presented, but it was not until June 6, 1619, that the publication of evidence
was reached. Yet the case seems still to have been in the preliminary stage
for on July 10th the Suprema ordered that the propositions, which had now
grown to fifty-seven in number, should be submitted to calificadores and on
their report the tribunal should decide whether to transfer him to the secret
prison. It waited more than six months before it reached a decision,
February 5, 1620, to make no change but, when the Suprema learned this, it
ordered him to the prison of familiars, which was done on August 12th.
Then, on the 18th, he selected patrones to advise him and, on September
25th, he presented the interrogatories for the witnesses in defence. On May
12, 1621, he was informed that all that he had required had been done for
him. On July 5th the consulta de fe voted that he should be warned and
required to retract the proposition respecting fasting and those derived from
it—which he had already done spontaneously six years before; as for the
others, he was acquitted. The Suprema took nearly a year to consider this
and did not confirm it until June 2, 1622, when the trial ended with the
reading of the sentence on June 30th.[370] All this reads like a travesty and
might well be the subject of ridicule were it not for the serious import on a
nation’s destiny of a system under which eight years of a man’s life could
be consumed on a matter which the outcome showed to be so frivolous, to
say nothing of the indefinite number of calificadores and officials whose
energies were wasted on this solemn trifling.
Preachers were as liable as professors to prosecution for
their utterances, and Spanish pulpit eloquence, as we have
seen it illustrated in the case of Fray Joseph de Sigüenza,
afforded ample field for censure. The auditor who took exception to
anything heard in a sermon had only to denounce the speaker and, if the
proposition was exceptionable, prosecution followed. Thus, in 1580, Fray
Juan de Toledo, a Geronimite of the convent of Madrid, was denounced to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-75-320.jpg)
![the Toledo tribunal for having, in a sermon before Philip II, asserted that the
royal power was so absolute that the king could take his vassals’ property
and their sons and daughters to use at his pleasure. Possibly this exuberance
of loyalty might have escaped animadversion, had not the preacher called
attention to the enormous revenues of the bishops, squandered on their
kindred, and urged that the king and pope should unite to reduce them to
apostolic poverty. On trial he admitted his remarks in a somewhat less
offensive form; he attempted to disable the witnesses and presented
evidence of good character without much success. The consulta de fe voted
in discordia, and the Suprema sentenced him to abjure de levi, to recant, in
the pulpit on a feast-day, the propositions, in a formula drawn up for him, to
be recluded in a convent for two years, to be suspended from preaching for
five years, and to perform certain spiritual penances.[371]
The severity of this sentence shows how little ceremony there was in
restraining the eccentricities of the Spanish pulpit, even when it would be
difficult to discern where suspicion of heresy came in. The formula of
retraction prescribed rendered the humiliation of the ceremony most bitter.
There were forms suited for the different characters of propositions, but all
bore the essential feature that the culprit in the pulpit admitted having
uttered the condemned expression; that the inquisitors had ordered him to
retract it; that he recognized that it ought to be retracted and, as an obedient
son of the Church and in fulfilment of the command, he declared, of his
own free will, that he had uttered a proposition heretical and contrary to
express passages of Holy Writ and, as such, he retracted and unsaid it and
confessed that he did not understand it when he said it nor, for lack of
knowledge, did he understand the evil contained in it, nor did he believe it
in its heretical sense, nor understand that it was heresy and, as he had
spoken evil and given occasion to be justly suspected that he said it in an
heretical sense, he was grieved and begged pardon of God and the holy
Roman Catholic Church, and begged pardon and mercy of the Holy Office.
A notary with a copy followed his words and, if the performance was
correct, made an official attestation of the fact.[372]
Instances of this sharp censorship of pulpit eloquence were by no means
rare. Thus in the single tribunal of Toledo, after Madrid had been separated
from it, Fray Juan de Navarrete, Franciscan Guardian of Talavera, was
sentenced, December 19, 1656, for an heretical proposition in a sermon, to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-76-320.jpg)
![make a retraction. On April 21, 1657, Fray Diego Osorio, regent of studies
in the Augustinian convent of Toledo, was required to retract, was
suspended for two years from preaching and was banished for the same
period from Madrid and Mascaraque. On April 23, 1659, the Mercenarian,
Maestro Lucas de Lozoya, Definidor General of his Order and synodal
judge of the province, was condemned to retract, was suspended from
preaching for two years and was exiled from Madrid and Toledo. Similar
sentences were pronounced July 14, 1660, on the Trinitarian Jacinto José
Suchet, and August 31st on the Franciscan Juan de Teran. The Trinitarian,
Juan de Rojas Becerro, December 24, 1660, was allowed to retract in the
audience-chamber, but was suspended and banished for one year. Juan
Rodríguez Coronel, S. J., on June 28, 1664, was suspended and banished
for two years, but was not required to retract. These instances will suffice to
indicate the frequency of these prosecutions and the manner in which such
cases were treated. They offer a curious contrast to the mercy shown,
January 31, 1665, to Sebastian Bravo de Buiza, assistant cura of Fresno la
Fuente, who was only reprimanded and required to explain in the pulpit the
most offensive proposition that the Virgin was a sinner and died in sin.[373]
This last case suggests that favoritism sometimes intervened to shield
culprits and this would seem to be confirmed by the leniency shown, in
1696, to Fray Francisco Esquerrer. He was the leading Observantine
preacher and theologian in Valencia and teacher of theology in the convent
of San Francisco in Játiva. It was an episode in the quarrel between
Dominicans and Franciscans over the Immaculate Conception, when,
November 13, 1695, the Dominican Fray Juan Gascon denounced him to
the Valencia tribunal for having defended at Játiva, October 9, 1693, the
proposition that Christ, in the three days of his death, was sacramented alive
in the heart of the Virgin; that he who should die in defence of the
Immaculate Conception would die a martyr, for it was a point of faith
settled by Scripture, by the Council of Trent, by the Apostolic Council of
Jerusalem and by the cult of the Church. Gascon had denounced this at the
time, but the tribunal had taken no notice of it, and he now repeated the
charge, adding that Esquerrer, preaching in 1693 at Olleria, had held it to be
a point of faith that the adoration of latria was due to St. Francis; in the
same year at Játiva he preached that Christ owed more to St. Antony of
Padua than St. Antony owed to Christ. Also, when preaching about an
image known as the Virgin of Salvation, he said that she was rather the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-77-320.jpg)
![Mother of Salvation than the Mother of Christ. Then, on August 28, 1695,
preaching to the Augustinians of Játiva, he proved logically that the wisdom
of St. Augustin was greater than the wisdom of the Logos and, on
November 6, 1695, to the Franciscans of Játiva, he declared that the
Immaculate Conception had been made a point of faith by Alexander VII
and Innocent XI. Then the tribunal at last was spurred to action; it gathered
evidence and procured from the calificadores a definition that some of the
propositions were blasphemous, others heretical and others ill-sounding.
Early in 1696 Esquerrer was thrown into the secret prison; he endeavored to
explain away the propositions; the trial proceeded with unwonted celerity
and, on September 9th, the case was suspended with merely the usual
reprimand and the suppression of the propositions of October 9, 1693.[374]
Apparently the Inquisition was content to have the people fed upon such
doctrines.
It was probably less to favoritism than to indolence that we may attribute
the outcome of the case of the Minim, Fray N. Serra, lector in the Barcelona
convent of S. Francesco de Paula. On St. Barbara’s day, December 4, 1721,
he preached a sermon in which, among various other ineptitudes, he said
that St. Barbara was a virgin and yet pregnant, and that Christ was the
fourth person of the Trinity. An artillery regiment in quarters had been taken
to the church and, in the evening, some of the officers, visiting Doña
Bernarda Vueltaflores, amused themselves by repeating his grotesque
utterances. A week later she chanced to mention the matter to Fray Antonio
de la Concepcion and he, for the discharge of his conscience, carried the
tale to the tribunal. Doña Bernarda was sent for, told what she remembered
and furnished the names of the witnesses. They were summoned and gave
their evidence. The fiscal fussed over it, said that he had only two
concurrent witnesses, and wanted others of the audience looked up and
examined, which was not done. The registers were searched, but no former
complaints against Fray Serra were found. Then the fiscal asked that all the
other tribunals of Spain be written to, which was postponed. On April 22,
1722 he had the propositions submitted to calificadores, five of whom
unanimously pronounced that the one relating to Christ was formally
heretical and the others scandalous and irreverent, rendering the culprit
vehemently suspect and of little sense. Then ensued a pause until 1726,
when in July replies were received from all the tribunals that they had
nothing against Fray Serra. Then followed another pause, until June 27,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-78-320.jpg)
![RELIGION AND
POLITICS
1728, when the inquisitors resolved that the case should be suspended after
consulting the Suprema, which assented with the mild rebuke that, as the
sumaria had been formed in 1721, it should have been acted upon at once,
in place of waiting until 1728.[375]
Cognizance of the more or less trivial utterances of individuals
continued to the last and formed an increasing portion of inquisitorial
business as Judaism gradually disappeared. How the people were still
taught to keep a watch over their fellows is exhibited in the case of Manuel
Ribes, of Valencia, in 1798. He was a boy only nine years of age, attending
a primary school, who was denounced by a fellow-pupil for an heretical
expression. That the case was seriously considered is inferable from the fact
that it was suspended, not dismissed, and remained of record against the
child in case of future offences. How keen, moreover, was the inquisitorial
eye to discern peril to the faith, is visible in the prosecution at Murcia, in
1801, of Don Ramon Rubin de Celis y Noriega, a dignitary of the cathedral
of Cartagena and rector of the conciliar seminary, for a proposition
concealed in his printed plan for instruction in Latin.[376]
Under such impulses it is not a matter for surprise that,
in this later period “propositions” furnished half the
business of the tribunals. In the register compiled in
Valencia of all the cases tried in Spain, after 1780 until the suppression of
the Inquisition in 1820, the aggregate is 6569 cases, out of which 3026, or
not far from one-half, are designated as for propositions. Of these latter 748
are noted as suspended or laid aside in Valencia, leaving 2278 carried on
through trial. Of the 3543 cases for other offences, 1469, as we have seen,
were for solicitation, leaving only 2074 as the total number for the
miscellaneous business of the tribunals. Those accused for propositions
represent every sphere of life, but a larger portion than of old belong to the
educated classes—clerics, professional men, officers of the army, municipal
officials, professors in colleges and the like.[377]
That this class of business should increase was natural in view of the
infiltration of the irreligious philosophy and liberal ideas of the later
eighteenth century, which escaped the censorship and watchfulness at the
ports. The Napoleonic war poured a flood of this upon the land, traversed in
almost every part by armies, whether hostile like the French or heretic allies](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-79-320.jpg)
![like the English. After the Restoration, the duty of the Inquisition was
largely the extirpation of these seeds of evil in a political as well as a
spiritual sense, and propositions antipoliticas, as we shall see, were as
freely subject to its jurisdiction as the irreligiosas. The punishments
inflicted were not usually severe, but the trial itself was a sufficient penalty,
for the accused was thrown into the secret prison during the dilatory
progress of his case, his property was embargoed and his career was ruined,
while in most cases he was subsequently kept under strict surveillance, for
which the inquisitorial organization furnished special facilities.
As a typical case it will suffice to allude to that of two merchants of
Cádiz, Julian Borrego and Miguel Villaviciosa, sentenced in 1818 by the
Seville tribunal, for “propositions and blasphemies,” to abjure de vehementi
and to ten years’ exile from Cádiz, Seville and Madrid, including service in
a presidio. In consideration, it is said, of the extraordinarily long
imprisonment which they had endured, the service of the former was only
to be four years in Ceuta and of the latter six years in Melilla. As was so
frequently the case at this time, the Suprema interposed in favor of leniency
and reduced the term to presidio for both to two years. They were married
men; the trial and sentence virtually meant ruin, and probably influence was
exerted in their behalf for, after six months, the Suprema allowed them to
return to Spain to support their families.[378]
What was the precise nature of the propositions the record does not
inform us, but, had the offence been political, it is improbable that this
mercy would have been shown. If it were religious, it may have been the
deliberate expression of erroneous belief, or a hasty ejaculation called forth
by an ebullition of wrath for, as of old the Inquisition took cognizance of
everything and, in its awe-inspiring fashion, undertook to discipline the
manners as well as the faith of the people. In 1819, the sentence of
Bartolomé López of Córdova, for propositions, warns him on the
consequences of his unbridled passion for gambling and lust, which had
caused his offence, and, in another case, the culprit’s inconsiderate
utterances are ascribed to his quarrels with his wife, with whom he is urged
to reconcile himself.[379]
Thus to the last the Inquisition, in small things as in great, sought to
control the thoughts and the speech of all men and to make every Spaniard](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-80-320.jpg)
![feel that he was at the mercy of an invisible power which, at any moment,
might call him to account and might blast him for life.
CHAPTER VIII.
SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS.
MAN’S effort to supplement the limitations of his powers by the
assistance of spiritual agencies, and to obtain foreknowledge of the future,
dates from the earliest ages and is characteristic of all races. When this is
attempted through the formulas of an established religion it is regarded as
an act of piety; when through the invocation of fallen gods, or of the
ministers of the Evil Principle, or through a perverted use of sacred rites, it
is the subject of the severest animadversion of the law-giver. When it
assumes to use mysterious secrets of nature, it has at times been regarded as
harmless, and at others it has been classed with sorcery, and the effort to
suppress it has been based, not on its being a deceit, but a crime.
When the Roman domination in Spain was overthrown by the Wisigoths,
the Barbarians brought with them their ancestral superstitions, to be
superadded to the ancient Ligurian beliefs and the more recent
Christianized paganism. The more current objectionable practices are
indicated by the repressive laws of successive Wisigothic monarchs, and it
illustrates the imperishable nature of superstitions that under their
generalizations can be classed most of the devices that have endured the
incessant warfare of the Church and the legislator for a thousand years. The
Wisigothic ordinances were carried, with little change, into the Fuero Juzgo,
or Romance version of the code, but their moderation was displeasing to
Ramiro I, who, in 943, prescribed burning for magicians and sorcerers and
is said to have inflicted the penalty in numerous instances.[380] It is not
probable that this severity was permanent for, as a rule, medieval legislation
was singularly lenient to these offences, although, about the middle of the
thirteenth century, Jacobo de las Leyes, in a work addressed to Alfonso X,
classes among the worst offenders those who slay men by enchantment.[381]
Alfonso himself, in the Partidas, treated magic and divination as arts not
involving heresy, to be rewarded or punished as they were used for good or
for evil.[382] In no land were they more widely developed or more firmly
implanted in popular belief, for Spain not only preserved the older errors of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-81-320.jpg)
![MEDIEVAL
TOLERATION
Wisigothic times but had superadded those brought by the Moors and had
acquired others from the large Jewish population. The fatalism of Islam was
a fruitful source of devices for winning foreknowledge. The astrologer and
the diviner, so far from being objects of persecution, were held in high
honor among the Moors, and their arts were publicly taught as essential to
the general welfare. In the great school of Córdova there were two masters
who taught astrology, three of necromancy, pyromancy and geomancy, and
one of the ars notoria. Seven thousand seven hundred Arabic writers are
enumerated on the interpretation of dreams, and as many on goetic magic,
while the use of amulets as preservatives from evil was universal.[383]
Spain was the classic land of magic whither, during the middle ages,
resorted for instruction from all Europe those who sought knowledge of its
mysteries, and the works on the occult arts, which were circulated
everywhere, bore for the most part, whether truly or falsely, the names of
Arabic authors.
Long after these pursuits had fallen elsewhere under the
ban of the Church, the medieval spirit of toleration
continued in Spain. Until the fourteenth century was
drawing to an end, astrology, we are told, was in general vogue among the
upper classes, while the lower placed full confidence in the wandering
mountebanks who overspread the land—mostly Moorish or Jewish women
—who plied their trade under the multifarious names of saludadores,
ensalmadores, cantadores, entendederas, adivinas and ajodadores, earning
a livelihood by their various arts of telling fortunes, preserving harvests and
cattle, curing disease, protecting from the evil eye, and exciting love or
hatred.[384] So little blame attached to these pursuits that Miguel de Urrea,
Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was popularly known as el
Nigromántico, and his portrait in the episcopal palace of Tarazona had an
inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded
the devil with his own arts.[385]
The Church, however, did not share in this tolerant spirit and was
preparing to treat these practices with severity. There is comparative
mildness, in 1317, in the definition of its policy by Astesanus, the leading
canonist of his time who, after reciting the ferocious imperial legislation,
adds that the canons impose for these arts a penance of forty days; if the
offender refuses to perform this he should, if a layman, be excommunicated](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-82-320.jpg)
![and, if a cleric, be confined in a monastery. If he persists in his evil ways,
he should, if a slave be scourged and, if a freeman, be imprisoned. Bishops
should expel from their dioceses all such persons and, in some places, this
is laudably accompanied with curtailing their garments and their hair. Yet
the uncertainty still prevailing is indicated by the differences among the
doctors as to whether priests incurred irregularity who misused in magic
rites the Eucharist, the chrism and holy water, or who baptized figurines to
work evil on the parties represented, and in this doubt Astesanus counsels
obtaining a dispensation as the safest plan.[386]
All doubts as to such questions were promptly settled. Pope John XXII
divided his restless activity between persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans,
warring with the Visconti, combating Ludwig of Bavaria and creating a
wholesome horror of sorcery in all its forms. Imagining that conspirators
were seeking his life through magic arts, he ordered special inquisitors
appointed for their extermination and urged the regular appointees to active
persecution. In various bulls, and particularly one known as Super illius
specula, issued about 1326, he expressed his grief at the rapid increase of
the invocation and adoration of demons throughout Christendom, and
ordered all who availed themselves of such services to be publicly
anathematized as heretics and to be duly punished, while all books on the
subject were to be burnt. The faithful were warned not to enter into
compacts with hell, or to confine demons in mirrors and rings so as to
foretell the future, and all who disobeyed were threatened with the penalties
of heresy.[387] Thus the Church asserted authoritatively the truth of the
powers claimed by sorcerers—the first of a long series of similar utterances
which did more, perhaps, than aught else to stimulate belief and foster the
development of the evil. The prosperity of the sorcerer was based on
popular credulity, and the deterrent influence of prospective punishment
weighed little against the assurance that he could in reality perform the
service for which he was paid.
There was no Inquisition in Castile, and the repression of these
unhallowed arts rested with the secular power, which was irresponsive to
the papal commands. The Partidas, with their quasi approval of magic, were
formally confirmed, by the Córtes of 1348, as the law of the land, and
remained the basis of its jurisprudence. Yet the new impulse from Rome
commenced soon afterwards to make itself felt. About 1370 a law of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-83-320.jpg)
![INQUISITORIA
L
JURISDICTION
Enrique III declared guilty of heresy and subject to its penalties all who
consulted diviners.[388] In this the injection of heresy is significant of the
source of the new policy, reflected further in a law of Juan I, in 1387, which
asserts that all diviners and sorcerers and astrologers, and those who believe
in them, are heretics to be punished as provided in the Partidas, laymen by
the royal officials and clerics by their prelates.[389] That these laws
accomplished little is indicated by the increasing severity of the pragmática
of April 9, 1414, which ordered all royal and local judges, under pain of
loss of office and one-third confiscation, to put to death all sorcerers, while
those who harbored them were to be banished and the pragmática itself was
to be read monthly in the market-places so that no one could pretend
ignorance.[390] Even the Mudéjares assimilated themselves in this to their
Christian conquerors, threatening the practice of sorcery with death, and
warning all to avoid divination and augury and astrology. This
accomplished little, however, and, after their enforced conversion, the
Moriscos continued to enjoy the reputation of masters of the black arts.[391]
In the kingdoms of Aragon the secular power seems to
have been negligent, and the duty reverted to the
episcopate, which was for the most part indifferent. It was
not wholly so, however, for, in 1372, Pedro Clasquerin,
Archbishop of Tarragona, ordered an investigation of his province by testes
synodales, and among the matters to be inquired into was whether there
were sorcerers. Even Inquisitor Eymerich appears to consider it as in no
way the business of the Holy Office, when he seeks to impress upon all
bishops the duty of searching for such enemies of Christ, and of punishing
them with all severity.[392]
In Castile, while all the arts of sorcery were reckoned heretical,
jurisdiction over them remained secular, even after the establishment of the
Inquisition although, among Isabella’s good qualities, is enumerated her
exceeding abhorrence of diviners and sorcerers and all practitioners of
similar arts.[393] There was evidently no thought of diverting the Inquisition
from its labors among the New Christians, when a royal decree of 1500
ordered all corregidors and justicias to investigate as to the existence in
their districts of diviners and such persons, who were to be arrested and
punished if laymen, while if clerics they were to be handed over to their
prelates for due castigation.[394]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-84-320.jpg)
![The question of jurisdiction, in fact, was a difficult one, which required
prolonged debate to settle. It is true that, in 1511, a case in Saragossa shows
the Inquisition exercising it, but a discussion to which this gave rise
indicates that as yet it was a novelty. Some necromancers were condemned
by the tribunal and the inquisitors asked whether confiscation followed.
