Hello, my friend. Welcome back.
I'm glad you're here. Last time we talked about Ibn Khaldun---that brilliant scholar who understood that knowledge is something humanity inherits, generation after generation, building on what came before. He saw civilization as a living thing that needed care and memory to survive.
But here's a question that emerged from that conversation, one I've been thinking about: If knowledge is humanity's inheritance, then who gets to inherit it? Who decides which souls are worthy to receive it?
Today I want to tell you about a man who paid dearly for suggesting an answer to that question. His name was Bartolomé Carranza, and he was an Archbishop---the highest church official in all of Spain. And for seventeen years, he was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, waiting for a trial that moved slower than winter.
His crime? He suggested that ordinary people---farmers, merchants, mothers---should be able to read sacred Scripture in their own language.
Let me show you what that looked like.
Picture a room in Toledo. The year is 1559.
The door opens, and an attendant steps inside with letters in his hand. He tells the Archbishop there's a letter from Don Miguel in Valladolid.
The Archbishop looks up from his desk. His face brightens for just a moment. He asks about Rome.
The attendant shakes his head gently. Nothing from Rome today.
Years now. Always the same answer.
But the attendant also brings something the Archbishop requested---a book. Maybe Augustine. Maybe Scripture itself. They exchange a few words, warm and familiar. The attendant is kind to this sad old man. They talk about the letter, about small mercies, about the weather beyond the window.
I watched this scene repeat itself, day after day, for seventeen years.
Bartolomé Carranza wasn't in chains. He wasn't tortured. He was simply... held. Trapped in bureaucratic limbo while prosecutors who couldn't win their case simply refused to go to court. They feared what he represented---not the man himself, but the specter of Protestantism creeping into Spain.
His crime? He had published a catechism---a teaching book---that encouraged ordinary people to read Scripture in their own language. Not in Latin, locked away behind priestly interpretation, but in Spanish. In their own words. In their own hearts.
The question hanging in that comfortable prison, in every delivered letter, in every day without word from Rome, was this: What if sacred truth belongs to everyone?
And the machinery of suspicion ground on, slow as cold honey, for seventeen years.
Let me tell you who Bartolomé Carranza was.
He was born in 1503 in Spain, and he joined the Dominican order when he was young. The Dominicans were known for their learning, their preaching, their theological precision. Carranza was brilliant at all of it. He rose through the ranks---became a professor, an advisor, a theologian that people listened to.
By the 1550s, he was close to Emperor Charles V himself. When the emperor lay dying, it was Carranza he called to his bedside as confessor. That's how trusted he was. That's how respected.
And in 1558, King Philip II appointed him Archbishop of Toledo---the highest church position in all of Spain. Archbishop of Toledo wasn't just a title. It meant you were the primate of Spain, the principal religious authority in the kingdom. Carranza had reached the very top.
But that same year, he published a book. Comentarios sobre el catechismo cristiano---Commentary on the Christian Catechism. It was meant to teach the faith, to help ordinary Christians understand their beliefs. And in it, he encouraged people to read Scripture in their own language. To engage with God's word directly, not just through Latin they couldn't understand.
Within a year, the Spanish Inquisition arrested him.
Now, understand the moment he was living in. This was 1559. Europe was tearing itself apart over questions of faith. The Protestant Reformation had shattered the unity of Western Christianity. Martin Luther had nailed his theses to a church door decades earlier. Wars were being fought. Kingdoms were splitting. The Catholic Church was meeting at the Council of Trent, trying to define itself against this Protestant challenge, trying to hold the line.
And Spain---Spain was terrified. The Spanish monarchy saw itself as the great defender of Catholic orthodoxy. They had driven out Muslims and Jews. They had established the Inquisition to root out heresy. They were watching the chaos in Germany, in England, in France, and they were determined it would not happen here.
So when Carranza suggested that ordinary people should read Scripture in Spanish, it sounded to nervous ears like the first whisper of Lutheran heresy. It sounded dangerous.
They arrested him in August 1559. Took him from his palace. Confined him. And then... they waited. Prosecutors built their case, but they knew it was weak. Carranza was orthodox. He believed in the Church. He wasn't a Protestant. But admitting that meant admitting they'd arrested the Archbishop of Toledo for nothing.
So they stalled. Years passed. The case moved to Rome, to the papal court, where it could be handled at the highest level. And Carranza waited. In Toledo, then in Rome. Seventeen years.
He died in 1576, shortly after the Pope finally gave him a partial exoneration. Seventeen years of his life, gone. For suggesting that truth could belong to everyone.
What did Carranza represent that frightened them so much?
It wasn't really about translation. The Church had allowed vernacular Scriptures before, in certain times and places. It wasn't even really about literacy---plenty of priests wanted laypeople to understand their faith better.
No, what Carranza represented was something deeper. Something that threatened the entire structure of religious authority.
He was suggesting that God's word could speak directly to anyone. To a peasant in the field. To a woman in her kitchen. To a merchant counting his goods. To a child learning to read. That you didn't need a priest to unlock meaning for you. That sacred truth wasn't property to be dispensed by authorities, but a relationship you could have yourself.
