History of the Reformation in Mexico

By Alejandro Moreno Morrison.

To the memory of my great-great-grandfather,

the REV. ARCADIO MORALES ESCALONA, Th. D.,

who rests from his labours for his deeds follow him (Revelation 14:13).

Anyone acquainted with Mexican history will realize that the title above is ambiguous. That is because, on the one hand, there is a period in the Mexican political and legal history known as the Reformation, while the term “Reformation”, on the other hand, has a very specific and well defined religious and theological connotation in ecclesiastical contexts.   Such ambiguity is intended since there is a close relationship between the political movement in Mexico called the Reformation and the history of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico. Furthermore, some readers will be able to notice, as well, some of the similarities that at least I see between the English Reformation and Mexico’s political “Reformation”.

The political “Reformation” in Mexico (1830-­1870) was the movement carried out by the “Liberals” (in its classical European sense rather than the modern sense) against the conservative oligarchy and the Roman­-Catholic clergy, who together concentrated all the economic, social, religious and political power in Mexico. Both, the time frame and the movement itself, overlap with the beginnings and development of the evangelical movement in Mexico, which eventually lead (in one of its several branches) to the foundation of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico.

In the summer of 1822, «Diego» Thompson (a Scottish missionary of Presbyterian background) arrived to Peru with the twofold mission of establishing schools in the “Lancasterian” method and of distributing Bibles in Spanish as an agent of the British and Overseas Bible Society.  It took him five years to make his way up north from Peru to Mexico City, where he arrived in May 1827, with 300 Bibles and 1,000 New Testaments.  The newly arrived Bibles immediately got the attention of many people. On the one hand, a few Roman-Catholic clergymen and such statesmen as Dr. José María Luis Mora, “considered the father of Liberalism in Mexico”, received favourably the distribution of Bibles.  Nevertheless, the official reaction of the Dioceses of Mexico was to ban the circulation of the Bible, and to confiscate and burn those Bibles already distributed among the people, even though such Bibles were the authorized Spanish translation of the Roman Church with the Apocrypha (the Scío de San Miguel version, published in Barcelona, 1820). In spite of the ban, Bibles continued arriving into Mexico and Circulating clandestinely throughout the decades of the 1830’s to the 1860’s.  

This was a time of great turmoil in Mexico as the Conservative Party (and the Roman-Catholic Church) strived to maintain its power, while from the outside Mexico faced war with the United States of America (USA) and intervention from France.  But above and beyond the earthly affairs of the “city of man”, a Christian soldier of the USA Army saw the Mexican War as an opportunity to build the “City of God” by distributing Spanish Bibles to the Mexican people wherever he went.  Likewise, during the French intervention (1864­ 1867), a Moravian chaplain of the French Army lead evangelical worship services in downtown Mexico City.  By the mid­-1850’s, the Liberal Party gained control of the Mexican Congress and passed a set of laws known as the “Reformation Laws,” as well as the 1857 Constitution, patterned after the USA Constitution.  A ruling criterion and aim of the new legislation was to limit the power of the Roman­-Catholic clergy and to recognize religious freedom and freedom of expression.  Moreover, a number of buildings and estates that were property of the Roman-Church (which owned 70% of the real-e­state property in Mexico) were “secularized,” that is, taken away from ecclesiastical hands to be destined for public use or to be sold for productive activities (very much as Henry VIII had done in England over 300 years earlier).  Eventually, the use of several of these “secularized” buildings was granted to Protestant Churches and organizations like the Bible Society.  

All such changes were officially condemned by the Roman pope Pius IX and thus opposed by the majority, though not all, of the Mexican Roman-Catholic clergy.  In fact, a schism was brought about by a small group of priests who sworn loyalty to Mexico and the new Reformation Laws and who thereby endeavoured to establish “the Reformed Mexican Catholic Church independent from that of Rome” and upon the foundations of the early Church.   These “Mexican Catholics” turned to the Episcopal Church o the USA for a serious ecclesiastical authority that would provide their meetings with an official character and to credit their gatherings toward the formation of a church.  The first evangelical service of this group took place in Mexico City in November 18, 1865.  

A couple of years later, a Presbyterian Church was established in Villa de Coss, Zacatecas, as a result of the preaching of Dr. Julius Mallet Prevost, elder in the Presbyterian Church and Consul of the USA in that city.  The church grew rapidly with members from all the ranks of society (including governors and local cabinet members) and established churches in nearby cities like Fresnillo and Concepción del Oro. By 1870, these Presbyterian Churches came under the wing of the Pennsylvania Synod.

