Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924099385787 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBHAHY 3 1924 099 385 787 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 2004 aitljaca, Nem Ijotfe Ml)tte S^tBtarical EiihrarH THE GIFT OF PRESIDENT WHITE MAINTAINED BY THE UNIVERSITY IN ACCORD- ANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF THE GIFT Ubc ©reat iPeoples Series Edited by D^VoRK POWELL Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford THE SPANISH PEOPLE THE SPANISH PEOPLE THEIR ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND INFLUENCE MARTIN Af'sy^HUME editor or the calendars of spanish state papers (public record office) " Santiago y Cierra Espana ! " ^ITH INDEX AND BIBLIOGRAPHY NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1901 li 'V*''- •■■'■A. >i^f ' ■■■-^4r;'\ t ^.\^lo■\\ Copyright, n)oi, ^ By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. W/,, THE GREAT PEOPLES The aim of the present scheme is to give in a series of well-printed, clearly written, and readable volumes a view of the process by which the leading peoples of the world have become great and earned their title to greatness ; to describe the share each has contributed to the common stock of what, for a better term, we call civilization. It will, for instance, try and show how populations such as dwelt in the lands we now call France and Spain gradually came to be peoples with peculiar and characteristic nationalities of their own, and how all through the progress of their develop- ment they influenced other peoples materially, morally, and mentally, whereby certain elements of our own present-day lives and circumstances may be accounted for. It is, in fact, not so much a set of political or military or even social histories as a sequence of readable studies on the tendencies and potencies of the chief peoples of the world that this series will strive to present. The various volumes have been written by experts ; for experience proves that when the man who knows his subject can write, he writes far better than the man who does not know his subject first-hand, but merely borrows from those who do. F. York Powell. INTRODUCTION An attempt is made in this book to trace the evolution of a highly composite people from its various racial units, and to seek in the peculiarities of its origin and the circum- stances of its development the explanation of its character and institutions, and of the principal vicissitudes that have befallen it as a nation. There are several reasons which render this process less difficult and more interesting in the case of the Spaniards than in that of any other of the epoch-making races of Europe. Situated at the extreme western point of the conti^ nent, the Iberian peninsula received in each case the last wave! sent out at the highest point of vigour by the successive in- fluences which pervaded Europe from the ancient East.' Each race, each civilization, which in turn reached this ulti^ mate peninsula could get no farther, and there had, of neces- sity, to stand, fight, and finally to fall, before the dispensationj that supplanted it. Spain consequently became, not only/ the battle ground upon which was decided the form into! which modern civilization should be moulded — whether Ar- yan or Semite, Christian or Moslem — but also the spot where the traces and traditions of each succeeding system lingered long after its onward impetus was spent. The country thus Vlll The Spanish People became the preserver and transmitter to the modem world of many survivals of vanished ancient systems, and the cul- ture of Spain itself was, in some sense, an epitome of the various rival systems that in historic times have divided the world. The physical conformation of the country aided this process of conservation. Shut in from the rest of Europe, "except at two points, by an almost inaccessible barrier of mountains, and scored over the greater part of its face by isolated valleys, difficult of access one from another, the separate regions into which Spain is geographically divided remained ethnologically distinct to an extent unknown in any of the other larger nations, and retained characteristic features of ancient races ages after they had disappeared elsewhere. Celts, Afro-Semites, Greeks, Phoenicians, Car- I thaginians, Romans, Teutons, Franks, Goths, and the min- gled hordes of Islam, in turn flooded the land, and in the countless valleys, hidden deep amid the savage spurs and ranges, there remained when the flood subsided a residuum of each inundation. The extent to which each invasion dominated a given region, is therefore easily traceable in the character and features of the inhabitants to-day; and the influence of race traditions upon historical events can be fol- lowed by the development of institutions in the various parts of the country. For the philosophical historian the study of the origin and progress of the Spanish people, therefore, provides an invaluable object lesson, by which the concatena- tion of cause and effect in the life of nations may be demon- strated, and the development of other European nations the better understood. Introduction ix Although at first sight the early history of the Spanish people may appear hopelessly complicated, as presenting the form of a number of concurrent histories of different peoples possessing .but little in common with each other, a close . consideration of the aggregate national movement will show- that there are certain characteristics more or less conspicu- • ous in the whole of the Iberian peoples, and that these com-, mon characteristics, derived from the numerically predomi-' nant root races, have invariably been appealed to on the/ comparatively few occasions when the whole nation has been ' moved by one united inspiration. On the other hand, the progress of the Spanish people generally — and especially in the matter of their institutions — assumed a regional character. This has aided the geograph-J ical causes in preventing the complete fusion of the peoples, and has retarded the organization of the nation on the usual modern lines of unity of race and soil ; because the separate regional units have retained traditions of their primitive in- stitutions and have resisted political absorption, as strongly as their circumstances have run counter to ethnological amalgamation. This explains the strong centrifugal tend- ency of some of the regions of the peninsula, a tendency which provides a key to many historical events which would otherwise be incomprehensible. This want of unity between the component parts of the> nation would, in ordinary cases, have prevented Spain from* exercising a controlling political influence in the world ; but' there are reasons peculiar to the race which made it possible' for this group of a ntagonistic little p_eo£les, to bulk before ' the world as a very Colossus, and to wield an imperial sway' The Spanish People •which, for a time, reduced all other modern powers to -pigmies. It is the business of this book to portray the origin and development of these special racial qualities, and to show how this disunited people were able by virtue of ' them to be swayed to great united action, and then, when . the common inspiration had passed, to fall again into disin- • tegration and impotence. Gifted with a veh ement vividn ess__of imagination and • floridness of word surpassing that of the Italians of the south, >and derived from similar sources, the Spaniards, nevertheless . are endowed with certain characteristics of their Afro- . Semitic root race, which, except in times of vmcontrollable excitement and social decadence, keep in check the bubbling • vivacity of the southern Latin. The keynote of this primitive 1^ racial character is overwhelming individualit y ; and all that •j the Spaniards have done in the world, their transient imperial I greatness, and their permanent tenacity, is owing to this qual- . ity in its various manifestations. For the Spaniard, until historically recent times, Spain was no fatherland; it is only so in a very limited sense to this day. Th e real fa therland of the Spaniard was his town, { or the particular fold in the hills that formed his world. His countrymen were not those who spoke a similar tongue on the other side of the mountains, but those who made com- mon cause with him on this side. The central thought of • each man was his own independence of his fellows, and • there was no subject in common to melt their personal pride • into one mass. Then came the Roma n, and infused during the centuries of his domination a glowing pride into each Spaniard's heart that he — the individual — was a part of the Introduction xi splendid empire whose eagles he carried in triumph from the Danube to far Caledonia. Under this impetus Spaniards became great — not as Spaniards, but as individual citizens of mighty Rome. Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, and Hadrian, the best of Roman emperors, were men of Spanish blood and birth. Martial, QuintilHan, Seneca, Lucan, and other Span- iards were as illustrious in Latin letters as their country- men were as commanders of armies and organizers of states. But Rome fell, and Spain fell with her, for there was no cohe- sion apart from the common pride in the mother-state which had formed the temporary bond. When later the Goth infused fresh vigour for a time^ in decadent Roman Spain, fervid Christianity knitted the men of Spain together, and again personal pride was the adhesive. To belong to the equal brotherhood before the' divine throne made the Iberian slave equal to the proudest- Gothic noble. Each man became great in his own eyes be- ' cause he formed part of the elect whom God regarded - with special individual care ; and again all Spaniards looked to one governing power. But this time the governors were priests. A theocracy with a puppet king was a bad organiA zation to defend a nation from the inrush of a conquering! people, and the theocracy was pushed back by the Moors j to the extreme corner of the kingdom, thence during eight; centuries of struggle gradually to reconquer by a continued crusade the land which theocracy had lost. Greatest of all the national uprisings of the Spanish people, was that which owed its strength to the mystic spiritual exaltation founded on individual pride, which swayed all Spain in the sixteenth century, and carried the race through far South America, xli The Spanish People facing dangers and hardships beyond human thought. Car- rying in one hand the cross and in the other the reeking sword, these conquerors of heretics in Europe, and of infidels in the distant unknown West, were saints especially chosen by the Lord to do His work. Murder and rapine -were not murder and rapine to them, for to them all things were licit, because each individual was set apart under the divine in- spection, and was himself distinguished by the Lord. There was no withstanding such a feeling as this ; and it was the moral greatness born of spiritual exaltation, which gave Spain a predominance far greater than was warranted by her ma- terial resources or her real national standing at any time. The feeling of individuality, upon which the sentiment was based, lay deep down in the root of the race, but cun- ning politicians deliberately turned it to the advantage of their ambitions. The bigotry inspired by the persecution of minorities, the cruelty of the Inquisition, which sickened the heart of the world and shamed hurnanity, were only so many means to an end. They inflamed the individual pride of each Spaniard of the majority in his own orthodoxy and his superi- ority over heretics, Jews, and Moors, and they welded the nation into a solid weapon, which might be used by the artful hand of the king or Caesar for his own ends. But the bond was a temporary one, for human thought cannot be enchained for ever; and Spain fell back into atoms, once more to begin the work of consolidation on more permanent bases. The contributions of Spaniards to the mass of the civili- zation of the world have been great. Their share in the civilizing mission of the Roman Empire, and their serv- Introduction xiii ice to the Latin literature, which in the progress of their decadence they corrupted and degraded, were in the best days of Rome immense. Tlie aid lent by Spanish soldiers, and especially by Spanish weapons, both to the Punic hosts and the Roman legions, contributed no small part to the heroic] battles which finally insured the triumph of the Roman and' the Aryan in Europe. The preservation and continuance inl operation of the Roman system of jurisdiction in Spain, after the final disappearance of the Roman dominion, kept alive for the subsequent benefit of other nations, the principles upon which the civilized codes of to-day are based ; whilst ~| the fostering in Moslem Spain of the learning of the Greeks ,' and the science of the Eastern peoples, preserved for later i ages priceless treasures, which otherwise would have been lost to the world. And again, in the later days, evil as wasi the use to which rulers turned it, the mystic devotional chiv- ji airy of Spaniards of the middle ages, the idea of eager " sacrifice for Christ, infused into Europe generally a purer * and more altruistic ideal of religious duty than was becoming '• prevalent under the sensuous and beauty-seeking influence of : the Italian Renaissance. For this the world is Spain's debtor ; and the debt is increased when we turn to the literary con- tributions of Spaniards to the world's wealth. The modern 1 stage to a great extent owes its renaissance to Spanish genius, i just as the modern novel of adventure may be traced to Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes. These, and many other contributions of Spaniards to the civilization of mod- ern Europe, are set forth in detail in the pages of this book ; but the main object has been to describe the development of a whole people, and to trace their vicissitudes to primitive xiv The Spanish People causes. The book has been written with no idea of super- seding or displacing ordinary histories, but only with the desire of supplementing and explaining them ; and although in some portions of the work more space has been given to dynastic and political events than was desired, it has been found necessary, in order to make the events that followed intelligible. I can only beg for indulgent judgment of a book so full of detail and of controversial points as this must necessarily be, and I trust that this story of the progressive evolution of a s ympathetic and epoch-making people may commend itself to the student as well as to the general reader. Martin A. S. Hume. London. INTRODUCTION. xv Of all the kind friends who have in various ways assisted and encouraged me in the course of my work, it would be impossible to speak. Yet must I set down a word of the gratitude that I feel to Mr. Cecil Bendall — but for whom the work might never have been written ; and Mr. John Bury — but for whom it might never have been published, for their constant and practical help, counsel and criticism ; to Mr. John Ormsby, for many valuable suggestions, conveyed in most delightful letters ; and to Don Juan Riano, for suggestions no less valuable, and conveyed by word of mouth during my last visit to Madrid, where the genial hospitality of Sir Henry Drrmimond and Lady Wolff has added to the many agree- able recollections that I treasure of that much abused but to me ever sympathetic city. Among the many friends whom I have to thank for help in the preparation of my chapter on Spanish Music — a chapter which, I am not ashamed to confess, I have re-written four times — I cannot pass over the name of Dr. Culwick ,- and in the final revision of the pages dealing with Architecture as well as Music, and of other chapters in my second volume, I have been greatly and most kindly assisted by Dr. Mahaffy. To the librarians and bookmen, great and small, in Bhomshury, in St. James's Square, in Kildare Street, in Trinity College, Dublin, and in other public and private libraries at home and abroad, I am under a substantial debt of gratitude, of which so general an acknow- ledgment is very far from being an adequate requital. I have, finally, to acknowledge with much gratitude, and not, I confess, without some pride, the liberality of the Boai-d of Trinity College in making a pecuniary grant to me in aid of the expenses of publication, a compliment whose value is enhanced by the manner in which the offer was conveyed to me, and the unconditional nature of the gift. Christmas Eve, 1894. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. — Rival civilizations— Punic and Roman Repub- lican Spain i The Phoenicians in Spain — The Iberians — Primitive civiliza- tion — The influence of the Greeks — The Carthaginians — The Punic wars in Spain — The Romans — Rising of the Celtiberians — Viriatus — Numancia — The revolt of Sertorius — Spain under the Roman Empire — Primitive institutions of Spain — The mu- nicipality. II. — A NEW dispensation — Imperial Roman and Gothic Spain 32 Organization of Roman Spain — Influence of Spaniards upon Latin literature — The Spanish C^sars — Decadence of Roman civilization in Spain — Christianity in Spain — Its influence on the c haracter of the people and in<;titiiHniT; — Fall of the empire — The coming of the Goths — Influence of Gothic tra ditions upon Spain — The elective monarchy — The triumph of Romanism over Arianism — The Code of Alaric — Literature and art in Spain under the Goths — The councils of prelates — Theocracy — The landing of the Moors. III.— Moslem Spain 71 Effect of the Moorish inva sion — The Berbers and the Arabs ^ — Abd-er-Rahman defeated by the Franks — The Mozarabes — The Caliph Abd-er-Rahman — Roncesvalles — Covadonga — Jhe religious influence on the reconquest — I nfluence of Arab civil i- ^ zation upon C hristian Spaniards — Santiago — The caliphs of Cordova — Growth ol t anaticism on both sides — Anarchy in Mos- lem Spain — Extension oi the Christian conquest — Restoration of the caliphate by Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir — Christian tribute to Abd-er-Rahman III — The rise of Castile — Almausor. XVI The Spanish People CHAiTER FACE IV. — The waning of the Crescent 103 In fluence of the Arabs and Tews upon Spanish characte c-and institutions. — Fusion of Moors and Arabs checked by the priests — Development of Arab literature in Spain — The arts, sci- ences, and industries of Christian and Moslem Spain — Dis- cord in Christian Spain — Distinctive traditions of the Christian kingdoms — Fall of the caliphate of Cordova — Sancho the Great of Navarre — The Council of Coyanza — Fernando I of Castile and Leon — The war of the brothers — Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon — The Cid — The Almoravides — Toledo the Christian capi- tal — ^The Roman ritual adopled — Urraca of Castile and Leon and Alfonso the Battler of Aragon — The Almohades. V. — Religion and learning in medIjEVAl Spain . . 141 The religious bond of union between the Christian Spanish races — The migration of the Mozarabes — Its influence on insti- tutions — Germ of representative institutions — The Herman- dades and Spanish feudalism — Alfonso the Emperor — Alfonso VIII and Eleanor Plantagenet — Berenguela of Castile and Al- fonso IX of Leon — Saint Fernando and the reunion of Castile and Leon — Aragon and Catalonia — Jaime the Conqueror — His vast projects — His contfests with the nobles — Conquests of Saint Fernando — I ntellectual a nd social progress of Spain in the twelfth a nd thlVtppnfh y^^nhiiTPg— l hp 'IrnnhaHniirg — lactilian language and literature — Alfonso the Learned and his works — The influence of Spanish Jews and Arabs on European learning — Arts and handicrafts — The growth of luxury in Spain — Na- tional amusements — The Spanish clergy — The incre ase of reli- gious intolerance. VI. — Political progress of Catholic Spain . . .183 Reign of Alfonso the Learned — The Cortes — Revolt of Sancho IV — Anarchy in Castile — Guzman " the Good " — Fernando IV and Maria de Molina — Aragon — The conquest of Sicily — The revolt of the Aragonese nobles — The Privilege of Union — Pedro the Ceremonious of Aragon — Abrogation of the "Union " — Castile under Alfonso XI — The growth of the Cortes — Pedro the Cruel of Castile — Revolt of the Castilian nobles — Civil war ^Pedro's treatment of his English auxiliaries — Murder of Pe- dro and accession of Henry II of Trastamara. 