Inquisitor-general Enguera decided in the affirmative, but referred to
Ferdinand for confirmation. The king instructed the archbishop to assemble
the inquisitors and some impartial lawyers to discuss the question and
report to him; their conclusion was in favor of the crown and not till then
did he order the receiver to sequestrate and take possession of the property,
which was considerable. The fact that it had not been sequestrated indicates
that there had been no precedent to guide the tribunal.[395] Soon after this,
in Catalonia, there came a demand for the more effective jurisdiction of the
Inquisition, in order to repress sorcery. When the Concordia of 1512 was
arranged, one of the petitions of the Córtes was that it should put into
execution the bull Super illius specula of John XXII, and that the king
should procure from the pope the confirmation of the bull. There was no
objection to this, and Leo X accordingly revived the bull and ordered its
enforcement in Aragon.[396] It must have been immediately after this that
the Edict of Faith, in the Aragonese kingdoms, required the denunciation of
sorcery, for, in the Sicilian instructions of 1515, issued to allay popular
discontent, it was provided that this clause should only be operative when
the sorcery was heretical.[397] Convictions, however, were few, at least in
Aragon, for after those of 1511 there were no relaxations for sorcery until
February 28, 1528, when Fray Miguel Calvo was burnt; the next case was
that of Mossen Juan Omella, March 13, 1537, and no further relaxations
occur in the list which extends to 1574.[398]
Castile followed the example of Aragon, and Archbishop Manrique
(1523-1538) added to the Edict of Faith six clauses, giving in full detail the
practices of magic, sorcery and divination.[399] Yet, as late as 1539, Ciruelo
seems to regard the crime as subject wholly to secular jurisdiction, for he
warns sovereigns that, as they hold the place of God on earth, they should
have more zeal for the honor of God than for their own, and should chastise
these offenders accordingly, being certain that they would be held to strict
account for their negligence.[400]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-85-320.jpg)
![PACT WITH
THE DEMON
The question, in fact, was a somewhat intricate one,
admitting of nice discussion. In 1257, not long after the
founding of the Old Inquisition, Alexander IV was asked
whether it ought to take cognizance of divination and sorcery, when he
replied that it must not be diverted from its proper duties and must leave
such offenders to their regular judges, unless there was manifest heresy
involved, a decision which was repeated more than once and was finally
embodied in the canon law by Boniface VIII.[401] There was no definition,
however, as to what constituted heresy in these matters, until the sweeping
declaration of John XXII that all were heretical, but in this there was a clear
inference that his bulls were directed solely to malignant magic working
through the invocation and adoration of demons. This, however, comprised
but a small portion of the vast array of superstitious observances, on which
theological subtilty exhausted its dialectics. Many of these were perfectly
harmless, such as the simple charms of the wise-women for the cure of
disease. Others were pseudo-scientific, like the Cabala, the Ars Notoria and
the Ars Paulina, by which universal knowledge was attained through certain
formulas. Others again taught spells, innocent in themselves, to protect
harvests from insect plagues and cattle from murrain. There were infinite
gradations, leading up to the invocation and adoration of demons, besides
the multiplied resources of the diviner in palmistry, hydromancy,
crystallomancy and the rest—oneiroscopy, or dream-expounding, being a
special stumbling-block, in view of its scriptural warrant. To define where
heresy began and ended in these, to decide between presumable knowledge
of the secrets of nature and resort to evil spirits, was no easy matter, and by
common consent the decision turned upon whether there was a pact,
express or implied, with the demon. This only created the necessity of a
new definition as to what constituted pact and, in 1398, the University of
Paris sought to settle this by declaring that there was an implied pact in all
superstitious observances, of which the result could not reasonably be
expected from God or from nature.[402] This marked a distinct advance in
the conception of heretical sorcery, but it still left open the question as to
what might or might not be reasonable expectation, and it was merely an
opinion, albeit of the most authoritative theological body in Europe.
Discussion continued as lively as ever. In 1492, Bernardo Basin, a
learned canon of Saragossa, considered it necessary to prove by logic that
all pact with the demon, implicit or explicit, if not heresy was yet to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-86-320.jpg)
![INFERENTIAL
HERESY
treated as heresy.[403] In 1494, the Repertorium Inquisitorum in quoting the
canon law, that sorcery must savor of heresy to give jurisdiction of the
Inquisition, still admits that there is no little difficulty in defining what is
meant by savoring of heresy, while even at the close of the sixteenth
century Peña tells us that no question excited more frequent debate.[404] It
is true that, in 1451, Nicholas V had conferred on Hugues le Noir, Inquisitor
of France, cognizance of divination, even when not heretical, but this had
been a special provision, long since forgotten.[405]
The tendency, however, was irresistible to extend the definition of
heretical sorcery, and to bring everything under the Inquisition. In 1552
Bishop Simancas argues that the demon introduces himself into all
superstitious practices and charms, even without the intention of the man;
he admits that many jurists argue that it is uncertain whether divinations and
sorceries savor of manifest heresy, and therefore inquisitors have not
cognizance of them, but the contrary is accepted by law, reason and custom,
for it is a well-known rule that, when there is a doubt whether a judge has
jurisdiction, the jurisdiction is his, and this matter is not exceptional;
inquisitors can proceed against all guilty of these offences as suspect of
heresy and this is received in practice.[406] Yet in practice these conclusions
were reached tentatively. In 1537 Doctor Giron de Loaysa, reporting the
results of a visitation of the Toledo tribunal, says that he has examined
many processes for sorcery and desires instructions, for there are a number
which are more foul and filthy than heretical; and even as late as 1568 the
Suprema, in acting on the Barcelona visitation of de Soto Salazar, reproves
Inquisitor Mexia for inflicting a fine of ten ducats and spiritual penances on
Perebona Nat, for having used charms and uttered certain words over a sick
woman; such cases, it says, do not pertain to the Inquisition, and in future
he must leave all such matters to the Ordinary, to whom they belong.[407]
The tribunals evidently were less doubtful than the
Suprema as to their powers. Among the practitioners who
speculated on popular credulity there were some called
zahories, who claimed a special gift of being able to see beneath the surface
when it was not covered with blue cloth, and who were employed to
discover springs of water, veins of metal, buried treasure and corpses, as
well as aposthumes and other internal diseases. There was no pretence of
magic in this but, in 1567, Juan de Mateba, a boy of 14, who claimed](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-87-320.jpg)
![CONFIRMATIO
N OF BELIEF
among other gifts to be a zahori, was sentenced by the Saragossa tribunal to
fifty lashes in the prison, to six years’ reclusion in a convent under
instruction, and subsequently to a year’s exile, together with prohibition,
under pain of two hundred lashes through the streets, to cure by
conjurations, or to claim that he has grace to effect cures, to divine the
future, or to see corpses and other things under the earth.[408]
Whatever doubts existed rapidly disappeared. It would be difficult to see
where the heresy lay which earned, from the Saragossa tribunal, in 1585, a
public scourging for Gracia Melero, because she kept the finger of a man
who had been hanged, together with a piece of the halter, thinking that they
would bring her good luck.[409] In fact, by this time the omnipresent demon
was held accountable for everything. A case exciting considerable attention
in 1588 was that of Elvira de Cespedes, tried by the tribunal of Toledo,
who, as a slave-girl at the age of 16, was married to Cristóval Lombardo of
Jaen and bore to him a son, still living at Seville. Subsequently at San Lucar
she fell in love with her mistress and seduced her, as well as many other
women. Running away, she assumed male attire and, during the rebellion of
Granada served as a soldier in the company of Don Luis Ponce. In Madrid
she worked in a hospital, obtained a certificate as a surgeon and practised
the profession. At Yepes she offered marriage to a girl, but the absence of
beard and her effeminate appearance caused her sex to be questioned; she
was medically examined, pronounced to be a man and the Vicar of Madrid
granted a licence under which the marriage was solemnized. Doubts,
however, still continued; she was denounced to the magistrates of Ocaña,
who arrested her and handed her over to the Inquisition. In the course of her
trial she was duly examined by physicians, who declared her to be a woman
and that her career could only be explained by the arts of the demon. This
explanation satisfied all doubts; she was sentenced to appear in an auto, to
abjure de levi, to receive two hundred lashes and to serve in a hospital ten
years without pay. In this the tribunal was merciful, for hermaphrodites
customarily had a harsher measure of justice.[410]
It is thus easy to understand how the definition of pact
by the University of Paris came to be so extended as to
cover every possible act that might be classed as
superstitious—all the old women’s cures and all the traditional usages and
beliefs that had accumulated through credulous generations trained to place](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-88-320.jpg)
![confidence in unintelligible phrases and meaningless actions—for any
result greater than could naturally be produced, if not attributable to God
was perforce ascribed to pact with the demon. Torreblanca thus assures us
that, in the cure of disease, pact is to be inferred when nothing, either
natural or supernatural, is employed, but only words, secretly or openly
uttered, a touch, a breathing, or a simple cloth which has no virtue in itself.
So it is with prayers and verbal formulas approved by the Church, but used
for purposes other than those for which they were framed, or even
exorcisms or conjurations against disease and tempests and caterpillars and
drought, employed without the rites prescribed by the Church, or by those
who have not the Order of Exorcists. There is pact in the use of idle prayers,
as to stop bleeding with In sanguine Adæ orta est mors, or Sanguis mane in
te ut sanguis Christi mansit in se; or of false ones, as for head-ache Virgo
Maria Jordanum transivit et tunc S. Stephanus ei obviavit; or of absurd
ones as the old Danatadaries, or the more modern Abrach Haymon etc., or
that inscribed on bread Irivni Teherioni etc.; or that against the bite of mad
dogs, Hax, Pax, Max. Suspect of pact are pious and holy prayers, in which
some extraneous or unknown sign is introduced, written and hung on the
neck, or anything by the wearing of which protection is expected from
sudden death or imprisonment or the gallows: also the use of natural objects
which, by their nature are not fitted for the expected results, or which are
inefficient of themselves and are supposed to derive virtue from words
employed, or are applied with prayers and observances not prescribed by
the Church and, finally, all cures of disease which physicians cannot
explain.[411] Moreover, theologians decided that in sorcery there was no
parvitas materiæ, or triviality, which redeemed it from being a mortal sin.
[412]
Thus all wise-women and charlatans became subject to the jurisdiction
of the Inquisition, and no richer field for the folklorist can be found than in
their numerous trials, where all the details of their petty devices and spells
and charms are reported at length. There was the corresponding duty
imposed on it to exterminate all popular superstitions throughout the land,
and possibly it might have had a measure of success in this if it could have
treated these practitioners as impostors. Unfortunately its jurisdiction over
them was based on the reality of their exercising demonic powers, and their
persecution only tended to confirm popular belief in the efficacy of their](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19141017-250518081112-f2972b3c/85/Learning-And-Performance-A-Systemic-Model-For-Analysing-Needs-And-Evaluating-Training-1st-Edition-Bryan-Hopkins-89-320.jpg)
Learning And Performance A Systemic Model For Analysing Needs And Evaluating Training 1st Edition Bryan Hopkins
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- 6. Learning and Performance Changing work roles, greater emphasis on individual autonomy, the growing importance of relationships, the complexity of many businesses; all these things call into question the prevailing approach to training needs analysis and evalua- tion,which still tends to be based on a simple gap analysis between job require- ments and an employee’s knowledge and skills. Bryan Hopkins’s Learning and Performance takes a systemic approach to work- place performance, training needs and the basis on which we can analyse them and evaluate the subsequent training. The author’s approach offers a model for HR and training departments that is relevant and sufficiently sophisticated for today’s workplaces.As with all his books, Bryan Hopkins combines a complete understanding of learning and organisational theory with pragmatic examples, ensuring a book that will be read and applied in equal measure. Bryan Hopkins is a learning and development consultant, working primarily with international organisations in the humanitarian and development sectors. For more than 30 years he has specialised in developing learning strategies and designing and evaluating training programmes for large public and private sec- tor organisations.
- 8. Learning and Performance A systemic model for analysing needs and evaluating training Bryan Hopkins
- 9. First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, NewYork, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of theTaylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Bryan Hopkins The right of Bryan Hopkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hopkins, Bryan, 1954– author. Title: Learning and performance: a systemic model for analysing needs and evaluating training / Bryan Hopkins. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022792 | ISBN 9781138220690 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315412252 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Employees—Training of. | Performance. | Needs assessment. | Organizational learning. | Personnel management. Classification: LCC HF5549.5.T7 H625 2017 | DDC 658.3/124—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022792 ISBN: 978-1-138-22069-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-131-5412-25-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC
- 10. To my wife, Helen, whose patience and support during the long hours researching and writing this book made it possible.
- 12. List of figuresx List of tablesxii Cover illustrationxiii Prefacexiv Acknowledgementsxvi List of abbreviationsxvii 1 What is this book about? 1 Why is the approach within this book different? 3 How can a systems approach lead to better training? 6 How is this book organised? 8 Notes 11 2 What is systems thinking? 12 Systems thinking – just what we do 12 Cartesian thinking in management 14 The trap of Cartesian thinking 15 Modern ideas of systems thinking 16 What is a ‘system’? 17 The key characteristics of a system 19 Summary 22 Notes 23 3 Analysing training needs 24 What is a training needs analysis? 24 Why do a needs analysis? 25 Challenges to the needs analysis process 25 Levels of analysis 27 Contents
- 13. viii Contents Processes for carrying out a needs analysis 28 Summary 34 Notes 34 4 Evaluating training 36 Why evaluate? 36 How often is training evaluation done? 37 What are the barriers to evaluating training? 38 The Kirkpatrick framework 40 The return-on-investment model 45 The organisational elements model 46 The Success Case Method 47 Summary 47 Notes 48 5 Key concepts in systems thinking 51 Do systems exist? 51 Classifying systems approaches 52 Open and closed systems 55 Feedback 56 Emergence 56 Causality 57 Linearity and non-linearity 58 Appreciation and the dynamics of time 59 Requisite variety 61 Single- and double-loop learning 61 Complexity theory 63 Wicked problems 66 Summary 71 Notes 73 6 Tools to help systems thinking 75 Diagramming 75 System Dynamics 80 TheViable System Model 86 Social Network Analysis 91 Soft Systems Methodology 94 Critical Systems Heuristics 105 Summary 108 Notes 109
- 14. Contents ix 7 How do people learn? 111 Ideas about learning 111 Formal and informal learning 116 How can formal learning be delivered? 118 Limitations of formal learning programmes 121 How does informal learning happen? 125 The limitations of informal learning 126 Integrating formal and informal learning 127 Summary 128 Notes 128 8 Systemic approaches to analysing training needs 130 How a systemic needs analysis works 130 Case study 1:Weknow Consulting 131 Case study 2: the AdvancedTechnology Procurement Agency 149 Summary 174 Notes 174 9 Specifying learning activities 175 Improving the likelihood of learning transfer 175 Auditing the learning transfer system 183 Encouraging informal learning 184 Integrating formal and informal learning 192 Summary 193 Notes 193 10 Systemic approaches for evaluating training 197 Why use systemic approaches to evaluate training? 197 A systemic model for training evaluation 200 Establishing a learning evaluation policy 204 Carrying out formative evaluations 207 Carrying out summative evaluations 209 An evaluation case study: what happened at ATPA? 217 Summary 228 Notes 229 11 Bringing it all together 231 Index235
- 15. 1.1 The ADDIE model of instructional design 2 1.2 Map of the book’s chapters 9 2.1 Training as a system 18 2.2 The Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships model 19 2.3 System map of actors in a situation of interest 20 3.1 Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model 29 3.2 Mager and Pipe’s Performance Analysis Flow Diagram 31 3.3 The Performance Systems Model 32 3.4 Rummler and Brache’s organisation as an adaptive system 33 3.5 Rummler and Brache’s Human Performance System 34 4.1 Theory of change for the effect of formal learning 43 5.1 Systems approaches and where they might be used 54 5.2 An appreciative system 59 5.3 Single-loop learning 62 5.4 Double-loop learning 62 5.5 Wicked problems affect each other 69 5.6 Conceptual illustration of an organisational issue 72 6.1 Map of relevant organisations 76 6.2 Multiple-cause diagram about implementing a health programme77 6.3 Multiple-cause diagram about operational issues 79 6.4 Influence diagram about intravenous drug use 80 6.5 Course enrolment causal flow diagram 81 6.6 Causal flow diagram showing defensive learning 82 6.7 Causal flow diagram showing impact on innovation 83 6.8 Causal flow diagram linking factors affecting evaluation 85 6.9 Limits to growth archetype 86 6.10 TheViable System Model 87 6.11 Sociogram showing workplace relationships 92 6.12 Step 1 of the SSM process 95 6.13 The state of English football 96 6.14 Rich picture illustrating drivers of deforestation 98 6.15 Multiple-cause diagram explaining deforestation 99 Figures
- 16. Figures xi 6.16 Step 2 of the SSM process 101 6.17 Step 3 of the SSM process 102 6.18 Partial conceptual model for improving understanding 102 6.19 Complete conceptual model for improving understanding 103 6.20 Step 4 of the SSM process 104 6.21 Step 5 of the SSM process 105 7.1 Kolb’s learning cycle 112 7.2 Learning as a feedback process 112 7.3 Social network of learning cycles 113 8.1 The Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships model 131 8.2 A process for carrying out a needs analysis 132 8.3 Rich picture of the Weknow situation of interest 134 8.4 Influence diagram for Weknow training situation 139 8.5 Conceptual model for the Weknow situation of interest 143 8.6 Outcomes chain logic model for the Weknow interventions 147 8.7 ATPA initial rich picture 150 8.8 ATPA organisation chart 151 8.9 Map of ATPA systems 157 8.10 ATPA recursion level 1 163 8.11 ATPA recursion level 2 (Procurement team) 164 8.12 Conceptual model for Transformation 1 169 8.13 Outcomes chain logic model for ATPA interventions 173 9.1 Theory of change of learning transfer 176 9.2 Systemic model of learning transfer 177 9.3 The LTSI conceptual framework 184 9.4 The dynamic nature of reflective practice 186 9.5 Preferences for seeking information by age 188 9.6 A community of practice as a trajectory towards expertise 189 10.1 A conceptual model for the process of ensuring learning 201 10.2 Levels of evaluation 203 10.3 A systemically based model of training evaluation 204 10.4 Steps in contribution analysis 215 10.5 The B–P–R framework 217 10.6 Theory of change for the ATPA transformation 218 10.7 ATPA recursion level 2 225 10.8 ATPA recursion level 1 227 11.1 An overall systemic approach to needs analysis and evaluation 233
- 17. 5.1 Classifications of system tools 52 6.1 Possible Weltanschauungen and transformations 100 6.2 Questions arising from the conceptual model 104 6.3 Types of power and their manifestation 107 6.4 Questions used in a CSH analysis 108 7.1 Methods of providing face-to-face formal learning 119 7.2 Different types of distance learning approaches 120 8.1 Exploring Weknow boundary issues 135 8.2 CATWOE elements for the Weknow situation 141 8.3 Questions prompted by the conceptual model 144 8.4 Potential interventions in the Weknow situation 146 8.5 Exploring ATPA boundary issues 152 8.6 Information for the level 1 recursion 159 8.7 Information for the level 2 recursion 165 8.8 Weltanschauungen identified for the ATPA situation 168 8.9 Issues raised by conceptual model and potential interventions 170 8.10 Possible interventions to support the ATPA transformation 172 9.1 Explanation of LTSI categories 185 10.1 Attribution and contribution questions 214 10.2 CSH questions for evaluating a formal learning intervention 220 10.3 Evaluation questions based on the logic model 222 10.4 Information for the level 2 recursion 226 Tables
- 18. The cover illustration is a bhavacakra, often referred to as a ‘wheel of life’, painted in the thangka tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.Such paintings are com- monly found in Tibetan Buddhist temples throughout south-east Asia and are designed to remind visitors of the cycle of existence. The graphical composition is highly symbolic, and different parts of it along with their physical relationship within the painting represent aspects of Bud- dhist belief such as karma, the law of cause and effect, which means that every- thing we do has an impact on the world around us, and the impermanence of life: nothing stays the same and everything constantly changes. Understanding the wheel of life contributes to an understanding about enlightenment. In its most humble way, this book hopes to offer some enlight- enment to the world of training. Cover illustration
- 19. One summer’s day in 1976 I walked out of the gates of University College London clutching a degree in mechanical engineering and headed up to the north of England to my first job, working in a quality control team for a company building the containment vessel for what would become Hartle- pool nuclear power station. I spent that long, hot summer inside the concrete- and-steel dome, screwing in and screwing out go/no-go gauges to check that screw threads were within specification. Hartlepool nuclear power station is still operational, so I guess that I did my work well enough, but it was not what I wanted to do with my life. So I decided to take my chances with Voluntary Services Overseas and in 1977 found myself working as an instructor in a technical college in a small town in northern Sudan. I spent two years there and, when I had the chance, tried to travel around the country. It was not easy, as there were no metalled roads and the railway system was unreliable, so any journey took several days and often relied on suq (market) lorries, old Bedford trucks loaded high with sacks of groundnuts if they were going north and imported goods if going south. Roads were terrible, in many places just indistinct tracks through sandy or rocky desert, and every now and then the driver would have to slow down to negotiate a wadi, a dried-out riverbed. This put an incredible strain on vehicles,and breakdowns were common.But what always surprised me was how, even in the remotest parts of the country, ‘bush mechanics’ would suddenly appear, pulling ancient tools out of goat-hair bags and somehow patching up leaking head gaskets or freeing recalcitrant clutches. How did these people learn how to do what they did? Sitting at their father’s (and it would have been their father, in a society with clearly defined gender roles) knee? Making hibiscus tea at a roadside truck stop and watching what happened? As the years went by I saw this phenomenon repeated in many differentAfri- can countries and eventually decided I would like to learn more.So I submitted a proposal to Leeds University to do a Ph.D., researching the informal training of bush mechanics inWest Africa, and was on the point of starting my research when my girlfriend became pregnant. Preface
- 20. Preface xv Feelings of paternal responsibility took over, and I abandoned my plans to spend some years wandering theWestAfrican bush interviewing mechanics and found a job with British Steel in Sheffield, designing computer-based training programmes and learning how to be a father. My professional life evolved into consultancy, and for many years I have worked on the design and delivery of training programmes. As time went by I started to become interested in systems thinking and slowly tried to inte- grate it into the various training needs analysis and evaluation projects which I worked on.But this was a slow and difficult process,so eventually I decided to enrol for the Open University’s M.Sc.programme SystemsThinking in Practice (as an extremely mature student).The various modules that I studied gave me the tools to think more carefully about how people learn to do their jobs and, most significantly, how I could use systems thinking approaches to develop a new paradigm for analysing training needs and evaluating training programmes. I have come to realise how powerful systems thinking is when trying to make sense of the complexity I see in people’s working lives and how it can really help design more effective training solutions.What is particularly exciting for me is how it makes it possible to integrate formal training programmes with informal learning, which actually represents the main way in which people learn how to do what they do. Which brings me back to those bush mechanics.Are they still popping out of the desert or the forest, coaxing life out of diesel engines? Just how do they learn to do what they do? Maybe it is finally time to do that Ph.D. . . . Bryan Hopkins
- 21. My first thanks are to a senior management team at an organisation where I was working, whose strong, negative reaction to a presentation I delivered about systems thinking made me realise that it really had something to say.Without their hostility, I would never have enrolled for my Master’s programme. Second thanks are to the academic team and fellow students involved with the Open University’s M.Sc. programme Systems Thinking in Practice. The knowledge I have gained, the wisdom I have observed and the hard work it has made me do have helped me along the road from being a confirmed reduction- ist to an aspiring systems bricoleur. Final thanks are to the people who have spent hours of their precious time looking through draft versions of the book, pointing out my inconsistencies and inaccuracies, straightening my tangled sentences and logic, and helping to shape the book into something that I hope will help fellow training profession- als. So thanks are due to: • Ray Ison, Professor of Systems at the Open University, who reassured me that there is sense in my application of systems thinking to training. • Barbara Schmidt-Abbey and Joan O’Donnell, fellow students on my Mas- ter’s programme, who reviewed the drafts and have provided me with moral support during the long time it took to write the book. • Dr Janet Curran and Christina Schmalenbach, experienced training pro- fessionals, who helped me make it more practical and relevant to the peo- ple who I hope will use it. • Helen Clay,my wife,who several times read through the whole manuscript in order to make sure that it was fit to let other people look at it. Acknowledgements
- 22. Abbreviation Meaning ADDIE Analysis–Design–Develop–Implement–Evaluate ASTD American Society for Training and Development ATPA Advanced Technology Procurement Agency BEM Behaviour Engineering Model B–P–R Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships CATWOE Customers–Actors–Transformation–Weltanschauung–Owner– Environment CSH Critical Systems Heuristics KSA knowledge, skills and attitudes LTSI Learning Transfer System Inventory® PQR Do P by Q in order to R ROI return on investment SCM Success Case Method SCO Supply Chain Officer SD System Dynamics SMT senior management team SNA Social Network Analysis SSCO Senior Supply Chain Officer SSM Soft Systems Methodology TNA training needs analysis VSM Viable System Model Abbreviations
- 24. 1 What is this book about? As its title suggests, this book looks at learning and performance and how we can evaluate how learning happens and what its effects are.In this context,‘per- formance’ refers to performance in the workplace, how well people are doing what they are supposed to be doing. Generally, we become more interested in people’s performance when we get a sense that it could be improved, that things are not being done as well as they could be or changes are being imple- mented which mean that people need new skills.When this happens we carry out some form of research in order to decide what can be done to help improve current performance or prepare people for change. ‘Learning’, in the sense of facilitating the learning of new knowledge and skill, may or may not be a way to achieve this. If a strategy to enable this learn- ing is implemented, we then need to see how effective these improvement strategies have been,and this is where the‘evaluation’part of the book becomes relevant. Responsibility for thinking about how to improve performance is often the responsibility of a training department and its professionals. As such, training becomes a key strategy to be deployed in order to improve performance.The aim of this book is to be a guide to training professionals that they can use to identify what strategies will be helpful in achieving this and subsequently to see how effective these strategies have been. So although our starting point here seems to be training,as will be elaborated on in subsequent chapters, the scope of this book is somewhat wider. Rather than just being a guide to help training professionals carry out a ‘training needs analysis’, with its implied restriction to training, it provides a methodology for understanding other factors which may be having an impact on performance so that strategies for dealing with these can be integrated with training responses. Later in the book we will return to discuss the semantics of the phrase ‘train- ing needs analysis’, but for now we will keep with it as something familiar and comforting. The design of a training programme provides a good starting point for an explanation as to what this book is about. Figure 1.1 is a representation of a well-known model for designing training, the ADDIE model: Analysis– Design–Develop–Implement–Evaluate.
