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TORQUEMADA
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THE GATES OF DOOM
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_HISTORIES_
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LONDON: STANLEY PAUL & CO
[Illustration:
_Photo by Lacoste._
FREY TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA.
From a Painting attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
[_Frontispiece._]
TORQUEMADA
AND
THE SPANISH INQUISITION
A HISTORY
BY RAFAEL SABATINI
_Author of “The Life of Cesare Borgia,” “The Strolling
Saint,” etc._
‘El fuego está encendido; quemará fasta que falle cabo al seco
de la leña’
ANDRÉS BERNALDEZ, _Historia de los Reyes Católicos, cap._ XIV.
_With Sixteen Illustrations in Half-tone, including a Map_
LONDON
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PREFACE
The history of Frey Tómas de Torquemada is the history of the
establishment of the Modern Inquisition. It is not so much the history
of a man as of an abstract genius presiding over a gigantic and cruel
engine of its own perfecting. Of this engine we may examine for
ourselves to-day the details of the complex machinery. Through the
records that survive we may observe its cold, smooth action, and trace
in this the awful intelligence of its architect. But of that architect
himself we are permitted to catch no more than an occasional and
fleeting glimpse. It is only in the rarest and briefest moments that he
stands clearly before us, revealed as a man of flesh and blood.
We see him, now fervidly urging a reluctant queen to do her duty by her
God and unsheathe the sword of persecution, now harshly threatening
his sovereigns with the wrath of Heaven when they are in danger of
relenting in the wielding of that same sword. But in the main he must
be studied, not in his actions, but in his enactments--the emanations
of his relentless spirit. In these he is to be seen devoutly compassing
evil in the perfervid quest of good.
Untouched by worldly ambitions, he seems at once superhuman and less
than human. Dauntless amid execrations, unmoved by plaudits, sublimely
disdainful of temporal weal, in nothing is he so admirable as in
the unfaltering self-abnegation with which he devotes himself to the
service of his God, in nothing so terrible and tragically deplorable as
in the actual service which he renders.
“His history,” says Prescott, “may be thought to prove that of all
human infirmities there is none productive of more extensive mischief
to society than fanaticism.”
To this day--four centuries after his passing--Spain still bears the
imprint of his pitiless work, and none may deny the truth of Rosseuw
St. Hilaire’s indictment that, after Philip II, Torquemada was the man
who did most harm to the land that gave him birth.
* * * * *
The materials for this history have been gathered from the sources
cited in the appended bibliography, to all of which the author
acknowledges his profound indebtedness. In particular, however, are his
thanks due--as must be the thanks of all men who engage in studies of
the Spanish Inquisition--to the voluminous, succinct, and enormously
comprehensive works of Juan Antonio Llorente, a historian of unimpugned
honesty and authority, who wrote under circumstances peculiarly
advantageous and with qualifications peculiarly full.
* * * * *
Juan Antonio Llorente was born at Logroño in 1756, and he was ordained
priest in 1779, after a university course of Roman and Canon law which
enabled him to obtain a place among the lawyers of the Supreme Council
of Castile--_i.e._ the Council of the Inquisition. Having graduated
as a Doctor of Canon Law, he discharged the duties of Vicar-General
to the Bishop of Calahorra, and later on became the Commissary of the
Holy Office in Logroño--for which it was necessary that he should prove
that he was of “clean blood,” undefiled by the taint of Jew or Moor or
heretic.
In 1789 he was appointed Secretary-General to the Holy Office, an
appointment which took him to Madrid, where he was well received by the
King, who gave him a canonry of Calahorra.
A profound student of sociological questions, with leanings towards
rationalism, he provoked a certain degree of mistrust, and when the
Liberal party fell from power and dragged with it many of those who had
held offices of consequence, the young priest found himself not only
deposed, but forced to meet certain minor charges, which resulted in
his being sent into retreat in a convent for a month as a penance.
Thereafter he concerned himself with educational matters until the
coming of Bonaparte’s eagles into Spain. When that invasion took
place, he hailed the French as the saviours of his country, and as a
consequence found himself a member of the Assembly of Notables convoked
by Murat to reform the Spanish Government. But most important of all,
from our point of view, is the fact that when the Inquisition was
abolished, in 1809, he accepted the charge of going through its vast
archives, and he spent two years and employed a number of amanuenses in
copying or making extracts of all that he considered of account.