In 1868, the Episcopal Church of the USA sent a missionary pastor to Mexico, the Rev. Henry C. Riley. Rev. Riley was born and had spent part of his life in Santiago de Chile, and was pastor of a large Spanish-speaking congregation in New York, so he was fluent in Spanish.  A few months after his arrival, the Rev. Riley sent back to the USA the following report: “A perfect hurricane of Protestant desires is raging against the Roman Church. I felt, as if I had suddenly found myself in the Reformation time. The great task to be accomplished is to edify as soon as possible churches and educational institutions.”  In time, instead of the “Reformed Mexican Catholic Church”, the Mexican Episcopal Church was established with people coming from the Mexican Catholic movement and several “evangelical societies» that had functioned clandestinely over the previous decades.  

One of the leaders of this church, don Julián Rodriguez, persistently invited Mrs. Felipa Escalona de Morales to attend their services.  Mrs. Escalona de Morales (or Mrs. Morales) was a pure Mexican Indian (thus at the lowest rank in society) and a member of the Liberal Party.  She worked in the domestic service at the residence of Ignacio Ramírez, one of the top leaders of the Liberal Party. Although Ignacio Ramirez was an atheist and had inclinations to the occult, he gave Mrs. Morales a Bible.  Albeit not formally educated, Felipa and her husband Bartolo enjoyed a quite awakened mind and had learned to read and write. From an early age, Felipa taught her son Arcadio to read and to love the Bible. Both parents were very religious, although they did not attend the Roman-Catholic mass.  

In January 1869, Felipa Morales sent her son Arcadio (who had just turned 19 years old) to a Tuesday service in the Protestant Church on her behalf.  Arcadio Morales was deeply scandalized by the mere suggestion of attending a Protestant gathering. At the end he attended merely out of obedience to his mother, who asked him “to see and to hear and to report back to her”. Thought not willingly, Arcadio attended the service with a friend of him and Mr. Rodríguez, the church leader who had been so persistent in inviting the Morales­-Escalona family.  On that particular week­day service an infant baptism was administrated.  The Protestant service made a powerful impression on the young Arcadio, who told Mr. Rodriguez that, if that was what Protestantism was all about, he had been a Protestant already for a long time. 

Nevertheless, Arcadio entered into a deep conflict of conscience upon the mere thought of leaving the religion in which he had been raised.  For the first time, he addressed a prayer in his own words: “My God, You see in what state I am; I do not know on whose side lays the truth; but You, who are neither Catholic nor Protestant, help me; I do not want my soul to be lost. If this new religion is the true one, let me embrace it with all my heart, and if that in which I have lived is Yours, then, Lord, do not let me abandon it even for a moment”. Then he took yet another step toward making up his mind about the matter; he purchased two Bibles, one Roman-­Catholic and another Protestant, in order to confirm that the Protestant Bible was not different and, therefore, that all these years reading the Bible had led him to be a “Protestant” albeit unaware of it.  One week after his first visit, Arcadio Morales Escalona was back in the Protestant service, now with a passionate devotion for the gospel. He soon became a “reader” at the Church, while also involved in the distribution of Bibles, and the preaching of the gospel in public places.  

A few years later (October 1872), the first Presbyterian missionaries (proper) from the USA (mostly from Pennsylvania) arrived to the coastal city of Veracruz, off the Gulf of Mexico. The missionaries were Mr. & Mrs. Henry Clifton Thompson, Mr. & Mrs. Paul H. Pitkins, Mr. & Mrs. Maxwell Phillips, Miss Helen P. Allen. A couple of months later (December 28, 1872), the Rev. & Mrs. Merril N. Hutchinson arrived to Mexico City and immediately got in touch with the Protestant Church and the young Arcadio Morales.  

The arrival (thus the growing presence) of the Presbyterian missionaries into an Episcopal environment inevitably brought about the discussion of church polity.  The Episcopalians were advocating for the appointment of an “Archbishop of the Evangelical Missions in Mexico” to oversee all of the evangelical societies and incipient churches. Moreover, as it was in the very origins of the Presbyterian movement in the Church of England, the issue was also raised concerning the use of vestments and other «Romish rituals» that remained in the worship of that nascent Protestant Church.  

Once again, the young Arcadio faced a dilemma on matters of the highest order: What is the right way of worshipping the Lord? After earnest prayer and long conversations with the Rev. Hutchinson on the matter (guided by Scripture as their sole authority), Arcadio embraced the Presbyterian polity and manner of worship leaving behind the Episcopal ways, and thus took the firm resolution “of establishing the Presbyterian Church in the capital of the [Mexican] Republic”. Like the Presbyterian forefathers, Arcadio was excommunicated from the Episcopal Church for his Presbyterian persuasion, which they took as «treason.» “Yet”—he records— “with a small number of brethren who followed me, we continued unaltered fighting against the common enemy, ‘Romanism’, and laying the foundations of Presbyterianism in the capital [city] of Mexico”.  