1 Contents xvii PAGE CHAPTER VII.— BflOGRESS AND DECADENCE IN MEDIAEVAL SPAIN . 222 ^Industrial Spain in the fourteenth century — The wool trade and the Mesta — Silks and velvets — Metal work — Moorish influence on design — Introduction of foreign goods — Gothic architecture in Spain — The architecture of the Mudejares — Education and the universities — Castilian literature in the fourteenth century — Organization of the government and judicature — Claims of John of Gaunt to the Castilian crown — Battle of Aljubarrota — The Castilian nobles and the towns — The decay of municipal independence — The " good " Regent Fernando of Castile — His election to the throne of Aragon — Alvaro de Luna and Juan II of Castile — gripigl ami Vitprary rnnHiHrin nf SpsiJn iindrr Tuan II — The Italian inflnenne — T he literature of knight-errantry — Its influence on the Spanish character. 255 VIII. — From anarchy to order — Unification by the FAITH . . . .... Aragon — Conquest of Naples — Navarre — Henry IV (the Impo- tent) of Castile — Pacheco, Marquis of Villena — Beltran de la Cueva — The Beltraneja — Deposition of Henry in effigy — Isabel the Catholic of Castile — Her marriage with Fernando of Ara- gon — Civil war in Castile — Death of Henry — Accession of Isa- bel — Her strong policy — The Santa Heimandad — The Cortes of Toledo, 1480 — Reforms in the administration and judicature — The Inquisition — Reasons for its establishment — .Persecution of the Jews — Sympathy of the populac e with religious intoler - ance — Granada — The discovery of America — Some reasons for t he cruelty of the first explorers — The objects of Aragon — War with France — Gonsalvo de Cordova — Conquest of Naples — Some fateful marriages — Death of Isabel — Fernando and Philip — Jimenez and the persecution of the Moriscos — Death of Philip — Juana the Mad — Fernando seizes Navarre — Death of Fer- nando. IX.— Spain and the empire— Greatness and decay . 396 Effects upon Spain of the rule of Fernando and Isabel — Ad- ministrative and judicial systems — The Inquisition — The Cortes — The religious bond of unity — Jimenez — Spanish literature under the " Catholic kings '' — The growth of luxury — Unwise fiscal measures — Effects upon Spain's foreign relations of the policy of the " Catholic kings " — The coming of Charles to XVlll The Spanish People CUAFTES PACK Spain — The Cortes of Corunna — The rising of the " common- ers " — The Germania — The demands of the Cortes — Villalar — Charles the Emperor at the head of Catholic Christendom — Wars in Italy, France, and Germany — Heavy burdens on Cas- tile — Remonstrances of Cortes — Continued wars — Charles and the papacy — Philip, Regent of Spain — Charles's plans for the aggrandizement of Spain — The English marriage — Accession of Philip — His policy and ambitions. X.— A CRUSADING PEOPLE— National failure . . 350 The colonization and organization of the Spanish possessions — Social changes in Spain in the first half of the sixteenth century — Effects of the settlement of America on industry — Perverse fiscal policy : its effects — Philip H and the papacy — The main^ spring of Philip's system — Auto-de-fe at Valladolid — Philip's foreign policy — The defeat of Los Gelves — Relief of Malta — The Inquisition triumphant in Spain — The Spaniards in Flan- ders — Alba — Spain and England — Decay of industry in Sp ain — Fanaticism of the people — The control of the Church in ^Eairi — The war ot ttie Moriscos — Expulsion from Andalusia — Don Juan of Austria — Lepanto — Don Juan's ambitions — Don Juan in Flanders — Farnese — The conquest of Portugal — The Armada — Philip and the League — Henry IV goes to mass — Antonio Perez and Aragon — Essex at Cadiz — Death of Philip II — Failure of his lifelong efforts. XI. — Consummation of the decay . . 404 Literary movement in the sixteenth century — The rise of the Spanish drama— Lope de Vega— Spanish prose— Don Quixote —The picaresque novels— MateiiaLa nd moral decline of the geo^e::;-Philip III and Lerma— Expulsion of the Moriscos— The Thirty Years' War— Death of Philip III— Condi tion of th e people on the accessio n of Philip IV — 01ivares1:iT?nr]H^7n^i. —The rebellion of Catalonia— Loss of Portugal— Fall of Oli- vares— Disillusionment and death of Philip IV— Exhaustion of the country— Habits of thp ppople— The golden age of Spanish literature and art— Velasquez, Murillo, etc.— Spanish sculpture —Reign of Charles II— His death— A disputed succession. XII.— The arrest of the decline— The final decay AND resurrection 458 Accession of Philip V— The wars of succession— The French influence— Princess des Ursins— The treaty of Utrecht— Eliza- Contents^ xix CHAPTER PAGE beth Farnese and her wars — Death of Philip — Loss of Flanders — Fernando VI — Snnial. pn liHr-gl^ anri jntdlf ^"''' '^"">^^^i"" "f the people — The pra nf rpfnrm — C harles II I — Vast improve - me nts effected — The Jesuits — R eaction — Death of Charles III — Charles IV and Godoy — Spain a satellite of France — The royal family at Bayonne — The Peninsular War — Fernando VII and the Constitution — The return of despotism — Isabel II and Don Carlos — The reign of Isabel — The revolution — Alfonso XII— Conclusion. Bibliography . ' 517 Index 525 THE SPANISH PEOPLE CHAPTER I RIVAL CIVILIZATIONS PUNIC AND ROMAN REPUBLICAN SPAIN The Phoenicians in Spain — The Iberians — Primitive civilization — The influence of the Greeks— The Carthaginians — ^The Punic wars in Spain — The Romans — Rising of the Celtiberians — Viriatus — Nu- mancia — The revolt of Sertorius — Spain under the Roman Empire — Primitive institutions of Spain — The municipality. More than eleven hundred 3'ears before the birth of Christ the ships of Tyre and Sidon, groping their way from headland to headland along the north African coast, came to the gates of the world that led out of the Mediterranean into the immeasurable unknown. The vessels themselves were little better than' frail open boats propelled by oar and sail, but the crews were of the indomitable race of Shem, whose function in the world it was to carry ever farther west the an- cient civilizations of the East, and to bring back, from the farthermost corners of the known earth the raw material for the luxury and splendour of the Pharaohs. The poorness of their own cramped little land of Phoenicia had driven them to the sea for a livelihood and had made them, as they were, traders, mariners, and middlemen, whose commercial colonies were dotted all over the Mediterranean coasts and islands. From the sea, too, they had wrung the secret which provided them with their own special article of barter, whose beauty enabled them to cajole from the 2 The Spanish People primitive peoples with whom they dealt the natural products and precious metals for which the Egyptians and Assyrians yearned. The spiky sea snails, whose crushed bodies dyed their cloth the rich Tyrian purple which added to the mag- nificence of emperors and dazzled the eyes of savages, had made the Phoenicians wealthy; but new markets and new supplies were ever needed ; and, pushing through the straits into the ocean, they set up in iioo b. c. their first peaceful^ Spanish colony, which they called Gadeira or Gadir (Cadiz), under the special protection of Melkarth (Hercules), the fa- vourite god of the Tyrians, who had now supplanted the Si- donians as leaders of the Phoenician federation. They found in possession of the land a people of strongly marked character, the impress of whose peculiarities is still deeply stamped upon the Spanish race after three thousand years of such varied intermixture as no other population in Europe has undergone. Whence the Iberians came has al- ways been, and must remain, a matter of dispute. That they, like the Celts, were a branch of the great Indo-European family, and had spread along the south of Europe from the slopes of the Caucasus, was long held as an article of faith by scholars whose opinions were worthy of respect ; but more recent ■ investigations tend somewhat to shake belief in this theory. That they were a dolichocephalic (long-headed) race of short stature and very dark complexion, with plentiful curly black hair,* is certain, and they probably inhabited the whole of Spain in the neolithic age, either as successors of a still earlier race — of which it is possible that the Basques, who still form a separate people in the north of Spain and southwest of France may be the survivors — or as the prim- itive inhabitants dating from the prehistoric times when Africa and Europe, and possibly also America, were joined by land. In any case, what is known of their physique seems to negative the supposition that they were of Indo-Euro- * " Colorati vultus et torsi plerunque crines." — Tacitus. The Iberians 3 pean or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyl tribes of the Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast oppo- site Spain, who were driven back into the mountains by suc- cessive waves of invasion. Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the early Iberian must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities of character and institu- tions the likeness is easily traceable to the Spaniard of to-day. The organization of the Iberians, like that of the Atlas peo- ples, was clannish and tribal, and their chief characteristic, was their indomitable local independence. Warlike and brave, sober and light-hearted, the Kabyl tribesman has for thousands of years stubbornly resisted all attempts to weld him into a nation or subject him to a uniform dominion, while the Iberian, starting probably from the same stock, was blended with Aryan races possessing other qualities, and was submitted for six centuries to the unifying organization of the greatest governing race the world ever saw — the Romans ; and yet, withal, even at the present day, the main character- istic of the Spanish nation, like that of the Kabyl tribes, is lack of solidarity. From the earliest dawn of history the centre of Spanish life, the unit of government, the birthplace of tradition, and the focus of patriotism have been the town. A Spaniard's pueblo means infinitely more to him than his town means to an Englishman or a Frenchman. With the Spaniard the idea of the state — of the nation — is superposed upon his more ancient traditions ; in the Iberian heart of him his pue- blo comes first, and then, far after, his province, and, last of all, Spain. It may be argued that much of this dominant regional feeling, which lies at the root of all Spanish political problems, has been caused by the physical conformation of the country; split up by numerous mountain ranges into small divisions, by which intercommunication has been ren- dered diflScult, local jealousies perpetuated, and the fusion of 4 The Spanish People races retarded; and this, it may be admitted, has produced its effect. But the Atlas tribes, with whom no Aryan ideas of state government have interfered, maintain in full vigour the same feeling as the Spaniard toward the town. Centuries of Roman administration broke up the tribal organization of the Iberians, which the Kabyls still retain, and substituted for it the idea of a centralized state, but on both sides of the Mediterranean the smallest unit of local government remains practically untouched from prehistoric times. The djemda and the pueblo, respectively, are the centres around which life revolves; the elected amin and the elected alcalde remain, as they always have been, the first and ever-present unit of au- thority. No master race has succeeded in welding the Kabyls, Touaregs, and Berbers into a state, as the Romans did with the mixed Iberians and Celts ; and in Spain to the present day, with its numberless paper constitutions and its feverish polit- ical experiments, the pueblo keeps its practical independence of a centralized government, which has federated pueblos into provinces, but has never absorbed or entirely destroyed the primitive germ of local administration. The village granary (posito) still stands in the Spanish village, as its counterpart does in the Atlas regions ; the town pasture and communal tillage land continue on both sides of the straits to testify to the close relationship of the early Iberians with the Afro- Semitic races, which included the Egyptian or Copt, the Kabyl, the Touareg, and the Berber. The language of the Iberians has been lost, but enough of it remains on coins of the later Celtiberian period to prove that it had a common root with Egyptian and the Saharan tongues, which extend from Senegal to Nubia on the hither side of the negro zone * With all this evidence before us we may be forgiven for doubting the correctness of the theory which ascribes a Cau- casian origin to the primitive Iberian people. * The original idea of the written character was apparently moulded upon the Phoenician, though little can now be deciphered. The Coming of the Celts 5 Long before the dawn of recorded history, while mankind was hardly emerging from the neolithic stage, a vast incur- sion of Celts had come from the north and poured over the western Pyrenees into Spain.* Finding the first provinces they reached occupied by the Iberians — or perhaps even by the remains of a still earlier race whose descendants still in- habit them — the Celtic invaders directed their course to the west, and took possession of the whole of what now is Portu- gal and Galicia, where their blood is still dominant. The new- comers were fair in complexion, very tall and strong, and much more advanced in knowledge than were the Iberians ; while the need of obtaining food in their peregrinations had made them a pastoral and, to some extent, an agricultural people. Through long unrecorded ages of tribal and local strug- gles these semi-savage peoples lived, fought, and died. On •the great elevated table-land which occupies the centre of Spain the races came together, and gradually amalgamated; the northwest and west of the country still remaining mainly Celtic, while in the south and east the Iberian blood predomi- nated. By the time that the Phcenicians established their * * I am led to this conclusion by a most interesting series of dis- coveries recently made in an ancient copper mine excavated on the side of Mount Aramo, near Oviedo, in Asturias. The workings are very extensive, and a considerable number of polished stone hammers and needles, horn picks, etc., have been found,' but no iron or metal instruments. Sixteen skeletons have come to light, and from the great difference in the size of the bones and the shape of the skulls, it is evident that they belong to two different races, which have .worked the mine in succession; .a fact also proved by the smelting in one case being much more perfect than the other, and the pottery and wooden instruments near the larger skeletons being superior to those found in the workings of the smaller folk. Both races appear simply to have picked out the nodules of native copper for use, and to have been ignorant of the process of. reducing the ore. I am led by these facts to the conclusion that the Celts must have arrived in Asturias in the transition period between the stone and bronze ages, when the knowledge of mining was confined to the picking out and melting of soft native copper. 6 The Spanish People colony at Cadiz the Celtiberians on the Mediterranean coasts had attained a considerable knowledge of agriculture, and were adepts at smelting iron and other metals, while the tribes in the inaccessible interior were still to all intents and pur- poses barbarians, constantly engaged in tribal warfare, in which, in cases of emergency, the women fought by the side of the men. The admixture of Celt and Iberian was an ideal one for the production of a fighting race. The Celtic love of home and kindred, the powerful frames hardened by long sojourn in cold climates, and the highly strung poetic im- agination engendered by a previous pastoral nomadic life made the Celts fierce and fervent protectors of their own ; while the Iberians, agile, daring, active, and enduring, with an overwhelming sense of individuality and independence, in- fused into the amalgamated race the element of personal pride in struggle and the conquest of an opponent, apart from the object of the contest. This was the race, still imperfectly fused, that the Phoeni- cian merchant-mariners found in possession of the Peninsula when they first set up their permanent establishment on the coast. But it was not the race that brought the men of Tyre flocking over to Spain after their brethren, to found other colonies besides Cadiz all along the south and east coast of the Peninsula. The vast fertile alluvial valleys of the Guadi- ana and the Guadalquivir, in the estuaries of which the first Phcenician settlements were made, gave rich pasture to flocks of sheep whose wool was the finest the newcomers had ever seen ; the dwarf oaks on the hillsides within view of the sea, abounded with those curious and mysterious little black, shining excrescences, of which the Persians made the splendid scarlet dye that ran the Tyrian purple so hard in the markets of the East; the Bay of Cadiz swarmed with tunny fish of a delicacy and size unknown before, and the salted tunny of Gadeira thenceforward for centuries shared with the pickled eels of Tartessus, at the mouth of the Gua- The Products of Iberia 7 dalquivir, the admiring suffrages of the Greek and Syrian gourmets. Nor was this all, for the Phoenicians found in the soil of Iberia vast stores of precious metals which made the Tyrians of Spain the richest people in the world. The quicksilver and cinnabar of Almaden, the silver, the gold, the copper and tin which served to provide the all-pervading bronze, the pearls, the corals, and the precious stones of the favoured land enabled the Phoenician colonies of Spain to vie in wealth, if not in power, with the mighty Carthage, their brother and rival on the opposite coast.* But if the Phoeni- cians took much wealth from Spain, they brought to it what was worth more than wealth — the science of writing in let- ters, which, like all Semitic people, they wrote from right to left, and in this were followed by the Celtiberians. Other things they taught the receptive barbarians among whom they lived. Lighthouses and landmarks, like the tower of Hercules at Corunna, were erected by them on the coast ; the art of working, refining, and manufacturing metals spread from the colonists to the native tribes ; and, in the course of time, the fine wools of Betica were manufactured by busy weavers in Spain itself, and sent, already dyed with the bril- liant scarlet of the Iberian kermes, to Greece and Syria, to Rome and Carthage, and even to far-off Gaul and the " Tin Isles " beyond. Thus for six hundred years the isolated Phoenician fac- tories on the Iberian coast gradually and insensibly intro- duced the first germs of wealth and refinement into the life * Some of the Greek writers seem to exaggerate the wealth of the Spanish mines to the extent of saying that the Phpenicians of Iberia cast their anchors of gold, and that the Carthaginians when they arrived in Andalusia were surprised to find the mangers and household vessels made of the same precious metal (see Antigiiedades de Espaiia, by Ambrosio de Morales, Alcala, 1577). But several large dishes, bowls, etc., in gold and silver of Phoenician and Carthaginian times have been found in Spain, and are described in " Spanish Indus- trial Art " by J. F. Riaiio. 