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The Inquisition and the University:
Guarantors of Assimilation

Carlos V, heir to the Holy Roman emperors by purchased election, occupied the Spanish throne and governed with a retinue of rapacious Flemings whom he showered with bishoprics, bureaucratric titles, and even the first license to ship slaves to the Latin American colonies. He drained Latin America of its treasure to hound Satan all across Europe and to spread the true faith. When the former inquisitor general Cardinal Cisneros who led the military invasion of Navarre was appointed Pope Adrian VI, Carlos granted him the right to purge the Navarrese church. The Pope appointed only clergymen sympathetic to the empire to ecclesiastical posts in Navarre. The Basque state's redemption seemed impossible or doubtful, but the fanatical mission against the Navarrese people's "heresy" was mixed with the fever that a new treasure stirred in the conquering hosts.

The leader of the Counter-Reformation was Carlos' son, Ferdinand II. From his huge palace-monastery, Escorial, near Madrid, Philip spread his armies against the centers of heresy. Calvinism had taken hold in Holland, England, France, and northern Navarre.

Navarrese "heretics", or those suspected of "heresy," were roasted in the Inquisition's purifying flames. For Spain, the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Logroño provided a means to eliminate the Navarrese intellectuals, thinkers, theologians, and clergymen suspected of opposing the foreign master.

The defense of the Catholic faith in Navarre was twofold: on the one hand, it turned out to be a mask for the submission of Navarre; on the other, the war against Protestantism was also the war against ascendant capitalism in Europe.

The metals of Latin America provided a means for Spain to fight against the nascent forces of the modern economy. Carlos V had already defeated the Castilian bourgeoisie in the uprisings of the Comuneros, which had become a social revolution against the nobility, its property and privileges. The uprisings were crushed following the betrayal of Burgos. In 1521, taking advantage of the revolt of the Comuneros, Henri d'Albret King of Navarre tried to recover Navarre from Spain. Northern Navarre and the Roncal valley united their armies led by Andre de Foix, seigneur d'Asparroz. Pamplone went up in revolt against the Castilians who quickly surrended. Most of the Navarrese territory was recovered, but having defeated the Comuneros, the Castilian troops returned to Navarre. Many Navarrese died in the battle of Noain in the Iruņa valley where the troops of Andre de Foix were defeated by the army of Carlos V.

The betrayal of Navarre extended across the Pyrenees. There, a Basque parasitic nobility complete with its cortege of intellectuals who made their living from service to the king of France, decided that Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and northern Navarre should be annexed to France. During the spread of the Counter-Reformation in France, the bishop of Baiona, Bertrand de Echauz, plotted with Cardinal Richelieu's plea to the king of France requesting that Navarre be annexed to France, which was carried out in 1620 with the Edict of Union. The annexation notwithstanding, northern Navarre kept its own institutions and laws which were the same national institutions of the entire Navarrese kingdom.

Basque identity was still present in 1789 when the parliament of (northern) Navarre declined an invitation to submit the Cahiers des Doleances to the French National Assembly which they considered a foreign institution. Unlike the western Basque lands of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, the Basque territories north of the Pyrenees maintained close relations with (southern) Navarre for many centuries.

For its foreign masters and its chief associate, the Church, and for the Basque nobility who sold its soul to the devil at a price that would have shamed Faust, the conquest of Navarre was perfectly rational.

Ideological justifications were never in short supply. The bleeding of Navarre became an act of charity, an argument for the faith. With the guilt, a whole system of rationalizations for guilty consciences was devised.

Purged, humiliated, and with its Basque character undermined, Navarre was transformed under the double seal of Spanish unity and Roman Catholic Orthodoxy into a "frontier of Catholicism," the religious version of Spanish monarchic unity in the elaboration of which ascetic, mystic, jurist, moralist, philosophical and theological writers all worked together to come up with ideas within which to frame the "Hispanic" character of Navarre in order to secure its annexation. In the geopolitical concept of imperialism, Navarre is no more than a natural appendage of Spain.

In the dioceses, universities, and ecclesiastical tribunals of 16th and 17th century Spain, the number of theologians from the Basque territories increased as Hispanic assimilation was guaranteed both by the Inquisition and the university. These theologians who worked at the service of Spain spreaded the imperial ideology throughout the Basque territories. The most important centers for the dissemination of "Hispanic" ideology were the University of Salamanca, sponsored by Queen Isabel, and the University of Alcala, founded by Cardinal Cisneros, the fierce conqueror of Navarre.

Bibliography: Mikel Sorauren, Historia de Navarra, el Estado vasco, Pamiela, 1999; Tomas Urzainki, La Navarra maritima, Pamiela, 1998; Roger Collins, The Basques, Basil Blackwell, 1986; Jean-Louis Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple Basque, in Euskadi en guerre, Ekin, 1982; Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation, Cambridge University Press, 1989; Luis Nuñez Astrain, La Razón Vasca, Txalaparta, 1995