In time, a small faculty of professors was formed in order to provide theological education to future Mexican ministers like Arcadio Morales. Such faculty included originally the missionary pastors Maxwell Phillips (Greek) and M. N. Hutchinson (Theology). In the years to come such faculty was enriched with the involvement of L. Polemus, Rollo Ogden, J. Milton Green (Th. D.), S. T. Wilton, (Th. D.), and Hubert Brown, (Th. D.).  

On the 21st of May, 1874, Arcadio was examined and approved on his theological training, in the constituting meeting of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico City (which lasted four days with recesses).  He, then, proceeded to make his public profession of faith and to be baptized (since Presbyterians did not accept the Roman baptism) along with other 64 believers who were the first members of the first Presbyterian Church in Mexico City.  

The Presbyterian Church was growing so rapidly, not only in Mexico City but also throughout all the Mexican territory, that there was a growing need for pastors all throughout Mexico. Along with ten other “seminarians” Arcadio Morales continued his theological education under the Presbyterian missionaries above mentioned. By 1878, the theological education and aptitudes of these young Mexicans were deemed appropriate to proceed to ordain them to the holy ministry in the Presbyterian Church.  That same year, 1878, the Rev. Arcadio Morales Escalona became the first pastor of “El Divino Salvador”, the first Presbyterian Church in Mexico City, with 240 registered members, 88 children baptized and growing!       

The Reformation had taken root in Mexican soil.

_________________

Alejandro Moreno Morrison is a Mexican lawyer and Reformed theologian.  He earned a law degree (equivalent to the LLB) at Escuela Libre de Derecho (Mexico City), and a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, Florida), part of such theological studies included a summer at the University of Oxford.  At Reformed Theological Seminary he was teaching assistant of the Rev. Dr. Ronald H. Nash.  He was also Spanish resources consultant for the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pratt at Third Millennium Ministries.  Alejandro has ministered as intern, teacher, and visiting preacher and teacher at churches and missions of several denominations including Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana Conservadora de México, Iglesia Presbiteriana Ortodoxa Reformada, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, North America Synod.  With the latter he was in charge of a mission congregation in Mexico City during 2014.  He has also been guest lecturer in Systematic Theology, Ethics, Evangelism, and Apologetics at Seminario Teológico Reformado of Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, in Contemporary Political Systems at the Faculty of Law of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and in Corporate law at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (Global Startup Lab for Mexico).  Since 2010 he is adjunct lecturer in Jurisprudence at Escuela Libre de Derecho.

The Synagogue’s Worship Was the Model for the Worship of the Apostolic Church

Horton Davies, Christian Worship: Its history and meaning (New York: Abingdon Press, 1957), pp. 19-20.

…the first Christians did not think of themselves as the founders of a new faith.  The temple and the synagogue and their liturgies formed the natural background of their worship.

Thus the first Christians in Jerusalem celebrated a Jewish liturgy with minor modifications.  It was simply a revised version of the worship of the synagogue.  And the synagogue had a twofold importance for the first generation of Christians.  In the first place, our Lord and Paul carried on their ministries in the synagogues…

The importance of the synagogue for our purpose is that its worship exerted a profound influence on the worship of the apostolic Church.  The main elements of its worship were carried over into Christian services.  The prayers, the praise, the reading of the Scriptures, and the exposition of them, were the fundamentals of Christian worship.  Moreover, the worship of the synagogue was nonsacrificial in character, and it provided a place for a simple liturgy with responses, as well as extemporary prayers.  Both these features were characteristic of apostolic worship.

The fact that the traditional Jewish structure of worship with certain important additions, satisfied the first Christians, can be inferred from the scanty references to the details of worship that are given in the New Testament.  The Jewish structure is assumed throughout, rendering it superfluous to describe the mode of worship in detail.

_____________________

Traducción al español: El culto de la sinagoga fue el modelo del culto de la Iglesia apostólica.

Horton Davies, born in Wales, was a historian of Christianity and a Congregational minister educated at the University of Edinburgh (B.A., M.A. and M.Div.), the University of Oxford (D.Phil.) and the University of South Africa (D.D.).  He was professor of Divinity at Rhodes University in South Africa.  He returned to Oxford in 1953 as head of the Department of Church History based at the university’s Mansfield College.  In 1956 he was invited to teach at Princeton Univeristy.  Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships in 1960 and 1965 and a Huntington Library Award in 1968 enabled Davies to further his writing of “Worship and Theology in England.” He received a doctor of letters in 1970 from Oxford based on the first three volumes of the work.  He wrote or edited more than two dozen books.  In 1984, he became Putnam professor emeritus of Religion at Princeton.  