- 25. 2 What is this book about? ADDIE is not the only model used for training development and is not necessarily the best, but it does provide a structure for this initial discussion. Each stage in the process of design has an impact on the overall quality of the training, and a discussion about the relative importance of each is not relevant here. However, within this model analysis and evaluation are arguably the most problematic stages, because they are often carried out in a limited manner, and methodologies for doing them are less well defined.By way of contrast,there is an extensive literature looking at the design, development and implementation of the many different forms of training. The importance of the needs analysis stage is based on the fact that it is the starting point, so decisions made here will, like a row of falling dominoes, tum- ble across from stage to stage.Unfortunately,reference literature on training and the academic research available suggests that this stage is often not really done in any systematic or comprehensive way: for example, some research reports that fewer than 10% of training design projects start with a thorough needs assessment process.1 The design stage may therefore start with a fairly clear description of what the training should be but with a somewhat hazy under- standing of why it is needed and who it is for. Decisions about design may often be based on what has been done in the past and what the capacities of the people involved in the design process are rather than on a fully assessed operational need. Figure 1.1 The ADDIE model of instructional design
- 26. What is this book about? 3 In the design stage the technical content for the learning is gathered and organised in a way to make it effective from a pedagogical perspective. Learn- ing activities are developed, and the materials are assembled in formats appro- priate for the delivery modality, for example, facilitator’s notes for a workshop, storyboards or similar for e-learning and so on. Design often focuses on how to deliver training to make sure that the learning activity is as effective as pos- sible, but if the analysis was weak there may be little attention paid to issues of learning transfer, how likely it is that the implementation stage will help learners apply new knowledge and skills delivered within the training in their workplace. Evaluation follows implementation: what did people learn, are they behav- ing differently as a result and what impact is this having? Evaluating training programmes can be a fraught subject, with the standard reference framework for training evaluation often being described as being useful as a framework but not as a methodology.And again, without an effective needs analysis, it can be difficult to come to any conclusions about the effectiveness of a learning intervention.How much have people learnt?What changes in performance can really be attributed to the training? So the initial needs analysis and final evaluation are actually intimately con- nected.Without the reliable starting point provided by a strong analysis it can be very difficult to carry out a meaningful evaluation.The aim of this book is to look at some ways in which training needs analyses can be carried out using methodologies which take workplace realities into consideration, so that the design, development and implementation stages are undertaken with a much firmer set of foundations and evaluation activities can provide a much more meaningful and useful description of what successes training has had. Training needs analysis and evaluation are,in essence,the same activities.In a needs analysis we look carefully at a current situation and come to some con- clusions about what we can do to make things better; in an evaluation we look carefully at what we have done within a situation and come to some conclu- sions about how well what we have done has affected the situation.The focus of the two activities may be somewhat different, but the processes we follow are essentially the same. Why is the approach within this book different? The methodologies described within this book are somewhat different to those usually covered within the training literature.They are based on an approach known as systems thinking, an area of knowledge which is often not well understood or clearly articulated. After many years of working in the training field, carrying out training needs analyses, designing training programmes and evaluating their success, I started to realise that the techniques that I was finding most useful for thinking through the analysis and evaluation parts of what I did came from this systems thinking world. The ideas gave me a way to develop a deeper
- 27. 4 What is this book about? understanding of why people are not performing as well as they could be and how this could be resolved.As I moved slowly from conscious incompetence to conscious competence in using systems thinking, partly through practice and partly through formal academic study, I tried to write down what I was doing as a process of reflective practice, as a way of learning more about what I was doing.This book is therefore something of a formal record of this process. The aim of the book is, therefore, to share with training professionals who are trying to develop their skills in training needs analysis and evaluation a prac- tical set of tools that they can use in their everyday work.As such, I have tried to use practical training-related examples whenever discussing systems concepts and have included a number of case studies based on real-life examples to show how systems approaches have helped me. But bringing a different discipline into the field of training presents some challenges to the structure of the book. As systems thinking may be completely new to many readers,the book includes several chapters on theory about systems thinking.This may be somewhat una- voidable if applying the approach is to make some sort of sense, but the reader should find that the systems concepts utilised in the practical case studies are explained as they are used,so if these chapters on theoretical concepts seem too daunting they can be avoided or left until later. While I was doing research for this book, I came across a sobering statis- tic (sobering particularly to someone who has spent their entire working life designing and delivering training programmes): less than 10% of what people learn is actually transferred to the workplace.2 Has 90% of what I and my fellow training professionals have done really been to no avail? Why might this be the case? Systems thinking provides some perspectives which may help offer some explanation.As is discussed in more detail in Chap- ter 2, a core principle of systems thinking is that it provides a radically different way of approaching problem solving, such as we do in a training needs analysis. One definition of the word ‘analysis’ is “the process of separating something into its constituent elements”.3 This is something which comes from the sci- entific method of understanding: if we are trying to develop an understanding of a complex issue, we often try to break it down into ‘constituent elements’ which are at a level of complexity that we can understand. For example, in Chapter 3, looking at existing models used in training needs analysis activi- ties, we discuss Tom Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model. This identifies six factors which affect performance: provision of information, understanding of information, suitability of the working environment, capacity of people to perform, incentives to perform and motivational needs.These are all relevant factors, but the model treats each as a separate contributor and does not con- sider the possibility that they may interact with each other. For example, if the working environment does not allow high levels of performance, providing more information to help people perform may actually cause frustration and hence reduce motivation.
- 28. What is this book about? 5 Breaking down a complex problem into its apparent constituent parts is a process known as reductionism. Reductionist thinking affects the design and delivery of formal learning in a number of different ways: • Organisational structures are reductionist, breaking down the complexity of the overall organisation into a number of simpler departmental struc- tures, of which the training department is one. How well it is connected to, and how clearly it understands the operation of other departments can vary hugely from one organisation to another. • Reductionism means that we separate the work that people do from the con- text within which they perform that work when designing training activi- ties.This means that we do not necessarily think about how the knowledge and skills implicit within a performance relate to the operational context. • Reductionist approaches to designing learning activities means that we break down the complexity of what people do in the workplace into dis- crete, simple steps (by task analysis) and then assume that adding these all up in a linear fashion will recreate our original level of performance, when in reality the subtlety of mastery has been lost. It is important to think more carefully about how reductionism separates per- formance from where it is performed. In his book How MusicWorks, the musi- cian David Byrne discusses how music has evolved in different times and places in response to where it is performed and how it is listened to. African music, performed in outdoor locations, is based around rhythm and percussion, which travels well through open air; western European classical music, performed in churches and concert halls, is melodic, as the acoustics of solid walls would cre- ate reverberations in percussive rhythms which would turn everything to“sonic mush”.4 Modern developments in recording technology and associated changes in how people listen to music (whether in sports stadia for a major concert, in a nightclub, in their living room or through earphones sitting in a commuter train) have also led to different musical forms which are best listened to in a particular context. Here we have the important word: context. Music is not something which exists on its own,separate from reality:it is something which is deeply affected by where it exists.Apparently, back in 1996 Bill Gates said,“Content is king”; well, when you take a systems perspective on the world, the king is context. C. West Churchman, one of the most influential writers on systems think- ing, discussed “the fallacy of ignoring the environment”5 when seeking to find solutions to problems without considering how they are interrelated with their context. So when we look at why systems thinking approaches can provide better solutions for improving learning and performance we find ourselves looking closely at context, deciding what the context is for the situ- ation we are looking at, and understanding it better so that we can work in it and with it.
- 29. 6 What is this book about? How can a systems approach lead to better training? Using systems thinking approaches in training needs analysis and evaluation helps us avoid the dangers of reductionism and lets us think about the impor- tance of relationships between different components of a situation. Let us con- sider a few benefits that can come from adopting a systems approach, and we shall see how context is a core principle within each of them. Places more emphasis on informal learning It has been estimated that perhaps 80% of what people learn at work comes through informal means,6 but for various reasons,discussed later,promoting and supporting informal learning is often seen by training departments as‘somebody else’s problem’. Of course, if everyone sees it as somebody else’s problem, little will be done to try and strengthen processes for strengthening informal learning. Because systems approaches make us think more about relationships and the need for networks of people to exchange information with each other to maintain learning, it is inevitable that solutions to performance problems must think about informal learning as well as formal training solutions. Focuses more attention to the operational context Systems thinking places a great deal of importance on managing the relation- ship between the situation we are thinking about and its context.Systems-based needs analyses will therefore suggest that learners need to develop their abilities to monitor how their operational context is changing and what impact they may be having on that context so that they can adapt accordingly. Stresses the dynamic nature of the operational context Traditional approaches to needs analysis have a tendency to identify at a par- ticular point in time (usually at the time of the needs analysis or the initial per- ception of the problem),a static set of skills which are needed for responding to the operational context. By the time the training is delivered these conditions may be different,and the value of the training may be diminished.Unless train- ing includes some strategies for improving situational awareness it may be out of date by the time it is implemented. A systems approach to analysing training should help us identify what people need to learn so that they are better able to deal with changing operational conditions – for example,through improving their abilities to analyse the oper- ational context or solve problems as they appear. Increases the importance of social learning activities Social learning describes learning which takes place when people come together, discuss a situation of mutual interest, explore different perspectives and use this to refine their respective understandings.
- 30. What is this book about? 7 Reflecting on different perspectives is a key aspect of systems thinking.In the world of human behaviour there can be no definitive definitions of what is happening, and each individual’s perception of a situation has validity. So when we are trying to understand what a workplace problem means and how we may be able to improve things, it is important to develop a shared understanding of the situation. Learning solutions based on a systems thinking–based analysis are therefore more likely to involve a learning process in which people collaborate and talk to each other in order to develop a shared understanding, through activity- based face-to-face learning and truly interactive technology-based learning solutions, as well as the encouragement of informal learning networks. Increases the likelihood of learning transfer As described previously, only a small percentage of what people learn in a formal learning event is usually transferred to the workplace, despite the best efforts of trainers and instructional designers. One of the reasons this may happen is if, within the process of designing a formal learning intervention, insufficient attention is paid to thinking about how that learning will be transferred into the workplace. Even if a formal event is well designed and effectively delivered, when people return to their work- place, local expectations and standards may constrain their ability to do any- thing differently. A systems approach to needs analysis means that the context of the work- place has to be taken into consideration, and this will have an impact on both the overall structure of a learning programme and the detail of how the learn- ing is delivered. But isn’t this all too complicated? Systems thinking can appear rather complex, time consuming and difficult to apply. But this is a criticism which applies to learning any new skill.The reality is that using a systems thinking approach need not take any longer than existing methods being used to carry out training needs analyses and evaluations and can, with increasing familiarity, help us develop ideas more quickly. This is because systems thinking is used to plan how to carry out these activi- ties and then to make sense of the data.Using systems thinking approaches does not mean a completely different approach to data collection: we still review available reports, we still interview stakeholders, we still send out surveys.What is different is that systems thinking provides a way of thinking about data to help us make more sense of it. It provides a well-structured process for identifying actions which we can take to improve performance in the workplace. For me, one of the most exciting things about using systems thinking approaches is the way that they can suddenly shine a clearer light on the most confusing of situations. But, like all skills, this needs perseverance and practice. And, while you are reading this book, some patience!
- 31. 8 What is this book about? How is this book organised? Bridging two different disciplines in a single book always presents challenges. As the primary audience for the book will be training professionals, writing about training is relatively straightforward, but how much explanation should be presented about systems thinking? Too little and its application to training may not make any sense; too much and it may become overwhelming. So I hope that I have managed to strike the right balance, but I have also tried to organise chapters in the book in such a way that it is easier to avoid the density of the systems thinking theory if readers want to avoid this. Figure 1.2 shows how the chapters are arranged in a way which should make it easier for readers to decide on the most appropriate way to navigate through its content. As overviews, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide introductions to the main top- ics within the book, systems thinking, training needs analysis and evaluation. Chapters 5 and 6 contain the heart of the systems thinking theory, and then Chapters 7, 8 and 9 cover how systems thinking can be applied to the needs analysis process. Finally, Chapter 10 looks at systems thinking approaches to training evaluation. Next, let us look at what each chapter contains in a little more detail. Chapter 2 introduces what is meant by the term‘systems thinking’by reflect- ing on the history of systemic thought and discussing why our patterns of thinking shifted to become centred around more reductionist principles.It then goes on to look at the three key elements within systems thinking, the impor- tance of interrelationships, the need to consider multiple perspectives and how to define boundaries around a situation of interest.This introduces the B–P–R model (Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships) which is used as a starting point for systemic approaches to needs analysis and evaluation. In Chapter 3 we take a look at existing ideas about training needs analysis. It is first important to clarify some terminology, because the ethos of systems thinking does not sit altogether comfortably with the limitations implied by the phrase ‘training needs analysis’.The chapter continues by looking at some existing models which have been used for analysing performance, such as Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model and the Mager and Pipe performance flowchart. Chapter 4 starts the discussion about evaluation by looking at the challenges associated with evaluating formal learning interventions and provides a critique of standard models of training evaluation, such as the Kirkpatrick framework and the return-on-investment model. Chapters 5 and 6 are where the deepest part of systems including theory lies. Reading these chapters will give you a very good foundation for understand- ing the application of systems thinking in the later chapters,but you may prefer to read through the practical chapters first and come back to this theory later. Systems thinking involves a large number of different concepts, and the aim of Chapter 5 is to summarise the most important and to explain how they will become important as we start to look at strategies for improving performance
- 32. Figure 1.2 Map of the book’s chapters
- 33. 10 What is this book about? and evaluating their effectiveness.This covers some relatively familiar ideas such as feedback and causality but also examines the significance of such concepts as emergence, the unexpected and unintended consequences of doing something, non-linearity, the way small changes can have big impacts and complexity, the phenomenon whereby interrelationships create stable yet dynamic systems. Building on this explanation of concepts, Chapter 6 looks at some specific tools which have been developed in order to harness the power of systems thinking.The chapter starts off with a discussion about drawing diagrams,which is a technique commonly used in a number of systems thinking approaches,and then looks at System Dynamics, a tool which entered mainstream management thinking as what systems thinking was with the publication of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.7 But there is much more to systems thinking than just this, and the chapter goes on to look at other tools such as theViable System Model, Social Network Analysis, Soft Systems Methodology and Critical Systems Heuristics.These are quite different tools but each has a particular strength: by choosing the right tool or tools we can develop a much deeper understanding of a situation. Chapter 7 introduces the needs analysis section of the book by looking in some detail at the process of learning. Because a systems approach challenges the narrow boundaries of ‘training’, the chapter considers both formal and informal learning and explains how integrating the two is important. Systems thinking is integrated into needs analysis in Chapter 8. Using a number of case studies, the chapter looks at how to use diagramming tech- niques to develop an initial understanding of the perceived performance issue and then how to gather and analyse data using systems thinking tools in order to arrive at a set of solutions.These solutions are expressed in the form of a theory of change, which will be an important part of the evaluation process, discussed in Chapter 10. Assuming that the needs analysis process identifies the need to provide some form of learning intervention, Chapter 9 explores the issue of learning transfer in some detail, looking at how the needs analysis process should take this into consideration when developing the specifications for learning interventions of different types.This covers both designing formal interventions, such as class- room events and e-learning, and informal learning, such as supporting com- munities of practice. Chapter 10 outlines a process for evaluating a formal learning intervention using systems thinking tools, such as theory-based evaluation and contribution analysis.This refers to the Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation because they are so well known but provides a quite different way of utilising them. The book concludes with Chapter 11, which is a reflection on what systems thinking can mean for the whole process of training.A key suggestion is that we should shift the focus from designing and delivering training courses towards looking at how we can encourage the development of learning systems, which include both formal and informal learning activities and which can become dynamic and self-sustaining entities.
