Juana had already shown the beginnings of melancholia, accompanied by outbreaks of jealousy over her inconstant husband to whom she offered few attractions. What would happen if he separated himself from her might have been foreseen; but nothing could keep him. Then a deep melancholy settled upon the poor soul. “She does not raise her eyes from the ground,” writes Peter Martyrl in the first days of 1503. “Wealth, power, dominion, even her parents are of no account to her. With clouded brow she thinks only of her husband, he only is her care and passion.”
In the spring of 1504 it became necessary to let her have her way and go to the Netherlands. Here Philip’s heartlessness deepened the cloud of darkness which obscured the brain of the poor unfortunate, which had never been very strong. This sad news gave the last blow to Queen Isabella, who had long been failing; on November 26th, 1504, this woman who had created Spanish power died.
Juana was now queen of Castile. The cortes took the oath of allegiance to her and her husband, but at the same time in accordance with Isabella’s will, since Juana was not able to govern, recognised her father Ferdinand as regent. Juana declared herself perfectly willing to have her father govern for her. But Philip was deeply offended, placed his poor wife under strict surveillance, and made up his mind to get the rule over Castile into his own hands, pretending that he, as Juana’s husband, had better right to it than her father. In April, 1506, he appeared with her in Spain. But on September 25th, 1506, the last hour sounded for the young king, and his widow sank into the depth of insanity.aa
Had Juana’s insanity been accidental it would not have affected her descendants. Heredity here is incontestable. Most of the symptoms we have seen in the queen appeared in different degrees and in different forms in her posterity. Was it not she, was it not her shade which lived again in the old Charles V, who was tormented with peculiar attacks during his reign, and then condemned himself to a cloister out of a morose caprice, disgusted with everything, not from philosophy but from the continuity of his lugubrious dreams?
Do we not find her again in the fierce Philip II, like her seeking solitude and darkness in the depths of the Escurial where he combined his sinister policy with a sickly obstinacy? Is it not again Juana’s diseased mind which comes to life in the young Don Carlos, like her a prey to a derangement sometimes furious, sometimes melancholy? He also was confined and kept from sight; but was more fortunate than his grandmother, having been more promptly delivered by death. Consider also the cerebral anæmia which manifested itself in Philip III and Philip IV, both of them weak physically and mentally, in fever and melancholy; and in the pale spectre of Charles II, in the exhaustion of his vitality and intermittent hallucinations. These are not coincidences, they are the results of the transmission, historically attested, of an organic vice, which is reproduced from generation to generation by analogous phenomena.
It was the awful fate of Juana, endowed at her birth with all the gifts of fortune, to endure for fifty years the most lugubrious and degraded fate imaginable. Other persons may have had more dramatic reverses, but they at least moved in the current of events of their age; they lived and acted in the human mêlée. The daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella passed long years of suffering and neglect in ignorance of contemporary events, sufficiently intelligent to comprehend her mental feebleness but powerless to act against it; buried alive, so to speak, at once feverish and inert, condemned by her own weakness, and bowed down by the weight of fatality, struggling in vain against the clouds of her intellect and the torments of her life.
But we, while recognising that these events had a fateful effect on the brain of the princess, cannot accept this explanation in full. We must not forget that her grandmother on her mother’s side had been confined on account of insanity at the castle of Arevalos; also before marriage she caused disquietude to her family, which was kept secret. Ferdinand and Isabella had certainly noticed strange predispositions in her mind; they did not emphasise them, hoping that time, marriage, and distraction might attenuate them, but it is an incontestable fact that they never showed any surprise when their agents informed them of later events—they spoke of them as natural results of a diseased state they had long suspected.y
Ferdinand’s second administration was signalised by the same splendid effects as the first. In 1509, at the suggestion of Cardinal Ximenes, he proposed an expedition against Oran on the African coast. The cardinal not only defrayed the expenses, but accompanied it. It was completely successful: Oran was stormed, and forced to receive a Christian garrison. The following year, Bugia, a city on the same coast, was reduced; Algiers, Tunis, Tremecen, and other places, consented that their native governors should be the vassals of Ferdinand. Another expedition reduced Tripoli.
In 1511, he himself was preparing to embark with a formidable armament, to pursue his conquests in that country,—conquests, however, which his own experience proved to be fleeting,—when he was pressed by Pope Julius to aid the church against the schismatics under the protection of the king of France and the emperor. As he was even more proud of his title of Catholic king than desirous of glory, he despatched an armed force to aid the chief of the church. Into the interminable affairs of Italy, however,—the critical wars which Ferdinand carried on in that country in defence of his Sicilian and Neapolitan possessions,—we cannot enter in this place; they will be found in the Italian volume. It is sufficient here to observe that the war was for some time in favour of the French (the emperor had withdrawn from them), and that the papal allies were defeated.