See also: God is Angry with Those Who Abuse the Light of the Gospel; The Biblical Teaching on the Worship of the True God (bilingual video-lecture); The Keeping of the Fourth Commandment in the New Testament (bilingual video-lecture); The Lovely Italian Princess & the Erudite Spanish Reformer: Giulia Gonzaga & Juan de Valdés in the 16th century Reformation; History of the Reformation in Mexico.

Vindiciae Legis, or A Vindication of the Morall Law and the Covenants (PDF and HTML)

By Anthony Burgess (London, 1647).

PDF file: BURGESS, Anthony. A Vindication of the Moral Law and the Covenants, 1647 (PDF)

HTML edition: BURGESS, Anthony. A Vindication of the Morall Law and the Covenants, 1647 (HTML)

Bibliographic information (The Westminster Assembly Project): Anthony Burgess, «Vindiciae Legis» (Bibliographic information page)

Introductory note by Alejandro Moreno Morrison

The full subtitle of the original edition is: A Vindication of the Morall Law and the Covenants, From the Errours of Papists, Arminians, Socinians, and more especially, Antinomians. In XXX Lectures, preached at Laurence-Jury, London.  The facsimile edition of the link above is taken from the second edition, corrected and augmented (London: James Young, 1647), and published by Reformation Heritage Books (Grand Rapids, 2011).

Burgess was member of the Westminster Assembly and of the committee that drafted chapter XIX of the Westminster Confession «On the Law of God.»  On the crucial importance and unique significance of this book as a testimony of the true Reformed Christianity, and more particularly of the true Reformed Presbyterianism that is faithful to the Westminster Standards, Stephen J. Casselli writes the following in the third page of the “Introduction” to the facsimile edition shared above:

On January 25, 1645, [Anthony Burgess] was elected vicar of the Guildhall church of St. Lawrence Jewry, where his lectures on the law would eventually be delivered. The timing for the call and delivery of these lectures is significant. Burgess delivered these lectures in the midst of the Assembly’s discussion and debates regarding the law of God, and Vindiciae legis provides exegetical and theological rationale, consonant with the teaching of chapter XIX of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

In footnote 11, Casselli further elaborates:

The foreword preceding the title page of Vindiciae legis calling for the publication of Burgess’s lectures is dated June 11, 1646, and this is a significant clue to understanding its historical milieu. It is clear that the lectures were delivered some time in the months preceding June of 1646. This is important because we also know that on November 18, 1645, the writing of the section on the law for the Confession of Faith was referred to the third committee, of which Anthony Burgess was a member. A report on the law was then made to the plenary session by John Wincop on January 7, 9, 12, 13, 29, and February 2 and 9, 1646…

Casselli’s sources are Alex F. Mitchel & John Sturthers, eds., The Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1847; p. 178); and Benjamin B. Warfield, The Westminster Assembly and Its Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931; p. 112).

It is worth noting that the “Antinomian Errours” circulating in England around 1645-6 were connected to the moral scepticism and antinomianism that was developed in Lutheran circles in the 17th century.  In his book Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; pp. 25-6), Knud Haakonssen explains as follows the line of thought of such moral scepticism and antinomianism:

Nothing that a person can be or make of himself will justify him before God; only faith justifies, and that only by God’s grace. Our duty towards God is thus infinite, and we may view our temporal life as a network of unfulfillable duties, which natural law theory may put into systematic form and give such worldly justification as our limited understanding permits. On the other hand, if our duty is really infinite and unfulfillable, then it is hard to see it as a possible guide to action; it provides no criterion for what behaviour to choose. We therefore can live only by faith. This strongly antinomian line was adopted by a great many sects at the Reformation and later and must undoubtedly be regarded as a target no less important than moral scepticism for Protestant natural law theory.

Also in his Introduction to this facsimilar edition, Casselli explains that in Burgess’s lectures the:

…development of the doctrine of the law and the covenants was worked out by the careful exegesis of particular texts, including detailed attention to grammatical and lexical features of the text. [Also]…thoughtful dialogue with the catholic theology of the Western church, a sophisticated interaction with contemporary interpretive traditions, and eye to ecclesiastical concerns, and a sensitivity to the progress of revelation leading to its culmination in the person and work of Jesus Christ…

The Lovely Italian Princess & the Erudite Spanish Reformer: Giulia Gonzaga & Juan De Valdés in the 16th century Reformation

By Alejandro Moreno Morrison

[Nota Bene: The links to the footnotes do not work properly.  To read the footnotes, please scroll down to the bottom of the page.]