8 The Spanish People of the people. The Greeks had simultaneously established themselves in colonies in the northeast of Spain, at Rhodas (now Rosas), the Balearic Isles, and later at Emporium (Am- purias), Denia, and Sagunto, and brought their share to the infant civilization of Spain. In neither case did the colonists come in the form of warriors or conquerors. The factories were protected by strong walls and stockade defences, and no attempt was made for centuries to subdue or govern the inland tribes. The Celtiberians of the coast in the course^ of time adapted their modes of life to those of the Phoenicians and Greeks who had settled in their midst, but a vast dififer- ence existed in the influence exerted respectively by the two colonizing nations. The Phoenicians, simply traders and in constant touch with their mother country, and in later times, with Carthage, rarely identified themselves permanently with the country of their abode ; while the Greeks, who were driven to form colonies, not primarily by greed of gain, but by political convulsions, frequently broke off all dependence on their mother country, except in religious afifairs, and went their own way as self-governed communities in the new land of their choice. The influence, therefore, of the Phoenicians over the Celtiberians was mainly material, while the Greeks, who were much more sympathetic to the natives, in course of time infused into the latter political, religious, and moral ideas * which took root and produced important fruit. At length, some five hundred years before Christ, the Phoenicians of Cadiz attempted to penetrate into the interior of the country beyond the zone of the coast tribes, and, prob- * The government of the Greek colonies, at first oligarchical, was at a later period democratic and elective, the general assembly of citi- zens choosing a small number as an executive power. This institu- tion greatly resembled the Iberian organization, and some of its procedure was adopted by the natives. The Greeks also brought a more attractive mythological form of religion than the Phoenicians, and the deeply devotional imaginative Celtiberians seized upon the_ sensuous and poetical system which made their religion enter into every act of their lives. The Carthaginians ably without desiring it, came into collision with the Celt- iberians of the interior. The native tribes, constantly at war among themselves, had by this time received sufficient Greek culture to recognise the wisdom of federation against a common enemy, and, united, swept down upon the Phoeni- cian settlements on the coast with fire and sword. Gadeira itself was in danger, and the vast riches of the other Tyrian colonies were already being squandered by savage hordes who had driven the Semitic merchants from their homes and country houses, when in desperation the Phoeni- cians cast about for help against their assailants. Tyre was far away, already in the toils of the Assyrians, and overshadowed by its great African colony, which Dido" and the Tyrian aristocrats had founded centuries before; so the trembling traders of Gadeira were fain to send swift galleys skimming through the straits to their kinsmen at Carthage, begging them to come to their aid. The Car- thaginians had long been jealous of the riches gained so easily by their unwarlike cousins across the sea, and having, in re- sponse to the invitation, repelled the Celtiberian tribesmen, in the first instance to impress them with their power, promptly enlisted them as irregular allies, and seized for themselves the Phoenician settlements in Spain. Cadiz alone held out and opposed a stubborn resistance, but at length the last Phoenician bulwark fell, and the more enterprising and warlike Carthaginians became masters in their kinsmen's stead. This was a people whose qualities soon won the hearts of the valiant Celtiberians, and for two hundred and fifty vears the prosperous coast colonies of Spain furnished Car- thage with the means which enabled her to aspire to universal dominion and to spread her influence from Britain to Nubia. Although during this first period of their domination the Car- thaginians visited all parts of the Peninsula, they made no attempt at imposing a government upon the tribes. Celt- iberians enlisted in plenty in the Punic legions, and their 10 The Spanish People finely tempered steel swords and lances of Bilbilis (near the modern Calatayud) were of such excellence that no helmet or buckler could withstand them ; * but the Carthaginians, like their Phoenician cousins before them, were content for two and a half centuries to use Spanish mines as a source of rev- enue and to leave the Celtiberians to govern themselves in their own way, so long as they would man their armies against the Romans. But the end of the first Punic war, which the Romans had carried into Africa, was disastrous to the Carthaginians ; and the vast army of mercenaries, mutinous, unpaid, and discon- tented, revolted on their return to Carthage ; one of the most sanguinary civil wars in history being the result. The mer- cenary revolt was crushed and drowned in seas of blood, and out of the reek there emerged a great statesman and soldier who had. directed the massacre. The disasters of the Punic war and the subsequent civil contest had split into two parties the leaders of Carthage. On the one side the great Hamilcar Barca headed the militant party, and advocated territorial . extension in Europe, in order that Rome might be threatened at her own gates ; while the peace party, led by Hanno, de- sired a return to the old Phoenician tradition of trade expan- sion and purely commercial activity, without burdening the republic with the responsibility of widespread dominion. After a struggle the Carthaginian Senate were gained to the side of Hamilcar, and Spain instead of Africa became the base of Carthaginian operations against Rome. There was good reason for this. The Celtiberians had proved them- selves in the first Punic war infinitely better soldiers than * Livy, Diodorus Siculus, and Polybius frequently mention both the excellence of the Iberian arms and the bravery of the native legionaries. The Celtiberians were famous horsemen (the horse was the most common device on their coins), and were largely used as cavalry both by the Carthaginians and subsequently by the Romans. No less than 20,000 Celtiberian mercenaries fought on the side of the Carthaginians in Sicily during the first Punic War The Carthaginians n the Numidian mercenaries who had formed the bulk of the Carthaginian armies, the supply of such men in Spain was well-nigh inexhaustible, horses were plentiful, and the steel weapons of Spain were the finest in the world. The firm possession, too, of the splendid harbours on the east coast of Spain opposite Italy, and the command of the passes over the eastern Pyrenees into Liguria, threatened Rome on her most vulnerable flank ; and at the first move of the Cartha- ginians from Africa the Romans sought to be beforehand with them, and occupied what now is Catalonia. Hamilcar with his army of Africans was received in the south by the Celtiberians of the coast with open arms. As has already been pointed out, there was probably much blood affinity be- tween the peoples on both sides of the sea ; the Carthaginians and their forbears, the Phoenicians, had lived in fair agree- ment with the natives for many centuries ; Celtiberian tribes- men had fought in the armies of Carthage for generations, and Hamilcar and his Punic hosts were welcomed, not as invaders, but as friends. Some resistance was offered by many of the interior tribes to the advance of Hamilcar ; and the Celtibe- rians who had grown up under the influence of the Greek col- onies in the northeast sided usually with the Roman invad- ers, but, generally speaking, the Carthaginians had the whole of the south of Spain in their favour, and Hamilcar overawed the east with his strong Numidian garrisons. After nine years of stubborn fighting, during which the Romans were at one time rolled back from the line of the Ebro to the flanks of the Pyrenees, and the proud city of Barcelona had been founded to perpetuate the memory of the conqueror, Hamil- car Barca fell in battle, and his peaceful diplomatic son Has- drubal succeeded him. For eight years Hasdrubal concil- iated the Celtiberians and consolidated the Punic empire in Spain, and before he was murdered at the end of his short reign the whole of the south and southeast and some of the interior tribes acknowledged the light overlordship of Car- 12 The Spanish People thage,* and the first attempt at the unification of Spain as a nation was made. A greater Barca than Hasdrubal was to endeavour to carry the process still further, but by far different methods, and to risk and lose all. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, was twenty-six years of age when he succeeded to the dominion of Punic Spain. He had been brought up in the country from his infancy; he had married a Celtiberian wife, and in all things had identified himself with the people among whom he lived. Idolized by the soldiery, and himself one of the greatest leaders of men the world has ever seen, to him and his armies was vouchsafed the task of championing one side in the great struggle which was to decide for all time whether Rome or Carthage should rule, whether the Semite or the Aryan should direct the coming civilization of Europe. There is no space here to tell the stirring story of the Punic wars outside of Spain, but reference must be made to a few incidents of them which specially concerned the Celtiberian people. The tribes of the northeast, and especially those within the old Greek spheres of influence, continued to resist the domination of Carthage and to clamour for Roman forces to fight their battle. It had been agreed by Hasdrubal that the territory north of the Ebro and the Greek-Iberian cities on the coast should be considered as under the protection of Rome ; but an excuse was soon found by Hannibal (219 b. C.) to attack the colony of Saguntum (near Murviedro). In vain the Saguntians prayed to Rome for aid — " Dum Romce con- sulitur, Saguntum expugnatur " — and no aid was sent. The Celtiberian was always at his best in fighting for his own pueblo, and the spirit shown at Saguntum, and later at Nu- * As if to emphasize the intention of the Barcas to transfer perma- nently the centre of the Carthaginian empire to Spain, Hasdrubal founded with all solemnity the city of New Carthage on the east coast, now called Cartagena. Saguntum 13 mancia, survived at Zaragoza and Gerona two thousand years afterward. For nine months Hannibal and his vast armies — it is said of 150,000 men — assailed the devoted city; and when, at length, famine rather than the sword, made surrender inevitable, Hannibal refused to grant honourable terms, and the whole of the inhabitants preferred suicide to humiliation. The proud Carthaginian conqueror entered the captured place to find nothing but ashes, ruins, and corpses to receive him.* Thenceforward it was war to the knife between Car- thage and Rome. With an army of over 100,000 men, a quarter of whom were Spaniards, Hannibal performed that prodigious march of his from Spain across the Pyrenees and the Alps almost to the gates of Rome, roHing back again and again the veteran legions of the republic. Four crushing defeats in the field the Romans suffered at the hands of Han- nibal, until at length the victor himself was exhausted, and the Roman Senate wisely seized the opportunity of sending a strong force under Gnaeus Scipio to Spain, to prevent the de- spatch of re-enforcements to Hannibal, and to strike the enemy in his own land. Gnaeus, landing in the extreme north- east, soon had 20,000 Iberian tribesmen under his standard to strike at the Carthaginians and their native levies. Even thus early Catalonia was ready to fight against the rest of Spain, as she has been ever since. Gnaeus and Publius Scipio were at first victorious, and prevented aid being sent to Han- nibal, but their forces were eventually routed, Publius falling in battle. Undismayed, the Roman Senate despatched Scipio Africanus to Spain (209 b. c.) to avenge his father, Publius, and to continue the war. More fortunate than his prede- cessors, he not only again stopped the despatch of Carthagin- ian re-enforcements, but utterly destroyed the Punic power in Spain ; then, hurrying to Africa, he struck at the heart of Car- thage itself. ♦Accounts of the siege of Saguntum will be found in Livy, xxi; Silus Italicus, i; and Polybius, iii. 3 14 The Spanish People In vain the Carthaginians sued for peace ; in vain Hanni- bal, whose first thought was for Spain, abandoned his Italian conquest and returned to Iberia, whence he was followed by Scipio (208 B. c.) ; in two years of constant fighting, during which the Iberian tribes changed sides with bewildering un- certainty, the armies of Rome carried all before them, and Carthage disappeared as a European power with the end of the second Punic war. But though the organized forces of Hannibal had been defeated, the Celtiberian bands were still ready to fight to the death rather than suffer the yoke which the victorious Romans now endeavoured to fasten upon them — even as two thousand years afterward the swarming Span- ish guerilla bands fought the armies of Napoleon, foot by foot, in mountain passes and narrow valleys, when the organized forces of .the Cortes had been swept into nothingness. Mer- ciful as, the threadbare legend tells us, Scipio was at the cap- ture of New Carthage, his generosity left him as soon as the disciplined Punic troops had been beaten, and the last Car- thaginian post in Spain — Cadiz — had been abandoned (206 B. c). Thenceforward the rigid rule of Rome had to be forced upon the unwilling Iberians at the sword's point. With the arrival of Scipio Africanus and the attempt of Rome to bring the Iberians into its uniform system of gov- ernment, the history of Spain as a nation may be said to com- mence. Before speaking of the influence exerted by the long Roman domination, it will be well to glance at the condition of the country when the Carthaginians finally left it. There is ample data in Livy, Appian, Strabo, and Polybius to allow of a fairly accurate idea being formed of the Iberian people after a few years of Roman rule. The tribes of the north and northwest, except in a few settlements on the coast, were prac- tically barbarians, knowing nothing of the value of the pre- cious metals or of the refinements of civilized life, while the coast tribes of the south and east had easily assimilated the arts, tastes and requirements of the Carthaginians, Romans, State of li^e Country 209 b. c. 15 and Greeks with whom^ithey had been brought into contact.* In the south, agriculture had advanced greatly ; the galleys of the Celtiberian towns were the finest in the Mediterranean; money was current,! coins being struck in all the colonies, with a Latin, Greek, or Phoenician inscription on one side and an Iberian legend on the other ; the breeding of cattle and horses was carried out on a vast scale ; and mining and * The profoundly interesting excavations made last year by M. Bonsor in the valley of the Guadalquivir (Les Colonies Agricoles Pre-Romaines de la Vallee du Betis, Paris, 1899) demonstrate that the Punic conquerors had before the advent of the Romans intro- duced a relatively high stage of civilization in Betica. M. Bonsor unearthed from the tumuli he explored an immense number of beau- tifully decorated fragments of pottery showing strong Greek influ- ence, as well as ivory combs, plaques and tazze, arms, bronze orna- ments, lamps, and other articles of the Carthaginian period, bearing figures of the winged bull, the combats with lions, and other Oriental devices, together with the beautiful decoration peculiar to the Greeks. More curious still was the great quantity of pottery found by M. Bonsor ornamented by raised geometrical patterns of great beauty and intricacy, formed by superposed lines of clay lighter than the groundwork. This pottery M. Bonsor identifies as Celtic in its ori- gk\, arid of a date prior to, or very early in, the Phoenician period. As similar Celtic pottery has been found in Portugal, it will be understood that the Celtic influence, having crossed the Pyrenees, reached the south by the western seaboard. It will thus be seen that long before the arrival of the Romans a relatively high degree of civilization had been reached at least in the south of Spain. There is also in the Louvre a very beautiful life-size sculptured bust of a woman elaborately dressed and adorned in the Carthaginian fashion, which shows the influence of Greek art on Oriental traditions. This bust was found at Elche, near Alicante, in 1897. t The first coins known to have been struck in Spain were Greek, from the famous settlement of Emporium (Ampurias). These pieces, which bore the winged horse on the reverse and a finely executed head on the obverse, were known and current throughout the coasts of the Mediterranean. The inscription in most cases consists of the word Emporium in Greek characters, but some coins have the same word in Iberic letters. Although no architectural monument of known Greek origin exists in Spain, a large quantity of purely Greek pottery is found, the characteristic ornamentation of which profoundly influenced the artistic tastes of the native peoples. The Greeks were also the first to introduce schools or academies in Spain. 