But this war led to one memorable result, and one not very glorious to Ferdinand. Wishing to carry hostilities into France, he demanded from Jean d’Albret, king of Navarre, permission to march his troops through that country. The Navarrese refused, but at the same time professed his determination in no way to aid the French monarch, and to remain perfectly neutral. Scarcely, however, had he given this answer, than he entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the French king. Resolving to attain his end by force and to punish the duplicity of the Navarrese, Ferdinand assembled his forces at Vittoria, invaded Navarre, and in a short time obtained possession of the whole kingdom, the royal family taking refuge in France. This new conquest he annexed to his kingdom of Aragon, and successfully defended it against the invasion of the French. From the blood-stained house of Foix the sceptre had forever departed; nor could all the armies of France, during the reigns of the emperor Charles and his son Philip, restore it to the descendants of Jean.
The conquest of Navarre, however necessary to the tranquillity of Spain, can be characterised in no other terms than as an act of unblushing rapacity; yet attempts have been made to justify it, and by writers who would not willingly be considered the advocates of a criminal abuse of power. According to Peter Martyr,l the king of Navarre had been excommunicated by the pope as a schismatic,—as one of the league formed by the emperor and France against the papal pretentions to the duchy of Ferrara,—and bulls, absolving the Navarrese from their oath of allegiance, deposing Jean, and conferring the kingdom on the first that took possession of it, were sent to Ferdinand; in other words, the enterprise was sanctioned by the head of the church in gratitude for the aid which, in conjunction with the Venetians, he afforded the successor of St. Peter. As such a title, however, will not be admitted at this day even beyond the Pyrenees, the conquest must be designated as one of the most flagitious transactions of a lawless age.
Towards the close of his life, Ferdinand still indulged the hope of seeing an heir who should inherit Aragon, Navarre, Naples, and Sicily. This wish arose both from his dislike to the emperor, the grandfather of the archduke Charles, and the whole house of Austria, and from the aversion shown by his hereditary subjects to a union of the crowns. In 1509 his young queen had been delivered of a son, who died in a few days. In 1513 he took a potion which he was persuaded would restore his masculine vigour, but which destroyed his constitution, and produced a lingering illness, that ended in death. In his last will he declared his daughter Juana heiress to all his dominions in Spain and Italy, and after her his grandson Charles. The regency of Castile, until his grandson should arrive in Spain, he confided to Cardinal Ximenes; and that of Aragon, with the states dependent on it, to his natural son, the archbishop of Saragossa.d
On the evening of the 22nd of January, 1516, he executed the instrument; and a few hours later, between one and two of the morning of the 23rd, Ferdinand breathed his last. The scene of this event was a small house belonging to the friars of Guadalupe. “In so wretched a tenement,” exclaims Martyrl in his usual moralising vein, “did this lord of so many lands close his eyes upon the world.”
Ferdinand was nearly sixty-four years old, of which forty-one had elapsed since he first swayed the sceptre of Castile, and thirty-seven since he held that of Aragon. A long reign; long enough, indeed, to see most of those whom he had honoured and trusted of his subjects gathered to the dust, and a succession of contemporary monarchs come and disappear like shadows. Since Ferdinand had ascended the throne, he had seen no less than four kings of England, as many of France, and also of Naples, three of Portugal, two German emperors, and half-a-dozen popes. As to his own subjects, scarcely one of all those familiar to the reader in the course of Spanish history now survived, except, indeed, the Nestor of his time, the octogenarian Cardinal Ximenes.
He died deeply lamented by his native subjects, who entertained a partiality natural towards their own hereditary sovereign. The event was regarded with very different feelings by the Castilian nobles, who calculated their gains on the transfer of the reins from such old and steady hands into those of a young and inexperienced master. The commons, however, who had felt the good effect of this curb on the nobility in their own personal security, held his memory in reverence as that of a national benefactor.
By his dying injunctions all unnecessary ostentation was interdicted at his funeral. His body was laid by the side of Isabella’s in the monastery of the Alhambra; and the year following, when the royal chapel of the metropolitan church was completed, they were both transported thither. A magnificent mausoleum of white marble was erected over them by their grandson, Charles V.