He held various offices of importance under the French Government, so
that when this was finally expelled from Spain, he, too, was forced to
go. He sought refuge in Paris, and there he wrote his famous “Historia
Critica de la Inquisicion de España,” the crystallization of his vast
researches.
It was a very daring thing to have done, and, thanks to the royalist
and clerical Government, he was not suffered to remain long
unpunished. He was inhibited from hearing confession or celebrating
Mass--practically unfrocked--and forbidden to teach the Castilian
language in private schools. He hit back by publishing “The Political
Portrait of the Popes,” which earned him orders to leave France
immediately. He set out in December of 1822 to return to Spain, and
died a few days after reaching Madrid, killed by the rigours of the
journey at his advanced age.
Although his “Critical History” displays at times a certain vehemence,
in the main it is concerned with the sober transcription of the musty
records he was privileged to explore.
* * * * *
The Spanish Inquisition has been the subject of much unrestrained and
exaggerated writing, expressing points of view that are diametrically
opposed. From such authors as Garcia Rodrigo, who laud its work of
purification, misrepresent its scope, and deplore (in our own times)
the extinction of that terrible tribunal, it is a far cry indeed
to such writers as Dr. Rule, who dip their pens in the gall of an
intolerance as virulent as that which they attack.
The author has sought here to hold a course that is unencumbered by
religious partisanship, treating purely as a phase of history the
institution for which Torquemada was so largely responsible. He has not
written in the Catholic interest, or the Protestant interest, or the
Jewish interest. He holds the view that on the score of intolerance it
is not for Christians to cast a stone at Jews, nor Jews at Christians,
nor yet Christians of one sect at Christians of another. Each will
find in his own history more than enough to answer for at the bar of
Humanity. And when achievement is measured by opportunity, each will
discover that he is entitled to fling at the others no reproaches which
the others are not entitled to fling at him.
If the Spanish Inquisition is here shown as a ruthless engine of
destruction whose wheels drip the blood of mangled generations, yet it
is very far from being implied that religious persecution is an offence
peculiar to the Church of Rome.
“She persecuted to the full extent of the power of her clergy, and that
power was very great. The persecution of which every Protestant church
was guilty was measured by the same rule, but clerical influence in
Protestant countries was comparatively weak.”
Thus Lecky, whom we quote lest any should be tempted to use anything
in these pages as a weapon of unchristian Christian partisanship.
Let any such remember that against Torquemada, who was unfortunately
well served by opportunity, may be set the bloody-minded John Knox,
who, fortunately for humanity, was not; let him ponder the slaughter
of Presbyterians, Puritans, and Roman Catholics under Elizabeth; let
him call to mind the persecutions of the Anabaptists under Edward VI,
and the Anabaptists’ own clamour for the blood of all who were not
re-baptized.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY PERSECUTIONS 17
II. THE INQUISITION CANONICALLY ESTABLISHED 29
III. THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC 37
IV. ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC 51
V. THE JEWS IN SPAIN 71
VI. THE NEW-CHRISTIANS 89
VII. THE PRIOR OF HOLY CROSS 104
VIII. THE HOLY OFFICE IN SEVILLE 114
IX. THE SUPREME COUNCIL 130
X. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE FIRST “INSTRUCTIONS”
OF TORQUEMADA 139
XI. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE MODE OF PROCEDURE 168
XII. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE AUDIENCE OF TORMENT 184
XIII. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE SECULAR ARM 194
XIV. PEDRO ARBUÉS DE EPILA 213
XV. TORQUEMADA’S FURTHER “INSTRUCTIONS” 231
XVI. THE INQUISITION IN TOLEDO 239
XVII. AUTOS DE FÉ 247
XVIII. TORQUEMADA AND THE JEWS 256
XIX. THE LEGEND OF THE SANTO NIÑO 271
XX. THE ARREST OF YUCÉ FRANCO 282
XXI. THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO 294
XXII. THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO (_continued_) 317
XXIII. THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO (_concluded_) 331
XXIV. EPILOGUE TO THE AFFAIR OF THE SANTO NIÑO 346
XXV. THE EDICT OF BANISHMENT 356
XXVI. THE EXODUS FROM SPAIN 367
XXVII. THE LAST “INSTRUCTIONS” OF TORQUEMADA 377
BIBLIOGRAPHY 395
INDEX 397
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FREY TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA _Frontispiece_
From a Painting attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
FACING PAGE
ST. PETER THE MARTYR PREACHING 32
From the Painting by Berruguete.