- 34. What is this book about? 11 Notes 1 Arthur Jr., W., Bennett Jr., W., Edens, P.S. Bell, S.T., 2003. Effectiveness of Training in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis of Design and Evaluation Features. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(2), p. 242. 2 Baldwin,T.T. Ford,J.K.,1988.Transfer of Training:A Review and Directions for Future Research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), pp. 63–105. 3 Definition taken from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (10th Edition). 4 Byrne, D., 2013. How MusicWorks, Canongate, Edinburgh, p. 18. 5 West Churchman, C., 1979. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, Basic Books, NewYork, p. 5. 6 Frazis, H., Gittleman, M. Joyce, M., 1998. Determinants of Training:An Analysis Using Both Employer and Employee Characteristics, in Key Bridge Marriott Hotel,Arlington VA, US Department of Commerce, Citeseer,Washington, DC;Tough, A., 1999. Reflections on the Study of Adult Learning, in New Approaches to Lifelong Learning Conference, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,Toronto. 7 Senge, P.M., 1990. The Fifth Discipline:The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Century Business, London.
- 35. 2 What is systems thinking? In this chapter we shall look at: • how systems thinking is what we do naturally • the Enlightenment, a new way of thinking • Cartesian thinking in management • traps in Cartesian thinking • what systems thinking is. Systems thinking – just what we do One of the things which distinguishes human beings from other animals is our sentience, our awareness of our existence in the world. One outcome of this is that we constantly seek to understand why we are here and how what we are doing interacts with everything else in the world.We are sense-seeking crea- tures; we try to understand how the world around us works and how we can best deal with this. In a modern, technology-driven society it is rather easy to lose sight of the fact that everything is connected, but in more traditional societies this sense of interconnectedness can be seen much more clearly. For example, every morning women in Bali take a small tray woven out of banana leaves, carefully fill it with small pieces of fruit, vegetables, biscuits, sweets and flowers and place it outside their house as an offering to the spirits who permeate the world around them. In this way the forces which dictate how the world works will be kept satisfied. The staple food crop in Bali is rice, grown across the entire island in a patch- work of paddy fields, connected by a complex network of irrigation chan- nels stretching from the volcanic peaks which run the length of the island all the way down to the tropical beaches. Managing the flow of water so that every individual farmer receives what they need is a complex matter negoti- ated within the subak system,in which community representatives and religious leaders discuss who needs water, where and when and then jointly agree on how irrigation channels will be opened and closed. Decisions are made, cere- monies are followed and offerings are made.Through this method, paddy fields
- 36. What is systems thinking? 13 are flooded when needed then emptied and left to lie fallow when appropriate in order to maintain fertility and reduce pest infestations. Although probably few Balinese would articulate it thus, they are systems thinkers.They see the world as a network of influences which needs to be man- aged carefully in order to achieve a balance which provides well-being. To some degree this describes most people in the world, having some kind of‘faith’which provides a way of understanding how the world works and how we should behave.Practical decisions about how the world works,how a coun- try works and how a family works are based on these articles of faith. Mystical beliefs in how the world worked dominated thinking everywhere until the 17th century,when a number of European thinkers started to find this reliance on hidden forces linking everything together deeply troubling. One of the key thinkers of this time was René Descartes (1596–1650), who suggested that, rather than the world being some form of organism governed by spiritual forces, it was more “an inert universe composed of purposeless particles each pursuing its course mindless of others”.1 If the components of the universe floated around independently, therefore, we could increase our understand- ing of any individual particle by studying it independently of other particles. Descartes decided that if he wanted to understand the world he could “divide each of the difficulties that I was examining into as many parts as might be pos- sible and necessary in order best to solve it”.2 We call this process of breaking a complex structure down into smaller parts which we can study more easily reductionism. Descartes also proposed that we should consider matter and the mind as separate entities: matter could be understood in mechanistic terms, but the workings of the mind were closed to human understanding, a distinction now known as ‘Cartesian dualism’. Living creatures were in reality just complicated machines, and this thinking inspired such creations as the mechanical duck automaton developed by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson, which is often known as ‘Descartes’s duck’. This concept of viewing the material world as essentially composed of mechanical objects proved to be extremely powerful. Descartes’s ideas came to play a central role in the development of what we now call the Enlightenment, the period where thinkers started to propose that humanity was composed of individual, rational agents rather than being pawns in some cosmic game being played by spiritual forces. Science was a key beneficiary of Cartesian thinking. In seeking to develop a scientific basis for explaining how the world worked scientists started to examine phenomena in ever greater detail, breaking every- thing down into its constituent parts. Reductionism relies on an assumption that the whole is the sum of its con- stituent parts.It shapes the modern world:through the education system we are divided into ‘artists’ or ‘scientists’, and the education one group receives ignores its connections with the other area of knowledge.Within each area of knowl- edge there is further reductionism, as scientists become chemists, biologists or physicists.In working life people take on further professional specialisms,losing
- 37. 14 What is systems thinking? contact with other disciplines. In reality it is difficult to avoid this narrowing down and ‘siloisation’: the modern, technical world means that professional areas require hard and time-consuming study of specialist topics, and it is hard to conceive of modern equivalents of Leonardo daVinci,whose talents spanned both arts and sciences. Cartesian thinking in management Descartes’s proposal that matter and mind could be separated has been heavily criticised by philosophers over the years, but it has indisputably been a power- ful tool to use in the inanimate matter–centred world of the physical sciences. However,there are problems when we start to think that human behaviour sys- tems can be treated as mechanical systems. Humans may be composed of mat- ter, but when their minds interact, the results are unpredictable to say the least. Nevertheless, Cartesian principles have made their way into all aspects of modern life, including management. Adam Smith’s An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations (published in 1776),referring to the manufac- ture of pins, advocated the division of tasks to allow specialisation (although he also observed that this could lead to people becoming “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become”).3 One of the earliest books to look at management as a specific subject in its own right was FrederickTaylor’s 1911 The Principles of Scientific Management.Taylor’s proposals were to deconstruct workplace performance and identify the separate activities that are needed in order to achieve the desired outputs.Adding together all of these separate activi- ties would give us the overall output of the organisation. Simple causal linkages connecting different aspects of organisational life were assumed.Workers were machines which could be programmed to carry out specific activities, and lit- tle consideration was given to the reality that they might hate what they were doing, they might disagree with how other organisational units operated, they might compete with each other. Problem solving became a matter of breaking down the problem into separate root causes and then, one by one, resolving these so that by a process of linear addition the problem was solved. Organisations follow this principle by subdividing themselves into functional divisions,each specialising in one particular task.For example,the typical enter- prise divides itself up into production and service functions: production covers such things as research and development,sales,design,manufacturing and so on, whereas service functions include human resources where training normally sits. People in the training department may be training experts (with a limited understanding of the production context) or former production staff (with a limited understanding of adult learning issues). Organisational structures can then make it hard for training staff to fully understand very much about how structures, processes, cultures, systems and the like all contribute to workplace performance. Organisations may have a unit devoted to organisational devel- opment (OD), which is where the greatest cross-sectoral experience may lie, but the OD team in many organisations sees itself as having a limited role in training development.
- 38. What is systems thinking? 15 Cartesian thinking therefore lies at the roots of the silo mentality in organisa- tions.This creates isolated pockets of expertise, separate from and suspicious of outsiders and protecting domains of influence and expertise.A training depart- ment is often one of the weaker silos, cut off from central operational func- tions as a sub-department within human resources. This often gives it little real political strength which might enable it to be proactive in identifying real learning needs or reacting to demands for training where knowledge and skills issues are not actually the real problem. Cartesian thinking also creates a top-down dynamic,in which demands flow downwards from the organisation to the individual. Hence learning activities are seen as ‘training’, something which is ‘done to people’.4 The problem here is that training staff often define themselves as people who transfer knowledge and skills to the workforce and so confine what they do to activities which live in this silo and do not necessarily see themselves as people whose role is to facilitate learning,5 which opens up a whole range of other possibilities for supporting organisational effectiveness. The trap of Cartesian thinking We can therefore start to see how reductionist thinking can create a trap. But apart from these practical problems, there are some deeper philosophical issues that it creates for us. First, reductionist thinking is so pervasive in modern life that we probably do not think at all about there being any alternative. The educational and professional development processes that we follow lead us to specialise more and more narrowly, cutting off our opportunities to see things from a different perspective. Second, a reductionist way of thinking means that we tend to see the world as being composed of‘machines’which are simply matter and have a fixed func- tionality.HannahArendt,theAmerican social theorist,saw this as providing reas- surance to us as humans:“the things of the world have the function of stabilising human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that. . . men, their ever-changing nature notwithstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is, their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table”.6 We therefore assume that what is in the world appears the same to everyone. This means that we can ‘detach’ ourselves from the world and ascribe a fixed meaning to everything around us.Seeing the man-made world around us as fixed is known as reification: [R]eification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something other than human products – such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and, further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness.7 But actually our reality is socially constructed; the interpretation we give of the world around us being based on our experience of the world, right from the
- 39. 16 What is systems thinking? moment we are born through to the moment of perception.If the meaning of the man-made world around us depends on our relationship with it, then we are of necessity connected to the world, and our presence has an impact.We see this in scientific exploration, where the ‘observer effect’ implies that any time we look at what is happening,we change what is happening and so cannot measure it reliably. Reductionism also leads to the assumption that what works one way will also work the other way around.This is true with a mechanical device:when I take my bicycle apart and examine each individual component so as to better understand what it is and how it works and then put it all back together, I have my bicycle again. However, this would not be the case if I decided to dismantle my cat. A similar phenomenon occurs with how people behave in the workplace. Reductionism at the macro level means that when we are looking for ways to improve performance and identify training as a requirement,we fail to consider how training interacts with other aspects of behaviour. For example, training is generally aimed at and designed for individuals, whereas most operational behaviour relies on team interactions. So when an individual returns to the workplace after completing training, their new skills may help improve overall performance . . . or may trigger resistance at a perceived attempt to change the existing dynamics. This possibility is discussed in more detail when we later look at the concept of complex adaptive systems (Chapter 5). At the micro level a key activity in systematic approaches to training design is the task analysis, in which we break down an overall performance system to identify the components that make up the performance; for example, follow- ing a reductionist approach we may decide that an overall work outcome is achieved by carrying out task A, task B and then task C. This is done on the assumption that by adding together all of the individual tasks needed to complete a performance we will end up with the overall per- formance outcome. However, by simply identifying separate skill-based activities and areas of knowledge that are needed to carry out a task we may fail to understand how they interact with each other and how one person’s performance is related to another’s.These interactions may lead to unexpected and unintended conse- quences, which may be quite subtle or intangible and may counteract the posi- tive influence of the training to a greater or lesser extent. For example, training people increases their attractiveness in the employment marketplace, and such individuals may leave to join competitors; training some members of a team and not others may lead to resentment and resistance to change. Unintended consequences of a set of connected activities is an example of,in systems terms, emergence, and this is also discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. Modern ideas of systems thinking It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss in any detail how modern con- cepts in systems thinking have developed.However,it is useful to understand in general terms how this has happened, as this helps set the tools used in systems thinking that are used in this book in context.
- 40. What is systems thinking? 17 Although systems thinking may be seen as a ‘modern idea’ arising as a reac- tion to Cartesian thinking, it has ancient roots.Aristotle, for example, believed that every object had a natural place and purpose, and every change in the world was a result of something returning to its natural place or fulfilling its purpose. This meant that we could only understand an object in relation to this purpose or function. C. West Churchman describes the I Ching, written somewhere around 2000 BC, as a systems-based approach to decision making.8 However, the Enlightenment came along and changed how we perceived the world around us.The power of reductionism as a tool for understanding the material world lead to it becoming the overwhelming paradigm for under- standing, and systems ideas fell into disuse. The first renaissance in systems thinking seems to have come from the writings of the Russian philosopher and physician Alexander Bogdanov, who between 1912 and 1917 published a three-volume work titled Tektology: Universal Organization Science, which discussed the importance of relationships in social and physical sciences.9 However, this work disappeared from view, and systems thinking lay dormant until the 1950s, when the Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy published various articles and books relating to what he called “general systems theory”. Drawing on thermodynamics, he proposed that living organisms work in open systems,exchanging information and mate- rials with their environments in order to establish a dynamic equilibrium, in which, while they are in balance with their environment they continue to develop.He contrasted this with much scientific work which treated organisms as closed systems, operating in isolation from their environments. Although Bertalanffy’s work focused on the systemic principles of life, his work acted as a major stimulus to many other people, who started to look at how these principles could be applied to human activity in general.The field of systems thinking therefore exploded into myriad disciplines and sub-disciplines, and there are too many of these to discuss in any detail here.This multiplicity of systems approaches has meant that it has become something of a challenge to explain just what ‘systems thinking’ is, and it is a frequent topic of discus- sion amongst ‘systemicists’ as to how to better communicate what it means and how it can be used effectively.The aim of this book is to look at how aspects of training can utilise principles of systems thinking and so provide a practical guide for using them. What is a ‘system’? Before going further it is important to clarify what we mean by ‘system’, as it is a word which has a number of somewhat different meanings. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary offers a number of definitions: • a complex whole;a set of things working together as a mechanism or inter- connected network • an organised scheme or method • the prevailing political or social order.
- 41. 18 What is systems thinking? The word ‘system’ is often used in a pejorative sense:“I couldn’t help it. It’s the way the system works”,“The system is slow today” and so on. Then we have systematic:“done or acting according to a fixed plan or system; methodical”.For example,a systematic approach to training design is to analyse training needs, write training objectives, design the training then implement and evaluate it.While systematic approaches are not of themselves undesirable, they are not necessarily systemic, our final derivative, which is defined as “of or relating to a system as a whole”. So while something done systematically may not be systemic, where an issue is systemic, consequences may follow each other systematically as a result of the system’s logic. In general, this book will talk about doing things in a systemic way but will often not define a fixed ‘systematic method’ for problem solving (which may be frustrating for some readers, but that is the nature of this particular beast). Training as a system Thinking about the first definition of‘system’,we can imagine a training inter- vention as ‘a set of things working together’ (Figure 2.1).We take inputs (learn- ers, content and perhaps a trainer), put them through a training intervention, and this transforms the learners into trained people. As an enhancement, we check by some sort of evaluation that the people are indeed trained and, if necessary, adjust the training so that the next set of inputs (learners) are even better trained. This is a very simple view of training, but it is a reasonable description of conventional approaches to training as a system. Let us consider the limitations of this system a little more closely. First, we have separated the system from the world of work: as we have drawn it we are not considering how the trained people interact with the workplace,nor are we taking any further input (such as information) from the workplace over and above what we are starting with. In systems terms this is therefore a ‘closed system’. Clearly this is not what real life Figure 2.1 Training as a system
- 42. What is systems thinking? 19 is about.Real life is all about‘open systems’,where the change we are interested in (application of new skills and knowledge) interacts with its environment, constantly pulling in new inputs and generating outputs which have an impact on the environment. For example, as our trained people change what is hap- pening in the workplace, the content needed in the training or the nature of the learners may change. The key characteristics of a system Now let us deconstruct our simple system somewhat.To do this we will con- sider three fundamental aspects of a system: • boundary decisions about what is inside and outside the system • multiple perspectives on the system • relationships between entities within and outside the system These aspects can be represented by Figure 2.2, which introduces the Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships (or B–P–R) model, which forms the basis for a systemic approach to needs analysis and evaluation. Boundaries First, let us consider the significance of boundaries.This simple view of train- ing as a system just looks at the training intervention and does not consider the workplace in which the new skills will be practised or the people who will be affected in some way by the learners’ new skills. So we have actually drawn a line around what we consider as important within the training and what we leave out: the system has a boundary even though we have not drawn it in the diagram. Boundaries may be physical, virtual or temporal; for example, who or what is considered as having an impact on performance, types of solution which we Figure 2.2 The Boundaries–Perspectives–Relationships model
- 43. 20 What is systems thinking? may or may not consider, if we look at a situation at a point in time or as part of a trend,who we decide to train and who we exclude from training and so on. Boundaries contain but also exclude. To illustrate some important points arising from this implication, consider Figure 2.3. This type of diagram is called a system map; it provides a way of showing what entities are involved in a system of interest. In this case our situation of interest includes actors involved in delivering a humanitarian aid programme; for example, we may be interested in evaluating the effectiveness of a training programme aimed at providing shelter in the aftermath of a civil conflict. The system map provides a way of capturing thoughts about who may or may not be relevant to the evaluation process.We have the humanitarian organ- isations who are implementing the shelter programme, the persons of con- cern (the people needing shelter) and the host government.We may consider these to be the key actors involved and that the humanitarian organisations are delivering this programme within an environment comprising non-state actors (rebel groups, paramilitary organisations etc.), the military-industrial complex (official armies and arms vendors), governments providing financial support to the humanitarian aid and finally the media. So on our system map we draw Boundary 1, which defines our system of interest and the environment within which it operates (its context). As we shall see later, making decisions about where to draw boundaries can have a significant effect on how we analyse or evaluate a situation. For Figure 2.3 System map of actors in a situation of interest
- 44. What is systems thinking? 21 example,by placing donor governments in the environment,how are we going to change the way in which we involve them in analysis or evaluation? Should we redraw Boundary 1 as Boundary 2 and consider them as a core part of the system?What effect will this have on what we do,who we talk to,our measures of success and so on? Boundary decisions that we make have an influence on the degree to which we can consider our thinking as ‘holistic’. Systems thinking is sometimes described as being holistic, but this is not necessarily a helpful way of think- ing about the subject.The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘holistic’ as being “characterized by the tendency to perceive or produce wholes”, but the prob- lem with this is that it is in practical terms impossible to think about a ‘whole’ situation: we always have to make boundary decisions about what to consider. So while it is true to say that systems thinking can help us to take a more holistic look at a situation,it certainly does not look at the whole situation,as we always have to make boundary decisions. One final consequence of making a boundary decision is how it can confer value on whatever we are considering.For example,when we look at a particu- lar situation and describe it as a‘problem’we are effectively creating a boundary around it, separating good stuff outside from not-so-good stuff inside.This can then lead us to analyse just what we see inside the boundary, our ‘problem’.To avoid this linguistic trap, throughout this book we will refer to issues we are looking at as ‘situations of interest’. Perspectives Next, there will be different opinions as to how this system actually works. At this point systems thinking literature sometimes refers to a story told in Eastern cultures (versions of the story appear in Sufism, Jainism, Buddhism and Hindu- ism) about six blind wise men walking in the forest. One day these men were walking through the forest when they came across an elephant. The first wise man bumped into the elephant’s side and, reaching his hand out, declared that they had come across a wall. The second wise man reached out and took hold of one of the elephant’s tusks: “This is a spear”, he cried. The third wise man bumped into the trunk: “Look out, good friends, there is a snake here!” he warned. And so it went on. Another mistook the elephant’s knee for a tree, another its tail for a rope and the sixth wise man thought the ear was a fan. The lesson the story tells is that we all see but a part of the totality and, based on what we see, construct a reality and make judgements. And because our perspectives are limited our judgements are necessarily flawed.As discussed previously, what is happening in an organisation and why it is being done is a socially constructed reality, so each person with an interest will have a differ- ent perspective on improvement solutions: the trainer will have an idea about what needs to be included in the training, and the learners will have their own opinions. So our system must be considered from multiple perspectives.