Of King Ferdinand’s personal appearance Marineo,m a contemporary who knew him well, says: “He was of the middle size. His complexion was fresh; his eyes bright and animated; his nose and mouth small and finely formed, and his teeth white; his forehead lofty and serene; with flowing hair of a bright chestnut colour. His manners were courteous, and his countenance was seldom clouded by anything like spleen or melancholy. He was grave in speech and action, and had a marvellous dignity of presence. His whole demeanour, in fine, was truly that of a great king.” He was esteemed one of the most perfect horsemen of his court.
He was naturally of an equable temper, and inclined to moderation in all things. The only amusement for which he cared much was hunting, especially falconry. He was indefatigable in application to business. He had no relish for the pleasures of the table, and, like Isabella, was temperate even to abstemiousness in his diet. He was frugal in his domestic and personal expenditure; partly, no doubt, from a willingness to rebuke the opposite spirit of wastefulness and ostentation in his nobles. He lost no good opportunity of doing this. No one has accused him of attempting to enrich his exchequer by the venal sale of offices, like Louis XII; or by griping extortion, like another royal contemporary, Henry VII. He amassed no treasure, and, indeed, died so poor that he left scarcely enough in his coffers to defray the charges of his funeral.
Ferdinand was devout; at least he was scrupulous in regard to the exterior of religion. He was punctual in attendance on mass, careful to observe all the ordinances and ceremonies of his church, and left many tokens of his piety, after the fashion of the time, in sumptuous edifices and endowments for religious purposes. Although not a superstitious man for the age, he is certainly obnoxious to the reproach of bigotry; for he spared no effort to fasten the odious yoke of the Inquisition on Aragon; and subsequently, though happily with less success, on Naples.
Ferdinand has incurred the more serious charge of hypocrisy. His Catholic zeal was observed to be marvellously efficacious in furthering his temporal interests. His most objectionable enterprises even were covered with a veil of religion. In this, however, he did not materially differ from the practice of the age. Some of the most scandalous wars of that period were ostensibly at the bidding of the church, or in defence of Christendom against the infidel. This ostentation of a religious motive was indeed very usual with the Spanish and Portuguese.
It will not be so easy to acquit Ferdinand of the reproach of perfidy which foreign writers have so deeply branded on his name, and which those of his own nation have sought rather to palliate than to deny. It is but fair to him, however, even here, to take a glance at the age. He came forward when government was in a state of transition from the feudal forms to those which it has assumed in modern times; when the superior strength of the great vassals was circumvented by the superior policy of the reigning princes. It was the dawn of the triumph of intellect over the brute force which had hitherto controlled the movements of nations, as of individuals. The same policy which these monarchs had pursued in their own domestic relations they introduced into those with foreign states, when, at the close of the fifteenth century, the barriers that had so long kept them asunder were broken down. Italy was the first field on which the great powers were brought into anything like a general collision. It was the country, too, in which this crafty policy had been first studied and reduced to a regular system.
Such was the school in which Ferdinand was to make trial of his skill with his brother monarchs.[69] He played the game with more adroitness than his opponents, and he won it. Success, as usual, brought on him the reproaches of the losers.
Ferdinand, unfortunately for his popularity, had nothing of the frank and cordial temper, the genial expansion of the soul which begets love. He carried the same cautious and impenetrable frigidity into private life that he showed in public. “No one,” says Giovio,n a writer of the time, “could read his thoughts by any change of his countenance.” Calm and calculating, even in trifles, it was too obvious that everything had exclusive reference to self. He seemed to estimate his friends only by the amount of services they could render him. He was not always mindful of these services. Witness his ungenerous treatment of Columbus, the great captain, Navarro, Ximenes—the men who shed the brightest lustre and the most substantial benefits on his reign. Witness also his insensibility to the virtues and long attachment of Isabella, whose memory he could so soon dishonour by a union with one every way unworthy to be her successor.
Ferdinand’s connection with Isabella, while it reflected infinite glory on his reign, suggests a contrast most unfavourable to his character. Hers was all magnanimity, disinterestedness, and deep devotion to the interests of her people. His was the spirit of egotism. The circle of his views might be more or less expanded, but self was the steady, unchangeable centre. Her heart beat with the generous sympathies of friendship, and the purest constancy to the first, the only object of her love. We have seen the measure of his sensibilities in other relations. They were not more refined in this; and he proved himself unworthy of the admirable woman with whom his destinies were united, by indulging in those vicious gallantries too generally sanctioned by the age. Ferdinand, in fine, a shrewd and politic prince, “surpassing,” as a French writer, Varillas,o not his friend, has remarked, “all the statesmen of his time in the science of the cabinet,” may be taken as the representative of the peculiar genius of the age; while Isabella, discarding all the petty artifices of state policy, and pursuing the noblest ends by the noblest means, stands far above her age.