1 6 The Spanish People metallurgy were now systematically conducted. The festive drink of the people appears to have been a fermented barley wine or beer,* and their principal amusements were competi- tive athletic sports, and, probably, also bull baiting. It must be repeated that the Phoenician and Carthaginian domination was much more important from the material and racial points of view than in the matter of social growth or institutions, with which the settlers did not to any great extent interfere. During the eight or nine centuries that the coasts were held by Afro-Semites a continued intermix- ture of African blood had increased the already large propor- tion of similar elements probably possessed by the Iberian race. In the west, it is true, the Celts remained almost pure ; but such social and governmental traditions as the Celt- iberians of the rest of Spain preserved, had been drawn from their Iberian ancestors, and strengthened by ages of contact with Afro-Semitic neighbours. With the exception, there- fore, of the peoples surrounding the Greek colonies on the northwest — whose descendants to this day have remained quite separate in sentiment from other Spaniards — the social traditions of the Iberian were African rather than Indo- European in tendency. The problem of the Romans — as it * The mode of life, system of agriculture, etc., of the Spanish peo- ple of the south may be seen to-day practically unchanged since Roman times in the great fertile valley praised by Strabo, and called La Vega, near Carmona. The necessary labourers are hired each year in towns and taken by the farmer to his grange; the women, even those of the farmer's own family, remaining in the town, whither the men return when the agricultural task of the season is done. The food of the peasants usually consists, as it did in the remotest times, of a breakfast of garlic soup with oil and bread, a midday meal of a sort of salad of vinegar, oil, and bread crumbs called gaz- pacho, and a supper of chick-peas with oil, bread, and wine. When the old sheep are killed in July and August stewed meat is served once a day, the whole company eating with wooden spoons out of a central dish. With the exception of the use of wine, and details of dress, little has changed in the lives of these people during re- corded history. Roman Organization 17 was the problem of all subsequent rulers of Spain — was to build up an edifice of European civilization upon a Libyan and Semitic foundation. Although probably Scipio Afri- canus and his successors did not fully recognise the nature or complexity of the task, it will be seen in the course of these pages that the whole subsequent development of the Spanish people has been influenced by the fact of the upper strata of its civilization being of a different primitive origin from its lower strata; that the history of Spain, indeed, consists of the continued antagonism between distinct racial traditions. The Romans saved Spain in the first instance from the further development of its institutions on tribal lines; they endowed the people with a religion and a priesthood, which the Spaniards adapted to their own primitive devotional mysticism, still so strongly noticeable among the tribes of the Atlas ; they ingrafted the idea of a state upon a society con- sisting of separate towns ; they finally made Spain more Ro- man than Rome ; but they never altered, and could not alter, the earliest characteristics of the people: their overpowering sense of individuality, their personal independence, and their intensely local patriotism, still as conspicuous in their de- scendants as in the Berber tribesmen, whom no Roman civili- zation through seven centuries laboured to consolidate into one people. This strong sense of personal independence and regional sentiment, unmodified in the Atlas by the centraliz- ing civilization of the Romans, preventing, as it does, the for- mation of an aristocracy or of a priestly caste, is sufficient to condemn a people to unprogressive impotence, and even in its greatly modified form, as stih seen in Spain, where racial admixture and centralization have worked for centuries, it is at the root of much of the misfortune and backwardness which has afflicted the country for so long. Rome lost no time in commencing its great task of or- ganization, and only one year after Scipio's great victory (206 B. c), regarding the whole country as a conquered pos- 1 8 The Spanish People session, the Romans divided tiie land into two proconsul- ships, Citerior, or hither Spain, being the east, and Ulterior, or farther Spain, the west. For two hundred years Rome wrestled with the stubborn Celtiberian tribesmen of the centre and north. Every valley, every pass, every ford, had to be won by sheer force of arms. Somewhat contrary to the usual Roman system, it was seen to be necessary to main- tain in Spain great permanent garrisons, amounting to 40,000 men, who were stationed principally in Saguntum, Cadiz, and Tarraco (Tarragona). This naturally led to the existence of a large mixed Roman and Celtiberian population, and semi- Roman cities or colonies sprang up, mainly inhabited by the half-castes, such as Urbs Italica (or Julia Augusta), opposite Seville; Carteia (near Algeciras), specially founded for the offspring of Roman plebeians and Iberian mothers ; and the Colonia Patricia, for a higher class, which stood on the banks of the Gaudalquivir on the site of the present Cordova. Thus, while the interior and northern tribes were still obstinately re- sisting absorption, the inhabitants of the coast almost eagerly, and in a very short space of time, became entirely Romanized. Slowly, but surely, however, the eagles advanced. The fortunes of the struggle, looked at in detail, seem to vary froin day to day, but the general course of the Romans was cease- lessly onward. Ubi castra ibi Respublica. Every succeeding camping ground became part of the state, and by 179 B. c. southern and eastern Spain had been fairly brought under Roman dominion. The country was proverbially rich, and Rome was already- growing corrupt ; the pretors, eager only to grow rapidly wealthy and return to the luxury and splendour of the moth- er city, extorted the treasure of the natives with heartless cru- elty, which kept discontent simmering and prevented the de- velopment of the country.* At length, in 154, a formidable * The Censor Marcus Cato was sent by the Senate to take supreme command in 197, and to remedy the extortion to which the Iberians The Rising of Viriatus 19 federation of tribes, mainly Lusitanians of Celtic descent, made a determined attempt to shake oS Roman control. Fulvius, the consul, with a great army was twice defeated, and his successor, Marcellus (152 b. c), was fain to sign a treaty of peace under the walls of Numancia, which the Ro- man Senate refused to ratify. Marcellus, on the spot, saw better than the Senate the difficulty of copquering these brave barbarians, and accepted the tremendous bribe of 6oc> talents of silver from the Celtiberians to end the war. But a new general from Rome, Lucullus, disregarded the fact, and car- ried ruthless massacre into the centre of what now is Castile. Though he killed 20,000 citizens of one city, he in turn had to sue for peace, which the generous Celtiberians granted him on the honourable terms which he did not deserve. Galba, the pretor, in the following year (151 b. c.) distanced all his predecessors in treachery and cruelty. By an act of unexam- pled dishonour he enslaved the whole body of three Lusita- nian tribes, and subsequently by similar falseness entrapped and massacred 30,000 refugees who had trusted to his word of honour. Out of the myriad of nameless barbarians who suffered, fought, and died, there arose one man at this juncture whose name will live for ever. Like the peasants, such as Mina, who by force of character rose from guerilla leaders to be com- manders of armies in the Napoleonic wars in Spain, Viriatus, a Lusitanian shepherd, began by heading a small band of his fugitive neighbours. To him flocked in the Estrema- duran mountains other tribesmen, attracted by his boldness and success. For ten years he held his own victoriously against all the armies and the best generals that Rome could send to subdue were exposed. He was a Stoic whose justice was proverbial; but even he destroyed 400 towns in one year, and during his short government he sent from Spain to the Roman treasury 1,400 pounds of gold and 1,024 pounds of silver. If the just Marcus Cato acted thus, it may be imagined what would be the excesses of the ordinary greedy pretor. 20 The Spanish People him. A consummate strategist and tactician, a born ruler of men, magnanimous, honourable, self-sacrificing, and just, he was the first man of Celtiberian birth who had stood out clearly from the ranks to infuse into his countrymen an idea of united action. Before his 10,000 Lusitanians, in no less than nine general engagements the Romans were forced to retreat discomfited, and at length, by his strategy, the army of Fabius Servilianus was placed at his mercy. Instead of imitating Roman inhumanity, he accorded honourable terms, by which the beaten army was allowed to retire to Tarra- gona, and the whole of the territory held by the Lusitanians was to remain independent in alliance with Rome. But treachery compassed what Roman arms were powerless to effect. The treaty was broken ; once more Viriatus was vic- torious over the brother of the defeated Servilianus, and in the feigned negotiations for peace which followed, the first Spanish patriot, Viriatus, fell by a dagger bought by Roman gold. Rome, the conqueror of Carthage, Macedonia, and Greece in battle, could only conquer Spain by murder. The Celtiberians, without the strong personality of Viri- atus to bind them together, were again split up into local bands, and submitted almost universally to the yoke of the republic. One city at least stood out. Within the weak walls of Numancia all the Celtiberians who scorned surrender to those whom they had vanquished in a dozen fights, took refuge. The town, though not a fortress, stood on the Douro, near the modern town of Soria, in a position of unusual natural strength, and could only be approached by mountain passes which could easily be defended. The city and the neighbouring tribes refused to yield, and harassed their Ro- man assailants with ceaseless guerilla attacks, until at length the Consul Quintus Pompeius Rufus conceded their terms of peace. As usual, the treaty was broken by his successor Popilius, and the war continued more cruelly than ever, again unsuccessfully for the Romans. A new consul with a Numancia 21 fresh army was despatched by the Roman Senate to bring the proud city to obedience at any cost, and he, too, gave up the task as beyond his strength. In his retreat with 20,000 men he was entrapped in a mountain pass by 4,000 tribesmen and forced to beg for terms, which were again granted by the Numancians. But Rome, who could not brook thus to be defied refused to ratify the compact, and once more the war recommenced. Three more Roman consuls in succession were defeated, and abandoned the task in despair. Still the terror Respublicw remained unconquered, and Rome was fain to send her greatest general, Scipio Emilianus, to subdue this insignificant Iberian city, if not the indomitable Iberian hearts it sheltered. The siege was long and stubborn ; fam- ine and pestilence added to its horrors, and when at length, after sixteen months' close beleaguerment, all hope was gone, the Numancians did as the Saguntians had done before them — destroyed everything they possessed, and then died heroically by their own short swords of Bilbilis steel. Six thousand of the defenders were found dead in the reeking streets of the city, and Scipio the ruthless entered Rome with barely a squad of Numancian captives to grace his triumph. For fourteen years Numancia had stood firm, but when it fell all Spain but the wild Celtic northwest lay open to the Roman legions, and for the next fifty years the work of organization and administration of the country as a province of the repub- lic went on almost uninterruptedly. It would be an error to ascribe the stubborn Celtiberian heroism, of which Saguntum, the rising of Viriatus, and the defence of Numancia are only a few instances, to any such feeling as that which we call patriotism, or indeed alone to the pugnacity and ferocity of the Celtiberian race. No such stubborn stand was made against the Carthaginian domina- tion as against the Romans, because the Punic traditions ' were more in accord with those of the Celtiberians them- selves than were those of the Latin race ; and the fierce fight- 2 2 The Spanish People ing of "the natives for the first century and a half against the Romans may probably be ascribed, in part, to the unsympa- thetic nature of the Roman organization, and partly to the incitement of Carthaginian emissaries, who were desirous of weakening their enemy by encouraging a wasting, irregular war in Spain. After the fall of Numancia the wars waged by the Romans in Spain were not so much the result of Iberian revolt against the authority of the republic, as an extension of the civil dissensions that divided Rome itself. This change of situation, in a large measure caused by the rapid Romanization both in blood and habits of the Celtiberian people, is strongly marked in the great rebellion of Sertorius. Sertorius, a Sabine with a Spanish mother, had been an advocate in Rome, an officer in Gaul, and a military tribune in Spain, where his half-Iberian blood and his stern justice made him extremely popular. Thence he had gone to Rome as questor and had thrown himself into the political contest which divided the city. Joining the plebeian party of Mari- us, he became pretor in 83 b. c, but the return of Sulla and the defeat of Marius sent him flying to Spain, already the most influential colony of the republic, with the object of organizing the Marian party there. He met with but little success, and retreating into Africa with a small body of par- tisans, continued to threaten the dominant patrician party in the Roman possessions. In 81 b. c. Sertorius was sum- moned to Spain to head the revolt against the government. Who summoned him is not quite clear, and it has usually been contended that this was another spontaneous attempt of the native Celtiberians finally to shake off the yoke of Rome. Judging, however, from the subsequent conduct of Sertorius and the changed condition of afifairs in Spain caused by the great increase of the semi-Roman pojpulation, it is extremely doubtful whether this was really the case. The very numer- ous offspring of Roman soldiers by Iberian women were, to all iritents and purposes, Romans, using the names of their Rebellion of Sertorius 23 fathers, speaking their language, and observing their cus- toms, but nevertheless were excluded from all the priv- ileges of Roman citizens, except in special instances. It was natural in these circumstances that they should promote a revolt in which the discontent of the oppressed native Celt- iberians might be employed against an administration which denied their rights, and in favour of a party leader from whom they might expect concessions. Sertorius accepted the invitation, and the whole country of Betica (Andalusia), where Roman blood was strongest, Lusitania, where the Celts were dominant, and the Celtiberian legions in the centre of Spain almost simultaneously joined his standard.* With enormous ability and success he or- ganized his people from his capital of Evora, cajoling the Celtiberian bands with stories of his supernatural inspiration, and infusing into them the utmost enthusiasm by appeals to their love of independence. How little Sertorius ever meant to do for the indepenflence of the pure Celtiberians is seen by the fact that he extended no privileges whatever to them dur- ing his administration, and. under the pretence of teaching them Latin culture he kept the flower of the Celtiberian youth in semi-imprisonment in his great school at Osca (Huesca). Sertorius defeated all the generals that the patrician party could send against him, and in 80 b. c. was joined by Per- penna, another Marian partisan from Sardinia, with 20,000 men. Metellus and Pompey, with all the strength of the Roman Senate at their backs, were powerless to withstand the almost universal revolt led by Sertorius, and on the re- treat of Pompey into Gaul it would have been easy for Serto- rius to have advanced upon Rome itself and to have brought * The revolt of Sertorius was interesting also from an ethnological point of view, as it was the means of introducing another large in- fusion of African blood into Iberia. Sertorius brought S.ooo Afri- cans with him, and a far greater number subsequently joined him. The 20,000 men brought by Perpenna from Sardinia must also have included many of the same race. 24 The Spanish People the Senate to its knees. But Sertorius was first of all a Ro- man, and would do nothing to humiliate the republic. His inaction at this juncture naturally offended his Celtiberian allies, and his jealous lieutenant took advantage of their dis- content to head a plot by which the chief was murdered at a banquet ostensibly given in his honour (73 b. c). During his administration Sertorius laid the foundation of a reformed organization of Spain. The deceived Celtiberians naturally seconded the efforts of the chief, who they thought was fight- ing for their independence, and his plans met with none of the resistance that was usually offered to Roman reforms. He divided the Peninsula into two grand divisions : Celti- beria, with its capital at Osca (Huesca), and Lusitania, with its capital at Evora. In the latter city he established a senate of three hundred members, nearly all of them of pure or mixed Roman birth ; his officers, magistrates, and governors were Romans almost to a man. His great school at Osca was taught by Latin and Greek professors ; his strenuous efforts to promote literature, science, and manufactures, his splendid prizes to successful students, his military, naval, and judicial organization, were all really directed toward the Ro- manization of Spain and its closer connection with the mother country rather than to its independence. With the death of Sertorius and the disillusionment of the Celtiberians the revolt rapidly collapsed. Pompey crushed what was left of the plebeian forces, and a few years later young Julius Caesar marched his legions sternly through the land, even to far-off savage Brigantium, in the northwest, where for the first time the mountain Celts were made to understand that civilizing Rome was now in earnest, and that lex Romana must rule unquestioned wherever the eagles had stood. And not alone to the wild tribesmen of the northwest had the lesson to be taught. The rapacious Roman officers were made to disgorge their plunder, and to their surprise the Celt- iberians experienced from a pretor equal-handed justice. Ju- Julius Czesar in Spain 25 lius himself had gone to Spain avowedly to obtain the funds to pay the vast debts of his riotous youth, and the treasure he sent to Rome was enormous,* as it might justly be with the almost inexhaustible i-esources of the country ; but the pecu- lation, extortion, and cruelty which had irritated the Celtibe- rians to madness formed no part of the system of the great Julius. Of the establishment of the triumvirate in Rome and the struggle between Caesar and Pompey for the consulship no account can be given here, except of that portion which was decided on Spanish soil. Julius was in Gaul at the head of his legions when the harsh message of the Senate reached him, proclaiming him an enemy to Rome if he did not at once disband his victorious army. Crossing the Rubicon with his legions, by forced marches he surprised and captured the mother city, and then hurried to Spain to crush the friends of Pompey who were in office there. Sweeping all before him in " hither Spain," of which the battle of Illerda made him master, he overturned the hated Varro in the south, and then carried his victorious legions to other lands. Again in 45 B. c, after Pompey's flight and death in Egypt, Julius had to return to Spain and trample down the last embers of the pa- trician party at the celebrated battle of Munda, which finally made him master of the world as perpetual dictator of Rome. In these long-continued wars between Roman factions the mixed populations of Spain fought on both sides ; there was no sense of a common bond between Spaniards to pre- vent them from killing each other in a stranger's domestic quarrel, and once more the influence of the tribal origin of the people and the physical conformation of the land, which re- tarded intercommunication, is seen in the absence of racial or national solidarity at a time when unity might have meant national independence. * Almost his first act as pretor was to seize the great accumula- tions of riches in the Temple of Hercules. 