- 45. 22 What is systems thinking? Relationships The third aspect to consider is that the system consists of entities which are connected in various ways: the trainer is connected to the content and the learners, for example.There are, therefore, multiple relationships. In considering performance improvement and training there are, amongst others, relationships between individuals in the workplace,between an organisation’s employees and its customers, between departments, between the organisation and political, social, environmental and technological forces and so on. Using the B–P–R model While the B–P–R model provides a convenient way to start thinking about a performance problem as a system, it should be noted that this does not repre- sent a systematic step-by-step process.In practice it is useful to start off any kind of systemic analysis by considering boundary issues,what is in or out,important or not important and so on. However, in doing this we have to simultaneously remember that different people will have different perspectives about where boundaries should be drawn. Once we have developed a working boundary definition, we may then explore perspectives and relationships, revising boundary decisions as we increase our understanding of the situation. Rather than being a linear model, B–P–R therefore represents a framework within which we can conduct our analysis, using boundary definitions as an entry point. Systems thinking approaches are designed to help us take these three aspects into consideration and to reflect on how they all interact. In the context of a training intervention this therefore helps us to think about such things as: • how learners with new knowledge and skills will interact with their work- place and what implications this may have • how different people may view the value of training differently;the learner may see it as important professional development, their supervisor as a way of helping the team to meet operational targets, the divisional director as an investment for the future • what implications there might be for the content of the training if we drew our boundaries about who was involved in the design process differently. There are, of course, many ways in which these three factors all have a bearing on training. Summary This chapter has looked at how a distinction has emerged during the last 300 years between systemic thought and Cartesian reductionism. Reduc- tionism emerged as a way of helping us understand the complexities of our
- 46. What is systems thinking? 23 existence but arguably has led us into something of a trap when we are trying to consider human behaviour. Systems thinking has emerged as a discipline which helps us deal with the complexity of life. It is based around three key concepts: those of boundary definitions, multiple perspectives and relationships. The aim of this chapter was to provide a basic understanding of what systems thinking means,and the next two chapters look at the key principles of the two main subjects of the book, training needs analysis and evaluation. If you would like to dig more deeply into systems thinking now,then you may wish to move on to Chapters 5 and 6 first. Otherwise, Chapter 3 will help you understand more about the core principles of training needs analysis. Notes 1 Malik, K., 2014. The Quest for a Moral Compass,Atlantic Books, London, p. 180. 2 Jackson, M.C., 2000. Systems Approaches to Management, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Pub- lishers, NewYork, p. 1. 3 For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour, accessed 04 January 2015. 4 Manuti, A., Pastore, S., Scardigno, A.F., Giancaspro, M.L. Morciano, D., 2015. Formal and Informal Learning in theWorkplace:A Research Review.International Journal ofTrain- ing and Development, 19(1), pp. 1–17. 5 Clement-Okooboh, K.M. Olivier, B., 2014.Applying CyberneticThinking to Becom- ing a Learning Organization. Kybernetes, 43(9/10), pp. 1319–1329. 6 Arendt, H., 1958. The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 137. 7 Berger, P. Luckmann, T., 1971. The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin, London, p. 106. 8 West Churchman, C., 1979. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, Basic Books, NewYork, pp. 32–34. 9 For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektology, accessed 15 April 2016.
- 47. 3 Analysing training needs This chapter looks at the important principles for the first of the book’s pri- mary aims, analysing training needs. It looks at: • what a training needs analysis should achieve • challenges in carrying out a training needs analysis • models for analysing performance • the potential benefits of a systems-based approach for training needs analysis. What is a training needs analysis? A training needs analysis (or TNA) is a process carried out to identify training which will help improve performance in a situation where this is perceived to be necessary. Or is it? It can be if we want it to be, but we need to look deeper into what assumptions lie behind this basic definition.The fundamental problem with the definition is the implicit assumption that the performance can be improved by training.This is dependent on the problem being caused by a lack of knowledge or skill, in which case training can help . . . but then only if we let it. So the danger is that if we embark on a training needs analysis and find that training is not needed, then we may return empty-handed. If, on the other hand, we reframe the boundaries within which we carry out the analysis, then we may return with some suggestions for non-training actions which could improve performance.This would be an improvement but then means that arguably we have not conducted a training needs analysis. So there is a terminology problem.Various alternatives to ‘training needs analysis’ have been used. It is sometimes called an ‘assessment’. Some writ- ers have also suggested that it should be called a ‘training requirements analy- sis’, while there is also the more radical ‘performance analysis’ or ‘performance improvement analysis’.1 The argument for this is (rightly) that strategies for improving performance may include non-training actions, and that training may not be appropriate at all. This is a particularly relevant argument when looking at performance from a systems perspective, where the context of per- formance is an essential element to consider.
- 48. Analysing training needs 25 However,while these are valid and meaningful terms,they do not necessarily trip easily off a learning professional’s tongue, so in this book we shall compro- mise somewhat and use the generalised but more familiar term ‘needs analysis’ to describe the process of investigating a situation in the workplace in order to identify potential training and non-training strategies. Systems thinking introduces various dilemmas regarding terminology, and these will be discussed where appropriate throughout this book.At this point it is important to think about what word we will use to describe a strategy identi- fied by the needs assessment process. In training jargon this is often referred to as a ‘solution’, but from a systems thinking perspective this presents a problem. In Chapter 5 we introduce the idea that workplace difficulties are examples of what have been called‘wicked problems’,which are essentially problems which can never effectively be eliminated, merely ameliorated. This means that the rather mathematical word ‘solution’, which suggests right or wrong, is inap- propriate. So we will refrain from using the familiar terms ‘training and non- training solutions’ and instead use alternatives such as ‘training intervention’, which describes the action and not the result. Why do a needs analysis? A good needs analysis brings many benefits: • It identifies gaps between current and desired levels of performance,making it possible to prioritise investments in time, money and human resources.2 • It provides an opportunity for the organisation to reflect on and learn something about its operation so that it can make appropriate changes. • It can provide good evidence which can be used in individual performance appraisal activities.3 • It increases the likelihood that the training done will be effective.4 This can have various positive effects in addition to increasing performance, such as improving employee motivation and making people more interested in undertaking further training.5 • It identifies issues which will influence the transfer of learning,so that atten- tion can be paid to factors which may prevent the transfer from happening. • It can identify existing informal learning channels,which can be taken into consideration in the design of training so that it becomes more effective. Challenges to the needs analysis process As discussed in Chapter 1, it seems that in practice needs analyses are often not carried out, at least not with rigour. It is hard to imagine many parts of organi- sational life in which an investment is made without really considering what it needs to achieve, how its success can be measured or if it is really needed. There are three possible reasons accounting for this. A fundamental reason may be a tendency in organisations to assume that any problem can be fixed by training.This is based on a belief that as a lack of
- 49. 26 Analysing training needs knowledge and skill is a cause of a problem (in itself a questionable assumption), providing training will mitigate the problem at the very least. A second problem may be the time needed to carry out a thorough needs analysis: the scope of the perceived problem needs to be assessed, stakeholders must be consulted, specifications must be prepared and consultations about implementation held.It is quite easy for some time to go by while this happens, and of course,if the prevailing belief is that as training is the necessary response, this may be seen as a waste of time. Third, there is often a lack of clarity about what a ‘training needs analysis’ is or how it should be done.What are its terms of reference? Should it con- sider training and non-training interventions? How do you carry out a training needs analysis? What skills are needed? Do internal training staff have the nec- essary understanding of adult learning and organisational development issues needed in order to specify and design a training programme which really will make a difference to performance? It is also possible that senior-level managers in an organisation may not in reality welcome any meaningful analysis of factors affecting performance.This might lead to uncomfortable change processes, so they see training as a way of being ‘seen to be doing something’ while not in practice doing anything meaningful at all. Finally, organisations are often unable to articulate clearly what their actual goals are,making it hard for analysts to identify any discrepancy between desired and actual behaviour.6 Given these challenges to carrying out a proper needs analysis, what may actually happen when a needs analysis is done? Sometimes the needs analysis process becomes a ‘shopping list’ exercise. Instead of considering organisational goals and mismatches between desired and actual levels of performance, the analyst simply asks people what training they think they need. This usually results in people stating what they ‘want’ rather than what they need, and the end result often has minimal success.7 There are various reasons for this: • Training staff feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of analysing the causes of performance problems, or the scale of the analysis process is seen as too great. • Training staff do not have the necessary skills for investigating the nature of a performance problem and identifying possible responses. • There is an assumption that individual workers will know what is best for them. The needs analysis may just be done at the personal level, looking at individu- als carrying out their task and focusing on a narrow range of factors affecting performance. Finally, needs analyses often fail to adequately consider how learning will be transferred into the workplace.Although a profile of the target group may be developed, inadequate consideration may be given to the dynamics of how
- 50. Analysing training needs 27 the workplace operates and the degree to which new knowledge and skills can be generalised into what people do and maintained over a period of time. As a result of all these limitations in the needs analysis process, the training interventions identified as necessary may be inappropriate or poorly defined, obstacles to people implementing new skills may be overlooked and success criteria may not be adequately defined.The whole design process starts off on the wrong footing, and subsequent evaluations become problematic. Levels of analysis There are two aspects to consider when carrying out a training needs analysis:the level of analysis and the process to follow.We will first look at the levels of analysis. Systematic approaches to needs analysis recommend that the analysis should be carried out at three separate levels: organisational, operational and personal.8 However, for many training professionals this must seem daunting. Training managers may be somewhat isolated from centres of political influence and find it difficult to arrange time with senior management to discuss broader organisa- tional issues; consultants may be presented with terms of reference which seem to make such broader investigations impossible. Pragmatically, the easiest solution is to confine any analysis to the lower lev- els, but it is important to appreciate that even small-scale or low-budget train- ing interventions may well be affected by and affect higher levels within the organisation. Systems thinking methodologies do provide various tools which can help deal with such tricky issues: for example, drawing a ‘rich picture’ (dis- cussed in Chapter 6) can quickly draw attention to broader issues which need to be addressed in the analysis process,making it easier to claim time in a direc- tor’s appointments calendar. The nature of the situation of interest is also relevant: introduction of new policies and processes will clearly have knowledge and skill implications, while solving chronic problems of poor performance may not. These may require more engagement within the analysis by senior management to reflect mean- ingfully on structural issues. The degree to which analysis is needed at each level is therefore dependent on boundary considerations;what is in the environment or within the situation of interest itself? Later chapters look at some tools which can be used to help decide where these boundaries are (or should be). The organisational level This is analysis at the highest level of the organisation. Key issues to explore here are: • What are the organisation’s strategic priorities? • How do the organisation’s goals align with the (possibly hidden or not articulated) goals of operational departments or individuals?9
- 51. 28 Analysing training needs • In what areas are the potential for improvement the greatest? • What are the norms, resources and support available for training activities? • What needs to be done at an organisational level to make the implementa- tion of any training more effective?10 • How is training seen in the organisation? Is it an occasional,one-off distraction or an integral part of promoting organisational change and development?11 • How can the analyst establish the levels of trust necessary in order to be con- fident of support from senior management in order to carry out the neces- sary analysis and then design and implement the necessary interventions?12 The operational (or task) level This is analysis carried out at departmental level, for example, operations, pro- duction, research and development and so on. Strategic decisions made at the organisational level help inform which operational parts of the organisation need to be examined in more detail. Typically analysis at this level covers such things as: • What is the perspective of operational departments on the priority issue? • What is the relevant operational context? • What are the linkages with other parts of the organisation? The personal level At the third level we have analysis of the individuals who actually carry out the necessary interactions with their environment. Here we find answers to ques- tions such as: • Who are the individuals responsible for the performance? • What levels of knowledge and skill do they have? • What are the knowledge, skill and attitudinal (KSA) requirements for working at the required level? • What are the learning transfer issues?What issues will make it more or less likely that any new knowledge or skill will be transferred to the workplace? This is the level at which most needs analyses are generally carried out, with the result that there is very much a focus on task-specific knowledge and skill topics and less attention paid to how the performance of interest relates to operational or organisational issues. Processes for carrying out a needs analysis Another possible reason suggested for the infrequency of carrying out a needs analysis may be the capacity of training departments to carry out a needs analy- sis. It would therefore be useful at this stage to look at some existing models
- 52. Analysing training needs 29 which have been developed for carrying out different types of needs analysis to see how well they support this activity. Conventional approaches to carrying out a training needs analysis follow systematic principles. For example, Goldstein and Ford recommend a five- step process (an essentially sequential process of gaining organisational support, organisational analysis, requirements analysis, task and KSA analysis and person analysis).13 Kraiger and Culbertson advocate a four-step process of needs identi- fication (which uses existing information to decide whether a fullTNA process is needed), needs specification (which defines performance gaps and proposes responses), the full TNA process (which in practice really covers Goldstein and Ford’s conception of the process) and completed by the evaluation stage.14 Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model Tom Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model (BEM) provides a rounded picture of factors affecting individual performance.15 Figure 3.1 is a slightly adapted version of the BEM. It proposes that there are two dimensions affecting performance, one which comes from the person themselves (the repertory of behaviour) and the other from the actual workplace (the supporting environment).Within each of these there are three separate areas that we need to consider: information, equipment and desire.To explain more fully what each of these factors are: • Provision of information is about making sure that people have adequate instructions about what they are supposed to do and how well they need to do it and that they receive appropriate feedback on their levels of per- formance (so that they know if they are underperforming). • Suitability of equipment is about making sure that people have the right tools for the job. • Incentive is making sure that there are rewards for good performance and implications for underperformance. • Comprehension is making sure that people understand the information that they have, and this is where training comes in. • Capacity is the physical ability to use the tools (for example, through issues such as ergonomics and scheduling). Figure 3.1 Gilbert’s Behaviour Engineering Model
- 53. 30 Analysing training needs • Motivation is each individual’s desire to do the work to the level required (but notice that this will be different for different people (according to cul- ture, age, gender etc.) and that only a matching combination of motivation and incentive creates desire. Gilbert’s recommendation for analysis is to work through the supporting environment factors first, from left to right, and then consider the repertory of behaviours, again left to right. His reasoning for this is that by doing it in this way you can make the easiest changes first, saving time and money.This has been described as a matter of ‘behavioural economics’ and that while it makes some sense from an implementation perspective,it may actually an effec- tive strategy in practice.16 For example, an analyst could identify a weakness in the provision of information to individuals and suggest an improvement and then wait for some weeks to see if this has an effect. If this does not happen, they could move onto the next potential response (improving the suitabil- ity of equipment) and so on.This would mean that the whole process could take a considerable amount of time before each possible intervention is tried and tested. The reductionist assumptions behind the model also mean that it fails to examine the systemic relationship among any of these factors:for example,how providing information on performance (such as a supervisor’s feedback) influ- ences levels of motivation or how equipment design has a bearing on incen- tives. So while the Behaviour Engineering Model may encourage a systematic approach to training needs analysis, it is not systemic. It is also very much focused at the person level of analysis and fails to consider at all organisational or operational factors unless the analyst makes a conscious effort to include them when considering individual boxes. Mager and Pipe’s performance analysis flowchart The flowchart developed by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe17 represents a step forward from the BEM in terms of usability and provides a highly systematic approach for thinking through the factors influencing individual performance (Figure 3.2). This follows a very similar approach to Gilbert’s model, taking the analyst through a sequence of questions starting with organisational issues, work- ing through to training, potentially the most expensive and time-consuming response in terms of organisational resources which may be needed. One particular strength of the flowchart is the way that it encourages people to reflect on how performance may be affected by other workplace require- ments, which reminds us of the characteristics of a wicked problem, in particu- lar that each problem is the symptom of another problem. As with the BEM,the flowchart does not consider interconnections between the various factors,and while the flowchart approach makes it an easy technique
- 54. Figure 3.2 Mager and Pipe’s Performance Analysis Flow Diagram
- 55. Another Random Scribd Document with Unrelated Content
- 56. LUIS DE LEON be burnt. In truth the question of the Vulgate was one of importance. The new heresies were largely based on the assumption of its imperfection, and sought to prove this by reference to the originals. Scholastic theology rested on the Vulgate and, in self-defence, the Council of Trent, in 1546, had declared that it was to be received as authentic in all public lectures, disputations, preaching and expositions, and that no one should dare to reject it under any pretext.[336] Yet it was notorious that, in the course of ages, the text had become corrupt; the Tridentine fathers included in their decree a demand for a perfected edition, but the labor was great and was not concluded until 1592, when the Clementine text was issued, with thousands of emendations. Meanwhile to question its accuracy was to venture on dangerous ground and to invite the interposition of the Inquisition. As one of the calificadores, during Fray Luis’s trial, asserted “Catholic doctors affirm that now the Hebrew and Greek are to be emended by the Vulgate, as the purer and more truthful text. To emend the Vulgate by the Hebrew and Greek is exactly what the heretics seek to do. It is to destroy the means of confuting them and to give them the opportunity of free interpretation.”[337] Fray Luis not only did this in debate but, in a lecture on the subject four years before, he had maintained the accuracy of the Hebrew text, contending that St. Jerome the translator was not inspired, nor were the words dictated by the Holy Ghost, and moreover that the Tridentine decree in no way affirmed such verbal inspiration.[338] On another point he was also vulnerable. Ten or eleven years previously, at the request of Doña Isabel de Osorio, a nun in the convent of Santo Spirito, he had made a Castilian version of the Song of Solomon, with an exposition. This he had reclaimed from her but, during an absence, Fray Diego de Leon, who was in charge of his cell, found it and made a copy, which was largely transcribed and circulated. At a time when vernacular versions were so rigidly proscribed this was, at the least, a hazardous proceeding and Bartolomé de Medina heightened the indiscretion by charging that, in his exposition, he represented the work as an amatory dialogue between the daughter of Pharaoh and Solomon. In December 1571, de Castro and Medina presented formal denunciations of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez, to the Salamanca commissioner of the Valladolid tribunal, charging them with denying the authority of the Vulgate and preferring the
- 57. interpretations of the rabbis to those of the fathers, while the circulation of Canticles in the vernacular was not forgotten. Other accusers, including students, joined in the attack, making thirteen in all, with a formidable body of denunciations. Grajal was soon afterwards arrested and Fray Luis, warned of the impending danger, presented himself, March 6, 1572, to Diego González, the former inquisitor of Carranza, then on a visitation at Salamanca, with a copy of his lecture on the Vulgate and the propositions drawn from it, and also his work on Canticles. He asked to have them examined and professed entire submission to the Church, with readiness to withdraw or revoke anything that might be found in the slightest degree objectionable.[339] In any other land, this would have sufficed. The inculpated works would have been expurgated or forbidden, if necessary. Luis would have retracted any expressions regarded as erroneous, and the matter would have ended without damage to the faith. Under the Inquisition, however, the utterance of objectionable propositions was a crime to be punished, and the submission of the criminal only saved him from the penalties of pertinacious heresy. On March 26th the warrant for the arrest of Fray Luis was issued and, on the 27th he was receipted for by the alcaide of the secret prison of Valladolid. He was treated with unusual consideration, in view of his infirmities and delicate health for, on his petition, he was allowed a scourge, a pointless knife to cut his food, a candle and snuffers and some books.[340] The trial proceeded at first with unusual speed. By May 15th the fiscal presented the formal accusation, in which Fray Luis was charged with asserting that the Vulgate contained many falsities and that a better version could be made; with decrying the Septuagint and preferring Vatable and rabbis and Jews to the saints as expositors of Scripture; with stating that the Council of Trent had not made the Vulgate a matter of faith and that, in the Old Testament, there was no promise of eternal life; with approving a doctrine that inferred justification by faith, and that mere mortal sin destroyed faith; with circulating an exposition of Canticles explaining them as a love-poem from Solomon to his wife—all of which was legitimately based on the miscellaneous evidence of the adverse witnesses.[341] This, as required, Fray Luis answered on the spot, article by article, attributing the charges to the malice of his enemies, denying some and explaining others clearly and frankly.