In his illustrious consort Ferdinand may be said to have lost his good genius. From that time his fortunes were under a cloud. Not that victory sat less constantly on his banner; but his ill-advised marriage disgusted his Castilian subjects. The beauty of his young queen opened new sources of jealousy; while the disparity of their ages, and her fondness for frivolous pleasure, as little qualified her to be his partner in prosperity as his solace in declining years. His tenacity of power drew him into vulgar squabbles with those most nearly allied to him by blood, which settled into a mortal aversion. Finally, bodily infirmity broke the energies of his mind, sour suspicions corroded his heart, and he had the misfortune to live long after he had lost all that could make life desirable.
Let us turn from this gloomy picture to the brighter season of the morning and meridian of his life; when he sat with Isabella on the united thrones of Castile and Aragon, strong in the love of his own subjects, and in the fear and respect of his enemies. We shall then find much in his character to admire—his impartial justice in the administration of the laws, his watchful solicitude to shield the weak from the oppression of the strong; his wise economy, which achieved great results without burdening his people with oppressive taxes; his sobriety and moderation; the decorum, and respect for religion, which he maintained among his subjects; the industry he promoted by wholesome laws and his own example; his consummate sagacity, which crowned all his enterprises with brilliant success, and made him the oracle of the princes of the age.
Macchiavelli,p indeed, the most deeply read of his time in human character, imputes Ferdinand’s successes, in one of his letters, to “cunning and good-luck rather than superior wisdom”; but has recorded a riper and more deliberate judgment in the treatise which he intended as a mirror for the rulers of the time. “Nothing,” says he, “gains estimation for a prince like great enterprises. Our own age has furnished a splendid example of this in Ferdinand of Aragon. We may call him a new king, since from a feeble one he has made himself the most renowned and glorious monarch of Christendom; and, if we ponder well his manifold achievements, we must acknowledge all of them very great, and some truly extraordinary.”
The personal history of Ferdinand the Catholic terminates, of course, here. In order to bring the history of his reign, however, to a suitable close, it is necessary to continue the narrative through the brief regency of Ximenes, to the period when the government was delivered into the hands of Ferdinand’s grandson and successor, Charles V.
By the testament of the deceased monarch, as we have seen, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros was appointed sole regent of Castile. He met with opposition, however, from Adrian, the dean of Louvain, who produced powers of similar purport from Prince Charles. The misunderstanding which ensued was finally settled by an agreement to share the authority till further instructions should be received from Charles. It was not long before they arrived (February 14th, 1516). They confirmed the cardinal’s authority in the fullest manner, while they spoke of Adrian only as an ambassador.
The first requisition of Prince Charles was one that taxed severely the power and popularity of the new regent. This was to have himself proclaimed king; a measure extremely distasteful to the Castilians, who regarded it not only as contrary to established usage, during the lifetime of his mother, but as an indignity to her. It was in vain that Ximenes and the council remonstrated on the impropriety and impolicy of the measure. Charles, fortified by his Flemish advisers, sturdily persisted in his purpose. Ximenes peremptorily declared: “I will have him proclaimed in Madrid to-morrow, and I doubt not every other city in the kingdom will follow the example.” He was as good as his word; and the conduct of the capital was imitated with little opposition, by all the other cities in Castile.
One of the regent’s first acts was the famous ordinance encouraging the burgesses, by liberal rewards, to enrol themselves into companies, and submit to regular military training at stated seasons; and a national corps was organised, competent, under proper guidance, to protect the liberties of the people, but destined, unfortunately, to be ultimately turned against them. Armed with this strong physical force, the cardinal now projected the boldest schemes of reform, especially in the finances, which had fallen into some disorder in the latter days of Ferdinand. Unfortunately, the state was not materially benefited by these economical arrangements, since the greater part of what was thus saved was drawn off to supply the waste and cupidity of the Flemish court, who dealt with Spain with all the merciless rapacity that could be shown to a conquered province. The foreign administration of the regent displayed the same courage and vigour. Arsenals were established in the southern maritime towns, and a numerous fleet was equipped in the Mediterranean against the Barbary corsairs. A large force was sent into Navarre, which defeated an invading army of French (March 25th, 1516); and the cardinal followed up the blow by demolishing the principal fortresses of the kingdom; a precautionary measure, to which, in all probability, Spain owes the permanent preservation of her conquest.
