ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC
Llorente agrees with the earlier writers on the subject in considering
the Spanish Inquisition as an institution distinct from that which
had been established to deal with the Albigenses and their coevals in
heresy. It is distinct only in that it represents a further development
of the organization launched by Innocent III and perfected by Gregory
IX.
Before entering upon the consideration of this Modern Inquisition--as
it is called--it will perhaps be well to take a survey of the Spain of
the Catholic Sovereigns--Ferdinand and Isabella--in whose reign that
tribunal was set up in Castile.
* * * * *
For seven hundred years, with varying fortune and in varying degree,
the Saracen had lorded it in the Peninsula.
First had come Berber Tarik, in 711, to overthrow the Visigothic
Kingdom of Roderic, to spread the Moslem dominion as far as the
mountains in the north and east and west from sea to sea. When the
Berber tribe, the Syrians, and the Arabs had fallen to wrangling among
themselves, Abdurrahman the Omayyad crossed from Africa to found the
independent amirate, which in the tenth century became the Caliphate of
Cordova.
Meanwhile the Christians had been consolidating their forces in the
mountain fastnesses of the north to which they had been driven, and
under Alfonso I they founded the Kingdom of Galicia. Thence, gradually
but irresistibly, presenting a bold front to the Moorish conqueror,
they forced their way down into the plains of Leon and Castile, so
that by the following century they had driven the Saracens south of
the Tagus. Following up their advantage, they continued to press them,
intent upon driving them into the sea, and they might have succeeded
but for the coming of Yusuf ben Techufin, who checked the Christian
conquest, hurled them back across the Tagus, and, master of the country
to the south of it, founded there the Empire of the Almoravides.
After these came the Almohades--the followers of the Mahdi--and the
land rang for half a century with the clash of battle between Cross and
Crescent, Castile, Leon, Aragon, and the new-born Kingdom of Portugal
striving side by side to crush the common foe at Navas de Tolosa.
In 1236 Leon and Castile--now united into one kingdom--in alliance with
Aragon, wrested Cordova from the Moors; in 1248 Seville was conquered,
and in 1265 Diego of Aragon drove the Saracen from Murcia, and thereby
reduced the Moslem occupation to Granada and a line of Mediterranean
seaboard about Cadiz, in which they remained until Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castile, by virtue of their marriage, had united the
two crowns on the death (in 1474) of Henry IV, Isabella’s brother.
* * * * *
Ferdinand brought, with Aragon, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples; Isabella
brought, with Castile, Leon and the rest of the Spanish territory,
saving Granada and that portion of the coast still in Moorish hands.
And thus was founded, by the welding of these several principalities
into one single state, that mighty Kingdom of Spain which Columbus was
so soon to enrich by a new world.
But though founded by this marriage, this kingdom still required
consolidating and subjecting. Generations of misrule in Castile,
culminating in the lax reigns of John II and Henry IV, had permitted
the spread of a lawlessness so utter that its like was not to be found
in any other state at that time. Anarchy was paramount mistress of
the land, and Pulgar has left us a striking picture of the impossible
conditions that prevailed.
“In those days,” he writes, “justice suffered, and was not to be done
upon the malefactors who plundered and tyrannized in townships and
on the highways. None paid debts who did not want to do so; none was
restrained from committing any crime, and none dreamed of obedience or
subjection to a superior. What with present and past wars, people were
so accustomed to turbulence that he who did not do violence to others
was held to be a man of no account.
Citizens, peasants, and men of peace were not masters of their own
property, nor could they have recourse to any for redress of the
wrongs they suffered at the hands of governors of fortresses and other
thieves and robbers. Every man would gladly have engaged to give the
half of his property if at that price he might have purchased security
and peace for himself and his family. Often there was talk in towns
and villages of forming brotherhoods to remedy all these evils.
But a leader was wanting who should have at heart the justice and
tranquillity of the Kingdom.”[23]
The nobility, as may be conceived--and, indeed, as Pulgar clearly
indicates--were not only tainted with the general lawlessness, but
were themselves the chief offenders, each man a law unto himself, a
tyrannical, extortionate ruler of his vassals, lord of life and death,
unscrupulously abusing his power, little better than a highway robber,
caring nothing for the monarchy so long as the monarchy left him
undisturbed, ready to rebel against it should it attempt to curtail his
brigandage.