Upon personal invitation of the emperor Charles V, 22-year-old Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, Duchess of Trajetto, Dowager Countess of Fondi, and Dowager Duchess of Gaeta, moved to Naples in December 1535.[1]  Giulia, “illustrious by birth, was still more so by her mental and personal endowments.”[2]  “Admirable woman of… aristocratic and thorough beauty,” as shown in her portrait kept in the British Museum,[3] Giulia was wooed by Ippolito Di’Medici, and variously celebrated by poets, painters, scholars, and noblemen.  The fame of her beauty reached such international proportions that, in the summer of 1534, Barbarossa, admiral of the Turkish-Ottoman fleet, almost succeeded in kidnapping her for the harem of sultan Soliman II.[4]  But God had a wonderful plan for her life, having predestined her for salvation before the foundation of the world.

But how could she come to saving faith in Christ and in Him alone when her religion taught her to merit salvation by works and not to acknowledge it as coming by grace alone to be received through faith alone?  How could she believe a gospel she had never heard?  And who could possibly be the preacher suited to her peculiar circumstances?  Although the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone was being preached already all over Europe, on Giulia’s side of the Alps and of the social gap such message was perceived with the political taints of a German revolt against the unity of the empire[5] and Christendom, and further tainted by the 1527 sack of Rome in which some German Lutherans were involved.

Years before, Spanish nobleman Ferrando (or Hernando) De Valdés, Perpetual Regent of Cuenca, Spain,[6] had three children among whom two stand out in history: Alfonso (b. ca. 1501) and Juan (b. ca. 1509).[7]

Alfonso De Valdés studied Latin and Law under royal tutor Pedro Mártir De Anglería,[8] whose assistance “helped secure Alfonso a future place in [emperor] Charles’s service”[9] at the imperial court.  Alfonso was present at the coronation of Charles V[10] and not much later became his Latin Secretary,[11] and some years later his Chief Secretary.[12]  Alfonso was present at Luther’s trial at the Diet of Worms.[13]  But the German monk did not produce any favourable first impression on the Spanish courtier, who called Luther “audacious, shameless,” his books “poisonous,”[14] and his followers “prone to evil.”[15]  Yet, he agreed on the need for a reformation and was dissatisfied with the way in which Rome was handling the Luther affair.[16]  “Alfonso’s name is found subscribed to imperial letters of the years 1526 and 1527, addressed to Pope Clement VII and to the College of Cardinals, in which a General Council is most energetically demanded.”[17]  That was exactly what Luther had originally requested. Through his writings and imperial politics, Alfonso pursued a reformation programme along the lines proposed by Erasmus, of whom he was protector[18] and friend, and who held both Valdés brothers, Alfonso and Juan, in very high esteem.[19]

Juan spent his youth years in the Spanish royal court,[20] and later went on to study at Universidad Complutense[21] (most likely Humanities and Canon Law).[22]  He was well versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and mastered the Spanish (Castilian) language.[23]  In January 1529, Juan published Dialogue on Christian Doctrine, which ignited against himself the hostility of the Spanish Inquisition.  Providentially, his case was appointed to scholars of his alma mater who were sympathetic to him, while enjoying also the favourable intervention of other people in prominence (including the General Inquisitor), all of which finally secured his absolution.

Around the same time, Alfonso De Valdés also provoked the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition with his writings, but such was his political power and influence that in 1530 he got an ample charter of absolution for his whole family from Clement VII, the very same pope he had attacked in his writings.[24]

By 1531 Juan had found refuge from the Spanish Inquisition in Clement’s papal court with the honorary title of Chamberlain[25] and the honorary dignity of Imperial Secretary with some semi-official role as Imperial agent.[26]  At Clement’s court Juan enjoyed the confidence of Pietro Carnesecchi, the pope’s Secretary and later Protonotary of the Apostolic See –a man so influential that it was believed “that he… wielded the pontifical power.”[27]

Meanwhile, Alfonso was travelling with the Emperor through Germany and having meetings with Melanchthon at Augsburg.

The intercourse between the two [Alfonso and Melanchthon] was a very friendly one, and with the sovereign, Valdés successfully set off the conciliatory and reasonable tone of the Protestants, and smoothed the way for a public reading of [the Augsburg Confession] in the presence of the Emperor…  It was with pleasure that he saw the Emperor… constrained to yield great liberty to the evangelical movement.[28]

Alfonso died in October of 1532, and it was so reported to Henry VIII by his then ambassador in Vienna, Thomas Cranmer, who wrote to the English king about Alfonso de Valdés in very complimentary terms.[29]

By 1535, after the death of pope Clement VII, Juan De Valdés became imperial agent and moved to Naples, which would become his home place for the rest of his short life, and his missionary field.  Variously described by his contemporaries as “Gentleman of cape and sword,” “noble and wealthy knight,” “prudent and learned man,” of “courtly bearing”[30] and “patient spirit,” [31] “of handsome looks, very sweet manners and of smooth and attractive speech,”[32] Valdés enjoyed the friendship of “the most distinguished members of the aristocracy of Italy of their period.”[33]  He used to gather them at his country house on the Riviera di Chiaia[34] –“one of the most beautiful places on earth”.[35]