26 The Spanish People After the murder of Csesar and the end of the Macedonian war (42 B.C.), Octavian, the future Augustus, became supreme consul in the west. To him Spain was especially sympa- thetic,* and one of his earliest measures was directed to draw- ing closer the bonds w"liich joined the dependency to the com- ing empire. The imposition of a new general tax (38 B. c.) was made the opportunity for a grouping of contributory towns and the submission of classified social groups of sub- jects to the various grades of Roman law. This is usually made by historians the commencement of a new era in Spanish history, and it may fairly be stated that with the establishment of the empire (30 b. c.) *'^e posi- tion of Spain was greatly changed. The tendency of the empire at its first inception, although military, was really far more democratic than the republic; and Augustus lost no time in increasing the number of citizens and in giving to the great colonial dominions of Rome a more popular political organization than they had previously enjoyed. Spain was divided anew into three provinces (29 b. c). Betica (Anda- lusia) was now almost completely Romanized, and conse- quently peaceful and easily governed. This was made a senatorial province, to be ruled by civil proconsuls appointed by the Senate, although in military matters the emperor was supreme. The less settled parts of the country were divided into two great provinces : Lusitania on the west, and Tarra- conensis on the east, which were governed, under an imperial legate, by military chiefs appointed by the emperor himself. Before proceeding with the story of Spanish development under the empire, it will be useful to glance at the methods followed during the two previous centuries of republican do- minion to mould the Celtiberians into the model of civilization * He formed a bodyguard for his own person of 3,000 Celtiberians of Calahorra, and to him Cornelius Balbus, a Spaniard of Cadiz, the first foreigner to be raised to the consulate, owed his rank. Many of Augustus's principal officers in Rome were Spaniards. The Organization of Spain 27 which the conquering people considered to be equally adapta- ble to all countries from the Euphrates to remote Caledonia. The Romans had found the primitive town and village gov- ernment of the Celtiberians, and the more advanced but simi- lar organization of the Carthaginian settlements, in full force when their dominion in Spain commenced. Fortunately their own governmental traditions were those of mutual wealth and protection, or democracy, rather than of the assumption of wealth and the duty of defence by a few, or aristocracy, and they were able to engraft gradually upon the Celtiberian towns a reformed administration, without greatly interfering with the underlying idea. A difference from the first was made be- tween the towns conquered by force of arms and those that submitted voluntarily. Important places in the latter cate- gory were made municipalities paying a stipendium to Rome, and the individual inhabitants might receive the honour of Roman citizenship, though the communities as a whole did not enjoy it until much later. The smaller towns were classed also in a similar way, those which had welcomed the Romans being least heavily taxed, and those which had been overcome with difficulty having to pay a very heavy tribute. The pretors and their questors, however, during the repub- lican period usually extorted as much as possible from the native cities without regard to the law, although periodically emissaries were sent to Rome from the towns with bitter complaints of illegal exaction. After a few years of inter- mixture of races another type of city sprang up, called a colony, where pure or mixed Romans alone settled, and to these were granted the full rights of Roman citizenship. Other colonies less Roman subsequently arose, to which a lesser privilege was allowed, as in the towns of Italy, some enjoying the jus Latii, like those near Rome, and some the ]us Italicum.* But in the whole of these categories of cities * At a somewhat later period of the Roman domination further special privileges were given to favoured towns, some being declared 28 The Spanish People the same system of internal government was followed. All the free inhabitants who owned a yoke of land or more were formed into an assembly, which was collectively respon- sible for the government of the town and for the payment of the tribute. From this obligation no landowner could es- cape,* and the consequence was that, although the land was nominally the property of individuals, the community insisted upon its full cultivation, in order that every " curial " or full burgess should be able to pay his quota of the taxes. In cases where the land was poor and the tribute was high, an owner often abandoned his land and the latter became forfeit to the community. In the later corrupt times before the fall of the Roman dominion the position of curial became an intol- erably oppressive one. In the colonies, and the highest grade of municipalities which enjoyed the jus Italicum, the assembly of landowners, or curia, elected the administrative magistrates ; in the second-class cities the chief officer was a rector appointed by the Roman pretor of the district ; and in the third class the executive was in the hands of the pretor himself. In each case the executive officers summoned the assembly or curia, which deliberated and decided by majority free from the payment of the stipendium, and others made practically- independent on the condition of contributing a certain number of armed men and galleys to the mother city. In cases where no resist- ance had been offered to Roman occupation disputes between natives were decided according to local customary law, Roman and native assessors being called in to assist the Roman provincial governor. Similarly during the early imperial domination, the popular repre- sentative assemblies, which met annually in each province to celebrate religious feasts dedicated to the emperor, were endowed with power to review the acts of the provincial governor, and, if they thought lit, to send delegates to Rome to complain of him. This right was fre- quently exercised in later years. * So strictly was this enforced that no curial was allowed to live out of the city; and only with much difficulty and strict guarantees might he enter any privileged order, or in Christian times join the priesthood. Three quarters of a curial's property went to the com- munity if he died without children, and a quarter was confiscated if his heir was not a curial. The Spanish Municipalities 29 of votes questions respecting the distribution of the common lands, the payment of the tribute, and the finance of the com- munity, the details of government of the city being in the hands of the executive officers. The curials enjoyed certain immunities and social consideration, and if the empire had developed on civil and senatorial lines, the system might have succeeded ; but, as will be shown in the course of the next chapter, the imposition of a military autocracy (as the empire soon became) upon so democratic a base as this ended in a deadlock, and was largely instrumental in the downfall of Roman power in Spain. It was not until the last days of the republic that any seri- ous attempt was made — if we except the administration of Sertorius — to weld these many little tributary common- wealths into a complete provincial system. With the excep- tion of the semi-savage tribesmen in the northwest, the tri- bal organization of the Celtiberians was now forgotten, and the people in the south and east had generally adopted the dress and speech of the Romans, the inhabitants of the colo- nies, Cordova especially, being already distinguished for their refinement and love of Latin literature.* The formation of the three provinces already mentioned, into which Spain was divided, was therefore accepted as a natural measure of ad- ministration by a people who, having abandoned the tribe, were now ready for another form of federation. Each prov- ince was subdivided into three or four districts (conventus jiiridici), the capital of each district being the seat of the civil, local, and military authorities, dependent upon the im- perial or senatorial legate in the provincial capital. Thus at the commencement of the Roman Empire the administrative * Metullus, after he had finished the suppression of the Sertorian revolt, took with him to Spain certain poets from Cordova whose language was praised even by Cicero, the only fault he could find with it being the pronunciation of Latin — " Pingue quiddam, adunque pere- grinum " — somewhat thick and strange. 4 30 The Spanish People framework for governing Spain, its principal colony, as a civilized country was complete. 1 100 B. c. TO 27 B. c. Summary of progress during this period The Phoenicians and Greeks had brought to the people the arts of civilization, a knowledge of written characters, of the use of money, of the cultivation of the soil, of the rearing of flocks for wool, of dyeing cloth, of the systematic mining, smelting, and tempering of metals, and to some extent also the aesthetic arts of painting, sculpture, mosaic, and ceramic decoration. The Romans had carried the instruction further in these re- spects, but their influence is also particularly marked in the or- ganization of the country as a whole, which the Punic occupiers had not attempted. The constantly warring clans and the larger tribal communities had now been brought under some degree of control by means of the provincial federation and organization, and by the ever-present Roman tax collector ; and, with the ex- ception of the tribes of the north and northwest, had to a great extent adopted the Latin tongue and garb. The south of Spain had become completely Romanized, and fine buildings, temples, and palaces had already grown common in the " colonies " and principal coast towns. The Roman colonies and coast towns men- tioned in the text were now connected by constructed highways, were supplied with public baths, and surrounded by walls instead of stockades, as they had been in earlier times. Summary of what Spain did for the world in this period The wools and cloths of the deltas of the Guadalquivir had become famous throughout the world, especially when dyed with the scarlet kermes from the woods on the slopes of the coast range. The steel blades of Bilbilis and the shields and armour from the same place were highly prized by Roman soldiers, while the Celtiberian Spaniards themselves had proved, both in their home wars and in the service of the Punic generals and of the Summary 31 Roman Republic, that they were fighting men of exceptional valour and endurance, contributing not a little to the spread of civilization that followed the Roman standards throughout central Europe. At the period of which we are writing (the establish- ment of the Roman Empire) already the mother city was drawing from Spain much of the material luxury which was enervating her peoples — the silver, the jewels, the pearls, the fine stuffs, the fruits, the wine, the oil, the grain, the potted tunny fish,* etc., which were sent in abundance from Betica, Cartagena, and Tar- ragona to the Roman ports. * One of the most highly prized exports from Spain was the con- diment, so dear to the gourmet of Rome, called garum. This was made (mostly at Carteia, near Gibraltar) of the intestines of certain small fish macerated in salt. CHAPTER II A NEW DISPENSATION IMPERIAL ROMAN AND GOTHIC SPAIN Organization of Roman Spain — Influence of Spaniards upon Latin lit- erature — The Spanish Caesars — Decadence of Roman civilization in Spain — Christianity in Spain — Its influence on the character of the people and institutions — Fall of the empire — The coming of the Goths — Influence of Gothic traditions upon Spain — The elec- tive monarchy — The triumph of Romanism over Arianism — The Code of Alaric — Literature and art in Spain under the Goths — The councils of prelates — Theocracy — The landing of the Moors. The great Julius had punished, but had not entirely sub- dued, the tribes of the mountainous northwest, and the fron- tiers of the imperial provinces of Lusitania and Tarraconensis were subject to the frequent incursions of these barbarians. It doubtless appeared easy to Augustus to suppress this handful of mountaineers, and soon after his assumption of the imperial dignity he came personally to extend to farthest Finisterre the network of Roman administration. Fixing his headquarters at first at Segisamo, between Burgos and the Ebro, he sent two divisions of his army against the Cantabrians and the Asturians respectively ; but his task was more difficult than he expected — even as Napo- leon found his long afterward — and Augustus retired in dis- couragement to Tarraco, leaving his generals to carry on the desultory warfare which, after many disappointments and partial victories, ended in the exhaustion rather than the sub- mission of the tribes. But large permanent garrisons were 32 Spain and the Empire ^^ stationed on the frontiers at Astorga, Braga, and at Pisoraca, south of Santander, hemming in the fastnesses of the bar- barians and rendering the tribes powerless against the set- tled parts of the country. New towns sprang up under the encouragement of Augustus where his garrisons were sta- tioned. Emerita Augusta (Merida), Asturica Augusta (As- torga), Bracara Augusta (Braga), Lucas Augusti (Lugo), Ce- saria Augusta (Zaragoza), Pax Augusta (Badajoz), and Urhs Septima Legionis (Leon) all received their baptism and special privileges from Augustus, and became so many centres of Latin propagation and culture, which within a very short time made the populations of the centre and north almost as Roman as those of the south had been for several genera- tions. Thenceforward, for four centuries, the fortunes of Spain, politically and socially, followed those of the empire. Our principal concern here, however, is with the effect pro- duced by the Roman connection upon the development of the Spanish people. The primitive Iberian tongue with its semi-Phoenician- Hebraic letters was rapidly forgotten, and Spain rang from end to end with what Saint Augustine called the odiosa cantio of native children learning Latin, still, it may be presumed, pronounced in a way which offended somewhat the finer ears of the fastidious scholars in Rome, but affording a fit vehicle for the copious expression of this extraordinary composite race, whose earliest manifestations of civilization took the unusual forms of literary activity and mental subtlety. The introduction of this new luxuriant element into Latin culture happened at a critical juncture in the life of the latter. The literature which the Romans had founded upon that of Greece had reached its highest native expression in the later years of the republic ; the establishment of the empire not only cur- tailed the employment of oratory and polemic, but gave to the great colonies an importance which under the former regimes they had never enjoyed. Rome was crowded with 34 The Spanish People men from the farthest confines of the empire; Gauls, Span- iards, and Africans surrounded Augustus as courtiers, para- sites, and officers ; foreign-born consuls governed provinces ; colonial statesmen even invaded the Senate ; and in a few years one Spanish-born Caesar after the other ruled the world from Rome. It was inevitable, therefore, that Latin culture should receive new colour from the fresh infiuences which the empire introduced into the heart of the Roman system. In a literary sense, by far the strongest of the new composite races evolved from Roman occupations was the Neo-Celt- iberian, and during the age of Augustus it introduced into Latin literature the luxuriant copiousness of word, the mor- dant satire, and the perverse subtlety which remain to this day the irrepressible characteristics of Spanish intellectual production. But though the introduction of this luxuriant growth, with its declamatory vehemence and its reckless riot of imagery, seemed for a time to give new vigour to already decadent Latin literature, it brought with it the seeds of the rank undergrowth which choked the flowers; and both in literature and in social life the decline and fall of Roman civilization, though originating from causes inherent in the civilization itself, were aided largely by the peculiar qualities of the Celtiberian race, which from the time of Augustus to the coming of the Goths exercised so powerful an influence over Roman culture. Beginning at first with the sober com- ments on Virgil written by Augustus's Spanish freed slave Julius Hyginius, chief keeper of the Palatine Library at Rome, and with the collections and criticisms of oratory of the elder Seneca (also a Spaniard), the manifestation of the peculiar Iberian spirit rapidly comes to the front in the wise but wordy pomposity of the younger Seneca, the oratorical and luxuriant beauty of the Pharsalia of Lucan of Cordova, the satirical wit and shameless efifrontery of Martial of Bilbi- lis, and the critical subtlety and well-balanced wisdom of Quintillian of Calahorra. Roman literary exquisites might Spain under the Empire 35 ridicule the provincialisms which marred the purity of Latin style — nay, even the greater Spanish Latin writers themselves, like Martial and Quintillian, endeavoured to suppress the in- troduction of exotic forms of expression which strangers brought into Rome — but the tide was too strong to be stemmed, and the fall in point of style from Cicero and the elder Seneca to Tacitus, and from Tacitus to the writers of later Christian Rome, was rapid and complete. While writers of Spanish birth were introducing over- florid vigour and oversubtle preciosity into Latin literature, Spain itself was prospering exceedingly. Under the Augus- tan emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero the rapacity of the Roman officers vexed Spain as it did the rest of the empire ; but the growing luxury and growing laziness of the capital made of Spain the granary as well as the treas- ure house of Rome, and the wealth thus accruing to the de- pendency enabled it not only to hold its own, but to sow its soil with public buildings, circuses, roads, aqueducts, and bridges, of which the mighty remains still vaguely astonish the degenerate Spaniard of to-day. This was the case even in the time of the bad emperors ; but to them succeeded Ves- pasian and Titus, and later a series of Spanish Caesars, under whose benign rule their native land rose to its highest point of grandeur and happiness. Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius for sixty years, with but slight intervals between them, ruled wisely and well. Under them Spanish adminis- tration was still further reformed and subdivided ; the oil, the wine, the corn, the salt fish, the wool, the linen, and the precious metals of Spain provided Rome with the luxury which was to enervate and ruin it.