Bartolomé Carranza was born at Miranda de Arga in Navarre, entered the Dominican order in 1520, and became a celebrated professor of theology at Valladolid. He served as a theologian at the Council of Trent in 1545–1547 and 1551–1552 and wrote against the Protestants. His teaching borrowed some of the Reformers’ language while holding to Rome’s doctrine:¹

‘The moral power of man,’ he said, ‘is indeed diminished but not destroyed; he is able to incline himself to righteousness, and faith justifies only so far as charity is added to it.’¹ Bartolomé Carranzaas reported by Merle d’Aubigné

In 1554 Carranza went to England with Philip of Spain, the husband of Mary I, and labored to restore the Roman church there, especially at Oxford, where heretical books were sought out and burned. He returned to Spain as Archbishop of Toledo and primate in 1558, and attended Charles V at his death.

His enemies in the Spanish Inquisition found suspicious phrases in his Commentaries on the Christian Catechism (1558), and in August 1559 the primate of Spain was arrested. His trial dragged on for seventeen years in Spain and Rome. In April 1576 Pope Gregory XIII required him to abjure sixteen propositions, and he died a few weeks later, on May 2, 1576.

Merle d’Aubigné believed Carranza had come close to evangelical faith in essential points. The record of his life shows a man who served Rome’s cause to the end, and whose fate shows how little room Spain allowed even for a suspicion of the Reformers’ teaching.

Catholic Opponents