Here Valdés received on the Sunday a select number of his most intimate friends; and they passed the day together in this manner: after breakfasting and enjoying themselves amidst the glories of the surrounding scenery, they returned to the house, when he read some selected portion of Scripture, and commented upon it, or some ‘Divine consideration’ which had occupied his thoughts during the week—some subject on which he conceived that his mind had obtained a clearer illumination of heavenly truth.[36]

Juan’s circle included scholars, literati, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, noblemen, and “the most noble and discrete women of Naples,”[37] such as the poetess Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547), friend of Baldassare Castiglione (author of Il Cortegiano) and Michelangelo’s Platonic love, and the young noble Giulia Gonzaga Colonna.[38]  It would be Giulia toward whom Juan’s mind would be “most forcibly brought into exercise.  Her noble faculties, her pursuit of the highest virtue, and the loveliness of her mind and person alike engaged his regard.”[39]

Juan De Valdés was probably first recommended to Giulia as legal advisor on a litigation brought about by the death of her husband.[40]  However, as confidence ripened between the two during the Lent season of 1536, it became apparent that Giulia’s core needs were not legal but spiritual, and that her legal advisor’s chief gifts were in biblical exposition, theology, and pastoral care.  One day, Giulia and Juan attended one of the Lenten sermons by Bernardino Ochino in company with emperor Charles V, his court, and the whole of Neapolitan society.  The whole audience, including the Emperor and Giulia, was deeply moved, and for Valdés the experience was apparently “akin to… a religious conversion.” [41]

Although “Valdés was undoubtedly the superior intelligence, and was further advanced in ‘Paulinism’”[42] and the doctrine of justification by faith, Ochino’s sermon was somehow used by the Holy Spirit to transform that knowledge into passionate action, moving Juan to display the fullness of his theological abilities and devoting to it increasingly more of his interest and time.

As a result, Juan first wrote Alfabeto christiano to address Giulia’s spiritual thirst.  Furthermore, the gatherings with his influential and aristocratic friends became opportunities for biblical exposition, theological discussion and, most of all, for the preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.  Valdés promoted the reading of works by John Calvin, Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, and Ulrich Zwingli, among such people as Carnesecchi, Ochino, Benedetto, and Pietro Martire Vermigli.  It was through Juan de Valdés that Vermigli was first nurtured in the gospel to become later one of the chief theologians of the Reformation.[43]  Thus, Valdés had a direct influence upon the two most influential pulpits in Naples, the ones held by Vermigli and Ochino.  Valdés’s writings reached as far as the influential cardinal Gasparo Contarini who, in striving for a reformation of the western Church from within and from the top, would later recommend Vermigli to be appointed for reformation commissions on two occasions.[44]

Notwithstanding the above, the first and special object of the theological works of this “Dottore e Pastore of noble and illustrious persons”[45] was the spiritual growth of his dearest friend Giulia –“the one who drank deepest of his instructions.”[46]  It was for Giulia that Juan translated the Scriptures into Spanish and for whom he wrote his Bible commentaries also in Spanish.  It was to Giulia that Juan dedicated his translation and commentaries to the Epistles of St. Paul, his translation and Commentary to the Psalms, and his translation and Commentary to the Gospel According to Matthew.[47]  “Possibly no man ever lived that did more by word and by writings to teach another spiritual truth, than did Valdés for Julia.”[48]

Juan De Valdés died in 1541, right before the beginning of the Italian Inquisition’s persecution in Naples and six years before the Council of Trent’s Decretum iustificatione against the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  In spite of his Protestant views, Valdés did not separate formally from the Roman Church, as he was never forced to make that choice.  More than attacking Rome, he “confined himself to the inculcation of what he believed to be Divine truth.”[49]

From the peculiar vantage point of his time (before the Council of Trent) and of his influential position, the hope for a Reformation from within and from the top was not ungrounded.  Juan De Valdés’s life, influence, and reformist ministry among the aristocracy and high clergy in Italy stand indeed as an incontestable witness to the fact that every possibility for a reformation without separation was exhausted, and that the Vatican, having turned its back deliberately and explicitly against the biblical and apostolic faith, cannot possibly be the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Juan De Valdés’s ministry succeeded in overcoming socio-economic and socio-political hindrances that would have prevented many in the aristocracy south of the Alps to embrace the biblical doctrine of the gospel of grace.  Thousands of people who otherwise would have never heard the gospel of justification by faith alone came to saving faith in Christ, including the princess whom God had predestined for salvation and preserved from the hands of the Sultan, and who is now enjoying the presence of Christ, her Saviour, and life everlasting in God’s glory.