* Spanish legionaries bore * Spain as a provincia nutrix was forced to send to the mother country every year a certain quantity of foodstuffs, which, in conse- quence of the richness of her soil, she could do easily and profitably. The payment received for these remittances was largely made in coin, and added greatly to the prosperity of the dependency and the spread of luxury in Spain itself. Guilds of handicrafts existed at this time 36 The Spanish People the eagles from the Tigris to the Tyne, and in all things but the name Spain, the daughter, was greater than Rome, the mother, from the death of Domitian to the death of Marcus Aurelius. But Spanish civilization, much as it might col- our the water by its national character, drew its inspiration entirely from the Roman fountain,* and sooner or later the great dependency was bound to share the decadence which was overwhelming the metropolis. Beneficent as was the influence of Trajan and the subsequent Spanish Caesars, their very elevation marked a considerable step downward in the political decline of the empire, for it indicated that the pro- vincial legionaries had learned from the Pretorian Guard the evil lesson of military interference in civil government, and that the imperial throne was to become the pledge and play- thing of rival soldieries. On the death of the infamous Com- modus and the murder of Pertinax the struggle which was the inevitable result of this state of things took place. The Pretorian Guard in Rome put the throne up to auction, and assassinated their nominee because he was unable to pay the full price he had promised. The provincial legions then pro- claimed three rival emperors, and the establishment of the military despotism of Septimius Severus was the consequence, to be followed by a century of anarchy, while the Prankish barbarians ravaged with impunity the territories of Rome and devastated some of the richest provinces of the east of Spain (256 to 268 a. d.). The rapacity of tax collectors and the corruption of the pretors were rapidly turning Spain into a desert. Caracalla had forced upon all provincial populations in many places in Spain, especially in Tarragona, which was famous for its fictile and textile manufactures. * It is noticeable that of the numerous specimens of Hispano- Roman art in existence— gold and silver work, pottery, glass, and arms— none present any special character to distinguish them from Roman art found in other parts of the world. Spanish art does not appear to have taken a line of its own until after the coming of the Goths. Decadence of Roman Spain 37 the burden of Roman citizenship while stiU extorting from them their provincial tributes, and the unfortunate curials of the towns were now made responsible not only for the taxes of their own municipalities, but for those of the surrounding rural districts. This meant widespread ruin, and the smaller landowners, upon whom this crushing responsibility mainly rested, abandoned by thousands their fields and holdings and sought safety in distant foreign legions or even in slavery. Their abandoned lands were bestowed upon provincial gov- ernment nominees, in order that the plunder of the cultivators should be complete in the guise of the law. Under this over- whelming burden of taxation, falling almost entirely on the workers and tillers of the soil, agriculture sank to utter ex- haustion, and woods and deserts covered some of the finest grain-growing soil in Europe. Great tracts of land, too, fell into the hands of Roman officers, who, in the absence of the free tenants, who had fled or been destroyed in the foreign wars of Rome, resorted to universal slave labour for the culti- vation of their estates. Slavery also became the rule in Spanish towns, for handicraftsmen also had been almost crushed out of existence by taxation, and often voluntarily went into slavery to insure for themselves at least bread and shelter. This collapse of a great civilization was not consummated without more than one effort of enlightened men to arrest the decline. JDiocletian and Constantine in the beginning of the third century tried, but too late, to decentralize the gov- ernment and to restore vitality to the atrophied outer mem- bers. Of the four great prefectures formed by them, that of Gaul included France, Great Britain, and Spain, and the latter country was divided into seven provinces — Betica (Andalu- sia), Lusitania (south Portugal), Gallsecia, Tarraconensis, Carthagenensis, Tingitana (Morocco), and Insulae Balearum — the first three being governed by consuls, and the latter four by presidents, all of whom were responsible to the Vicar 38 The Spanish People of Spain, who in turn was subordinate to the Pretorian Pre- fect of Gaul, who held his almost independent court at Aries, on the Rhone. But the setting up of these great officers, sov- ereigns in all but name, when corruption had broken down Roman patriotism and sapped Roman honesty, only paved the way to the complete disintegration of the empire, and the swarming hordes of barbarians who assailed the Roman territories on all sides from Armenia to Gaul overran with comparative ease the semi-independent provinces left to themselves by the vicious tyrants in Rome so long as they provided money for the waste and wickedness of the capital. Another powerful factor in the dissolution of the Roman Empire, having, for reasons which will pres- ently be explained, specially strong influence in Spain, was the establishment of Christianity as a religious and political system. The bases of Roman social life were crumbling. From the first it had been reared on the foundation of family head- ship. The individual, as such, had no natural rights which the state acknowledged. The paterfamilias centred in him- self all the rights and duties of the family. He was not only the chief, but the judge, the domestic priest, and the autocrat of his household. In the days of Rome's simplicity and pu- rity, in an early stage of civilization, this worked well ; but as the old gods became discredited corruption grew uni- versal, and when the increasing number of domestic slaves led to promiscuity the institution of the family became in- sufficient for the protection of individuals, and a new organi- zation of society became vitally necessary. A somewhat similar process of declension had also pro- ceeded in politics and philosophy. With the ever-growing provincial element introduced by the empire into Rome, and the progressively vicious effects of a military despotism, magistrates and administrators had degenerated into greedy and corrupt extortioners from whom no protection could be Christianity in Spain 39 expected, and the immense mass of the people were simply machines whose work provided for the unrestrained luxury of the weak and vicious few. The old religion, too, had lost its hold. The two schools of thought that divided the Roman world, the Epicurean and the Stoic, respectively offered sys- tems which might replace the decaying faith in the pagan divinities. The sensuous materialism and frank disbelief of the Epicurean appealed to those enervated by the luxury of the age, against which the Stoic, with his frigid creed of duty, justice, forgiveness, and self-denial, without divine command- ment or superhuman reward, could make no way. But with the birth of Christianity all was changed. Here was a living creed which gave to Stoicism a reason and a reward, and whispered to the ear of the slave, " the barbarian," the tiller and the craftsman : " You, too, are God's creatures, as dear to your Maker even as the proudest tyrant of them all." Not for the Jews alone, as St. Paul announced, but for all the world, was given this new charter of humanity, which struck at the very base of Roman society, deposed the paterfamilias except in the hearts of his children, and proclaimed the brotherhood of all men as equally beloved sons of the uni- versal Father. From the earliest days the keynote of Celtiberian feeling had been the absorbing sense of individuahty, and a new evangel which gave' divine warrant for the strongest instinct of the Spanish race seized upon the people as it did in no other part of the world. Whether St. James preached the new gospel in the north of Spain and St. Paul in the south or not matters but little; certain it is that during the first three centuries Christianity spread rapidly in the country; and even thus early the organization of the Church, where all else was disorganized, enabled it to wield a political power greater than it did elsewhere. Amid the general dissolution of civil authority a compact body of priests and bishops, with independent resources, a separate jurisdiction, and a common 40 The Spanish People end, became practically a state within a state.* Before the Roman power finally disappeared from Spain it had thus been reduced to impotence by the apathy of the vast body of the population, who had nothing to lose, and by the vigour and cohesion of the Spanish Christian bishops and priests, whose personal eminence made them powerful, and whose doctrine of human brotherhood and the communion of souls with God exactly suited the mystic imagination of the Celt blended with the proud independence of the Iberian. Spain did not escape from the persecution which followed Christianity elsewhere, especially from Trajan, who knew his fellow-countrymen and understood that the triumph of Chris- tianity meant in any ca'se the loss of Spain to the empire. Many isolated martyrs in the first two centuries suffered eagerly for their faith ; but with the awful edict of Diocletian (303) Spain for a few years was the scene of the cruel general persecutions which only added fervour to those who wit- nessed the constancy of the victims. At length the proclama- tion of Constantine at Milan (306) gave religious liberty to all Roman citizens, and the baptism of the great Theodosius before the end of the century made Christianity the religion of the Roman world. The Emperor Theodosius, a Spaniard, was the man who reunited the empire and dared to face the new order of things, endeavouring at any cost to conciliate the continuance of a power based on paganism with the reign of Christ. But Theodosius, great as he was, had the vehe- mence of his Iberian blood and the vicious methods of his im- perial pagan traditions. While enjoining that all citizens * In 313 the first great council of Spanish clergy met at Elvira (Granada), 19 bishops, 36 priests, and many deacons being present; and though their 81 decrees were concerned only with theology and church discipline, yet the existence of such a national assembly thus early portended the preponderance of the Church in civil afifairs later. In 380 sat the great council at Zaragoza, and in 400 the first Council of Toledo assumed the functions of a national parliament and dis- cussed civil as well as ecclesiastical matters. . Fall of the Empire 41 should adhere to the doctrine of the Trinity as taught by Saint Peter and upheld by the pontiff Damasus, he stigmatized those who believed in other variants of Christianity as ex- travagant madmen, whom he " branded with the infamous name of heretic " and threatened with " the severe penalties which our authorities, guided by Divine wisdom, shall choose to inflict upon them." This true Spaniard lived three centu- ries too late. The corruption and decay of Rome had gone too far for her institutions to be remodelled on Christian lines. The Goths were already at her gates and the Vandals in her legions ; and though Theodosius, with his Iberian reckless- ness of life, waded in blood to revive the dying empire with the strength of the Cross, he failed, and his death (395) was the signal for the dissolution of Rome. Theodosius, by his will, again divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius to rule the Byzantine empire of Con- stantine, and feeble Honorius that of the West. The govern- ment of the latter was disputed by another Constantine, elected emperor by the legionaries of Britain. To withstand the rebel, Honorius and his Vandal mercenary Stilicho admit- ted the swarming hordes of barbarians, Vandals, Suevians, and Alans across the Rhine into Gaul (406). The flood gates thus at last were open, and the power of Rome could never again turn back the invading tide. Constantine, how- ever, easily overcame his rival emperor and soon was en- throned at Aries. Leaving the barbarian allies of Honorius to be dealt with later, Constantine pushed over the Pyrenees into Spain, for without the dependency the empire of the West would be valueless indeed; Honorius, the son of Theodo- sius, was a Spaniard, but for reasons that have already been stated the native populations of Spain had little concern now as to the person of the supreme governor of Rome. The disintegration and anarchy which had fallen upon the Roman world had left Spain practically with no government at all, but a succession of greedy bloodsuckers who robbed the in- 42 The Spanish People dustrious and the weak in the name of some far-away em- peror, who gave neither protection nor peace in return for their exactions. Constantine therefore marched almost un- resisted through Spain, and was promptly recognised by Ho- norius himself as emperor. But a greater task than overrun- ning apathetic Spain lay before him if he had dared to under- take it. Alaric the Goth was master of northern Italy, and Constantine, finding him too strong to be dealt with, retreated beyond the Rhone and was forced to content himself with the territorj- he had already conquered. But in his absence in Gaul anarchy broke out in Spain, where he had left his young son as r«gent. Gerontius, the general in Spain, proclaimed his own son emperor, with his imperial capital at Tarragona, and in an evU hour invited across the P}Tenees to help him the bands of barbarians who had crossed the Rhine to help Honorius, and whom Constantine had left behind him in Gaul. Like a devastating flock of locusts, making no distinction between friends and foes, the tribes swept down upon Spain (409), and one of the strangest facts of history is that neither the Roman soldiers nor the Latin-Celtiberian popvilation appear to have offered any effectual resistance whatever to their advance. Xo doubt their appearance was savage and their methods of warfare terror-striking, but that the Celtibe- rians, whose character before and since was always fiercely warlike, especially in defence of their own districts, should have tamely submitted to rapine, slaughter, and destruction by savages, proves more than anything else the utter despair which the later Roman Empire had produced upon the peo- ple. For centuries, too, the best manhood of the race had been drafted into the legions and sent to the farthest ends of the empire, in most cases never to see their native land again ; and doubtless this, together with the enervating effects of Roman luxun.-, especially in the south and east, had to a great extent softened the race, while the fraternal and peaceful doc- The Descent of the Vandals 43 trines of Christianity may have taken spirit out of the resist- ance. In any case, neither Rome itself nor the native popula- tions withstood the onward rush of the savages, and Spain, from the Pyrenees to the Pillars of Hercules, was ravaged and spoiled. During their long wanderings from the banks of the Baltic the invaders had seen no country so fertile or beautiful as that which met their eyes as they descended the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, and the various Germanic tribes were soon fighting among themselves for the possession of the choice districts. The least numerous tribe, the Suevians, were pushed up into the mountainous northwest corner, where, with their backs to the sea, tbey held their own against all comers, while the more numefbus Alans spread down the centre and extreme east and- west, sacking and plundering as they went. The Vandals took possession of the fertile south, with its fine ports' and rich valleys, and for six years (409 to 415) the tribes worked their unchecked will on Ro- man Spain amid slaughter, famine, and pestilence. Alaric, the Gothic king, was master of Italy before he died, in 411, and his brother-in-law Atawulf, the new king, ex- tended his victorious sway over Gaul, conquering the upstart Csesars who, elected by various legions, disputed the crown with powerless Honorius ; Atawulf's object being to ally him- self with the family of Honorius by marrying his sister Pla- cida, and perhaps subsequently succeeding to the imperial throne as first Visigothic emperor. But Honorius was suspicious and refused, though Atawulf had his way and mar- ried Placida without the consent of her brother. The latter then induced the Visigoth to cross the Pyrenees and recon- quer Spain from the barbarians as he had reconquered Gaul for the empire. He reached only as far as Barcelona when he was murdered, as was his successor a few days afterward. The Gothic generals at Barcelona then chose Wallia as their Ij^^^who promptly crushed the barbarian tribes and loyally 44 The Spanish People handed over to the emperor at Ravenna once more the de- pendency of Spain, receiving for himself as a reward the kingdom of southern Gaul (Toulouse) (418). But no sooner had the Goths retired from Spain than again the Vandals be- came troublesome, and spreading northward attacked the de- scending Suevians, driving them back into their mountain fastness again. The Vandals were in turn driven back to their own Andalusia (i. e., Vandalucia) by the combined Romans and Suevians in 420, where thenceforward for seven years they held their own by land and sea. What power might eventu- ally have been wielded by this energetic people, if they had remained in Andalusia it is difficult to say, for they were al- ready masters of the western Mediterranean ; but a disaf- fected Roman general in Morocco opposite begged for their aid, and nearly the whole tribe of 80,000 persons, with many Alans also, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar (429), and Spain knew them no more, though Vandal blood must have run plentifully in the wild Berbers whom, nearly three hundred years afterward, Tarik led across from Africa to conquer Spain for the Crescent. For well-nigh forty years afterward one Gothic king of Toulouse after another gave occasional aid to successive pow- erless emperors to keep up a semblance of Roman power in Spain, punishing the savage pagan Suevians and repressing the warlike Alans ; but during all this time no regular system of central government existed outside the imperial camps, and the slight bond of Spanish nationality again resolved itself into its primitive elements — independent autonomous towns. At last a king of Toulouse arose strong enough to ignore the shadow of Roman rule in Spain. Euric the Goth vanquished the Roman garrison of Tarragona, and thencefor- ward (466-484) by treaty with the emperor ruled from his capital in southern France all Spain except the Suevian north and west. It will be useful here to pass briefly in review theMftfew The Coming of the Goths 45 situation created by the appearance of a fresh governing race in the Peninsula, and to consider the effect thus produced upon the making of the Spanisli people. The influence of the barbarian tribes may be at once dismissed as having been very small, except in Galicia, where the mixture of Celt and Suevian produced a race which is still quite distinct in its character. The Goths, however, at the time of their ap- pearance as a governing aristocracy in Spain had become by long contact with Romans to all intents and purposes a civil- ized people, whom the Spaniards received as liberators from the depredations of the barbarians, and, in some sense, as the successors of the Roman officers who had held sway over the country for so long. The Gothic governmental traditions were such as befitted a people whose existence had for cen- turies been warlike and nomadic, and, as will be seen, their inability to alter these traditions when they had founded a settled dominion led to their own downfall as a ruling race in the Peninsula. It has been shown how completely the Spaniards had adopted the social usages and literary tastes of their Roman conquerors; that Latin art, science, architecture, and re- ligion had been accepted entire without Iberian gloss or alteration by a people who, as a nation, had emerged from savagery at the bidding of Rome; and yet, notwithstanding this, the centralizing governmental traditions which the Ro- man system had grafted upon the primitive town and village government of the Celtiberians had struck so little root in Spain during six centuries, that long before the last legion- aries left the country the centralized government had fallen away, and the towns with their assembly of all free citizens survived with but little alteration from the pre-Roman period. No centralizing governing genius of Neo-Celtiberian blood continued the national traditions introduced by the Romans or endeavoured to employ Roman methods to consolidate Spain into a civil self-constituted nation : and by the time the 5 46 The Spanish People Goths appeared all was clear for them to begin afresh on their own lines. These lines were radically different from those of the Romans. The Gothic social system had always recognised the independence of the individual, and especially of the women of the family. The paterfamilias did not centre in himself all the rights of his household; wife and children were expected to do their share of fighting the ene- my and providing food for the house, and participated by right in the plunder or the food. The equality of the wife with her husband was enjoined strictly, not only in the mar- riage ceremony but also by the law, which gave her full con- trol over her own property and a half share of the common stock. As a result of this admission of the rights of individ- uals, the governmental traditions of the Germanic peoples were purely elective and representative, but on an aristocratic basis, as was inevitable with a people who for centuries had lived by armed struggle. At first sight it would appear that such a system as this would have been in entire accord with the individualistic instincts of the Spanish people ; but this was not by any means the case, and the permanent influence of Gothic governmental traditions on Spain was comparatively small. The individuality, so characteristic of the Spaniard, arose out of a natural, proud personal independence and impa- tience at restraint by another man ; whereas the Gothic recog- nition of the individual was in a great measure the outcome of the stage of civilization the race had reached, and the peculiar road by which 'it had reached it. The difference will be easily appreciated by the readiness with which the Goth accepted the Arian doctrine of predestination, which made the acts of the individual of no importance in his spiritual evolution, while the Celtiberian from the first fiercely asserted the indi- vidual responsibility and rational independence of each crea- ture toward his Maker. The only centralizing idea of the Goths was an elective military monarchy, upheld by landowning armed chieftains. The Arian Schism 47 which subsequently developed into European feudalism, and it will be seen that this organization could only with much difficulty and delay be ingrafted upon a system of autono- mous tributary towns.