To crush these and other unruly elements in the state, to resolve into
order the chaos that had invaded every quarter of the kingdom, was the
task which at the outset the young Queen perceived awaiting her--a task
that must have daunted any mind less virile, any spirit less vigorous.
And there were other and more pressing matters demanding her instant
attention if she were to retain her seat upon this almost bankrupt
throne of Castile which she had inherited from her brother.
Alfonso V of Portugal was in arms, invading her frontiers to dispute,
on his niece Juana’s behalf, Isabella’s right.
Henry IV had left no legitimate issue, but his wife Juana of Portugal
had brought forth in wedlock a daughter of whom she pretended that he
was the father, whilst the King of Portugal, to serve interests of
his own, recognized the girl as his legitimate niece. Public opinion,
however, hesitated so little to proclaim her bastardy that it had named
her La Beltraneja, after Beltran de la Cueva who notoriously had been
her mother’s lover. And what Beltran de la Cueva, himself, thought
about it, may be inferred from the circumstance that in the ensuing
struggle he was found fighting for the honour of Castile under the
banner of Queen Isabella.
The war demanded all the attention and resources of the Catholic
Monarchs, and Isabella’s own share in these labours was conspicuous.
They resulted in the rout of the Portuguese supporters of the pretender
at Toro in 1476. By that victory Isabella was securely seated upon her
throne and became joint ruler with Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon.
She was twenty-five years of age at the time, a fair, shapely woman
of middle height, with a clear complexion, eyes between green and
blue, and a gracious, winsome countenance remarkable for its habitual
serenity. Such, indeed, was her self-control, Pulgar tells us, that not
only did she carefully conceal her anger when it was aroused, but even
in childbirth she could “dissemble her feelings, betraying no sign or
expression of the pain to which all women are subject.” He adds that
she was very ceremonious in dress and equipage, that she was deliberate
of gesture, quick-witted, and ready of tongue, and that in the midst
of the labour of government--and very arduous labour, as shall be
seen--she found time to learn Latin, so that she could understand all
that was said in that tongue.
“She was a zealous Catholic and very charitable, yet in her judgments
she inclined rather to rigour than to mercy. She listened to counsel,
but acted chiefly upon her own opinions. Of a rare fidelity to her
word, she never failed to fulfil that to which she had pledged herself,
save where compelled by stress of circumstance. She was reproached,
together with her husband, of being wanting in generosity, because,
seeing the royal patrimony diminished by the alienation of fiefs and
castles, she was always very careful of such concessions.
“‘Kings,’ she was wont to say, ‘should preserve with care their
dominions, because in alienating them they lose at once the money
necessary to make themselves beloved and the power to make themselves
feared.’”[24]
Such is the portrait that Pulgar has left us, and considering that
he is writing of a sovereign, it would be no more than reasonable to
suspect flattery and that curious, undiscriminating enthusiasm which
never fails to create panegyrists when it is a question of depicting
a prince, however inept, to his contemporaries. But if Pulgar has
erred in this instance, it has been on the side of moderation in his
portrayal of this gifted, high-spirited woman.
Her actions speak more eloquently of her character than can the pen of
any chronicler, and it is in the deeds of princes that we must seek
their true natures, not in what may have been written of them in their
own day. The deeds of Isabella’s life--with one dark exception that is
the subject of this history--more than bear out all that Pulgar and
others have set down in praise of her.
No sooner had she overthrown those who came from abroad to dispute her
right to the crown than she turned her attention to the subjugation of
those who disputed her authority at home. In this herculean labour she
had the assistance of Alonzo de Quintanilla, her chancellor, and Juan
Ortega, the King’s sacristan. These men proposed to organize at their
own risk one of those brotherhoods which Pulgar mentions as having been
so ardently desired by the country for its protection from those who
preyed upon it. This _hermandad_ was to act under royal sanction and
guidance, with the object of procuring peace and protection of property
in the kingdom. Isabella readily approved the proposal, and the
brotherhood was immediately founded, a tax to support it being levied
upon those in whose interest it was established, and very willingly
paid by them.
Splendidly organized, this association, half military, half civil, so
effectively discharged the functions for which it was created, that
twenty years later--in 1498--it was possible to abolish it, and to
replace it by a much simpler and less costly system of police which
then sufficed to preserve the order that had been restored.