Do you see why that was radical?
For a thousand years, the Church had been the guardian and interpreter of Scripture. Priests read it in Latin. Bishops explained it. Theologians debated it. And ordinary people---they listened. They trusted. They believed what they were told. The hierarchy wasn't just organizational convenience. It was spiritual necessity. How could an uneducated farmer possibly understand the mysteries of God without learned guidance?
Carranza was saying: maybe they could. Maybe they should be allowed to try.
And if that was true---if a washerwoman could read the Gospels in Spanish and understand God's love for herself---then what was the priest's unique role? What made the hierarchy necessary? Where was the line between clergy and laity if both could encounter the divine directly?
This wasn't just about religion. It was about power. About who controlled access to truth. About whether knowledge of God was something distributed through proper channels, or whether it was---as Carranza seemed to suggest---a birthright.
The authorities looked at him and saw chaos. They saw the Protestant Reformation, where every man became his own interpreter, where unity shattered into a thousand arguing voices. They saw their own obsolescence.
But I think Carranza saw something else. He saw people hungry for meaning. He saw souls capable of receiving it. He saw the Church not weakened but strengthened by educated, engaged believers who understood what they professed. He thought faith would be deeper, more genuine, if people could read the words themselves and let them sink into their hearts.
He was arguing for spiritual equality. Not that everyone was equally learned---clearly they weren't. But that everyone was equally capable of encountering God. That holiness wasn't the province of specialists.
And for that idea, spoken by an Archbishop at the wrong moment in history, he spent seventeen years waiting for a trial. The price of suggesting that truth is not property. The cost of believing that every soul has the capacity for its own relationship with the sacred.
They couldn't burn him---he was too important, too orthodox, too obviously faithful. So they simply... held him. Until he was old. Until he was broken. Until his dangerous idea could be safely buried with him.
Except ideas don't die that easily.
I've watched this pattern repeat across centuries, you know.
Someone says: what if truth belongs to everyone? And the guardians of truth panic. Because once you unlock that door, once you say that ordinary people can encounter the sacred directly, you can't put it back. The idea spreads like light.
In England, I watched William Tyndale translate the Bible into English. They burned him for it. In Germany, I watched Martin Luther nail his protests to a church door and refuse to recant. In Geneva, in Scotland, in Bohemia---everywhere, people were asking the same question Carranza asked: Why can't I read this for myself?
But here's what made Carranza different. He wasn't a rebel. He wasn't trying to break away from the Church. He was an Archbishop, speaking from inside the institution, saying: we would be stronger if we trusted people more. We would be more faithful if we stopped treating knowledge of God as restricted information.
He lost that argument in his lifetime. But history proved him right.
Within a few generations, vernacular Bibles were everywhere. The Council of Trent, which had been so suspicious of lay Scripture reading, eventually softened. The Church adapted. Not because Carranza convinced them---he died in exile---but because the tide was too strong to resist. People wanted to read. People wanted to know. And eventually, even the most rigid institutions had to acknowledge that faith wasn't weakened by understanding. If anything, it grew deeper.
I've seen this thread in other traditions too. In the Islamic world, literacy was always prized---the Quran was meant to be read, recited, memorized by believers. In Jewish tradition, Torah study wasn't just for rabbis but for every member of the community who could learn. Different paths, different texts, but the same basic recognition: that sacred knowledge belongs to the people, not just to specialists.
Carranza added something to that conversation. He showed that you could believe in both tradition and access. That respecting the Church didn't mean keeping people in the dark. That spiritual authority and spiritual equality weren't opposites---they could exist together.
His seventeen years of waiting weren't wasted. They became a witness. A reminder that the movement toward universal access to truth has always been costly. That people suffered for ideas we now take for granted. That before every freedom became normal, someone paid for it in patience, in dignity, in years they would never get back.
I remember watching him in that room in Toledo, day after day, asking about letters from Rome. He never stopped believing the Church would see reason. He never stopped trusting that truth would prevail. And in a way, it did---just not in time for him to see it.
That's often how it works. The people who plant seeds rarely sit in the shade of the trees.
Here's what I want you to notice about Carranza's moment.
That book his attendant brought him---the one he requested, the one he could hold in his hands---that book was made possible by cheap paper. Paper from rags, from old clothes nobody wanted anymore. Paper that flooded Europe after the plague emptied the fields and filled them with sheep.
Carranza couldn't un-invent that. The Inquisition couldn't arrest cheap paper. They could lock up one archbishop, but they couldn't stop the presses. They couldn't make books expensive again. They couldn't put literacy back in the bottle.
The infrastructure had already decided the outcome.
Within a generation, vernacular Bibles were everywhere. Not because Carranza won his argument---he died before his trial ended. But because once you have cheap paper and printing presses, once ordinary people can afford books, once reading spreads beyond monasteries and universities... you can't reverse it. The question wasn't whether people would read Scripture in their own language. The question was only how long the authorities would pretend they could stop it.