* It will not therefore surprise the reader to learn that the consolidation of Spain under the Gothic kings was effected by instrumentalities quite separate from Germanic governmental traditions, and that it was the Neo-Celtiberian and not the Gothic spirit that finally became paramount in the making of the nation. The avidity with which the Latin-speaking Celtiberians had seized upon the religion of Christ, and the early promi- nence in ecclesiastical organization assumed by the Spanish clergy, have already been mentioned. The mass of the popu- lation, it may be assumed, were still to a large extent pagan in feeling and observance; but the teaching of Christianity, which told them of human equality and individual responsibil- ity, appealed to their dearest instincts, and the men of their own race and tongue who taught it, coming as they did with the glamour of a supernatural mission, speedily established their influence over the people. The early councils of the Church, to which reference has already been made, were thus the first assemblies ever sitting in. Spain which could claim to speak in any sense for the nation. When the first great schism threatened to split the Church, it was a Spaniard, Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, who was chosen by Constantine (321) to fulfil the mission of persuading Arius to abandon his Unita- rian heresy. This failing, Hosius sat pre-eminent over * In Britain, for instance, where the primitive tribal traditions had not been lost and the towns had been governed on purely Roman military lines, the Germanic-Saxon traditions of a small aristocratic class speaking in the name of the whole community was easily accli- matized, and naturally ended in feudalism, where the possession of the land brought with it the right to speak for those who lived on it, and the duty of protecting them against others while claiming certain service in return. For reasons which have been stated, this feudal system was never strong in Spain. 48 The Spanish People all other ecclesiastics at the great Council of Nicea, which fixed the canons of the faith; and when (380) Priscilian, Bishop of Avila, dared to think for himself in the matter of the Trinity, his teaching was stamped out with ruthless perse- cution by his Spanish fellow-Christians, and he himself was executed, while his few followers were scattered to the far Scilly Isles. There was no room for heresy even thus early in Spain, and each council that met reasserted the purity of the only true faith. When Euric the Goth and his successors appeared in Spain as kings the only unified institution they found was the ecclesiastical organization which had grown up with the spread of Christianity, and which was obeyed, at least in mat- ters of doctrine, by a whole people. Unfortunately, however, the Goths had adopted the Arian form of belief, and when Clo- vis and his Franks, pagans to a man, coveted Gaul, and the former had adopted Latin Christianity to gain it, then the Goth Alaric the younger, King of Toulouse and Spain, son of Euric, saw that doctrine was stronger than temporal loyalty, for none of his Catholic subjects would help an Arian against the Catholic Frank, and the Goths were driven out of Gaul into Spain, which only the arms of Theodoric the Ostrogoth of Italy preserved for his kinsman Amalaric against Clovis (511). Thenceforward for years the Prankish Catholic car- ried on a crusade, usually successful, against the Arian Goth in Spain and southern France, in which the Catholic Iberians left all the fighting to their Arian ruler and his countrymen.* The empire, too, found reason to quarrel with the Arian Goths in Spain, and by an intrigue with one of the Gothic pretenders to the crown (Athanagild) the Byzantine emperor recovered most of the south of Spain (554), while Athanagild reigned over what was left from his capital of Toledo. This * In 532 the Franks raided the country as far south as Zaragoza, but were met and defeated by a Gothic army on their way back across the Pyrenees. The Gothic Monarchy 49 standing religious division between the Gothic king and his Spanish subjects paralyzed the progress of civil organization and made the Gothic military caste doubly foreigners to the people among whom they lived. Another circumstance came to increase the isolation of the Goths. The Suevians had retained their independent pagan kingdom for one hun- dred and fifty years in the northwest, until 560, when St. Mar- tin d'Umium, by means of some miraculous relics which re- stored a Suevian prince to health, converted the whole nation to the Catholic type of Christianity. Thus on each side of the Pyrenees as well as in the south of Spain, and even among the mass of their own subjects, the Gothic kings found themselves threatened with zealous religious enemies, thirsting after a crusade, in which the Spaniards themselves would be on the side of the enemy. Nor was this the only danger which threatened the Gothic domination. The system of electing a sovereign by the mili- tary chiefs opened the door to endless dissension and in- trigue, the elected king in most cases being murdered after a short reign by one of the jealous factions or ambitious pre- tenders who coveted the succession. It was already being proved that institutions which suited an ambulant military nation were destructive in a settled civil state, and the Gothic King Leovgild (572) called together the military chiefs, and obtained their permission to make the crown hereditary in his house, his two sons, Hermenegild and Recared, being ap- pointed successively the first heirs. He then assembled the whole of his force and expelled the Byzantine emperor's troops*from the territories in the east, upon which they had encroached, confining them to the southern province they had obtained from Athanagild, and again drove back the Sue- vians and Cantabrians into their inaccessible mountains in the north and northwest. But though his arms were victorious, the religious difficulty continued, or rather increased. Three quarters of the population at least were Catholics, though all 50 The Spanish People the military aristocracy and Gothic soldiers were Arian, so that force was on the side of the latter; but the Catholics gained a notable recruit in Hermenegild, the heir to the crown, whose Prankish wife, Ingunda, was a fervent Athana- sian ; and urged by the native Catholic clergy, especially Le- ander. Bishop of Seville, Hermenegild headed a revolt against his father, in which all the Catholic elements in the Peninsula were on the side of the rebel. The imperial Byzantines de- serted him at a critical juncture, and, after undergoing a long siege in his viceregal capital of Seville, Hermenegild was defeated, exiled to Valencia, and forgiven by his father on condition of his abjuring Catholicism. When, however, shortly afterward, the Goths endeavoured to force Arianism upon his Catholic followers, Hermenegild again rose, and civil war between father and son once more devastated the coun- try, the Franks and the Roman Byzantines again siding with the rebel. Hermenegild was routed by his father's troops at Tarraco and promptly executed, much to the scandal of the Roman churchmen, who in course of time have built up a great structure of sanctimonious fable over the name of the undutiful son, of whom the Church has made a saint and Spain a national Catholic hero. Leovgild, the greatest of the Gothic kings who had yet reigned in Spain, died in 586, full of honours and surrounded with regal splendours such as none of his predecessors had afifected. A strong man who tried forcibly to unify a people by bringing the majority to the religious views of the minor- ity, he failed, as he was bound to do, seeing the strength of the elements opposed to him. A hundred years before his time the Catholic clergy had discovered that unity was strength, and that their councils were the only united institu- tion in the country which might assume a national character. The bishops, with three quarters of the people at their backs, were therefore not likely to allow a foreign monarch with a foreign army to break up their strong organization and sub- Conversion of Recared 51 stitute a legal centralization and an alien faith in its place. Leovgild did his best to make Spain a nation on civil instead of ecclesiastical lines, but not only the interested clergy, but the spirit of the Spanish people was against him. The abso- lute identification between the church and the state has al- ways appealed to them, and a nation resting on an ecclesiasti- cal foundation suited them. The individual oppression of one man they could never brook ; but, withal, they are, and al- ways were, the easiest governed people in the world when the ruling power is a collective entity arrogating to itself super- natural sanction. The oppression of the priest, speaking for the Church, or of the king whose power is from heaven, does not degrade the subject, they think ; on the contrary, it raises him, and establishes his own oneness with the Divinity, which for His good deigns to participate in his personal affairs. Thus it was that the Catholic priests were stronger than Leovgild, and his son Recared recognised- this and bowed his head to the inevitable. By the end of the sixth century, indeed, the Gothic ele- ment had been so greatly changed by a hundred and eighty years of proximity with the Romanized Spaniards that it was impossible to maintain any longer the isolation that at first had been natural. The Gothic military chiefs — like the Normans who later followed William the Conqueror to Eng- land — had possessed themselves of most of the settled land in large estates, and a condition of affairs somewhat resembling feudalism was gradually being created, which reduced most of the people outside the towns to a state of semi-serfdom. As these nobles grew in power, still claiming as they did that the sovereign was merely their nominee, to enjoy the throne only during his good behaviour,* it became the more necessary for the king — who was now endeavouring to make the crown * The formula was: "King shalt thou be if thou doest right. If thou doest not right no king shalt thou be." 52 The Spanish People hereditary — to obtain strength and sanction elsewhere; and it was unquestionably a stroke of good policy on the part of Recared to proclaim himself a Catholic and throw himself upon the Church and the mass of his subjects for support. After a partially successful attempt to convert with him the Arian bishops and to reconcile them with the Catholic prel- ates, Recared summoned the ever-famous third Council of Toledo in 589, and solemnly made his confession of faith, which he called upon his people to follow.* The Arian Gothic nobility and some of their bishops protested in vain against the king's act. The proud Catholic churchmen, with Leander of Seville at their head, acknowledged Recared as their sovereign, and the priest in future was paramount in the politics of Spain. This was the parting of the ways. The Iberian spirit made the Spaniards prefer a sacerdotal monarch, ruling with super- natural sanction over a willingly submissive but vigorous democracy, while in England the territorial aristocracy de- feated the Church, and the king became the puppet of the nobles and the people their serfs, until by slow degrees the middle classes partially emancipated them. The different lines taken by the two peoples are to be accounted for, first, by racial tradition, as has already been pointed out ; and sec- ond, by the fact that the Norman invasion of England made the foreign kings at first entirely dependent upon the nobles, who wielded the armed power, while there was no special bond between king and people ; whereas in Spain the religion of the Gothic landed chiefs was opposed not only by the eccle- siastical power, but by the great majority of the people, and the king could, and did, stultify his nobles by siding with the stronger party. * Not only did Recared submit questions of doctrine and eccle- siastical discipline to the council, but also many points of civil gov- ernment. In addition to the 67 prelates, there were S lay officers of state or palatines in this council. Gothic Administration 53 After many wars with the Frank in his dominion north of the Pyrenees, Recared died in Toledo in 6oi. His reign marks a new epoch in the Gothic rule in Spain, as well as a landmark in the larger history of the people. The rude Ger- manic race had now to a great extent adopted the speech of the Romanized Spaniards, and although marriage between the two races was prohibited, undoubtedly a considerable intermixture of blood had taken place in the nearly two cen- turies since Atawulf crossed the Pyrenees. Recared the Arian Goth had become a Spanish national sovereign under Catholic ecclesiastical patronage, but from that hour the strength of tlie Gothic monarchy declined, and a hundred years later it fell, decayed to the core. Before recounting the facts of its decline, it will be well to cast our eyes backivard for a space to consider what influence it had exercised over the Spanish people in the days of its vigour. The coming of this sturdy northern race had, after the first few years of anarchy, infused fresh energ)' into the populations enervated by centuries of Roman decadence, and had endowed with new life the institutions which Roman abuses were sapping; but little was altered in the frame- work of society which the Goths found established in Roman Spain. It has already been related that the town govern- ment, the nucleus of all other government in Spain, had broken down in consequence of the curials — or aldermen — being rendered responsible for the payment of the whole of the taxes and tribute. The Goths preserved the insti- tution of the curia, composed, as before, of the landowning taxpayers, but reUeved the members of the responsibility for the taxes, the collection of which was now intrusted to a special officer appointed by the count of the sub- district. In cases, also, where there was not a sufficient number of qualified persons in the town to form a curia the count might appoint other residents to the membership, and the curia was also intrusted with judicial functions in criminal 54 The Spanish People causes in first instance within the town. These reforms again restored to the municipal government the full vigour it had formerly enjoyed, and for the next thirteen centuries the institution continued almost unchanged. Similarly the Goths had accepted the Roman provincial divisions. Betica, Lusi- tania, Cartagenensis, Gallsecia, and Tarraconensis, over each of which a Gothic military leader or duke was placed, with almost sovereign power, and the subdistricts were ruled by counts appointed by the king, these counts having direct control over the town councils or curias in their districts. There was also a judge of the peace for each subdistrict and regular judges for each province, and an advocate was ap- pointed for each town to plead or represent its interests be- fore the higher authorities, where its privileges appeared to be imperilled.* The king was in theory absolute within the law while he reigned, but he had at his side a council of pala- tines, or high officers of state, who advised him on points of difficulty. This council, which at first was a real power on the side of the nobles to moderate the royal action, began to decline when the king's interests diverged from that of the Gothic nobility ; and in the later period, when one usurper after another rose to the throne over the murdered body of his predecessor, the office of palatine was filled mostly by vile upstarts and facile intriguers. It should be mentioned also that, although the institution of slavery was continued as under the Romans, the condition of the slaves was much im- * It will be observed that, except in military and judicial matters, the towns were practically independent, and that no seigneurial rights were exercised over them either by the neighbouring territorial mag- nates, by the dux of the province, or the comes of the subdistrict, the intervention of the latter being confined to the collection of the taxes and the general supervision of the acts of the curia. In the case of arbitrary or unnecessary interference on the part of the dux or comes, the town had the right of appeal to the king through its specially appointed officer. The territorial or aristocratic govern- ment was thus only imperfectly grafted on to the ancient municipal system. Laws and Learning 55 proved. This arose in a large measure from the arrangement that the Goths should have two thirds of the whole of the soil of the country outside the towns and common lands, no taxation being payable on their portions,* which, moreover, were inalienable to any person of Roman-Spanish blood. To till this large proportion of land slave labour had to be em- ployed, and as a consequence many of the slaves became serfs or bondsmen attached to the land, instead of the domestic chattels they had formerly been under the Romans. It will be seen by all this that, although Gothic methods had been to some extent superposed, it was the Roman- Iberian main idea, rather than the Germanic, which had survived in the government of Spain, and the same phe- nomenon is noticeable in legislation. The primitive laws of the Roman Republic were in course of time modified and softened by the edicts which each pretor issued on assuming office, announcing the interpretation he intended to give to the original code. By the command of Hadrian (120 a. d.) these various edicts were condensed into a uniform code, under the name of the " perpetual edict " ; but as this code was found inapplicable to some of the distant provinces, such as Spain, which had already its own equitable traditions, An- toninus Pius, the successor of Hadrian, issued a " provincial edict " which provided that only specified portions of the Roman code need be enforced in certain provinces which possessed their own customary laws. When the Goths arrived in Spain they found the provincial edict, and an un- codified mass of proconsular and pretorian edicts based on Roman-Iberian usage the nominal law of Spain, and Euric compiled a code which Alaric II (506 a. d.) issued as his Breviariiim Alaricianium. This code was written in Latin, * The lands still remaining in the hands of natives not only paid a tax to represent the military obligation resting on the land held by Gothic nobles, but also the old Roman land tax (jugatio), now called a capitation. In addition to this, every person, free or servile, except the Gothic nobles, was liable to a humane capitatio. 56 The Spanish People and to a certain extent followed the Roman code, but was largely Gothic in its feeling and procedure.