ST. DOMINIC 48
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery, attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
POPE INNOCENT III. AND ST. DOMINIC 64
From a Fresco in the Church of the Sacro Speco, Subiaco.
ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC 80
From a Painting in the Prado Gallery, attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
SEVILLE 96
From Colmenar’s “Délices d’Espagne.”
FERDINAND OF ARAGON AND THE INFANTE DON JUAN 128
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST PRINTED EDITION OF THE “INSTRUCTIONS”
OF TORQUEMADA 144
TOLEDO 176
From Colmenar’s “Délices d’Espagne.”
PROCESSION TO AUTO DE FÉ 208
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
THE AUTO DE FÉ 240
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
BANNER OF THE INQUISITION 272
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
SANBENITO OF PENITENT ADMITTED TO RECONCILIATION 304
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
SANBENITO OF PENITENT RELAPSED 336
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
SANBENITO OF IMPENITENT 368
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 384
From Colmenar’s “Délices d’Espagne.”
TORQUEMADA
CHAPTER I
EARLY PERSECUTIONS
In an endeavour to trace the Inquisition to its source it is not
necessary to go as far back into antiquity as went Paramo; nor yet
is it possible to agree with him that God Himself was the first
inquisitor, that the first “Act of Faith” was executed upon Adam and
Eve, and that their expulsion from Eden is a proper precedent for the
confiscation of the property of heretics.[1]
Nevertheless, it is necessary to go very far back indeed; for it is in
the very dawn of Christianity that the beginnings of this organization
are to be discovered.
There is no more lamentable lesson to be culled from history than that
contained in her inability to furnish a single instance of a religion
accepted with unquestioning sincerity and fervour which did not, out of
those very qualities, beget intolerance. It would seem that only when a
faith has been diluted by certain general elements of doubt, that only
when a certain degree of indifference has crept into the observance
of a prevailing cult, does it become possible for the members of that
cult to bear themselves complacently towards the members of another.
Until this comes to pass, intolerance is the very breath of religion,
and--when the power is present--this intolerance never fails to express
itself in persecution.
Deplorable as this is in all religions, in none is it so utterly
anomalous as in Christianity, which is established upon tenets of
charity, patience, and forbearance, and which has for cardinal guidance
its Founder’s sublime admonition--“Love one another!”
From the earliest days of its history, persecution has unfailingly
signalized the spread of Christianity, until to the thoughtful observer
Christianity must afford the grimmest, the saddest--indeed, the
most tragic--of all the paradoxes that go to make up the history of
civilized man.
Its benign gospel of love has been thundered forth in malign hatred;
its divine lesson of patience and forbearance has been taught in
murderous impatience and bloodthirsty intolerance; its mild tenets of
mercy and compassion have been ferociously expounded with fire and
sword and rack; its precepts of humility have been inculcated with a
pride and arrogance as harsh as any that the world has known.
It is impossible to deny that at almost any time in the history of
Christianity the enlightened pagan of the second century would have
been justified of his stinging gibe--“Behold how these Christians love
one another!”
It may even be said of the earliest Christians that it was largely
through their own intolerance of the opinions and beliefs of others
that they brought upon themselves the persecutions to which through
three centuries they were intermittently subjected. Certain it is that
they were the first to disturb the toleration which in polytheistic
Rome was accorded to all religions. They might have pursued their cult
unmolested so long as they accorded the same liberty to others. But by
the vehemence with which they denounced false all creeds but their own,
they offended the zealous worshippers of other gods, and so disturbed
the peace of the community; by denying obedience to the state in
which they dwelt, by refusing to bear arms for the Empire on the plea
of “Nolo militare; militia mea est ad Dominum!” they provoked the
resentment of the law. When driven, by the beginnings of persecution,
to assemble and celebrate their rites in secret, this very secrecy
became the cause of further and sharper proceedings against them. Their
mysteriousness evoked suspicion, and surmise sprang up to explain it.