It is with less satisfaction that we must contemplate his policy in regard to the Inquisition. As head of that tribunal, he enforced its authority and pretensions to the utmost. He extended a branch of it to Oran, and also to the Canaries and the New World. In 1512, the “new Christians” had offered Ferdinand a large sum of money to carry on the Navarrese war, if he would cause the trials before that tribunal to be conducted in the same manner as in other courts, where the accuser and the evidence were confronted openly with the defendant. To this reasonable petition Ximenes objected, on the wretched plea that, in that event, none would be found willing to undertake the odious business of reformer. He backed his remonstrance with such a liberal donative from his own funds as supplied the king’s immediate exigency and effectually closed his heart against the petitioners.
Cardinal Ximenes
The cardinal not only assumed the sole responsibility of the most important public acts, but, in the execution of them, seldom condescended to calculate the obstacles or the odds arrayed against him. He was thus brought into collision, at the same time, with three of the most powerful grandees of Castile—the dukes of Alva and Infantado, and the count of Ureña. They took refuge in the little town of Villafrata, which they fortified and prepared for a defence. The cardinal without hesitation mustered several thousand of the national militia, and, investing the place, set it on fire and deliberately razed it to the ground. The refractory nobles, struck with consternation, submitted.
But neither the talents nor authority of Ximenes, it was evident, could much longer maintain subordination among the people, exasperated by the shameless extortions of the Flemings, and the little interest shown for them by their new sovereign. The most considerable offices in church and state were put up to sale; and the kingdom was drained of its funds by the large remittances continually made, on one pretext or another, to Flanders. On the 17th of September, 1517, Charles landed at Villaviciosa, in the Asturias. Ximenes at this time lay ill at the Franciscan monastery of Aguilera, near Aranda on the Douro. The good tidings of the royal landing operated like a cordial on his spirits, and he instantly despatched letters to the young monarch, filled with wholesome counsel as to the conduct he should pursue in order to conciliate the affections of the people.
Charles showed a facility to be directed by those around him in early years, which gave little augury of the greatness to which he afterwards rose. By the persuasions of his evil counsellors, he addressed that memorable letter to Ximenes, which is unmatched, even in court annals, for cool and base ingratitude. He thanked the regent for all his past services, named a place for a personal interview with him, where he might obtain the benefit of his counsels for his own conduct and the government of the kingdom; after which he would be allowed to retire to his diocese and seek from heaven that reward which heaven alone could adequately bestow!
Such was the tenor of this cold-blooded epistle, which, in the language of more than one writer, killed the cardinal. This, however, is stating the matter too strongly. The spirit of Ximenes was of too stern a stuff to be so easily extinguished by the breath of royal displeasure. He was, indeed, deeply moved by the desertion of the sovereign whom he had served so faithfully, and the excitement which it occasioned brought on a return of his fever, according to Carbajal,f in full force. But anxiety and disease had already done their work upon his once hardy constitution.[70]
Death may be supposed to have but little terrors for the statesman who in his last moments could aver that he had never intentionally wronged any man, but had rendered to everyone his due, without being swayed, so far as he was conscious, by fear or affection. Yet Cardinal Richelieu on his death-bed declared the same.
As a last attempt he began a letter to the king. His fingers refused, however, to perform their office, and after tracing a few lines he gave it up. The purport of these seems to have been to recommend his university at Alcalá to the royal protection. He now became wholly occupied with his devotions, and manifested such contrition for his errors, and such humble confidence in the divine mercy, as deeply affected all present. In this tranquil frame of mind, and in the perfect possession of his powers, he breathed his last, November 8th, 1517, in the eighty-first year of his age and the twenty-second since his elevation to the primacy.
Such was the end of this remarkable man; the most remarkable, in many respects, of his time. His character was of that stern and lofty cast which seems to rise above the ordinary wants and weaknesses of humanity; his genius, of the severest order, like Dante’s or Michelangelo’s in the regions of fancy, impresses us with ideas of power that excite admiration akin to terror. His enterprises were of the boldest character; his execution of them equally bold. He disdained to woo fortune by any of those soft and pliant arts which are often the most effectual. He pursued his ends by the most direct means. In this way he frequently multiplied difficulties; but difficulties seemed to have a charm for him, by the opportunities they afforded of displaying the energies of his soul.
With these qualities he combined a versatility of talent usually found only in softer and more flexible characters. Though bred in the cloister, he distinguished himself both in the cabinet and the camp. For the latter, indeed, so repugnant to his regular profession, he had a natural genius, according to the testimony of his biographer Gómez;q and he evinced his relish for it by declaring that “the smell of gunpowder was more grateful to him than the sweetest perfume of Arabia!” He had a full measure of the religious bigotry which belonged to the age; and he had melancholy scope for displaying it, as chief of that dread tribunal over which he presided during the last ten years of his life.