Further to subject the turbulent and insubordinate nobility, Isabella
employed methods similar to those adopted in like case by her
neighbour, Louis XI of France. She bestowed the offices of state upon
men of merit without regard to birth, which hitherto had been accounted
the only qualification. The career of the law was thrown open to the
burgher classes, and every office under the crown was made accessible
to lawyers, who thus became the staunch friends of the sovereign.
If the nobles did not dare to revolt, at least they protested in the
strongest terms against these two innovations that so materially
affected and weakened their prestige. They represented in particular
that the institution of the _hermandad_ was the manifestation of a want
of confidence in the “faithful nobility,” and they implored that four
members of their order should be appointed by the Catholic Sovereigns
to form a council of supreme direction of the affairs of State, as
under the late King Henry IV.
To this the Catholic Sovereigns replied that the _hermandad_ was a
tutelary institution which was very welcome to the country, and which
it was their pleasure to maintain. As for the offices of State, it
was for the sovereigns to appoint such men as they considered best
qualified to hold them. The nobles, they added, were free to remain at
Court or to withdraw to their own domains, as they might see fit; but
as for the sovereigns, themselves, as long as it should please God to
preserve them in the high position in which He had deigned to place
them, it should be their care not to imitate the monarch who was cited
to them as an example, and not to become puppets in the hands of their
“faithful nobility.”
That answer gave the nobles pause. It led them to perceive that a
change had taken place, and that the lawless days of Henry IV were at
an end. To have made them realize this was something. But there was
more to be done before they would understand that they must submit to
the altered conditions, and Isabella pursued the policy she had adopted
with an unswerving directness, as the following story from Pulgar’s
Chronicle bears witness:
A quarrel had broken out in the Queen’s palace at Valladolid between
Don Fadrique Enriquez (son of the Admiral of Castile) and Don Ramiro
de Guzman. Knowledge of it reached the Queen, and she ordered both
disputants to hold themselves under arrest in their own quarters until
she should provide that judgment be given between them by the Courts.
Fadrique, however, signified his contempt of the royal mandate by
disobeying it and continuing at large. Learning this, Isabella gave the
more obedient Guzman his liberty, and the assurance of her word that he
should suffer no harm.
A few days later he was riding peacefully through the street, secure
in the Queen’s safe-conduct, when he was set upon by three masked
horsemen of the household of Fadrique and severely beaten. No sooner
did the Queen hear of this further affront to her authority than she
got to horse, and rode through torrential rain from Valladolid to the
Admiral’s castle at Simancas. In fact, in such haste did she set out
that she rode alone, without waiting for an escort. This, however,
followed presently, but did not come up with her save under the very
walls of the Admiral’s fortress.
She summoned the Admiral, and commanded him to deliver up his
rebellious son to her justice, and when Don Alonso Enriquez protested
that his son was not there, she bade her followers search the castle
from battlements to dungeons. The search, however, proved fruitless,
and Isabella returned empty-handed and indignant to Valladolid. Arrived
there, she took to her bed, and to those who came to seek news of her
health, she replied: “My body aches with the blows delivered yesterday
against my safe-conduct by Don Fadrique.”
The Admiral, trembling before the royal wrath, resolved to deliver up
his son and cast him upon the mercy of the Queen. So the Constable of
Castile--Fadrique’s uncle--undertook the office of intercessor. He went
with Don Fadrique to Valladolid, and imploring Isabella to consider
that the young man was but in his twentieth year and that he had sinned
through the rashness of youth, begged her to do upon him the justice
she might wish or the mercy that was due.
The Queen, however, was not to be moved to mercy for offences that set
her royal authority in contempt. She was inexorable. She refused to
see the offender, and submitted him to the indignity of being taken to
prison through the streets of the city by an alcalde. After a spell of
confinement there she banished him to Sicily, prohibiting his return to
Spain under pain of severest punishment.
It happened, however, that Don Ramiro de Guzman did not consider his
honour sufficiently avenged by his enemy’s exile. One night, when the
Court was at Medina del Campo, he ambushed himself in his turn with
some followers of his own, and attacked the Admiral, to return him
the blows received from his son. From this indignity the Admiral was
saved by his escort. But when Isabella heard of the affair, she treated
Guzman as a rebel, seized his castles in Leon and Castile, as she
would have seized his person, but that to escape her anger he fled to
Portugal for shelter.[25]
* * * * *
No less determined was her conduct in the matter of the
Grand-Mastership of Santiago.