[Editorial note: The first version of this text was originally written for and published without footnotes in The Progress of St. Paul’s (the monthly newsletter of St. Paul’s Church (Presbyterian Church in America), Orlando, Florida, ca. Oct. 2000  This is a revised version (Oct. 28, 2017).]

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[1] Giulia Gonzaga, born in 1513, got married in 1526 to Vespaciano Colonna (born in 1485), Count of Fondi and Duke of Gaeta, who died on March 13, 1528.  See Philip McNair, An Anatomy of Apostasy (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 31; and http://www.visitaitri.it/nuova_pagina_1.htm.

[2] John T. Betts “Preface” to his edition of Juan De Valdés, Commentary upon the Gospel of St. Matthew (London: Trubner & Co., 1882), p. viii.

[3] Marcelino Menéndez-Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles: Erasmistas y protestantes. Sectas místicas.  Judaizantes y moriscos.  Artes mágicas (México: Porrúa, 1995, reprint of the 1882 ed.), p. 104.

[4] Cf. McNair, op. cit., p. 30.

[5] See Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., pp. 55 & 84.

[6] See ibid., p. 54.

[7] The year of birth of both these siblings is unclear.  The ambiguity is connected to the fact that two sources seem to suggest that Alfonso and Juan were twins.  The main source of the ambiguity and possible confusion is a letter from Erasmus to Juan (March 21, 1529), in which Erasmus refers to both as twins (gemellos), although it could have been an allusion to the likeness between the two siblings (see ibid., p. 84, and José C. Nieto, Juan de Valdés y los orígenes de la Reforma en España e Italia, 1st Spanish ed. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979, corrected and augmented from the 1st English ed., 1970), p. 176).  One of the reasons to doubt they were twins is the fact that Alfonso was already Secretary to emperor Charles V when Juan was still a student in Escalona, Spain.  Therefore, it is most likely that, as Nieto thinks (see ibid.), Juan was younger than Alfonso.  Consequently, the most likely explanation for the two dates given for the birth of Alfonso a Juan is that Alfonso was born ca. 1501, and Juan ca. 1509.

[8] Pedro Mártir de Anglería was an “Italian humanist brought to the Spanish royal court by Ferdinand and Isabel to provide such instruction” (Daniel A. Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance: The Life of Juan de Valdés (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 15).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 55.

[11] See Nieto, op. cit., p. 281.

[12] As reported by Thomas Cranmer in 1532, while Cranmer was Henry VIII’s ambassador to the imperial court (see Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 56).

[13] See ibid.

[14] See ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] See ibid.

[17] Edward Boehmer, Lives of the Twin Brothers Juán and Alfonso de Valdés (London: Trubner & Co., 1882), p. 16.

[18] See Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., pp. 58-9.

[19] John Stoughton, Footprints of Italian Reformers (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1881), p. 107.  Menéndez-Pelayo interprets a paragraph by Francisco de Enzinas (an acquaintance of both Valdés brothers) as implying that it was Alfonso who inculcated into Juan the “reformist ideas” (op. cit., p. 85).

[20] The Valdés family was very wealthy and politically powerful (see Crews, op. cit., p. 12).

[21] “Complutense” means “from Alcalá de Henares.”  It was in this university where the Poliglotha Complutense edition of the Bible had been prepared.

[22] Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 84.  This author reports that many are the authors who refer to Juan de Valdés as «jurisconsulto» (jurist).

[23] See ibid., pp. 84-85.  In fact, his best-known work (still in print and widely read and studied) is his Diálogo de la lengua (ca. 1533-36), considered one of the three foundational documents of the modern Spanish language.  Juan wrote this book in Naples for non-Spanish-speakers in the imperial court eager to learn to speak proper Spanish, since that was emperor Charles V’s favourite language.

[24] Boehmer, op. cit., p. 16.

[25] Betts, in his “Introduction” to Boehmer’s Lives… explains that the post was «…that of ‘Cameriere d’onore, di spada e cappa’, meaning a chamberlain of honour, a secular, a layman, a post of honour involving no regular duties . . . they do not present themselves at the palace except when they choose to do so, and that it is usual for the Popes to send the Cardinal’s hat by them to newly-appointed Cardinals” (op. cit., p. iv).

[26] See ibid., pp. 20-21.

[27] Betts in the “Introduction” to Boehmer, Lives…, op. cit., p. vi (citing Riguccio Galluzzi, Storia del Granducato di Toscana Firenze, 1822).

[28] Boehmer, op. cit., p. 16-17.  Menéndez-Pelayo reports, nevertheless, that Alfonso found some of the propositions of the confession to be “bitter and intolerable” (op. cit., p. 70).

[29] See ibid., p. 17, and Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit.