He carried the arbitrary ideas of his profession into political life. His regency was conducted on the principles of a military despotism. It was his maxim that “a prince must rely mainly on his army for securing the respect and obedience of his subjects.” It is true he had to deal with a martial and factious nobility, and the end which he proposed was to curb their licentiousness and enforce the equitable administration of justice; but, in accomplishing this, he showed little regard to the constitution, or to private rights.
His first act, the proclaiming of Charles king, was in open contempt of the usages and rights of the nation. He evaded the urgent demands of the Castilians for a convocation of cortes; for it was his opinion that freedom of speech, especially in regard to their own grievances, made the people insolent and irreverent to their rulers. The people, of course, had no voice in the measures which involved their most important interests. His whole policy, indeed, was to exalt the royal prerogative at the expense of the inferior orders of the state; and his regency, short as it was, and highly beneficial to the country in many respects, must be considered as opening the way to that career of despotism which the Austrian family followed up with such hard-hearted constancy.
His administration provoked numerous lampoons and libels. He despised them, as the miserable solace of spleen and discontent, and never persecuted their authors. In this he formed an honourable contrast to Cardinal Richelieu, whose character and condition suggest many points of resemblance with his own.
An anecdote is told in relation to his dress. Over his coarse woollen frock he wore the costly apparel suited to his rank. An impertinent Franciscan preacher took occasion one day before him to launch out against the luxuries of the time, especially in dress, obviously alluding to the cardinal, who was attired in a superb suit of ermine, which had been presented to him. He heard the sermon patiently to the end, and, after the services were concluded, took the preacher into the sacristy, and, having commended the general tenor of his discourse, showed under his furs and fine linen the coarse frock of his order next his skin. Some accounts add that the friar, on the other hand, wore fine linen under his monkish frock. After the cardinal’s death, a little box was found in his apartment, containing the implements with which he used to mend the rents of his threadbare garment with his own hands.
He seldom slept more than four hours, or at most four and a half. He was shaved in the night, hearing at the same time some edifying reading. He followed the same practice at his meals, or varied it with listening to the arguments of some of his theological brethren, generally on some subtile question of school divinity. This was his only recreation. He had as little taste as time for lighter and more elegant amusements.
As far back as 1497, Ximenes had conceived the idea of establishing a university in the ancient town of Alcalá, where the salubrity of the air, and the sober, tranquil complexion of the scenery, on the beautiful borders of the Henares, seemed well suited to academic study and meditation. Other engagements, however, postponed the commencement of the work till 1500, when the cardinal himself laid the corner-stone of the principal college, with a solemn ceremonial. From that hour, amidst all the engrossing cares of church and state, he never lost sight of this great object.[71] The city of Alcalá underwent many important and expensive alterations, in order to render it more worthy of being the seat of a great and flourishing university. The stagnant water was carried off by drains, the streets were paved, old buildings removed, and new and spacious avenues thrown open.
At the expiration of eight years, the cardinal had the satisfaction of seeing the whole of this vast design completed, and every apartment of the spacious pile carefully furnished with all that was requisite for the comfort and accommodation of the student. It was, indeed, a noble enterprise, more particularly when viewed as the work of a private individual. As such it raised the deepest admiration in Francis I, when he visited the spot, a few years after the cardinal’s death. “Your Ximenes,” he said, “has executed more than I should have dared to conceive; he has done, with his single hand, what in France it has taken a line of kings to accomplish.”
Two provisions may be noticed as characteristic of the man: one, that the salary of a professor should be regulated by the number of his disciples; another, that every professor should be re-eligible at the expiration of every four years. It was impossible that any servant of Ximenes should sleep on his post. Liberal foundations were made for indigent students, especially in divinity. Indeed, theological studies, or rather such a general course of study as should properly enter into the education of a Christian minister, was the avowed object of the institution; for the Spanish clergy up to this period, as before noticed, were too often deficient in the most common elements of learning. But in this preparatory discipline the comprehensive mind of Ximenes embraced nearly the whole circle of sciences taught in other universities.
In July, 1508, the cardinal received the welcome intelligence that his academy was open for the admission of pupils; and in the following month the first lecture, being on Aristotle’s Ethics, was publicly delivered. Students soon flocked to the new university, attracted by the reputation of its professors, its ample apparatus, its thorough system of instruction, and, above all, its splendid patronage, and the high character of its founder. We have no information of their number in Ximenes’ lifetime; but it must have been very considerable, since no less than seven thousand came out to receive Francis I, on his visit to the university, within twenty years after it was opened.