There were in Spain three religio-military orders: the Knights of
Alcantara, the celibate Knights of Calatrava--who were the successors
of the Knights Templars--and the Knights of Santiago. This last order
had been founded for the purpose of affording protection to the
pilgrims who came into Spain to visit the shrine at Compostella of
St. James the Apostle, who is alleged to have been the first to bear
the message of Christianity into the Iberian Peninsula.[26] These
pilgrimages, chiefly from France, were a great source of revenue to
the country, and it became of importance to ensure their immunity from
the predatory hordes that infested the highways. Further, the Knights
of Santiago had found employment for their arms in the crusade waged
on Spanish soil against the Moors, in token whereof they wore the
Crusader’s cross in red upon their white cloaks. They acquired great
power and wealth, possessing castles and convents in every part of
Spain, so that the office of Grand Master of the Order was one of great
weight and importance--too great, in the opinion of Isabella, to be in
the hands of a subject.
This opinion she boldly manifested in 1476, when the death of Don
Rodrigo Manrique left the office vacant. She took horse, as was her
custom, and rode to Huete, where the Chapter of the Order was assembled
upon the business of the necessary election, and she frankly urged that
to an office so exalted it was not fitting that any but the King should
be elected.
The proposal was not received with satisfaction. Ferdinand was an
Aragonese, and despite the union of the two kingdoms which must be
completed when he should succeed to the throne of Aragon, he was
still looked upon as a foreigner by the Castilians. Under Isabella’s
insistence, however, a compromise was effected. The Chapter consented
to elect Ferdinand to the office of Grand-Master on condition that he
should nominate a gentleman of Castile to act as his deputy for the
discharge of the duties of the position. This was done, and Alonso
de Cardenas--a loyal servant of the Sovereigns--was chosen as the
royal deputy. Thus Isabella established it that the appointment of
Grand-Master of the Order of Santiago should be a royal prerogative.
* * * * *
Even more strikingly than in either of the instances cited does the
Queen’s resolute, spirited nature manifest itself in her manner of
dealing with a revolt that took place in Segovia at the commencement of
her reign.
During the war with Portugal the Catholic Sovereigns had entrusted
their eldest daughter, the Princess Isabella, to the care of Andrés de
Cabrera, the Seneschal of the Castle of Segovia, and his wife, Beatriz
de Bobadilla.
Cabrera, a man of stern and rigid equity, had occasion to depose his
lieutenant, Alonso Maldonado, from his office, conferring this upon his
own brother-in-law, Pedro de Bobadilla. Maldonado conspired to avenge
himself. He begged Bobadilla’s permission to remove some stones that
were in the castle, upon the pretext that he required them for his
own house, and he sent some men of his own to fetch them. These men,
who were secretly armed, having gained admission, stabbed the sentry
and seized the person of Bobadilla, whilst Maldonado, with other of
his people, took possession of the castle itself. The inmates of the
Alcazar, hearing the uproar, fled to the Homenaje Tower, taking with
them the Infanta, who was five years of age at the time. Fortified
in this, they defied Maldonado when he attacked it. Finding it
impregnable, the rebel ordered Bobadilla to be brought forward, and
threatened the besieged that unless they admitted him he would put the
prisoner to death.
To this threat Cabrera’s dignified reply was that Maldonado must do as
he pleased, but the gates would not be opened to him.
By this time a multitude of the townspeople had gathered there, alarmed
by the disturbance and armed for any emergency. To these Maldonado
cunningly represented that what he was about was being done in their
interests against the overbearing tyranny of the Governor, and he
invited them to join hands with him in the cause of liberty to complete
the work he had so excellently begun. The populace largely took sides
with him, so that Segovia was flung into a state of war. There was
constant fighting in the streets, and the gates were in the hands of
the rebels, with the exception of that of St. John, which was held for
Cabrera.
It is believed that it was Maria de Bobadilla herself who, stealing
undetected from the Alcazar, escaped from Segovia and bore to the
Queen the news of what was taking place, and the consequent peril of
the royal child.
