610 INTELLECT AND FAITH. So minutely was the question reasoned out that it became heresy to assert that one would undergo death in defence of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. In 1571 Alonso de Castro, although a Franciscan, uses this as an illustration that it is heretical thus to declare adhesion to a point which is not an article of faith. In the heated controversy everywhere raging ardent polemics showed their zeal by offering to stake their exist- ence upon it, and the question became a practical one for the In- quisition to deal with. A vow or oath to defend the doctrine was declared to be valid, but in 1619 the inquisitors of Portugal, with the assent of Paul V., condemned as heretical the opinion that one who should die in defence of the Immaculate Conception would be a martyr. As the Inquisition was largely in Dominican hands, it doubtless was used effectually to persecute the too zealous as- sert ors of the doctrine, and to this probably is attributable the rule that in all such cases the denunciation should be sent to the supreme Inquisition in Rome and its decision be awaited, thus tying the hands of the local inquisitors. From Carena's remarks, it is evident that these cases were not infrequent and that they gave much trouble.* The Jesuits threw the immense weight of their influence in favor of the Immaculate Conception, and in time it became not
- Alph. de Castro de justa Hoeret. Punitione Lib. I. c. viii. Dub. 4. — Carense
Tract, de Modo procedendi Tit. xvn. § 9. Yet in Spain the intense popular devotion to the Virgin rendered the Inqui- sition very sensitive in its reverence for her. In 1642 an inquisitor, Diego de Narbona, in his Annales Tractatus Juris alluded to an assertion of Clement of Alexandria (Strouiata, Lib. vn.) that some persons believed that after the Nativ- ity the Virgin was inspected by the midwife to prove her virginity. Although he condemned the statement as most indecent and dishonoring to the Virgin, his work was denounced to the Inquisition of Granada, which referred it to the Inquisitor-general. Narbona in vain endeavored to defend himself. It was shown that in the Index Expurgatorius of 1640 the passage of Clement, as well as those in all other authors alluding to it, had been ordered to be borrado, or expunged, so that the very memory of so scandalous a tale might be lost. Narbona alleged in his defence a passage in Padre Basilio Ponce de Leon, but the Inquisition showed that this had likewise been borrado, and, as every one who possessed a copy of a book containing a prohibited passage was bound to blot it out and ren- der it illegible, he was culpable in not having done so.— MSS. Bibl. Bodleian. Arch S. 130.