[30] See Stoughton, op. cit., p. 110; and Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 94.

[31] Stoughton, op. cit.

[32] Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 100.

[33] Betts, “Preface”, op. cit., p. viii.

[34] “On the Chiaja, not far from the rock-cut road from Naples to Pozzuoli, where tropical vegetation mingles with that of higher latitudes, and where Virgil’s tomb arrests the traveller’s attention… Juan de Valdés had a country house, not crowded into a long line of palaces and villas, but standing by itself, ‘set in verdure’, with an open view of the glorious bay, and refreshed at eventide by a cooling breeze” (Stoughton, op. cit., p. 109).

[35] Betts, “Preface,” op. cit., p. viii.

[36] “Life and Writings of Juan de Valdés”, by B. J. Wiffen, prefixed to the CX Considerations, tr. John T. Betts, p. 138.  Cited in Stoughton, op. cit., p. 109.

[37] Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 103.

[38] The following lines by Jacob Burckhardt provide a good picture of Valdes’s social circle in Italy:

It would be juster to wonder at the secure foundations of a society which, notwithstanding these tales, still observed the rules of order and decency, and which knew how to vary such pastimes with serious and solid discussion. The need of noble forms of social intercourse was felt to be stronger than all others. To convince ourselves of it, we are not obliged to take as our standard the idealized society which Castiglione depicts as discussing the loftiest sentiments and aims of human life at the court of Guidobaldo of Urbino, and Pietro Bembo at the castle of Asolo.  The society described by Bandello, with all the frivolities which may be laid to its charge, enables us to form the best notion of the easy and polished dignity, of the urbane kindliness, of the intellectual freedom, of the wit and the graceful dilettantism, which distinguished these circles. A significant proof of the value of such circles lies in the fact that the women who were the centers of them could become famous and illustrious without in any way compromising their reputation.  Among the patronesses of Bandello, for example, Isabella Gonzaga (born an Este) was talked of unfavorably not through any fault of her own, but on account of the too-free-lived young ladies who filled her court. Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, Ippolita Sforza married to a Bentivoglio, Bianca Rangona, Cecilia Gallerana, Camilla Scarampa, and others, were either altogether irreproachable, or their social fame threw into the shade whatever they may have done amiss. The most famous woman of Italy, Vittoria Colonna (b. 1490, d. 1547), the friend of Castiglioni and Michelangelo, enjoyed the reputation of a saint. It is hard to give such a picture of the unconstrained intercourse of these circles in the city, at the baths, or in the country, as will furnish literal proof of the superiority of Italy in this respect over the rest of Europe.

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Seattle: The World Wide School), Part V, Ch. IV, “Social Etiquette”).  On-line edition: http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheCivilizationoftheRenaissanceinItaly/chap36.html

[39] Stoughton, op. cit., p. 119.

[40] See McNair, op. cit., p. 31.

[41] Ibid., p. 35.

[42] Ibid., p. 36.

[43] Vermigli became professor of Divinities at the University of Oxford during the reign of the Reformed “Boy King,” Edward VI of England.

[44] See ibid.

[45] Nieto, op. cit., p. 244 (citing Edmondo Cione, “Epistola del primo Editore” to Juan de Valdés, Le cento e dieci divine considerazioni (Milano: Fratelli Bocca, Editori, 1944), p. 527).

[46] Stoughton, op. cit., p. 119.

[47] “Juan de Valdés has the merit of having translated for the first time into our language [Spanish] any part of the New Testament” (Menéndez-Pelayo, op. cit., p. 105).  Menéndez-Pelayo, an ultra-conservative Spanish Roman-Catholic, recognizes Valdés’s translation as “faithful and accurate” (ibid., p. 106).

[48] Betts, “Introduction,” op. cit., p. vii.

[49] Stoughton, op. cit.

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Alejandro Moreno Morrison is a Mexican lawyer and Reformed theologian.  He studied at Escuela Libre de Derecho (Mexico City), Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, Florida) and the University of Oxford.  At Reformed Theological Seminary he was teaching assistant of the Rev. Dr. Ronald H. Nash.  He was also Spanish resources consultant for the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pratt at Third Millennium Ministries.  Alejandro has ministered as intern, teacher, or visiting preacher or teacher at churches and missions of several denominations including Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana Conservadora de México, Iglesia Presbiteriana Ortodoxa Reformada, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, North America Synod.  With the latter he was in charge of a mission congregation during 2014.  He has also been guest lecturer in Systematic Theology, Ethics, Evangelism, and Apologetics at Seminario Teológico Reformado of Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, in Contemporary Political Systems at the Faculty of Law of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and in Corporate law at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (Global Startup Lab for Mexico).  Since 2010 he is adjunct lecturer in Jurisprudence at Escuela Libre de Derecho.