Upon learning this, Isabella instantly repaired to Segovia. The leaders
of the rebellion had news of her approach, but dared not carry their
insubordination to the length of closing the gates against her. They
went so far, however, as to ride out to meet her and to attempt to deny
admittance to her followers; and her counsellors, seeing the humour of
the populace, urged her to be prudent and to accede to their wishes.
But her proud spirit flared up under that cautious advice.
“Learn,” she cried, “that I am Queen of Castile, that this city is
mine, and that no conditions are to be imposed upon me before I enter
it. I shall enter, then, and with me all those whom I may judge
necessary for my service.”
With that she ordered her escort forward, and entered the city by a
gate that was held by her partisans, and so won through to the Alcazar.
Thither flocked the infuriated mob, and thundered at the gates,
demanding admission.
The Queen, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Cardinal of Spain
and the Count of Benavente, who were with her, ordered the gates to be
thrown open and as many admitted as the place would hold. The populace
surged into the courtyard, clamouring for the Seneschal. To meet them
came the slight, fair young queen, alone and fearless, and when in
their astonishment they had fallen silent--
“People of Segovia,” she calmly addressed them, “what do you seek?”
Dominated by her serenity, awed by her majesty, their fury fell from
them. Humbly now they urged their grievance against Cabrera, accusing
him of oppression, and imploring of the Queen’s grace his demission.
Instantly she promised them that their request should be granted;
whereupon the revulsion was complete, and the mob that but a few
moments earlier had been yelling threats and execrations now raised
their voices loyally to acclaim her.
She commanded them to return to their homes and their labours, and to
leave the administration of justice in her hands, sending her their
ambassadors to prefer their complaint against Cabrera, which she would
investigate.
As she commanded so it was done, and when she had examined the
accusations against the Seneschal and satisfied herself that they were
groundless, she announced him free from guilt and reinstated him in his
office, the conquered people bowing submissively to her ruling.[27]
In 1477 Isabella moved into Andalusia, in which province, as elsewhere,
law and order had ceased to exist. She entered Seville with the
proclaimed intention of demanding an account of the guilty. But at the
very rumour of her approach and the business upon which she came, some
thousands of the inhabitants whose consciences were uneasy made haste
to depart the city.
Alarmed by this depopulation, the Sevillans implored the Queen to
sheathe the sword of justice, representing that after the bloody
affrays that for years had been afflicting the district there was
scarcely a family in which some member was not answerable to the law.
Isabella, gentle and merciful by nature--which renders her association
with the Inquisition the more deplorable--lent an ear to these
representations, and granted an amnesty for all crimes committed
since the death of Henry IV. But she was not so lenient with those
who had prostituted the justice which they administered in her name.
Informed of the judges who were making a trade and extortion of their
judgments, she punished them by deposition, and herself fixed the
scale of legal costs to be observed in future.
Finding a mass of impending law-suits which the misrule of the past
years had put upon the province, she directed her attention to clearing
up this Augean stable. Every Friday, attended by her Council, she sat
in the great hall of the Alcazar of Seville to hear the plaints of the
most humble of her subjects; and so earnestly and vigorously did she go
to work that in two months she had disposed of litigations that might
have dragged on for years.
* * * * *
Upon her accession she had found the royal treasury exhausted by the
inept administration of the last two reigns and the prodigal, reckless
grants that Henry IV and Juan II had made to the nobles. This condition
of things had seriously embarrassed the Catholic Sovereigns, and they
had been driven to various expedients to raise the requisite funds
for the war with Portugal. Now that the war was at an end, they found
themselves without the means necessary to maintain the royal state.
Isabella made a close investigation of the grants that had been made by
her brother and father, and she cancelled all those that were the fruit
of caprice and wantonness, restoring to the Crown the revenues that had
been recklessly alienated and the taxes that the country had hitherto
paid to none but the bandits who oppressed it.
Similarly she found the public credit entirely ruined. Under the late
king such had been the laxity, that in three years no less than 150
public mints had been authorized, and this permitted such abuses that
a point had been reached where it almost seemed that every Spaniard
minted his own money, or that, as Rosseeuw St. Hilaire puts it,
“coining was the country’s chief industry.”
[Illustration:
_Photo by Alinari._
POPE INNOCENT III. AND ST. DOMINIC.
From a Fresco in the Church of the Sacro Speco, Subiaco.]