- 58. LUIS DE LEON It was a special favor that he was at once provided with counsel and allowed to arrange his defence—a favor which brought upon the tribunal a rebuke from the Suprema, January 13, 1573, as contrary to the estilo, which must be followed, no matter what might be the supplications of the accused. Fray Luis identified many of the witnesses—out of nineteen he recognized eight—and he drew up six series of interrogatories, mostly designed to prove his allegations of mortal enmity. Of these the inquisitors threw out three as “impertinent” and the answers to the others were, to a considerable extent, unsatisfactory, as was almost inevitable under a system which made the accused grope blindly in seeking evidence. As time wore on in this necessarily dilatory business, Fray Luis grew impatient at the stagnation which seemed to preclude all progress, not being aware that in reality it had been expedited irregularly.[342] It would be wearisome to follow in detail the proceedings which dragged their slow length along. Additional witnesses came forward, whose depositions had to go through the usual formalities; Fray Luis presented numberless papers as points occurred to him; he defended himself brilliantly and, through the course of the trial there were few of the customary prolonged intervals, for his nervous impatience kept him constantly plying the tribunal with arguments and appeals which it received with its habitual impassiveness. At length, after two years, early in March, 1574, it decided that there was no ground for suspicion against him in the thirty articles drawn from the testimony of the witnesses, while he could not be prosecuted criminally on the seventeen propositions extracted from his lecture on the Vulgate, seeing that he had spontaneously presented them and submitted himself to the Church. The fiscal, however, appealed from this to the Suprema and his appeal must have been successful, for the trial took a fresh start.[343] After some intermediate proceedings, Fray Luis, on April 1st was told to select patrones theólogos to assist in his defence. He at once named Dr. Sebastian Pérez, professor in the royal college which Philip II had founded at Párraces, in connection with San Lorenzo del Escorial, and two days later he added other names. In place of accepting them the tribunal endeavored to compel him to take men of whom he knew nothing and who, in reality, were the calificadores
- 59. who had already condemned his propositions. The struggle continued until, on August 3d, the Suprema wrote that he could have Pérez, but his limpieza must first be proved and Philip’s consent to his absence be obtained. We have seen how prolonged, costly and anxious were investigations into limpieza and, as Fray Luis remarked, this was to grant and to refuse in the same breath. At last, after endless discussions, in October he despairingly accepted Dr. Mancio, a Dominican and a leading professor of theology at Salamanca. Mancio came in October, again towards the end of December, and finally on March 30, 1575, while Fray Luis meanwhile was eating his heart in despair. At length, on April 7th Mancio approved of Fray Luis’s defence, declaring that he had satisfied all the articles, both the series of seventeen and that of thirty, which had been proved against him or which he had admitted having uttered.[344] If Fray Luis imagined that this twelve months’ work to which such importance had been attributed, had improved his prospects, he was speedily undeceived. We hear nothing more of Dr. Mancio or of his approval. The propositions, with the defence, were submitted again to three calificadores (men who had been urged upon him as patrones) and it illustrates the uncertainties of theology and the hair-splitting subtilties in which the doctors delighted, that not only were the original seventeen articles declared to be heretical for the most part, but five new ones, quite as bad, were discovered in the defence which had elicited Dr. Mancio’s approval, and these five thenceforth formed a third category of errors figuring in the proceedings.[345] It is not easy for us to comprehend the religious conceptions which placed men’s lives and liberties and reputation at the hazard of dialectics in which the most orthodox theologians were at variance. When Fray Luis was informed that five new heretical propositions had sprouted from the hydra-heads of the old ones, he was dismayed. Sick and exhausted, the prospects of ultimate release from his interminable trial seemed to grow more and more remote. Arguments and discussions continued and were protracted. New calificadores were called in, who debated and opined and presented written conclusions on all three series of propositions. It would be useless to follow in detail these scholastic exercises, of which the chief interest is to show how, in these infinitesimal points, one set of theologians could differ from another and how completely
- 60. LUIS DE LEON the enmity of the two chief witnesses, Leon de Castro and Bartolomé de Medina, was ignored. Thus wore away the rest of the year 1575 and the first half of 1576. There was no reason why the case might not be continued indefinitely on the same lines, but the inquisitors seem to have felt at last that an end must be reached, and a consulta de fe was finally held, in which Dr. Frechilla, one of the calificadores who had condemned the propositions, represented the episcopal Ordinary.[346] The case illustrates one incident of these protracted trials. During its course it had been heard by seven inquisitors, of whom Guijano de Mercado was the only one who served from the commencement to the end, and his colleague in the consulta, Andrés de Alava, had appeared in it only in November, 1575, and had not been present in any audiences after December. There was, moreover, an unusual feature in the presence of a member of the Suprema, Francisco de Menchaca, indicating perhaps that the case was regarded as one of more than ordinary importance. There were five consultors, Luis Tello Maldonado, Pedro de Castro, Francisco Albornoz, Juan de Ibarra and Hernando Niño, but the two latter fell sick, when the examination of the voluminous testimony was half completed, and took no further part in the proceedings. On the final decision, September 18, 1576, Menchaca, Alava, Tello and Albornoz voted for torture on the intention, including the propositions which the theologians had declared that Fray Luis had satisfied, after which another consulta should be held. They humanely added that it should be moderate in view of the debility of the accused. Those better acquainted with the case, Guijano and Frechilla, were more lenient. They voted for a reprimand, after which, in a general assembly of professors and students, Fray Luis should read a declaration, drawn up by the calificadores, pronouncing the propositions to be ambiguous, suspicious and likely to cause scandal. Moreover his Augustinian superior was to be told, extra-judicially, to order him privately to employ his studies in other directions and to abstain from teaching in the schools. The vernacular version of Canticles was to be suppressed, if the inquisitor-general and Suprema saw fit.[347] Comparatively mild as this sentence might seem, it gratified to the full the vindictiveness of his enemies—it humiliated him utterly and destroyed his career.
- 61. As there was discordia the case necessarily reverted to the Suprema, which seems to have recognized that both votes assumed the nullity of the laborious trifling, by which the calificadores had found dangerous heresies in his acknowledged propositions. Discussion must have been prolonged however, for the final sentence was not rendered until December 7th. This fully acquitted Fray Luis of all the charges, but ordered a reprimand in the audience-chamber and a warning to treat such matters in future with great circumspection, so that no scandal or errors should arise. The Suprema could scarce say less, if the whole dismal farce, of nearly five years, was not to be admitted as wholly unjustifiable, and it enclosed the sentence in a letter instructing the tribunal to order Fray Luis to preserve profound silence and to avoid dissension with those whom he suspected of testifying against him. It was probably on December 15th that the sentence was read and the reprimand administered. Fray Luis took the necessary oaths, he made the promises required, and was discharged as innocent after an incarceration, incomunicado, which had lasted for four years, eight months and nineteen days. His requests were granted for a certificate de no obstancia and for an order on the paymaster of the schools to pay him his professorial salary from the date of his arrest to the expiration of his quadrennial term.[348] During this prolonged imprisonment, Fray Luis seems to have been treated with unusual consideration. He was allowed to send for all the books needed for his defence and for study—even for recreation, for we find him, July 6, 1575, asking for the prose works of Bembo, for a Pindar in Greek and Latin and for a copy of Sophocles.[349] He relieved the distractions of his defence and the anxieties of his position by the composition of his De los Nombres de Christo, which has remained a classic. Yet these were but slender alleviations of the hardships and despairing tedium of his prison cell. On March 12, 1575, he is begging for the sacraments; though he is no heretic, he says, he has been deprived of them for three years. This petition was forwarded to the Suprema, which replied by drily telling the tribunal to complete the cases of Fray Luis, Grajal and Martínez as soon as opportunity would permit.[350] At an audience of August 20th, of the same year, when remanded to his cell, he paused to represent that, as the inquisitors well knew, he was very sick with fever; there was no one in his cell to take care of him, save a fellow-prisoner, a young boy who was simple; one day he fainted through hunger, as there was no one to give him food, and he asked whether a fraile of his Order could be admitted to assist him and to aid him
- 62. LUIS DE LEON to die, unless they wished him to die alone in his cell. This was not refused but, as the condition was imposed that the companion should as usual share his imprisonment to the end, the request was in vain. Then, on September 12th, in his reply to the five propositions suddenly sprung upon him, he feelingly referred to the years of prison and the sufferings caused by the absence of comforts in his weakness and sickness, as a torture long and cruel enough to purge all suspicions.[351] Even more pitiful was a petition to the Suprema in November of the same year—“I supplicate your most illustrious body, by Jesus Christ, on my giving ample security, to order me to be placed in one of the convents of this city, even in that of San Pablo (Dominican), in any way that it may please you, until sentence is rendered, so that if, during this time, God should call me, which I greatly fear, in view of my much trouble and feeble health, I may die as a Christian among religious persons, aided by their prayers and receiving the sacraments, and not as an infidel, alone in prison with a Moor at my bed-side. And since the rancor of my enemies and my own sins have deprived me of all that is desirable in life, may the Christian piety of your most illustrious body give me this consolation in death, for I ask nothing more.”[352] It is perhaps needless to say that this touching appeal did not even receive an answer. After the term of his professorship had expired, about March 1, 1573, his special enemy, Bartolomé de Medina, was elected in his place and was promoted, in August 1576, to the leading chair in theology, while Fray García del Castillo succeeded to that of Durandus. On Fray Luis’s return, he was warmly and honorably received in an assembly of the Senate, convoked for the purpose, where the Commissioner of the Inquisition declared that the Holy Office had ordered his restoration to honor and to his professorship. Luis however refused to disturb Castillo and, in January 1577, an extraordinary chair on the Scriptures was created for him. The next year, on the chair of moral philosophy falling vacant, he obtained it and subsequently he became regular professor of Scripture—one of the highest positions in the University. His colleague Grajal had been less fortunate, having perished in prison before the termination of his trial.[353] Fray Luis’s mental vigor was unimpaired, although his delicate frame never wholly recovered from the effects of his long imprisonment. Such an experience of the dangers attendant on the discussions of the schools might
- 63. seem sufficient to dampen his disputatious ardor, but in a theology, which sought to reduce to hard and fast lines all the secrets of the unknown spiritual world, there was risk of heresy in every speculation. In an acto of the University, held January 20, 1582, the debate widened into a discussion upon predestination and free-will, in which Fray Luis and Fray Domingo de Guzman were bitterly opposed to each other. It was continued in another theological Act the next week; the students became excited and called upon Father Bañez to repress these novelties, which he did in a lecture declaring that the views of Fray Luis savored of Pelagianism. The latter was angered and the next day, in an assembly of all the faculties, the question under debate was: If God confers equal and sufficing grace on two men, nothing else interfering, can one be converted and the other reject the aid? The discussion between Fray Luis and Bañez was hot, and the excitement increased. Then on January 27th there was another assembly which wrangled over the intricate questions involved in prevenient aid and human coöperation.[354] This was the commencement of the long debate De Auxiliis, between Jesuits and Dominicans, which lasted for a century, until both sides were silenced by the Holy See, without either being able to claim the victory. Fray Luis had excited many enmities—though not as many as he was in the habit of claiming—and the occasion was favorable for striking at him and at those whom he supported. Fray Juan de Santa Cruz drew up an account of the discussions, with a censure of the erroneous and heretical propositions defended; it was not a personal denunciation of any one, but he declared that the agitation and disquiet of the schools demanded a settlement by the Inquisition. This he presented, February 5th, at Valladolid, to the inquisitor, Juan de Arrese and, from the marginal notes, it appears that, besides Fray Luis, two Jesuits and a Benedictine were marked for prosecution. In March, Inquisitor Arrese came to Salamanca on a mission to suppress astrology and took the opportunity to gather testimony on the scholastic quarrel. Various witnesses, some of them Augustinians, came forward spontaneously with evidence, and the Mercenarian, Francisco Zumel presented a series of propositions, purporting to be drawn from a lecture by Fray Luis on predestination, of which the worst was that Christ on the cross was destitute of God and was provoked to sin. Zumel was a bitter enemy of Luis, who had defeated him, four years before, in competition for the chair of moral
- 64. LUIS DE LEON philosophy; both had their partizans and their quarrels were the cause of much trouble.[355] Fray Luis’s experience of the Inquisition naturally led him to seek exculpation. Three times he appeared voluntarily before Arrese and made verbal and written statements, in which he rendered an account of his share in the debates. He admitted that he had defended a position opposite to what he had previously taught, which was not without a certain temerity, as differing from the ordinary language of the schools, and not proper for public debate, as it was delicate, difficult of comprehension and liable to lead the hearers into error. He protested that he had not intended to offend Catholic doctrine and, if he had said anything inconsiderately, he submitted it to the censure and correction of the holy tribunal. He also laid much stress on the notorious hatred of the Dominicans towards him, and the manner in which they lost no opportunity of decrying his doctrine, his person and his morals.[356] Inquisitor Arrese returned to Valladolid with the evidence, after which there was pause before the case of Fray Luis was taken up. There would seem to have been some hesitation concerning it, for the Suprema took the unusual step of summoning him before it, from which he excused himself on the plea of illness and forwarded a physician’s certificate in justification. The next document in the case is a letter of August 3d, from the Suprema to the tribunal, calling for the papers in the cases of the Salamanca theologians, with its opinion concerning them. In its reply the tribunal said that Fray Luis had confessed to everything testified against him, submitting himself to correction, and conceding that what he had said was not devoid of temerity; he had evidently spoken with passion and after the debate had begged pardon of Domingo de Guzman for telling him that what he advocated was Lutheran heresy. In view of all this the tribunal proposed to call him before it and examine him when, if nothing further resulted, he should be gravely reprimanded and, as the school of Salamanca was gravely excited and, as some Augustinians were boasting that his utterances had been accepted by the tribunal as true, he should be required publicly to read in his chair a declaration drawn up for him censuring the propositions, and also to declare that he had spoken wrongly when he had characterized the opposite as heresy.[357]
- 65. FRANCISCO SANCHEZ This would have been a profound humiliation for the proud and domineering theologian, but again Quiroga seems to have interposed to save him. There is a blank in the records for eighteen months, explicable by the affair being in the hands of the Suprema. What occurred during the interval is unknown, but the outcome appears in the final act of the trial, February 3, 1584, at Toledo. There Fray Luis stood before Inquisitor- general Quiroga who reprimanded and admonished him charitably not in future to defend, publicly or privately, the propositions which he had admitted were not devoid of temerity, adding a warning that otherwise he would be prosecuted with all the rigor of the law, to all of which Fray Luis promised obedience.[358] That he had in no way lost the respect of his fellows is seen in his election to the Provincialate of the Augustinian Order, in 1591, shortly before his death. In addition to their exhibiting the attitude of the Inquisition towards the most distinguished intellects of the period, these two trials of Fray Luis illustrate its arbitrary methods, operating as it did in secret. His fault, if fault there was, was the same in both cases—the enunciation of opinions on which the most learned doctors differed. In both cases he denounced himself, freely confessed what he had spoken or written, and submitted himself unreservedly to the judgement of the church. In the first case he was arrested; he endured nearly five years of incarceration and only escaped torture or the ruin of his career through the kindly interposition of Quiroga. In the second, there was no arrest, the case was decided on the sumaria, or suspended, and although Quiroga probably again intervened, it was only to save the accused from a humiliation which would have gratified malevolence. Judged by its own standard, the Inquisition abused its powers —either, in one case, by unpardonable severity or in the other by excessive moderation, but it was responsible to no one and had no public opinion to dread. Just as the case of Fray Luis was ending, prosecution was commenced against another Salamanca professor, of equal or even greater distinction. As a man of pure letters, no one at the time was the peer of Francisco Sánchez, known as el Brocense, from his birth-place, las Brozas. Vainglorious, quarrelsome, caustic and reckless of speech, he made numerous enemies, but probably he
- 66. would have escaped the Inquisition had he confined himself to his chair of grammar and rhetoric. He delighted however in paradoxes, and he held himself so immeasurably superior to the theologians, and was so confident in the accuracy of his own varied learning, that he could not restrain himself from ridiculing their pretensions, from exposing the errors of pious legends and denouncing some of the grosser popular superstitions, thus rendering himself liable to inquisitorial animadversion, whenever malice or zeal might call the attention of the tribunal to his eccentricities. He flattered himself that he did not meddle with articles of faith, but he failed to realize how elastic were the boundaries of faith, and that, in attacking vulgar errors, he might be regarded as undermining the foundations of the Church. Scandal was a convenient word which bridged over the line between the profane and the sacred.[359] His habitual intemperance of speech was stimulated by a custom in the Salamanca lecture-rooms of students handing up questions for the lecturer to answer, and it would appear that malicious pleasure was felt in thus provoking him to exhibit his well-known idiosyncrasies. It was an occasion of this kind that prompted the first denunciation, January 7, 1584, by Juan Fernández, a priest attending the lectures. Others followed, and the character of his utterances appears in the propositions submitted to the calificadores:—That Christ was not circumcised by St. Simeon but by his mother the Virgin.—That there ought to be no images and, but for apparent imitation of the heretics, they would have been abolished.—That those were fools who, at the procession of Corpus Christi, knelt in the streets to adore the images, for only Christ and his cross were to be adored.—Only saints in heaven were to be adored and not images, which were but wood and plaster. —Christ was not born in a stable, but in a house where the Virgin was staying.—That the eleven thousand virgins were only eleven.—Doubts whether the Three Kings were kings, as Scripture speaks only of Magi.— That the Magian kings did not come at Christ’s birth, but two years after, and found him playing with a ball.—That theologians know nothing.—That many Dominicans thought the faith was based on St. Thomas Aquinas; this was not so and he did not care a —— for St. Thomas.—When asked why St. Lucia was painted without eyes, he said that she had not torn them out, but she was reckoned the patron saint of eyes from her name—Lucia a lucere.
