THE CASE OF DIEGO DE UCEDA

Photograph by Isabel Pérez Lago

John E. Longhurst’s book Luther and the Spanish Inquisition: The Case of Diego de Uceda, 1528-1529 reminds us of Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Garden of Forking Paths in its treatment of texts used to capture the reader’s attention to the displayed conflict. Considered as an example of anti-narrative, Borges’s story is told through a sequence of fragments from newspapers, letters and other documents that, in reality, do not exist. The Argentinean writer uses real dates, names and events within his work so as to make his reader wonder about the realistic character of the story. At one point, the reader can’t even state clearly whether he is reading a fictional story with verifiable elements included or a truthful article containing an intense dose of creative images. Likewise, Longhurst’s work proposes an intriguing way to tell us about the case of Diego de Uceda during the Spanish Inquisition, using a postmodern literary presentation of the facts that are divided into setting, denunciation, double jeopardy, frustration, the burden of proof, crisis, purification, and an epilogue.

In the first chapter, the reader is situated within the time and space of the conflict narrated: the trials set up by the Inquisition tribunals against those who ideologically opposed some Catholic doctrines, inspired by Martin Luther in the 1500s. One of these figures was Diego de Uceda, “an enthusiastic devotee of the teachings of Eramus of Rotterdam,” which tried to find a middle ground between Catholicism and Lutheranism (8). Here are mentioned many of the people imprisoned by the Catholic Church due to their heretic practices, that is for believing in Lutheranism, Illuminism, or Erasmism. The idea of confessing to God alone -not to the priests- plus the need to avoid adoring dead images, which were considered a resemblance of the idols of the pagans, became two of the main reformist thoughts defended by Luther, and, of course, they were radically condemned by the Inquisition.

The subsequent chapters refer to the recollection of evidences that incriminated Diego de Uceda, bringing him to the Inquisition chambers (18). Although he clarified that his only wish consisted of living and dying in the Catholic faith, Diego was submitted to an extensive trial that ended up in torture. Diego had said that the most important thing in confession was for the sinner to repent inwardly and to promise to mend his ways in the future (28). Later, he added that ignorance combined with an unwillingness to learn is the basis of many evils, including the misunderstanding of words (28). In a letter written after having spent days of solitary meditation in his cell, Diego de Uceda confessed that he also denied a miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and he begged for mercy to the Catholic Church (35). As Longhurst affirms, Diego’s life, fortune and honor were at stake while he tried to convince the Inquisitors of his piety and orthodoxy (50). Diego stated that priests were instituted as arbiters between God and men, making oral confession the only vehicle to the absolution of sins (54). Put to be tortured, Diego had to tell the Inquisitors what they all wanted to hear: words (which he might not even have believed) in support of the Lutheran disregard of confession and the adoration of images as well as the idea that contrition alone was enough for the believers to be saved (62-63).