She reduced the number of mints to five, and exercised the severest
control over their output, thereby liberating trade from the fear of
fraud that had been stifling it. An increased and steadily increasing
prosperity was the almost immediate result of this wise measure.
* * * * *
Having restored order in the country, she turned her attention to the
Court, applied herself to the purification of its morals, and set about
converting it from the disgusting licence that had prevailed in her
brother’s time.
Herself of a rigid chastity, she exacted the same purity of conduct in
all the women who approached her, and she submitted the noble damsels
brought up at her Court to the very strictest surveillance. Loving the
King very sincerely, she was notoriously inclined to jealousy: let
him but look too assiduously upon any lady of her train, and Isabella
found a way to remove her from the Court. She saw to it that the pages
who were in waiting upon her should be given a good education, that
thus they might avoid the idleness which unfailingly leads to waste
of character and to immorality. Finally, according to Bernaldez,[28]
she extended her moral reforms to the convents, which were no less in
need of them than the Court, and she corrected and punished the great
depravity that was permeating all conventual orders.[29]
There is no chronicler of her reign who does not dilate upon her great
piety. Bernaldez compares her to St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor
Constantine,[30] and describes her as very devoted to the Holy Faith
and very obedient to Holy Church. Bernaldez, of course, was writing
after the establishment of the Inquisition, of which he, in common with
other contemporary and subsequent chroniclers, very warmly approved;
and he may have been very largely influenced by consideration of the
support which she had unfortunately lent to its introduction into
Castile. But that her piety was extreme and sincere we infer from the
moment that we see her, after the battle of Toro, which definitely gave
her the crown, going barefoot to church to a service of thanksgiving.
Yet, however ardent her piety, it would not carry her the length of
recognizing in the Pope the temporal over-lord of Castile.
From the thirteenth century the power of the Church had been increasing
in Spain under the dogma of the spiritual sovereignty of Rome over all
the Catholic churches of the world. The clergy had amassed enormous
wealth with that facility so peculiarly their own when the occasion is
afforded them, and to this end they had abused the reckless, foolish
liberality of Isabella’s predecessors.
Lucius Marinæus informs us that the incomes of the four
archbishoprics--Toledo, Santiago, Seville, and Granada--amounted to
134,000 ducats,[31] whilst those of the twenty bishoprics came to some
250,000 ducats.
Surrounded as she was by priestly counsellors whom she respected,
she nevertheless manifested plainly her impatience of the clerical
usurpation of the rights of the Crown. The chief of these abuses
was no doubt that practised by the Pontiff himself, in conferring
upon foreigners the highest and richest benefices of the Church of
Spain, ignoring that it was the prerogative of the Crown to name the
bishops--always subject to papal confirmation. That Isabella, devout
and priest-surrounded as she was, should have dared to oppose the Holy
See and the terrible Pope Sixtus IV, as fearlessly as she had opposed
her predatory nobles, is perhaps the highest proof that history can
yield of her strength of character.
Her smouldering indignation flared out when the Pope, ignoring her
nomination of her chaplain, Alonzo de Burgos, to the vacant bishopric
of Cuenca, appointed his own nephew, Raffaele Riario, Cardinal of San
Sisto, to that vacant see.
Twice already had she sought the pontiff’s confirmation of nominees
of her own for other benefices--the Archbishopric of Saragoza and
the Bishopric of Tarragona--and on each occasion her nominee had
been set aside in favour of a creature of the Pope’s. But this third
contemptuous disregard of her prerogative was more than her patience
could endure. The Catholic Sovereigns refused to ratify the appointment
of Riario, and begged the Pope--submissively at first--to cancel it.
But the harsh, overbearing Sixtus returned an answer characteristic
of his arrogant nature. It was his, he announced, to distribute at
his pleasure all the benefices of Christendom; and he condescended to
explain that the power which it had pleased God to confer upon him on
earth could not be limited by any will but his own, and that it was
governed only by the interests of the Catholic Faith, of which he was
the sole arbiter.
But his stubbornness met a stubbornness as great. The Catholic
Sovereigns replied by withdrawing their ambassador from the Papal
Court, and issuing an injunction to all Spanish subjects to leave Rome.