- 67. That these free-spoken propositions should be duly characterized by the calificadores as heretical, rash, erroneous, insulting and so forth was a matter of course and, on May 18th, the consulta de fe voted for imprisonment in the secret prison with sequestration, subject to confirmation by the Suprema. The latter delayed action until August 29th and then manifested unusual consideration for the eccentricities of Sánchez, which were doubtless well known. He was merely to be summoned before the tribunal, to be closely examined and to be severely reprimanded, with a warning to give no further occasion for scandal, as otherwise he would be treated with all rigor.[360] His first audience was held on September 24th. There is a refreshing and characteristic frankness in his reply to the customary question whether he knew the cause of his summons. He supposed it was because, about Christmas-time, in his lecture-room, he was asked why St. Lucia was painted with her eyes on a dish and why she was patron saint of eyes, when he replied that she was not such a fool as to tear out her eyes to give them to others; the vulgar believed many things that had no authority save that of painters, and it was on account of her name that she was patron saint of eyes. Then, he added, some days later he was asked why he talked against what the Church holds; this angered him and he told them they were great fools who did not know what the Church is; they must think that sacristans and painters are the Church; he would be speaking against the Church if he spoke against the Fathers and Councils. If they saw eleven thousand virgins painted in a picture, they would think that there were eleven thousand, but in an ancient calendar there was only undecim M. virgines—there were ten martyrs and Ursula made the eleventh. Then, some three years ago, the Circumcision was represented in the cathedral of Salamanca, where appeared the Virgin, Simeon and the child Jesus. He said to many of those present that it was a pity such impertinences were permitted in Salamanca; that the Virgin did not go to the temple until the forty days were expired, and no priest was required for the circumcision, for it is rather believed that the Virgin performed it in her own house. He mentioned various other criticisms which he had made on pictures, such as the Last Supper, where Christ and the apostles should be represented on triclinia, and the Sacrifice of Abraham where Isaac should be a man of 25. For this all he was called in Salamanca a rash and audacious man, and he supposed this was the cause of his summons; if there was more, let him know it and he would obey the
- 68. FRANCISCO SANCHEZ Church; if in what he had said he had caused scandal, he was ready to retract and to submit to the Church.[361] This fearless frankness was preserved in the examination that followed on the charges not explained in his avowal. When asked whether he knew these things to be heretical and if his intention was to oppose the Church, he replied that in the form of the charges he held them to be heretical, but he had uttered them only in the way he stated, with the intention of a good Christian and for the instruction of others, but, if he had erred, he begged mercy with penance, and was ready to make whatever amends were required. His confessions were duly submitted to calificadores who reported, reasonably enough, that he denied some, explained others and left others as they were, but that as a whole he deserved to be reprimanded and punished, because he exceeded his functions without discretion and, if not restrained, he would come to utter manifold errors and heresies. Under ordinary routine his punishment would have been exemplary, but the tribunal was controlled by the instructions of the Suprema and, on September 28th, he was duly reprimanded and warned to abstain in future from such utterances, for they would be visited with rigorous punishment. He promised to do this and was dismissed.[362] With any one else this narrow escape, which shows the strong disinclination to deal harshly with him, would have ensured lasting caution, and even on Sánchez it seems to have imposed restraint for some years. The impression, however, wore away and the irrepressible desire to manifest his contempt for theology and theologians, and to display the superior accuracy of his wide learning, gradually overcame prudence. In 1588, he printed a little volume entitled De erroribus nonnullis Porphyrii et aliorum which, when subsequently examined by calificadores, was said to prove that the author was insolent, audacious and bitter, as were all grammarians and Erasmists; that, if its conclusions were true, we might burn all the theology and philosophy taught by the schoolmen, from the Master of Sentences to Caietano, and by all the universities, from Salamanca to Bologna. Another of his works bore the expressive title of Paradoxos de Theulugia, which went to two editions and was censured as requiring expurgation. Theology seems to have had for him the fatal fascination of the candle for the moth and, with his temperament, he could not touch it without involving himself
- 69. FRANCISCO SANCHEZ in trouble. He gradually resumed his free speech and repeated his old assertions which he had promised to suppress, and to these he added new ones, such as approving the remark of a canon of Salamanca that he who spoke ill of Erasmus was a fraile or an ass, adding that, if there were no frailes in the world, none of the works of Erasmus would have been forbidden. From 1593 to 1595, Dr. Rosales, the commissioner at Salamanca, repeatedly forwarded to the Valladolid tribunal reports and evidence as to his relapse in these evil ways, and urged that he should be summoned and corrected and told not to meddle with theology but to confine himself to his grammar, for he knew nothing else.[363] The tribunal had these various charges submitted to calificadores, who duly characterized them in fitting terms, but it took no action until May 18, 1596, when it commissioned Rosales to put in shape the informations against Sánchez. Rosales was replaced by Francisco Gasca de Salazar, who was instructed, September 17th, to finish the matter without delay. He returned the papers as completed, September 29th, adding that Sánchez was so frank that he said these things publicly, as a man unconscious of error and, if examined, would tell the truth and give his reasons; he did not seem to err with pertinacity but like the grammarians, who usually deal in paradoxes, for which reason Gasca said that he had taken no notice of them. [364] Probably some restraint exercised by the Suprema explains why, after these preparations, four years were allowed to pass without action. If so, this restraint was suddenly removed, for there is no evidence that any fresh imprudences on the part of Sánchez stimulated the tribunal when, September 25, 1600, it took a vote that, in view of the previous warning and continued repetition of the same propositions and additional ones, and especially of the De Erroribus Porphyrii and other books suspect in doctrine, he should be summoned to the tribunal and a house be assigned to him as a prison, while all his books and papers should be seized. The Suprema confirmed this; on October 20th the summons was issued and, on November 20th, the books and papers were forwarded. On November 10th Sánchez appeared before the tribunal and, with kindly consideration, the house of his son, Dr. Lorenzo Sánchez, a physician residing in Valladolid, was assigned as his prison. Three audiences were held, on November 13th, 16th, and 22d, in
- 70. which he said that, if he had uttered or done anything contrary to the faith, he was ready to confess it and reduce himself to the unity of the Church. As the charges were not as yet made known to him, he tried to explain various matters which were not contained in them, such as denying free-will, as holding the opinion that Magdalen was not the sister of Lazarus, and that Judas did not hang himself.[365] No more audiences were held. The next document is a petition, dated November 30th, in which Sánchez set forth that he was mortally sick and given over by the physicians; that he had through life been a good Christian, believing all that the Holy Roman Church believes, and now, at the hour of death, he protested that he died in and for that belief. If, having labored for sixty years in teaching at Salamanca and elsewhere, he had said or was accused of saying anything against the holy Catholic faith, which he denied, if yet by error of the tongue it was so, he repented and begged of the Inquisition pardon and penance in the name of God. When taking pen in hand he had always recommended himself to God and, if in his MSS. there should be found anything ill-sounding, he desired it stricken out and, if there were useful things, he asked the Inquisition to permit their printing, as he left no other property to his children, and also that his enemies and rivals might be confounded. Finally, as he was in prison, by order of the Inquisition, he supplicated that he might have honorable burial, suitable to his position, and that the University of Salamanca be ordered to render him the customary honors.[366] Thus closed, in sorrow and humiliation, the career of one of the most illustrious men of letters that Spain has produced. Under the existing system the Inquisition could do no otherwise than it had done, and its treatment of him had been of unexampled forbearance. That forbearance, however, seems to have ceased with his death. The records are imperfect, and we have no knowledge of the course of his trial which, as usual, was prosecuted to the end, but the outcome apparently was unfavorable. On December 11th the calificadores who examined his papers made an unexpectedly moderate report. There was a certain amount of minute and captious verbal criticism, but the summing up was that he seemed somewhat free in his expositions of Scripture, attaching himself too much to human learning and departing too readily from received opinions, but he
- 71. JOSEPH DE SIGUENZA was easily excusable as these were private studies and mostly unfinished, so that his final opinions could not be assumed.[367] Notwithstanding this, his dying requests were not granted. The interment was private and without funeral honors. As regards the University of Salamanca, Dr. Lorenzo Sánchez reported, on December 22d, that his father had many enemies there, that there was much excitement and scandal, and it was proposed not to render him the customary honors, to the great injury of his children’s honor, wherefore he petitioned for orders to pay the honors and also the salary for the time of his detention. To this supplication no attention was paid, and the same indifference was shown when, long afterwards, on June 25, 1624, another son, Juan Sánchez, a canon of Salamanca, represented that malicious persons asserted that his father had died in the secret prison, wherefore he petitioned for a certificate that his father had not been imprisoned in either the secret or public prison, and that no sentence had been rendered against him. The influence of all this on the fortunes of his descendants can readily be estimated. As for the MSS. which had occupied the dying man’s thoughts, the final judgement passed upon them left little to be delivered to the children.[368] Another contemporaneous case is worthy of mention if only because the Geronimite Joseph de Sigüenza has customarily been included among the victims of the Inquisition, in place of which he sought its jurisdiction in order to protect himself against the machinations of his brethren. At an early age he had entered the Order, where his talents and varied learning gained him rapid advancement. When the Escorial was completed, Philip II sent for him to preach the first sermon in the church of San Lorenzo; since then he had preached oftener than any one else and many of the gentlemen and ladies of the court had selected him as their confessor. Philip placed him in charge of the royal archives and of the sagrarios and reliquaries of the two libraries, which brought him into frequent communication with the king, and he had utilized this to cause appointments and dismissals, and to institute reforms in the college of Párraces. This caused jealousy and enmity, and Diego de Yepes, the prior of his convent of San Lorenzo, endeavored to procure his removal. Then he incurred the hostility of the prior of the college, Cristóbal de Zafra, who was a florid preacher. In a sermon before the king on the
- 72. previous Nativity of the Virgin (September 8th) he had said that the Minotaur was Christ and the Labyrinth was the Gospel and Ariadne was Our Lady and the child she bore to Theseus was faith, and if any one desired to enter the Labyrinth he must pray to the Virgin for her child. Such sermons were the fashion, and Diego de Yepes eclipsed this, on January 1st, when he told his audience that when Delilah had exhausted Samson she removed him from her and delivered him to the Philistines, so when the Virgin had exhausted God she removed him and placed him in the manger, with other equally filthy topics. Fray Joseph sought to repress this style of preaching, insisting that it should be confined to expositions of the Evangel and moral instruction, which gained him enemies among those whose eccentricities and bad taste he reproved. Another source of enmity was that he was entrusted with the selection of students to attend the lectures on Hebrew of Arias Montano, when he came to San Lorenzo, which angered those who were omitted. A formidable cabal was formed for his ruin; careful watch was kept on his utterances in unguarded moments and in the pulpit, and it was not difficult to collect propositions which, when exaggerated or distorted, might furnish material for prosecution. It was safer to trust to a prejudiced court within the Order than to the Inquisition. A visitation of the convent and college was ordered, with instructions to withdraw the licence of any preacher or confessor found to be insufficient. The visitors came on April 13, 1592 and reported on the 17th. The frailes were examined separately and secretly and, of twenty-two, all but one offered objections to opinions uttered by Fray Joseph. From their testimony was extracted a series of nineteen propositions, most of them utterly trivial. He was accused of decrying scholastic theology, of holding that preaching should be based on the bare Scriptures, of exaggerated praise of Arias Montano at the expense of other expounders of Holy Writ, of advising a fraile to study Scripture in place of books of devotion and much else of the same nature. The frailes had learned the processes of the Inquisition; they submitted these propositions for qualification to Gutiérrez Mantilla, the chief professor of theology in the college, who rendered three opinions, varying in tone, but the final one declared that some of the propositions inclined to Lutheranism and Wickliffitism and others to Judaism. Moreover, on May 18th he wrote to the king, announcing the discovery of a dangerous heresy in the college of San Lorenzo which, if not checked at the outset, might bring upon Spain the dangers developed in
- 73. THEOLOGICAL TRIVIALITIES other lands. It had spread among the students, some of whom, by the vigilance of the prior, were already in the Inquisition of Toledo, and he begged Philip to urge on the prior unrelaxing efforts to avert the evil. All this had been done in secret, but enough reached the ears of Fray Joseph to convince him of the ruin impending at the hands of his brethren. Such matters belonged exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and they could not prevent his appealing to that tribunal, in which he lost no time. On April 23d he presented himself at Toledo, with a letter from his prior, Diego de Yepes, stating that he was learned, able and a prior of the Order, but that some of his expressions in preaching and conversation had created scandal, in consequence of which he had been tried by visitors; this trial Yepes was ready to submit to the tribunal, and he asked that Fray Joseph be treated with its customary benignity. With this Fray Joseph handed in a written statement, containing what he had been able to gather as to the accusations, and submitting himself to the judgement of the Inquisition, both in correcting what was wrong and in accepting whatever punishment might be imposed. The tribunal sent for the papers of the trial and assigned to him the convent of la Sisla as a prison, which he was not to leave without permission under the customary penalties. This confinement, however, was scarce more than nominal for, on May 14th, he represented that the king and court were at San Lorenzo, and his absence would be a great dishonor to him, wherefore he asked to have, by return of his messenger, permission to go there, which was immediately granted. Subsequently he was allowed the unusual favor of consulting with his counsel at the latter’s house and, on October 21st, he asked licence to return to San Lorenzo for a month, because he was suffering from fever and his physician stated that his life was at risk at la Sisla—a request which was doubtless granted. The contrast is marked between his treatment and that of Luis de Leon. Meanwhile the trial was in progress with all customary formalities. The propositions were submitted to calificadores and, on July 30th, the fiscal presented the accusation, denouncing him as an apostate heretic and excommunicated perjurer, demanding his relaxation and asking that he be tortured as often as necessary. He duly went through the examinations on the accusation and publication of evidence, and presented eight witnesses, who testified to his distinguished reputation for learning, piety and orthodoxy, also that Fray
- 74. Cristóbal de Zafra was noted for bringing fables and poetry into his sermons, and that Fray Justo de Soto, who had accused him of saying that Jews and Turks could be saved, was an ignoramus, knowing little of grammar and nothing of theology. It was not until October 22d that was held the consulta de fe, which voted unanimously for acquittal; the Suprema confirmed the sentence, on January 25, 1593, when Fray Joseph was probably absent, for it was nearly a month before he appeared, on February 19th to hear it read. At his request a copy of it was given to him and thus ended a case in which the Inquisition was the protector of innocence against fraternal malignity.[369] The extent to which Spanish intellect wasted itself in interminable controversies over the infinitely little, and the dangers to which all men were exposed who exercised the slightest originality, are illustrated in the case of Padre Alonso Romero, S. J., lector, of theology in the Jesuit college of Valladolid. For a proposition concerning the intricate question whether a man violates the law of fasting by eating nothing on a fast-day, his fellow- Jesuit, Fernando de la Bastida, with a number of students, denounced him to the Inquisition, August 29, 1614. The main proposition, and a number of others, on which it was based, or which were deduced from it, were pronounced by the calificadores, or at least by some of them, to be false, scandalous, rash and approximating to error. No less than seventeen witnesses were examined against him and when, on January 9, 1615, he presented himself, he admitted uttering the proposition, but said that he had consulted many learned men and the principal universities and he offered in defence the signatures of many Jesuits and of professors of Salamanca, Alcalá and Valladolid, to the effect that it was not subject to theological censure. The case proceeded to a vote in discordia, October 15th, when the Suprema ordered his confinement in a Jesuit house, that he should cease lecturing, and that the papers in his cell should be examined. On October 29th, while he was detained in the audience-chamber, his keys were taken and his papers were seized, although during this audience he stated that, when he found that many learned men condemned his proposition, he had retracted it publicly and had defended the opposite, which he offered to do again. To the ordinary mind this would appear to render further proceedings
- 75. THE PULPIT superfluous, but the assumed injury inflicted on the faith demanded reparation, and the case went on. Thirty-three propositions, dependent on the first one, were submitted to calificadores and condemned as before, while nineteen others, extracted from his papers, were explained by him and dropped. Drearily and slowly the proceedings dragged along. On March 3, 1616, the accusation was presented, but it was not until June 6, 1619, that the publication of evidence was reached. Yet the case seems still to have been in the preliminary stage for on July 10th the Suprema ordered that the propositions, which had now grown to fifty-seven in number, should be submitted to calificadores and on their report the tribunal should decide whether to transfer him to the secret prison. It waited more than six months before it reached a decision, February 5, 1620, to make no change but, when the Suprema learned this, it ordered him to the prison of familiars, which was done on August 12th. Then, on the 18th, he selected patrones to advise him and, on September 25th, he presented the interrogatories for the witnesses in defence. On May 12, 1621, he was informed that all that he had required had been done for him. On July 5th the consulta de fe voted that he should be warned and required to retract the proposition respecting fasting and those derived from it—which he had already done spontaneously six years before; as for the others, he was acquitted. The Suprema took nearly a year to consider this and did not confirm it until June 2, 1622, when the trial ended with the reading of the sentence on June 30th.[370] All this reads like a travesty and might well be the subject of ridicule were it not for the serious import on a nation’s destiny of a system under which eight years of a man’s life could be consumed on a matter which the outcome showed to be so frivolous, to say nothing of the indefinite number of calificadores and officials whose energies were wasted on this solemn trifling. Preachers were as liable as professors to prosecution for their utterances, and Spanish pulpit eloquence, as we have seen it illustrated in the case of Fray Joseph de Sigüenza, afforded ample field for censure. The auditor who took exception to anything heard in a sermon had only to denounce the speaker and, if the proposition was exceptionable, prosecution followed. Thus, in 1580, Fray Juan de Toledo, a Geronimite of the convent of Madrid, was denounced to
- 76. the Toledo tribunal for having, in a sermon before Philip II, asserted that the royal power was so absolute that the king could take his vassals’ property and their sons and daughters to use at his pleasure. Possibly this exuberance of loyalty might have escaped animadversion, had not the preacher called attention to the enormous revenues of the bishops, squandered on their kindred, and urged that the king and pope should unite to reduce them to apostolic poverty. On trial he admitted his remarks in a somewhat less offensive form; he attempted to disable the witnesses and presented evidence of good character without much success. The consulta de fe voted in discordia, and the Suprema sentenced him to abjure de levi, to recant, in the pulpit on a feast-day, the propositions, in a formula drawn up for him, to be recluded in a convent for two years, to be suspended from preaching for five years, and to perform certain spiritual penances.[371] The severity of this sentence shows how little ceremony there was in restraining the eccentricities of the Spanish pulpit, even when it would be difficult to discern where suspicion of heresy came in. The formula of retraction prescribed rendered the humiliation of the ceremony most bitter. There were forms suited for the different characters of propositions, but all bore the essential feature that the culprit in the pulpit admitted having uttered the condemned expression; that the inquisitors had ordered him to retract it; that he recognized that it ought to be retracted and, as an obedient son of the Church and in fulfilment of the command, he declared, of his own free will, that he had uttered a proposition heretical and contrary to express passages of Holy Writ and, as such, he retracted and unsaid it and confessed that he did not understand it when he said it nor, for lack of knowledge, did he understand the evil contained in it, nor did he believe it in its heretical sense, nor understand that it was heresy and, as he had spoken evil and given occasion to be justly suspected that he said it in an heretical sense, he was grieved and begged pardon of God and the holy Roman Catholic Church, and begged pardon and mercy of the Holy Office. A notary with a copy followed his words and, if the performance was correct, made an official attestation of the fact.[372] Instances of this sharp censorship of pulpit eloquence were by no means rare. Thus in the single tribunal of Toledo, after Madrid had been separated from it, Fray Juan de Navarrete, Franciscan Guardian of Talavera, was sentenced, December 19, 1656, for an heretical proposition in a sermon, to
- 77. make a retraction. On April 21, 1657, Fray Diego Osorio, regent of studies in the Augustinian convent of Toledo, was required to retract, was suspended for two years from preaching and was banished for the same period from Madrid and Mascaraque. On April 23, 1659, the Mercenarian, Maestro Lucas de Lozoya, Definidor General of his Order and synodal judge of the province, was condemned to retract, was suspended from preaching for two years and was exiled from Madrid and Toledo. Similar sentences were pronounced July 14, 1660, on the Trinitarian Jacinto José Suchet, and August 31st on the Franciscan Juan de Teran. The Trinitarian, Juan de Rojas Becerro, December 24, 1660, was allowed to retract in the audience-chamber, but was suspended and banished for one year. Juan Rodríguez Coronel, S. J., on June 28, 1664, was suspended and banished for two years, but was not required to retract. These instances will suffice to indicate the frequency of these prosecutions and the manner in which such cases were treated. They offer a curious contrast to the mercy shown, January 31, 1665, to Sebastian Bravo de Buiza, assistant cura of Fresno la Fuente, who was only reprimanded and required to explain in the pulpit the most offensive proposition that the Virgin was a sinner and died in sin.[373] This last case suggests that favoritism sometimes intervened to shield culprits and this would seem to be confirmed by the leniency shown, in 1696, to Fray Francisco Esquerrer. He was the leading Observantine preacher and theologian in Valencia and teacher of theology in the convent of San Francisco in Játiva. It was an episode in the quarrel between Dominicans and Franciscans over the Immaculate Conception, when, November 13, 1695, the Dominican Fray Juan Gascon denounced him to the Valencia tribunal for having defended at Játiva, October 9, 1693, the proposition that Christ, in the three days of his death, was sacramented alive in the heart of the Virgin; that he who should die in defence of the Immaculate Conception would die a martyr, for it was a point of faith settled by Scripture, by the Council of Trent, by the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem and by the cult of the Church. Gascon had denounced this at the time, but the tribunal had taken no notice of it, and he now repeated the charge, adding that Esquerrer, preaching in 1693 at Olleria, had held it to be a point of faith that the adoration of latria was due to St. Francis; in the same year at Játiva he preached that Christ owed more to St. Antony of Padua than St. Antony owed to Christ. Also, when preaching about an image known as the Virgin of Salvation, he said that she was rather the