Very soon there was levelled against them the charge from which hardly
any cult that celebrates in secret has been exempt. It was put abroad
that they practised abominations, and that they engaged in the ritual
murder of infants. Public opinion, ever credulous where evil is the
subject, was still further inflamed against them, and fresh and greater
disorders were the result. Thus they came to be denounced for atheism,
insubordination, and subversion of public order.
The severity dealt out to them by a state hitherto indifferent--through
the agnosticism prevalent in the ruling classes--to the religious
opinions of its citizens, was dictated by the desire to suppress an
element that had become socially perturbative, rather than by any
vindictiveness or intolerance towards this new cult out of Syria.
Under Claudius we see the Nazarenes expelled from Rome as disturbers
of the public peace; under Nero and Domitian we see them, denounced as
_hostes publici_, suffering their first great persecution. But that
persecution on purely religious grounds was repugnant to the Roman is
shown by the conduct of Nerva, who forbade delations and oppressions on
the score of belief, and recalled the Christians who had been banished.
His successor, the just and wise Trajan, provoked perhaps by the fierce
insurrection of the Jews which occurred in his reign, moved against the
Nazarenes at first, but later on afforded them complete toleration.
Similarly were they unmolested by the accomplished Adrian, who, indeed,
so far approved of their creed as to have notions of including Christ
in the Roman Pantheon; and they were left in peace by his successor
Antoninus, notwithstanding that the last was so attached to the faith
of his country and to the service of the gods as to have earned for
himself the surname of Pius.
With the accession of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, who
was rendered hostile to the new doctrine not only by his own stoical
convictions, but also because politically he viewed the Christians with
disfavour, came the next great persecution; and persecution was their
portion thereafter for some sixty years, under four reigns, until the
accession of Alexander Severus in the third decade of the third century
of the Christian era.
Alexander’s mother, Julia Mannea, is believed to have been instructed
in the new doctrine by Origen, the Alexandrian, although her conversion
to Christianity and her ideas upon it do not appear to be greatly
in advance of those of Adrian, for she is said to have included an
image of Christ in the group of beneficent deities set up in her
_lararium_.[2]
For twenty years the Christians now knew peace and enjoyed the fullest
liberty. Upon that followed a period of severe oppression, initiated
by Decius, continued by Valerian and Aurelian, and reaching something
of a climax under Diocletian, in the dawn of the fourth century, when
the Christians endured the cruellest and most ferocious of all these
persecutions. But the end of their sufferings was at hand, and with
the accession of Constantine in 312 a new era began for Christianity.
Constantine, upheld by the Christians as their saviour, in admitting
the inevitable predominance which the new religion had obtained in
rather less than three hundred years, was compelled to recognize the
rights of its votaries not only to existence but to authority.
Legends surround the history of this emperor. The most popular relates
how, when he was marching against Maxentius, his rival for the throne,
desponding in the consciousness of his own inferior force, there
appeared at sunset a fiery cross in the heavens with the inscription
ΕΝ ΤΟΓΤΩ ΝΙΚΑ--IN THIS SIGN YOU CONQUER. And it is claimed that as a
consequence of this portent, whose injunction he obeyed, he sought
instruction in Christianity, was baptized and made public avowal of
that faith. Others maintain that he was reared in Christianity by
his mother, St. Helena--she who made an expedition to the Holy Land
to recover the true cross, and who is said to have built the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; whilst others still assert that
Constantine did not receive baptism until at the point of death, and
that throughout his life, whilst undoubtedly favouring Christians, he
continued in the pagan religion in which he had been educated by his
father.
The truth probably lies midway. During the early years of his reign
Constantine not only pursued a middle course, according religious
liberty to all sects, but, himself, whilst leaning strongly towards
Christianity, retained his imperial dignity of High-priest of the
polytheistic Roman cult, and the title “Pontifex Maximus,” which
later--together with so much else of pagan origin--was appropriated
by the Christians and bestowed upon their chief bishop. But in 313-14
he refused to celebrate the _ludi seculares_, and in 330 he issued an
edict forbidding temple-worship, whilst the Christian Council of Nicæa,
in 325, was held undoubtedly under his auspices.