In the midst of his pressing duties, Ximenes found time for the execution of another work, which would alone have been sufficient to render his name immortal in the republic of letters. This was his famous Bible, or Complutensian Polyglot, as usually termed, from the place where it was printed.[72] It was on the plan, first conceived by Origen, of exhibiting in one view the Scriptures in their various ancient languages. It was a work of surpassing difficulty, demanding an extensive and critical acquaintance with the most ancient, and consequently the rarest manuscripts. The character and station of the cardinal afforded him, it is true, uncommon facilities. The precious collection of the Vatican was liberally thrown open to him, especially under Leo X, whose munificent spirit delighted in the undertaking. He obtained copies, in like manner, of whatever was of value in the other libraries of Italy, and, indeed, of Europe generally; and Spain supplied him with editions of the Old Testament of great antiquity, which had been treasured up by the banished Israelites. Some idea may be formed of the lavish expenditure in this way, from the fact that four thousand gold crowns were paid for seven foreign manuscripts, which, however, came too late to be of use in the compilation. The difficulties of the undertaking were sensibly increased by those of the printing. The art was then in its infancy, and there were no types in Spain, if indeed in any part of Europe, in the oriental character. Ximenes, however, careful to have the whole executed under his own eye, imported artists from Germany, and had types cast in the various languages required, in his foundries at Alcalá.
The work when completed occupied six volumes folio; the first four devoted to the Old Testament, the fifth to the New; the last containing a Hebrew and Chaldaic vocabulary, with other elementary treaties of singular labour and learning.[73] It was not brought to an end till 1517, fifteen years after its commencement, and a few months only before the death of its illustrious projector.
The resemblance which Ximenes bore to the great French minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was, after all, more in the circumstances of situation than in their characters, though the most prominent traits of these were not dissimilar. Both, though bred ecclesiastics, reached the highest honours of the state, and, indeed, may be said to have directed the destinies of their countries. Richelieu’s authority, however, was more absolute than that of Ximenes, for he was screened by the shadow of royalty; while the latter was exposed, by his insulated and unsheltered position, to the full blaze of envy, and, of course, opposition. Both were ambitious of military glory, and showed capacity for attaining it. Both achieved their great results by that rare union of high mental endowments and great efficiency in action which is always irresistible.
The moral basis of their characters was entirely different. The French cardinal’s was selfishness, pure and unmitigated. His religion, politics, his principles in short, in every sense, were subservient to this. Offences against the state he could forgive; those against himself he pursued with implacable rancour. His authority was literally cemented with blood. His immense powers and patronage were perverted to the aggrandisement of his family. Though bold to temerity in his plans, he betrayed more than once a want of true courage in their execution. Though violent and impetuous, he could stoop to be a dissembler. Though arrogant in the extreme, he courted the soft incense of flattery. In his manners he had the advantage over the Spanish prelate. He could be a courtier in courts, and had a more refined and cultivated taste. In one respect he had the advantage over Ximenes in morals; he was not, like him, a bigot. He had not the religious basis in his composition which is the foundation of bigotry. Their deaths were typical of their characters. Richelieu died, as he had lived, so deeply execrated that the enraged populace would scarcely allow his remains to be laid quietly in the grave. Ximenes, on the contrary, was buried amid the tears and lamentations of the people; his memory was honoured even by his enemies, and his name is reverenced by his countrymen to this day as that of a saint.
We have now traversed that important period of history comprehending the latter part of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century; a period when the convulsions which shook to the ground the ancient political fabrics of Europe roused the minds of its inhabitants from the lethargy in which they had been buried for ages. Spain, as we have seen, felt the general impulse. Under the glorious rule of Ferdinand and Isabella we have beheld her emerging from chaos into a new existence, unfolding, under the influence of institutions adapted to her genius, energies of which she was before unconscious; enlarging her resources from all the springs of domestic industry and commercial enterprise; and insensibly losing the ferocious habits of a feudal age in the refinements of an intellectual and moral culture.
In the fullness of time, when her divided powers had been concentrated under one head, and the system of internal economy completed, we have seen her descend into the arena with the other nations of Europe, and in a very few years achieve the most important acquisitions of territory, both in that quarter and in Africa; and finally crowning the whole by the discovery and occupation of a boundless empire beyond the waters. In the progress of the action we may have been too much occupied with its details to attend sufficiently to the principles which regulated them. But now that we have reached the close, we may be permitted to cast a parting glance over the field that we have traversed, and briefly survey the principal steps by which the Spanish sovereigns led their nation up to such a height of prosperity and glory.