- 78. Mother of Salvation than the Mother of Christ. Then, on August 28, 1695, preaching to the Augustinians of Játiva, he proved logically that the wisdom of St. Augustin was greater than the wisdom of the Logos and, on November 6, 1695, to the Franciscans of Játiva, he declared that the Immaculate Conception had been made a point of faith by Alexander VII and Innocent XI. Then the tribunal at last was spurred to action; it gathered evidence and procured from the calificadores a definition that some of the propositions were blasphemous, others heretical and others ill-sounding. Early in 1696 Esquerrer was thrown into the secret prison; he endeavored to explain away the propositions; the trial proceeded with unwonted celerity and, on September 9th, the case was suspended with merely the usual reprimand and the suppression of the propositions of October 9, 1693.[374] Apparently the Inquisition was content to have the people fed upon such doctrines. It was probably less to favoritism than to indolence that we may attribute the outcome of the case of the Minim, Fray N. Serra, lector in the Barcelona convent of S. Francesco de Paula. On St. Barbara’s day, December 4, 1721, he preached a sermon in which, among various other ineptitudes, he said that St. Barbara was a virgin and yet pregnant, and that Christ was the fourth person of the Trinity. An artillery regiment in quarters had been taken to the church and, in the evening, some of the officers, visiting Doña Bernarda Vueltaflores, amused themselves by repeating his grotesque utterances. A week later she chanced to mention the matter to Fray Antonio de la Concepcion and he, for the discharge of his conscience, carried the tale to the tribunal. Doña Bernarda was sent for, told what she remembered and furnished the names of the witnesses. They were summoned and gave their evidence. The fiscal fussed over it, said that he had only two concurrent witnesses, and wanted others of the audience looked up and examined, which was not done. The registers were searched, but no former complaints against Fray Serra were found. Then the fiscal asked that all the other tribunals of Spain be written to, which was postponed. On April 22, 1722 he had the propositions submitted to calificadores, five of whom unanimously pronounced that the one relating to Christ was formally heretical and the others scandalous and irreverent, rendering the culprit vehemently suspect and of little sense. Then ensued a pause until 1726, when in July replies were received from all the tribunals that they had nothing against Fray Serra. Then followed another pause, until June 27,
- 79. RELIGION AND POLITICS 1728, when the inquisitors resolved that the case should be suspended after consulting the Suprema, which assented with the mild rebuke that, as the sumaria had been formed in 1721, it should have been acted upon at once, in place of waiting until 1728.[375] Cognizance of the more or less trivial utterances of individuals continued to the last and formed an increasing portion of inquisitorial business as Judaism gradually disappeared. How the people were still taught to keep a watch over their fellows is exhibited in the case of Manuel Ribes, of Valencia, in 1798. He was a boy only nine years of age, attending a primary school, who was denounced by a fellow-pupil for an heretical expression. That the case was seriously considered is inferable from the fact that it was suspended, not dismissed, and remained of record against the child in case of future offences. How keen, moreover, was the inquisitorial eye to discern peril to the faith, is visible in the prosecution at Murcia, in 1801, of Don Ramon Rubin de Celis y Noriega, a dignitary of the cathedral of Cartagena and rector of the conciliar seminary, for a proposition concealed in his printed plan for instruction in Latin.[376] Under such impulses it is not a matter for surprise that, in this later period “propositions” furnished half the business of the tribunals. In the register compiled in Valencia of all the cases tried in Spain, after 1780 until the suppression of the Inquisition in 1820, the aggregate is 6569 cases, out of which 3026, or not far from one-half, are designated as for propositions. Of these latter 748 are noted as suspended or laid aside in Valencia, leaving 2278 carried on through trial. Of the 3543 cases for other offences, 1469, as we have seen, were for solicitation, leaving only 2074 as the total number for the miscellaneous business of the tribunals. Those accused for propositions represent every sphere of life, but a larger portion than of old belong to the educated classes—clerics, professional men, officers of the army, municipal officials, professors in colleges and the like.[377] That this class of business should increase was natural in view of the infiltration of the irreligious philosophy and liberal ideas of the later eighteenth century, which escaped the censorship and watchfulness at the ports. The Napoleonic war poured a flood of this upon the land, traversed in almost every part by armies, whether hostile like the French or heretic allies
- 80. like the English. After the Restoration, the duty of the Inquisition was largely the extirpation of these seeds of evil in a political as well as a spiritual sense, and propositions antipoliticas, as we shall see, were as freely subject to its jurisdiction as the irreligiosas. The punishments inflicted were not usually severe, but the trial itself was a sufficient penalty, for the accused was thrown into the secret prison during the dilatory progress of his case, his property was embargoed and his career was ruined, while in most cases he was subsequently kept under strict surveillance, for which the inquisitorial organization furnished special facilities. As a typical case it will suffice to allude to that of two merchants of Cádiz, Julian Borrego and Miguel Villaviciosa, sentenced in 1818 by the Seville tribunal, for “propositions and blasphemies,” to abjure de vehementi and to ten years’ exile from Cádiz, Seville and Madrid, including service in a presidio. In consideration, it is said, of the extraordinarily long imprisonment which they had endured, the service of the former was only to be four years in Ceuta and of the latter six years in Melilla. As was so frequently the case at this time, the Suprema interposed in favor of leniency and reduced the term to presidio for both to two years. They were married men; the trial and sentence virtually meant ruin, and probably influence was exerted in their behalf for, after six months, the Suprema allowed them to return to Spain to support their families.[378] What was the precise nature of the propositions the record does not inform us, but, had the offence been political, it is improbable that this mercy would have been shown. If it were religious, it may have been the deliberate expression of erroneous belief, or a hasty ejaculation called forth by an ebullition of wrath for, as of old the Inquisition took cognizance of everything and, in its awe-inspiring fashion, undertook to discipline the manners as well as the faith of the people. In 1819, the sentence of Bartolomé López of Córdova, for propositions, warns him on the consequences of his unbridled passion for gambling and lust, which had caused his offence, and, in another case, the culprit’s inconsiderate utterances are ascribed to his quarrels with his wife, with whom he is urged to reconcile himself.[379] Thus to the last the Inquisition, in small things as in great, sought to control the thoughts and the speech of all men and to make every Spaniard
- 81. feel that he was at the mercy of an invisible power which, at any moment, might call him to account and might blast him for life. CHAPTER VIII. SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. MAN’S effort to supplement the limitations of his powers by the assistance of spiritual agencies, and to obtain foreknowledge of the future, dates from the earliest ages and is characteristic of all races. When this is attempted through the formulas of an established religion it is regarded as an act of piety; when through the invocation of fallen gods, or of the ministers of the Evil Principle, or through a perverted use of sacred rites, it is the subject of the severest animadversion of the law-giver. When it assumes to use mysterious secrets of nature, it has at times been regarded as harmless, and at others it has been classed with sorcery, and the effort to suppress it has been based, not on its being a deceit, but a crime. When the Roman domination in Spain was overthrown by the Wisigoths, the Barbarians brought with them their ancestral superstitions, to be superadded to the ancient Ligurian beliefs and the more recent Christianized paganism. The more current objectionable practices are indicated by the repressive laws of successive Wisigothic monarchs, and it illustrates the imperishable nature of superstitions that under their generalizations can be classed most of the devices that have endured the incessant warfare of the Church and the legislator for a thousand years. The Wisigothic ordinances were carried, with little change, into the Fuero Juzgo, or Romance version of the code, but their moderation was displeasing to Ramiro I, who, in 943, prescribed burning for magicians and sorcerers and is said to have inflicted the penalty in numerous instances.[380] It is not probable that this severity was permanent for, as a rule, medieval legislation was singularly lenient to these offences, although, about the middle of the thirteenth century, Jacobo de las Leyes, in a work addressed to Alfonso X, classes among the worst offenders those who slay men by enchantment.[381] Alfonso himself, in the Partidas, treated magic and divination as arts not involving heresy, to be rewarded or punished as they were used for good or for evil.[382] In no land were they more widely developed or more firmly implanted in popular belief, for Spain not only preserved the older errors of
- 82. MEDIEVAL TOLERATION Wisigothic times but had superadded those brought by the Moors and had acquired others from the large Jewish population. The fatalism of Islam was a fruitful source of devices for winning foreknowledge. The astrologer and the diviner, so far from being objects of persecution, were held in high honor among the Moors, and their arts were publicly taught as essential to the general welfare. In the great school of Córdova there were two masters who taught astrology, three of necromancy, pyromancy and geomancy, and one of the ars notoria. Seven thousand seven hundred Arabic writers are enumerated on the interpretation of dreams, and as many on goetic magic, while the use of amulets as preservatives from evil was universal.[383] Spain was the classic land of magic whither, during the middle ages, resorted for instruction from all Europe those who sought knowledge of its mysteries, and the works on the occult arts, which were circulated everywhere, bore for the most part, whether truly or falsely, the names of Arabic authors. Long after these pursuits had fallen elsewhere under the ban of the Church, the medieval spirit of toleration continued in Spain. Until the fourteenth century was drawing to an end, astrology, we are told, was in general vogue among the upper classes, while the lower placed full confidence in the wandering mountebanks who overspread the land—mostly Moorish or Jewish women —who plied their trade under the multifarious names of saludadores, ensalmadores, cantadores, entendederas, adivinas and ajodadores, earning a livelihood by their various arts of telling fortunes, preserving harvests and cattle, curing disease, protecting from the evil eye, and exciting love or hatred.[384] So little blame attached to these pursuits that Miguel de Urrea, Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was popularly known as el Nigromántico, and his portrait in the episcopal palace of Tarazona had an inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded the devil with his own arts.[385] The Church, however, did not share in this tolerant spirit and was preparing to treat these practices with severity. There is comparative mildness, in 1317, in the definition of its policy by Astesanus, the leading canonist of his time who, after reciting the ferocious imperial legislation, adds that the canons impose for these arts a penance of forty days; if the offender refuses to perform this he should, if a layman, be excommunicated
- 83. and, if a cleric, be confined in a monastery. If he persists in his evil ways, he should, if a slave be scourged and, if a freeman, be imprisoned. Bishops should expel from their dioceses all such persons and, in some places, this is laudably accompanied with curtailing their garments and their hair. Yet the uncertainty still prevailing is indicated by the differences among the doctors as to whether priests incurred irregularity who misused in magic rites the Eucharist, the chrism and holy water, or who baptized figurines to work evil on the parties represented, and in this doubt Astesanus counsels obtaining a dispensation as the safest plan.[386] All doubts as to such questions were promptly settled. Pope John XXII divided his restless activity between persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, warring with the Visconti, combating Ludwig of Bavaria and creating a wholesome horror of sorcery in all its forms. Imagining that conspirators were seeking his life through magic arts, he ordered special inquisitors appointed for their extermination and urged the regular appointees to active persecution. In various bulls, and particularly one known as Super illius specula, issued about 1326, he expressed his grief at the rapid increase of the invocation and adoration of demons throughout Christendom, and ordered all who availed themselves of such services to be publicly anathematized as heretics and to be duly punished, while all books on the subject were to be burnt. The faithful were warned not to enter into compacts with hell, or to confine demons in mirrors and rings so as to foretell the future, and all who disobeyed were threatened with the penalties of heresy.[387] Thus the Church asserted authoritatively the truth of the powers claimed by sorcerers—the first of a long series of similar utterances which did more, perhaps, than aught else to stimulate belief and foster the development of the evil. The prosperity of the sorcerer was based on popular credulity, and the deterrent influence of prospective punishment weighed little against the assurance that he could in reality perform the service for which he was paid. There was no Inquisition in Castile, and the repression of these unhallowed arts rested with the secular power, which was irresponsive to the papal commands. The Partidas, with their quasi approval of magic, were formally confirmed, by the Córtes of 1348, as the law of the land, and remained the basis of its jurisprudence. Yet the new impulse from Rome commenced soon afterwards to make itself felt. About 1370 a law of
- 84. INQUISITORIA L JURISDICTION Enrique III declared guilty of heresy and subject to its penalties all who consulted diviners.[388] In this the injection of heresy is significant of the source of the new policy, reflected further in a law of Juan I, in 1387, which asserts that all diviners and sorcerers and astrologers, and those who believe in them, are heretics to be punished as provided in the Partidas, laymen by the royal officials and clerics by their prelates.[389] That these laws accomplished little is indicated by the increasing severity of the pragmática of April 9, 1414, which ordered all royal and local judges, under pain of loss of office and one-third confiscation, to put to death all sorcerers, while those who harbored them were to be banished and the pragmática itself was to be read monthly in the market-places so that no one could pretend ignorance.[390] Even the Mudéjares assimilated themselves in this to their Christian conquerors, threatening the practice of sorcery with death, and warning all to avoid divination and augury and astrology. This accomplished little, however, and, after their enforced conversion, the Moriscos continued to enjoy the reputation of masters of the black arts.[391] In the kingdoms of Aragon the secular power seems to have been negligent, and the duty reverted to the episcopate, which was for the most part indifferent. It was not wholly so, however, for, in 1372, Pedro Clasquerin, Archbishop of Tarragona, ordered an investigation of his province by testes synodales, and among the matters to be inquired into was whether there were sorcerers. Even Inquisitor Eymerich appears to consider it as in no way the business of the Holy Office, when he seeks to impress upon all bishops the duty of searching for such enemies of Christ, and of punishing them with all severity.[392] In Castile, while all the arts of sorcery were reckoned heretical, jurisdiction over them remained secular, even after the establishment of the Inquisition although, among Isabella’s good qualities, is enumerated her exceeding abhorrence of diviners and sorcerers and all practitioners of similar arts.[393] There was evidently no thought of diverting the Inquisition from its labors among the New Christians, when a royal decree of 1500 ordered all corregidors and justicias to investigate as to the existence in their districts of diviners and such persons, who were to be arrested and punished if laymen, while if clerics they were to be handed over to their prelates for due castigation.[394]
- 85. The question of jurisdiction, in fact, was a difficult one, which required prolonged debate to settle. It is true that, in 1511, a case in Saragossa shows the Inquisition exercising it, but a discussion to which this gave rise indicates that as yet it was a novelty. Some necromancers were condemned by the tribunal and the inquisitors asked whether confiscation followed. Inquisitor-general Enguera decided in the affirmative, but referred to Ferdinand for confirmation. The king instructed the archbishop to assemble the inquisitors and some impartial lawyers to discuss the question and report to him; their conclusion was in favor of the crown and not till then did he order the receiver to sequestrate and take possession of the property, which was considerable. The fact that it had not been sequestrated indicates that there had been no precedent to guide the tribunal.[395] Soon after this, in Catalonia, there came a demand for the more effective jurisdiction of the Inquisition, in order to repress sorcery. When the Concordia of 1512 was arranged, one of the petitions of the Córtes was that it should put into execution the bull Super illius specula of John XXII, and that the king should procure from the pope the confirmation of the bull. There was no objection to this, and Leo X accordingly revived the bull and ordered its enforcement in Aragon.[396] It must have been immediately after this that the Edict of Faith, in the Aragonese kingdoms, required the denunciation of sorcery, for, in the Sicilian instructions of 1515, issued to allay popular discontent, it was provided that this clause should only be operative when the sorcery was heretical.[397] Convictions, however, were few, at least in Aragon, for after those of 1511 there were no relaxations for sorcery until February 28, 1528, when Fray Miguel Calvo was burnt; the next case was that of Mossen Juan Omella, March 13, 1537, and no further relaxations occur in the list which extends to 1574.[398] Castile followed the example of Aragon, and Archbishop Manrique (1523-1538) added to the Edict of Faith six clauses, giving in full detail the practices of magic, sorcery and divination.[399] Yet, as late as 1539, Ciruelo seems to regard the crime as subject wholly to secular jurisdiction, for he warns sovereigns that, as they hold the place of God on earth, they should have more zeal for the honor of God than for their own, and should chastise these offenders accordingly, being certain that they would be held to strict account for their negligence.[400]
- 86. PACT WITH THE DEMON The question, in fact, was a somewhat intricate one, admitting of nice discussion. In 1257, not long after the founding of the Old Inquisition, Alexander IV was asked whether it ought to take cognizance of divination and sorcery, when he replied that it must not be diverted from its proper duties and must leave such offenders to their regular judges, unless there was manifest heresy involved, a decision which was repeated more than once and was finally embodied in the canon law by Boniface VIII.[401] There was no definition, however, as to what constituted heresy in these matters, until the sweeping declaration of John XXII that all were heretical, but in this there was a clear inference that his bulls were directed solely to malignant magic working through the invocation and adoration of demons. This, however, comprised but a small portion of the vast array of superstitious observances, on which theological subtilty exhausted its dialectics. Many of these were perfectly harmless, such as the simple charms of the wise-women for the cure of disease. Others were pseudo-scientific, like the Cabala, the Ars Notoria and the Ars Paulina, by which universal knowledge was attained through certain formulas. Others again taught spells, innocent in themselves, to protect harvests from insect plagues and cattle from murrain. There were infinite gradations, leading up to the invocation and adoration of demons, besides the multiplied resources of the diviner in palmistry, hydromancy, crystallomancy and the rest—oneiroscopy, or dream-expounding, being a special stumbling-block, in view of its scriptural warrant. To define where heresy began and ended in these, to decide between presumable knowledge of the secrets of nature and resort to evil spirits, was no easy matter, and by common consent the decision turned upon whether there was a pact, express or implied, with the demon. This only created the necessity of a new definition as to what constituted pact and, in 1398, the University of Paris sought to settle this by declaring that there was an implied pact in all superstitious observances, of which the result could not reasonably be expected from God or from nature.[402] This marked a distinct advance in the conception of heretical sorcery, but it still left open the question as to what might or might not be reasonable expectation, and it was merely an opinion, albeit of the most authoritative theological body in Europe. Discussion continued as lively as ever. In 1492, Bernardo Basin, a learned canon of Saragossa, considered it necessary to prove by logic that all pact with the demon, implicit or explicit, if not heresy was yet to be
- 87. INFERENTIAL HERESY treated as heresy.[403] In 1494, the Repertorium Inquisitorum in quoting the canon law, that sorcery must savor of heresy to give jurisdiction of the Inquisition, still admits that there is no little difficulty in defining what is meant by savoring of heresy, while even at the close of the sixteenth century Peña tells us that no question excited more frequent debate.[404] It is true that, in 1451, Nicholas V had conferred on Hugues le Noir, Inquisitor of France, cognizance of divination, even when not heretical, but this had been a special provision, long since forgotten.[405] The tendency, however, was irresistible to extend the definition of heretical sorcery, and to bring everything under the Inquisition. In 1552 Bishop Simancas argues that the demon introduces himself into all superstitious practices and charms, even without the intention of the man; he admits that many jurists argue that it is uncertain whether divinations and sorceries savor of manifest heresy, and therefore inquisitors have not cognizance of them, but the contrary is accepted by law, reason and custom, for it is a well-known rule that, when there is a doubt whether a judge has jurisdiction, the jurisdiction is his, and this matter is not exceptional; inquisitors can proceed against all guilty of these offences as suspect of heresy and this is received in practice.[406] Yet in practice these conclusions were reached tentatively. In 1537 Doctor Giron de Loaysa, reporting the results of a visitation of the Toledo tribunal, says that he has examined many processes for sorcery and desires instructions, for there are a number which are more foul and filthy than heretical; and even as late as 1568 the Suprema, in acting on the Barcelona visitation of de Soto Salazar, reproves Inquisitor Mexia for inflicting a fine of ten ducats and spiritual penances on Perebona Nat, for having used charms and uttered certain words over a sick woman; such cases, it says, do not pertain to the Inquisition, and in future he must leave all such matters to the Ordinary, to whom they belong.[407] The tribunals evidently were less doubtful than the Suprema as to their powers. Among the practitioners who speculated on popular credulity there were some called zahories, who claimed a special gift of being able to see beneath the surface when it was not covered with blue cloth, and who were employed to discover springs of water, veins of metal, buried treasure and corpses, as well as aposthumes and other internal diseases. There was no pretence of magic in this but, in 1567, Juan de Mateba, a boy of 14, who claimed
- 88. CONFIRMATIO N OF BELIEF among other gifts to be a zahori, was sentenced by the Saragossa tribunal to fifty lashes in the prison, to six years’ reclusion in a convent under instruction, and subsequently to a year’s exile, together with prohibition, under pain of two hundred lashes through the streets, to cure by conjurations, or to claim that he has grace to effect cures, to divine the future, or to see corpses and other things under the earth.[408] Whatever doubts existed rapidly disappeared. It would be difficult to see where the heresy lay which earned, from the Saragossa tribunal, in 1585, a public scourging for Gracia Melero, because she kept the finger of a man who had been hanged, together with a piece of the halter, thinking that they would bring her good luck.[409] In fact, by this time the omnipresent demon was held accountable for everything. A case exciting considerable attention in 1588 was that of Elvira de Cespedes, tried by the tribunal of Toledo, who, as a slave-girl at the age of 16, was married to Cristóval Lombardo of Jaen and bore to him a son, still living at Seville. Subsequently at San Lucar she fell in love with her mistress and seduced her, as well as many other women. Running away, she assumed male attire and, during the rebellion of Granada served as a soldier in the company of Don Luis Ponce. In Madrid she worked in a hospital, obtained a certificate as a surgeon and practised the profession. At Yepes she offered marriage to a girl, but the absence of beard and her effeminate appearance caused her sex to be questioned; she was medically examined, pronounced to be a man and the Vicar of Madrid granted a licence under which the marriage was solemnized. Doubts, however, still continued; she was denounced to the magistrates of Ocaña, who arrested her and handed her over to the Inquisition. In the course of her trial she was duly examined by physicians, who declared her to be a woman and that her career could only be explained by the arts of the demon. This explanation satisfied all doubts; she was sentenced to appear in an auto, to abjure de levi, to receive two hundred lashes and to serve in a hospital ten years without pay. In this the tribunal was merciful, for hermaphrodites customarily had a harsher measure of justice.[410] It is thus easy to understand how the definition of pact by the University of Paris came to be so extended as to cover every possible act that might be classed as superstitious—all the old women’s cures and all the traditional usages and beliefs that had accumulated through credulous generations trained to place
- 89. confidence in unintelligible phrases and meaningless actions—for any result greater than could naturally be produced, if not attributable to God was perforce ascribed to pact with the demon. Torreblanca thus assures us that, in the cure of disease, pact is to be inferred when nothing, either natural or supernatural, is employed, but only words, secretly or openly uttered, a touch, a breathing, or a simple cloth which has no virtue in itself. So it is with prayers and verbal formulas approved by the Church, but used for purposes other than those for which they were framed, or even exorcisms or conjurations against disease and tempests and caterpillars and drought, employed without the rites prescribed by the Church, or by those who have not the Order of Exorcists. There is pact in the use of idle prayers, as to stop bleeding with In sanguine Adæ orta est mors, or Sanguis mane in te ut sanguis Christi mansit in se; or of false ones, as for head-ache Virgo Maria Jordanum transivit et tunc S. Stephanus ei obviavit; or of absurd ones as the old Danatadaries, or the more modern Abrach Haymon etc., or that inscribed on bread Irivni Teherioni etc.; or that against the bite of mad dogs, Hax, Pax, Max. Suspect of pact are pious and holy prayers, in which some extraneous or unknown sign is introduced, written and hung on the neck, or anything by the wearing of which protection is expected from sudden death or imprisonment or the gallows: also the use of natural objects which, by their nature are not fitted for the expected results, or which are inefficient of themselves and are supposed to derive virtue from words employed, or are applied with prayers and observances not prescribed by the Church and, finally, all cures of disease which physicians cannot explain.[411] Moreover, theologians decided that in sorcery there was no parvitas materiæ, or triviality, which redeemed it from being a mortal sin. [412] Thus all wise-women and charlatans became subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and no richer field for the folklorist can be found than in their numerous trials, where all the details of their petty devices and spells and charms are reported at length. There was the corresponding duty imposed on it to exterminate all popular superstitions throughout the land, and possibly it might have had a measure of success in this if it could have treated these practitioners as impostors. Unfortunately its jurisdiction over them was based on the reality of their exercising demonic powers, and their persecution only tended to confirm popular belief in the efficacy of their
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