From the very moment that the new religion found itself recognized
and invested not only with civil rights but actually with power, from
the very moment that the Christian could rear his head and go openly
and unafraid abroad, from that very moment do we find him engaging in
persecutions against the votaries of other cults--against pagan, Jew,
and heretic. For although Christianity was but in the beginning of the
fourth century of its existence, not only had it spread irresistibly
and mightily in spite of the repressive measures against it, but it was
already beginning to know dismemberment and divisions in its own body.
Indeed, it has been computed that the number of schisms in the fourth
century amounted to no less than ninety.
Of these the most famous is that of Arius, a priest of Alexandria,
who denied that Christ was God Incarnate, accounting Him no more than
divinely inspired, the first and the highest of the sons of men.
Although already denounced by the Synod that met at Alexandria in 321,
so great had been the spread of this doctrine that the Œcumenical
Council of Nicæa was convoked especially to deal with it. It was then
condemned as heretical, and the Articles of Faith were defined and set
down in the Nicene Creed, which is recited to this day.
Other famous heresies were the Manichæan, the Gnostic, the Adamite,
the Severist, and the Donatist; and to these were soon to be added,
amongst others, the Pelagian and the Priscilliantist.
Perhaps the Manichæans’ chief claim to celebrity lies in the fact that
the great St. Augustine of Tagaste, when he abandoned the disorders of
his youth, entered Christianity through this sect, which professed a
form of it vitiated by Sun-worship and Buddhism.
The other heresies--with the exception of the Pelagian--were, in
the main, equally fantastic. The Gnostic heresy, with its many
subdivisions, was made up of mysticism and magic, and founded upon
Zoroastrian notions of dualism, of the two powers of good and evil,
light and darkness. To the power of evil it attributed all creation
save man, whose soul was accounted of divine substance. The Adamites
claimed to be in the state of original innocency of Adam before the
fall; they demanded purity in their followers, rejected marriage, which
they urged could never have come into existence but for sin, and they
expelled from their Church all sinners against their tenets, even as
Adam and Eve had been expelled from Eden. The Severists denied the
resurrection of the flesh, would not accept the acts of the apostles,
and carried purity to fantastic lengths. The Soldiers of Florinus
denied the Last Judgment, and held it as an undeniable truth that the
resurrection of the flesh lay entirely in reproduction.
The Pelagians were the followers of Pelagius, a British monk who
settled in Rome towards the year 400, and his heresy at least was
founded upon rational grounds. He denied the doctrine of original sin,
maintained that every human being was born in a state of innocency,
and that his perseverance in virtue depended upon himself. He found
numerous followers, and for twenty years the conflict raged between
Pelagians and the Church, until Pope Zosimus declared against them and
banished Pelagius from Rome.
From Constantine onwards Christianity steadily maintains her
ascendancy, and her earliest assertion of her power is to bare the
sword of persecution, oblivious of the lofty protests against it which
she, herself, had uttered, the broad and noble advocacy of tolerance
which she had urged in the days of her own affliction. We find Optatus
urging the massacre of the Donatists--who claimed that theirs was the
true Church--and Constantine threatening with the stake any Jew who
should affront a Christian and any Christian who should become a Jew.
We find him demolishing the churches of the Arians and Donatists,
banishing their priests and forbidding under pain of death the
propagation of their doctrines.
The power of Christianity suffered one slight check thereafter, under
the tolerant rule of Julian the Apostate, who reopened the pagan
temples and restored the cult of the old gods; but it rose again to be
finally and firmly established under Theodosius in 380.
Now we see the pagan temples not only closed, but razed to the ground,
the images broken and swept away, their worship, and even private
sacrifice, forbidden under pain of death. From Libanius we may
gather something of the desolation which this spread among the pagan
peasant-folk. Residing at a distance from the great centres where
doctrines were being expounded, they found themselves bereft of the
old gods and without knowledge of the new. Their plight is a far more
pathetic one than that of the Arians, Manichæans, Donatists, and all
other heretics against whom there was a similar enactment.