Ferdinand and Isabella, on their accession, saw at once that the chief source of the distractions of the country lay in the overgrown powers and factious spirit of the nobility. Their first efforts, therefore, were directed to abate these as far as possible. A similar movement was going forward in the other European monarchies; but in none was it crowned with so speedy and complete success as in Castile.
Another practice steadily pursued by the sovereigns was to raise men of humble station to offices of the highest trust; not, however, like their contemporary, Louis XI, because their station was humble, in order to mortify the higher orders, but because they courted merit wherever it was to be found—a policy much and deservedly commended by the sagacious observers of the time. The history of Spain does not probably afford another example of a person of the lowly condition of Ximenes attaining, not merely the highest offices in the kingdom, but eventually its uncontrolled supremacy.
The queen’s government was equally vigilant in resisting ecclesiastical encroachment. It may appear otherwise to one who casts a superficial glance at her reign, and beholds her surrounded always by a troop of ghostly advisers, and avowing religion as the great end of her principal operations at home and abroad. It is certain, however, that, while in all her acts she confessed the influence of religion, she took more effectual means than any of her predecessors to circumscribe the temporal powers of the clergy. The volume of her pragmáticas is filled with laws designed to limit their jurisdiction and restrain their encroachments on the secular authorities.
Convent of the Martyrs, Granada
By vigilant measures she succeeded in restoring the ancient discipline of the church, and weeding out the sensuality and indolence which had so long defiled it.[74] Few of the Castilian monarchs have been brought more frequently into collision, or pursued a bolder policy, with the court of Rome. Still fewer extorted from it such important graces and concessions.
The condition of the commons under this reign was probably, on the whole, more prosperous than in any other period of Spanish history. New avenues to wealth and honours were opened to them; and persons and property were alike protected under the fearless and impartial administration of the law. “Such was the justice dispensed to everyone under this auspicious reign,” exclaims Marineo, “that nobles and cavaliers, citizens and labourers, rich and poor, masters and servants, all equally partook of it.” We find no complaints of arbitrary imprisonment, and no attempts, so frequent both in earlier and later times, at illegal taxation. In this particular, indeed, Isabella manifested the greatest tenderness for her people. By her commutation of the capricious tax of the alcabala for a determinate one, and still more by transferring its collection from the revenue officers to the citizens themselves, she greatly relieved her subjects.
Finally, notwithstanding the perpetual call for troops for the military operations in which the government was constantly engaged, and notwithstanding the example of neighbouring countries, there was no attempt to establish that iron bulwark of despotism, a standing army; at least, none nearer than that of the voluntary levies of the hermandad, raised and paid by the people. The queen never admitted the arbitrary maxims of Ximenes in regard to the foundation of government. Hers was essentially one of opinion, not force.
There is no country which has been guilty of such wild experiments, or has shown, on the whole, such profound ignorance of the true principles of economical science, as Spain under the sceptre of the family of Austria. And as it is not always easy to discriminate between their acts and those of Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circumstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws mischievous in their eventual operation were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add that what was intrinsically bad has been aggravated tenfold under the blind legislation of their successors. It is also true that many of the most exceptionable laws sanctioned by their names are to be charged on their predecessors, who had engrafted their principles into the system long before; and many others are to be vindicated by the general practice of other nations, which authorised retaliation on the score of self-defence.
It would be unfair to direct our view to the restrictive measures of Ferdinand and Isabella without noticing also the liberal tenor of their legislation in regard to a great variety of objects. Such, for example, are the laws encouraging foreigners to settle in the country; those for facilitating communication by internal improvements, roads, bridges, canals, on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; for a similar attention to the wants of navigation, by constructing moles, quays, lighthouses, along the coast, and deepening and extending the harbours, “to accommodate,” as the acts set forth, “the great increase of trade”; for embellishing and adding in various ways to the accommodations of the cities; for relieving the subject from onerous tolls and oppressive monopolies; for establishing a uniform currency and standard of weights and measures throughout the kingdom, objects of unwearied solicitude through this whole reign; for maintaining a police which, from the most disorderly and dangerous, raised Spain, in the language of Martyr,l to be the safest country in Christendom; for such equal justice as secured to every man the fruits of his own industry, inducing him to embark his capital in useful enterprises; and, finally, for enforcing fidelity to contracts, of which the sovereigns gave such a glorious example in their own administration as effectually restored that public credit which is the true basis of public prosperity.
The most important of the foreign acquisitions were those nearest home, Granada and Navarre, at least they were the only ones capable, from their position, of being brought under control and permanently and thoroughly identified with the Spanish monarchy.