Matters were becoming strained; an open rupture impended between Spain
and the Vatican. But the Sovereigns had notified the Pope that it was
their intention to summon a general council of the Church to settle
the matter in dispute, and no Pope of those days could contemplate with
equanimity a general council assembled for the purpose of sitting in
judgment upon his decrees. Whatever the result, since at these councils
the papal authority was questioned, it must follow that thereafter
that authority would be impaired. Therefore this was the stock threat
employed to bring a recalcitrant pontiff to a reasonable frame of mind.
It made Sixtus realize the strength of purpose that was opposed to him;
and, knowing as he did that this resoluteness backed an undeniable
right which he had violated, he perceived that he dared carry
insistence no further. So, despite his earlier assertion that the power
which he held from God could be limited by no will but his own and
governed by no consideration but that of the interests of the Faith, he
gave way completely.
The three royal nominees were duly confirmed in the vacant sees, and
Sixtus gave an undertaking that in future he would make no appointments
to the benefices of Spain save of such ecclesiastics as the Catholic
Sovereigns should nominate.[32]
It is to be added that in acting upon this signal victory which she
had won, Isabella used the faculty it gave her with such pious wisdom,
sincerity, and discretion that had the Pope but followed her example
in the appointment of dignitaries, it would have contributed to the
greater honour and glory of the Church. For she sternly opposed the
granting of benefices upon any grounds but those of absolute merit.
Having won her way in this, she was the better able to curb the
predatory habits of her clergy by edicts that limited their power to
proper clerical confines.
* * * * *
“It is amazing,” comments Pulgar, “that a woman should have been able,
single-handed and in so little time, by her judgment and perseverance
to accomplish what many men and great kings had been unable to do in
many years.”
“Properly to judge the notable improvements,” says Rosseeuw St.
Hilaire,[33] “which this reign effected in industry and agriculture,
it would be necessary to follow year by year the table of ordinances
issued by the Catholic Sovereigns. It would be seen that in many things
the genius of the founders of the Castilian Monarchy forestalled
the work of centuries. The happy results of these reforms were soon
experienced everywhere: the highways were purged of malefactors, new
roads of communication were opened up, rivers were bridged, consular
tribunals established in commercial centres, consulates created in
Flanders, England, France, and Italy; with maritime commerce expanding
daily and in a measure with the progress of industry, new buildings
sprang up in every city, and the population rapidly increased. All
announced a new era of regeneration in Castile. Contemporary writers,
struck by these prodigies, exalt with one voice this glorious reign
which opens new destinies to Spain.”
* * * * *
It is certain that in no other country in Europe at this date were
the laws so well maintained and the rights of the individual so well
protected. Justice was rigorously done, there were no longer arbitrary
imprisonments and sequestrations, whilst the unequal and capricious
taxation of the past was abolished for all time.
“Such,” says Marinæus, “was the strict justice meted out to each
in this happy reign that all men, nobles and knights, traders and
husbandmen, rich and poor, masters and servants, were treated alike and
received equally their share of it.”
* * * * *
Where so much was good, where so much stout service was done to the
cause of progress and civilization, it is the more deplorable to find
in this reign the one evil thing that is now to be considered--so evil
that it must be held to counterbalance and stultify all the excellences
of Isabella’s sway.
The particular praise which so far we have heard their contemporaries
bestowing upon the Catholic Sovereigns, is a praise which every man in
every age must echo.
But there was praise as loud upon another score, as universally uttered
by every contemporary and many subsequent historians, some no doubt
because they were sincere in the deadly bigotry that inspired it,
others because they did not dare to express themselves in different
terms.
“By her,” cries Bernaldez, as a climax to his summing-up of her many
virtues and wise provisions, “was burnt and destroyed the most evil and
abominable Mosaic, Talmudic, Jewish heresy.”
And Mariana, the historian, accounts the introduction of the
Inquisition into Spain the most glorious feature of the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella. He is setting it above all the moral splendours
of that day when he exclaims:
“Still better and happier fortune for Spain was the establishment in
Castile at about this time of a new and holy tribunal of severe and
grave judges for the purpose of inquiring into and punishing heretical
pravity and apostasy....”[34]
It would be unjust to suppose that there is a man to be found to-day in
the Church of Rome, of which the Spanish Inquisition was a deplorable
and integral part, who can turn with us in other than regret to
consider this black shadow that lies across one of the brightest pages
of history.