It is now, at this early date, that for the first time we come across
the title “Inquisitor of the Faith,” in the first law[3] promulgated to
render death the penalty of heresy. It is now that we find the great
Augustine of Tagaste--the mightiest genius that the Church has brought
forth--denouncing religious liberty with the question, “Quid est enim
pejor, mors animæ quam libertas erroris?”[4] and strenuously urging
the death of heretics on the ground that it is a merciful measure,
since it must result in the saving of others from the damnation
consequent upon their being led into error. Similarly he applauded
those decrees of death against any one pursuing the polytheism that but
a few generations earlier had been the official religion of the Roman
Empire.
It was Augustine--of whom it has been truly said that “no man since
the days of the Apostles has infused into the Church a larger measure
of his spirit”--in his enormous fervour, and with the overwhelming
arguments inspired by his stupendous intellect, who laid down the
principles that governed persecution, and were cited in justification
of it for nearly 1,500 years after his day. “He was,” says Lecky, “the
most staunch and enthusiastic defender of all those doctrines that grow
out of the habits of mind that lead to persecution.”[5]
So far, however much persecution may have been inspired by the Church,
its actual execution had rested entirely and solely with the civil
authorities; and this aloofness, indeed, is urged upon the clergy by
St. Augustine. But already before the close of the fourth century we
find ecclesiastics themselves directly engaged in causing the death of
heretics.
Priscillian, a Spanish theologian, was led by St. Paul’s “Know ye
not that ye are the temple of God?” to seek to render himself by
purity a worthy dwelling. He preached from that text a doctrine of
stern asceticism, and forbade the marriage of the clergy. This at the
time was optional,[6] and by proclaiming it to be Christ’s law he
laid himself open to a charge of heresy. He was accused of magic and
licentiousness, excommunicated in 380 and burnt alive, together with
several of his companions, by order of two Christian bishops. He has
been described as the first martyr burnt by a Spanish Inquisition.[7]
It must be added that the deed excited the profoundest indignation on
the part of the clergy against those bishops who had been responsible
for it, and St. Martin of Tours hotly denounced the act. But this
indignation was not provoked by the fact that men had suffered
death for heresy, but by the circumstance that ecclesiastics had
procured the execution. For it was part of the pure teaching of the
early Church that under no circumstances--not as judge, soldier, or
executioner--should a Christian render himself the instrument of the
death of a fellow-creature; and it was partly through their rigid
obedience to this precept that the Christians had first drawn attention
to themselves and aroused the resentment of the Roman government, as
we have seen. Now, whilst at no time after the Church’s accession to
power was this teaching observed with any degree of strictness, yet
there were limits to the extent to which it might be neglected, and
that limit, it was considered, had been exceeded by those prelates
responsible for the death of the Priscilliantists.
The point, apparently trivial at present, has been insisted upon here,
in view of the important and curious part which it was destined to play
in the procedure of the Inquisition.
The Church had now come to identify herself with the State. She had
strengthened her organizations; she had permeated the State with her
influences, until it may almost be said that the State had lost its
capacity for independent existence, and had become her instrument.
The civil laws were based upon her spiritual laws; the standard of
morality was founded upon her doctrines; the development of the
arts--of painting, sculpture, literature, and music--became such as was
best adapted for her service, and, cramped thereby into confines far
too narrow, was partly arrested for a time; sciences and crafts were
stimulated only by her needs and curbed by her principles; the very
recreation of the people was governed by her spirit.
And yet, whilst influencing the State in its every ramification so
profoundly that State and Church appeared welded into one disintegrable
whole, she kept herself independent, unfettered, and autonomous. So
that when that great Empire of the West upon which she had seemed
to lean was laid in ruins by the invading barbarians, she continued
upright, unshaken by that tremendous cataclysm. She remained to conquer
the barbarian far more subtly and completely than he had conquered. Her
conquest lay in bringing him to look upon her as the natural inheritor
of fallen Rome. Soon she entered upon that splendid heritage, claiming
for her own the world-supremacy that Rome had boasted, and assuming
dominion over the new nations that were building upon the ruins of the
shattered empire.