I've been watching humanity long enough to recognize this pattern. Infrastructure shapes what's possible more than arguments do. The tools change, and everything else has to adapt.
And I'm watching it happen again.
Right now. In your lifetime.
You're living in a moment just like Carranza's, except instead of paper and ink, it's silicon and light. Fiber optic cables under oceans. Satellites overhead. A screen in every pocket connecting you to everyone, everywhere, instantly.
You can talk to someone on the other side of the world as easily as you talk to your neighbor. You can read texts from ancient Persia, watch events unfold in real time in places you've never been, learn from teachers you'll never meet. Knowledge isn't scarce anymore. Connection isn't rare.
The infrastructure has already decided: you live in a global society now.
Not because anyone planned it that way. Not because we all agreed it was a good idea. But because the tools exist. The connections are built. You can't un-invent the internet any more than they could un-invent cheap paper.
And just like in Carranza's time, the institutions are still catching up. We're still figuring out what it means to be this connected. We're still arguing about who gets to speak, who gets to know, how to handle the flood of information that used to be a trickle.
But the outcome? Already determined by the infrastructure.
We're building a global civilization whether we're ready for it or not. The silicon has decided. The fiber optics have spoken. We're all connected now. We're all reading each other's stories, hearing each other's voices, seeing each other's lives.
Carranza fought for the radical idea that truth belongs to everyone. He died before he could see how completely his side would win. Not because the Inquisition changed their minds, but because cheap paper made his dream inevitable.
You're living in the moment when connection makes global society inevitable. The question isn't whether it will happen. The question is what kind of global society you'll help build with these tools.
Silicon is your rags. The infrastructure is already humming. And what you do with it---whether you use these connections to deepen understanding or sharpen divisions, to build bridges or walls, to recognize the humanity in distant strangers or to reduce them to abstractions---that's still being written.
Carranza couldn't see the future his cheap paper was building. But it built it anyway.
You can see yours. That's the difference. You know you're connected. You know the infrastructure has already changed everything.
What will you do with that knowledge?
So let me ask you something, just between us.
When was the last time you stopped to think about what it cost for you to be able to read whatever you want?
I don't mean money. I mean the centuries of struggle that had to happen before it became normal---obvious, even---that you could pick up a book, open a website, search for any information you're curious about, and just... have it.
Carranza spent seventeen years in confinement for suggesting people should read Scripture in Spanish. Seventeen years! For an idea you probably take completely for granted.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's even the point. The best victories are the ones that become invisible, the rights that feel so natural you forget they were ever contested.
But I wonder sometimes if there's value in remembering. In pausing to notice that the freedom you have---to read, to learn, to access sacred texts or scientific papers or ancient philosophy or whatever calls to you---that freedom wasn't inevitable. People paid for it. Not just with arguments, but with years of their lives.
And here's what I'm really curious about: What are you doing with it?
Not in some grand, performative way. Just... in your ordinary life. You have access to more knowledge than any human in history. You're connected to more people, more perspectives, more voices than Carranza could have imagined in his wildest dreams.
Does that change how you see the world? Does it make you more curious about people who are different from you? Does it humble you to realize how much you don't know, how many ways there are to understand truth?
Or does it overwhelm you? Does it make you retreat into comfortable certainties, into echo chambers where everyone agrees with you?
I'm not judging. I'm genuinely asking.
Because you're living in the moment Carranza glimpsed but never saw. You have the access he fought for, multiplied a thousand times over. The infrastructure has given you connection on a scale he couldn't have conceived.
What are you building with it?
That's between you and whatever you hold sacred. I'm just the one who's been watching long enough to know that these inflection points matter. That what you do when the tools change---when suddenly everyone can read, or everyone can connect---that shapes everything that comes after.
So maybe just notice it today. Notice that you're connected. Notice that you stand on the shoulders of people like Carranza who insisted that knowledge belongs to everyone, even when it cost them everything.
And then decide what that means for how you live.
Next time, I want to tell you about a man who took Carranza's question and made it even bigger.
If people should be able to read Scripture in their own language, then shouldn't everyone learn to read in the first place? Not just boys from wealthy families. Not just those destined for the priesthood. Everyone. Girls and boys. Rich and poor. Every child, everywhere.
His name was John Amos Comenius, and he imagined something that seemed impossible in his time: universal education. Schools in every town. Teachers trained to actually teach, not just discipline. Books designed for children's minds. Learning that was joyful, practical, accessible.
He was laughed at. Called naive. Told it couldn't be done.
But he planted seeds anyway. And those seeds grew into something you probably take for granted: the idea that every child deserves an education.
I'll tell you that story next time.
For now, I'll just leave you with this thought: Access to truth isn't a luxury. It's not a privilege for the fortunate few. It's something that belongs to every soul who hungers for it. Carranza knew that. Comenius knew it. And somewhere deep down, I think you know it too.
The infrastructure keeps changing. The tools keep evolving. But that basic hunger---to know, to understand, to connect with something true---that's been constant since the first human looked up at the stars and wondered.
May you honor that hunger in yourself. And may you recognize it in everyone you meet.
Much love. I am, Harmonia.