* This was in- tended exclusively for the use of the Goths themselves, while Romanized Spaniards were still subject to their former laws. Each successive king added something to these enactments, but it was increasingly evident that two separate judicial sys- tems in the same country could not exist as a permanent arrangement, especially as, notwithstanding all prohibitions, the races and classes intermingled. Recared, at the time of the third Council of Toledo, issued certain edicts which were to be binding upon Goths and Spaniards alike ; and this tend- ency to uniform legislation naturally grew as the councils, which were largely Spanish and ecclesiastical, increased in civil power. At length, when the Gothic monarchy was tot- tering, a vigorous king who lived too late sought to weld his people into one by means of the law in addition to the bond of the Church, which by this time had usurped all power. Chindaswinth (642-654) fused the Gothic and Roman systems of jurisdiction into one national code, binding upon all citi- zens, and abolished the former rival enactments. The Lex Visigothorum, though yet tinged with Gothic social traditions, * For instance, the Germanic aristocratic system- is seen in the fact that the punishments depended not so much upon the nature of the crime as upon the rank of the criminal. All Gotlis being nobiles — classed as primates (lords) and seniores (gentlemen) — their punishment, in every case a fine, was always very light; while the most inhuman cruelty was inflicted upon slaves for very slight offences. Thus a free citizen might assault another free citizen for 10 gold pieces; it would cost him 4' gold pieces to beat an inferior free citizen or freedman, and only 5 pence to beat a slave, while a slave would receive 200 lashes for assaulting a free citizen. The enforcement of the rights of women also indicates the Germanic influence in this code. The code as it was finally published by Egica in the last days of Gothic rule consisted of twelve books, of which the first five regulated civil and private relations, the next three treated of crimes and their punishments, the ninth book referred to offences against the state, the tenth and eleventh to public order and com- merce, while the twelfth book dealt with the suppression of Judaism and heresy. Laws and Learning 57 was practically a Christianized adaptation of the Roman law to the special circumstances of Spain, showing on every page the great influence of the Spanish bishops ; and under the successor of Chindaswinth, his son Recceswinth, it was pro- mulgated and strictly enforced throughout the country. This Lex Visigothorum, or Fuero Jusgo, is especially interest- ing as being the most direct transmission of the old Roman laws in force in any modern country, and the adoption and adaptation of it thus by the Gothic kings of Spain proves the superiority of the Goths as a receptive people to the other Germanic nations which overran Europe, and who in most cases laboured to destroy and abolish all traces of Ro- man civilization. Though the Visigoths were not a literary people, and their influence upon Spanish letters was insignificant, yet the Ro- man-Spaniard, with his exuberant literary talent,- and satu- rated with the later Latin traditions which his race had large- ly been instrumental in forming, continued his activity in authorship during the whole of the Gothic domination. The line of Latin culture in Spain had never been cut, tenuous as it had sometimes grown under such mediocrities as the geog- rapher Pomponius Mela and the like. But in the fourth century the Christian idea seized firm hold of the imagina- tions of Spanish-Latin writers, and thenceforward became the central pivot around which their compositions turned. Before the arrival of the Goths a writer who is usually claimed by Spaniards as the first Christian poet, Juvencus (330),* turned into hexameters reminiscent of Virgil the Christian gospels. The style is florid, artificial, and not with- out the pagan traces which his traditions and the models he followed would naturally produce. Prudentius,* a fervent Christian poet, born at Tarragona, proud of his country, proud of Rome, and proudest of all of his faith, followed ; but * Both Juvencus's and Prudentius's works were edited and pub- lished by Arevalo, at Rome, in 1792 and 1789 respectively. 58 The Spanish People even in his most exquisite verses, full of religious fire as they are, and thirsting for martyrdom, he shows the old classical pagan love for beautiful things, and for the glowing im- agery which his pagan predecessors and exemplars had taught him to admire. Orosius,* the Spanish disciple of Saint Augustine, was the first writer who gave to history the universal and general note which Christianity brought with it, by recognising the equality of all peoples before the Creator, though he, too, was full of the glory of Roman Spain. By far the most famous of the Spanish-Latin writers dur- ing the Visigothic period was the great churchman Saint Isi- dore, who had succeeded in the bishopric of Seville to his brother the rebel ecclesiastic Leander, who had supported Saint Hermenegild against his father, the king. Saint Isidore, who presided over the metropolitan see of Seville from 600 to 636, may be fairly considered as the last scholarly representa- tive of the ancient classical learning before the dark curtain fell upon the world. His great work is a sort of encyclopedic dictionary, called the Etymologies, which contains an extraor- dinary amount of learning gathered from previous writers of all time, many of whose works have since been lost. The principal value of Saint Isidore's work at the present time is to enable us to understand by his definitions both the extent to which Christianity had modified the classical Roman views of society and life in Spain in the seventh century, and how far it had accepted the scientific knowledge of the ancients. There is nothing, however large or small, which escapes the pen of Saint Isidore ; and it is evident from the definitions in the Etymologies that a Christian bishop had no hesitation whatever in accepting and indorsing to a great extent the views -on art, eloquence, music, and literary expression which had been formulated by the writers of pagan Greece and * Orosius's works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Eccle- siasticorum Latinorum, Vienna, lib. 5. Saint Isidore 59 Rome. His philosophy of hfe is Platonic and Aristotelian, while his religious philosophy is drawn from Saint Gregory the Great. As a Christian prelate quoting a Christian Pope, he condemned vain, gentile books, " the fictions of the poets, who with the attraction of the fables move the soul to levity," and the showy, empty eloquence of the later pagan rhetori- cians, which he compares unfavourably with the staid sim- pHcity of Holy Writ ; but as a writer with the Iberian spirit strong in him, he does not disdain the use of florid rhetoric in his own writings, and his views of art and beauty are taken entire from the pagan writers, notwithstanding an occasional Christian tag introduced to show the vanity of human crea- tions. The wonderful harvest of learning gathered in from all sources by Saint Isidore profoundly influenced his contempo- raries and successors, and he is usually placed as the leader of a separate school of thought in Seville, although without apparently sufficient reason, as the absorption of the classical learning by Christian writers, so conspicuous in the Etymolo- gies, is indicative not of Seville alone, but of the Christian writers of all Visigothic Spain under Saint Isidore's influence, especially those of Zaragoza and Toledo, led respectively by Saint Braulius, the disciple and editor of Saint Isidore, and by Saint Eugenius. The influence subsequently exerted outside Spain by this assimilation is especially seen in the works of the Spanish-Roman Goth Theodowulf, Bishop of Orleans under Charlemagne — poet, courtier, philosopher, and great ecclesiastic. Theodowulf, like Saint Isidore, adapted the beauties of Virgil, Ovid, Quintillian, and Donatus to the Christian creed. Possessing all the ancient love of beauty and elegance, all the old admiration for perfect works of art, the Christian bishop sought to prove in every page of his writ- ings that harmonious beauty in form, colour, and expression was not necessarily pagan, but that the breath of Christianity would lend to loveliness itself a new life, which should lead 6o The Spanish People the thoughts of men to the Maker of all harmony. We shall see later that his idea, especially Spanish in its origin, disap- peared for a time more completely in Spain than elsewhere, owing to the Christian fervour aroused by the Moorish domi- nation. The revival of the classical ideals, the rekindling of the spark which Saint Isidore so lovingly kept alight during his time, was to be effected in Spain, it is true, but by men of foreign tongue and unchristian creed, taking their inspiration direct from the original fount. It is evident by the canons of the various councils of To- ledo that the secular education of youth was not neglected in Visigothic Spain, although, with the almost complete suprem- acy of the ecclesiastical class during the later years of the dominion, it is natural that the monastic and episcopal schools for those destined to the priesthood should be the most fa- mous. At Dumium, in Galicia, the noted Hungarian Bishop of Braga, Saint Martin, founded a school known throughout western Europe ; the academies of Valclara in Catalonia, of Toledo, of Zaragoza, of Seville, and many others, were cele- brated for the learning of their professors and alumni. It is to be presumed from the several references of Saint Isidore and others that as much attention as ever was paid in the schools to rhetoric and forms of expression, for eloquence and elegance of style are more often praised even than the substance of learning itself by these early Christian Spaniards. The verbal exuberance of the Iberian was as evident then as it was in the palmy days of the younger Seneca, and as it has invariably been since in every manifestation of Spanish literary activity. While Christian poesy and an adaptation of classical learning thus flourished in Spain under the Visi- goths, another branch of art decayed almost entirely. Dur- ing the Roman rule the theatre and the public diversions had flourished exceedingly, as the dramatic poetry of the period and the ruins of the splendid amphitheatres still existing in Spain will testify. The Goths, however, were not a theatrical Art in Gothic Spain 6i or a poetic people, and under the influence of Saint Gregory Christian feeling was strongly against the scenic pleasures that had delighted the pagan Romans. Saint Isidore in every case speaks of the theatre and actors in the past tense — al- though we know that poetic recitations in public had not entirely disappeared — and he has no words of reprobation too strong for such amusements. " What connection," he asks, " can a Christian have with the folly of the circus games, with the indecency of the theatre, with the cruelty of the amphi- theatre, with the wickedness of the arena, or with the lascivi- ousness of the plays ? They who enjoy such spectacles deny God, and, as backsliders in the faith, hunger after that which they renounced at their baptism, enslaving themselves to the devil with his pomps and vanities." It will be seen, therefore, that the influence which domi- nated literature under the Visigoths in Spain was entirely the tradition of Roman culture, more or less modified by Chris- tian doctrine ; and in the domain of executive art the same phenomenon is seen. The discovery, in 1858, near Toledo, of the priceless treasure of Guarrazar enables us to form a precise idea of the Gothic influence upon the artistic metal work of Spain. Eleven votive crowns of gold and precious stones of extraordinary magnificence, and much other gold jewelry of the later Gothic period, testify to the lavish but somewhat barbaric splendour which surrounded the Visi- gothic kings in the decadence of their monarchy.* The crowns, especially that of King Swinthila (at Madrid) and that of King Recceswinth (at Paris), are surrounded with rosettes of pearls and sapphires in a delicate red paste cloi- sonne setting. The suspending chains are of pierced floriated work, and the same simple patterns of decoration are found on all the objects, executed in openwork filigree, repousse, and cloisonne, of wonderful richness and intricacy of work- * Most of these interesting objects may be seen in the Musee de Cluny, Paris, and the rest in the Royal Armory, Madrid. 6 62 The Spanish People manship. The general character, although somewhat remi- niscent of the later Roman Empire, has for the first time distinct features of its own, which distinguished the fine metal work of Christian Spain for centuries afterward, and almost certainly influenced Prankish art of the same period — unless, indeed, the origin of both schools was similar and simultane- ous. There is more than a suggestion of Byzantine and early Oriental in the style of ornamentation, but the heavy splen- dour of the Germanic taste is evident throughout. The manufacture of the world-famous swords and steel armour of Bilbilis and Toledo had continued through the whole period, and in this direction also the Goth left some small influence behind him. The swords made there in Car- thaginian and Roman times were broad, straight, double- edged blades, with a central groove, and also the special arm of the Celtiberians, a curved, sickle-shaped sword, with the edge on the inner curve. Under the Visigoth the latter arm disappeared and the former became longer and less broad. The Roman breastplates and leg pieces likewise fell into dis- use under the Goths, and gave place to coats of mail and chain armour, also distinctly reminiscent of the East. Span- ish pottery during the Visigothic period shows but little de- parture from the Roman and Arrhetini (Samian) models, which had been general under the empire, the surface orna- mentation alone in some cases testifying to the general Byzantine influence ; but the manufacture of fine glass, for which Spain had been famous under the Romans, seems to have almost disappeared during the Gothic domination ; and the same fate appears to have befallen the textile industries, the famous linens and scarlet cloths of earlier days being now never mentioned. It will thus be seen generally that Spain owed but little either politically or artistically * to the Goths, whose main * Their architecture had not yet assumed in Spain the character we usually associate with their name, The oldest speciinen existing Decline of the Goths 63 influence during the first hundred and eighty years of their domination was to revivify existing institutions. With the conversion of Recared to CathoUcism and his submission to the ecclesiastical rather than to the feudal power, the vigour of the Gothic monarchy declined with startling rapidity. Recared and his successors decided to accept the Church as the national bond of union, and thenceforward the national development was forced to proceed on ecclesiastical lines. The countries in which feudal institutions won in the first struggles gradually developed national parliaments out of the assemblies of nobles ; in Spain the progress was in another direction. There the elective assemblies of nobles became effete, and the councils of bishops with a few pala- tine officers formed the earliest germ of national representa- tion. The effect of this will be apparent later in the growth of Spanish institutions. King followed king in rapid succession after the death of Recared (6oi) : no less than three sovereigns being murdered in five-and-twenty years, besides two who died natural deaths within that period. The only one of note was Swinthila (621-631), who took advantage of the Eastern Emperor He- raclitus being engaged in his war with Persia to chase the imperial troops from the last foothold in the south of Spain, which they had obtained from Athanagild sixty years before ; and thus the long connection of Spain with the Roman Em- pire at last came to an end (626), to be revived again in an- other form nine hundred years later under Charles V. But Swinthila tried to do too much. He not only dared to kick against his hard taskmasters, the Spanish Catholic bishops, but by again endeavouring to make the crown hered- itary alienated also the Gothic nobles. He was accordingly speedily disposed of, and a protege of the churchmen, Sise- is the church of Naranco, near Oviedo, of the middle of the ninth century, which shows no departure from the style of the later empire except a natural tendency toward the prevailing Byzantine. 64 The Spanish People nand, was proclaimed king (631) without the form of election by the barons. In order, therefore, to obtain sanction for his usurpation, he summoned the famous fourth Council of Tole- do, and in its hands deposited the power he had seized. Saint Isidore presided over this august assembly of churchmen, and in the name of the Church recognised Sisenand as king. But even this was not enough for the ecclesiastics. It was enacted that in future every king should receive from the council of bishops and palatines the confirmation of his elec- tion before he should be allowed to rule ; the Catholic Church was proclaimed as the only religion of the monarchy, and ex- communication was fulminated against the deposed Swinthila and all that dared question the decisions of the councils. The influence of churchmen of Iberian blood and sympathies was soon seen in the bitter persecution of the Jews, who had flocked to Spain in great numbers on the destruction of Jeru- salem by Titus, and had lived in peace and prosperity ever since under the empire and the early Gothic kings. Imme- diately the conversion of Recared gave to the Spanish bishops the whip hand persecution began. No Jew was allowed to hold any public office, to own Christian slaves, or to marry a Christian wife ; and under Sisebut (612-620) compulsory bap- tism was enforced upon them, and the persecuted people fled from torture and death in great numbers to France and Morocco. Swinthila refused' to persecute them, but when the fourth Council of Toledo had anointed his usurping suc- cessor (633) it was no longer persecution, but extermination, that the churchmen aimed at, notwithstanding the grave warn- ing against overzeal given by Saint Isidore himself. No mercy, no toleration, no social rights, were to be allowed to the hated race, and five years later (638) it was enacted by the sixth Council of Toledo that none but Catholics should be allowed to live in Spain. Each succeeding council gave an- other turn of the screw which oppressed the Jews. Even those who accepted Christianity were harried and persecuted The Church v. Feudalism 65 with relentless spite. Placed under ecclesiastical judges alone, deprived of property, rights, and children, scourged, enslaved, and tortured, it is not to be wondered at that those who fled across the straits and those who remained pariahs, though professed Christians, in Spain, plotted ceaselessly- to over- throw the rule of the bitter bigots who had deprived them and their race of all that mankind holds dear. Nor was this persecution the only outcome of the ecclesiastical supremacy in the state. The conduct of the clergy themselves, sure of immunity under any circumstances, became hideously cor- rupt and dissolute ; and the whole community naturally par- took of the corruption of its political and religious guides. Kings counted for little now, for if they grew independent they were easily removed. Councils of Toledo met in rapid succession and issued decrees for the government of the country, most of which tended to the extension of Roman- Spanish and Catholic ideas and the absorption of the Goth ; while the kings, mostly mere puppets of the churchmen, grew in splendour and luxury as they declined in power. Once a flicker of the old Gothic spirit showed itself in the forcible election of the fine old soldier Wamba to the throne (672) by the Gothic nobles. Faced by a widespread Jewish con- spiracy for setting up a rival king in Gothic Gaul, and by a re- volt of the Cantabrian tribes in the north of Spain, Wamba taught some of his people to fight vigorously again, and to throw off the paralysis that afflicted them. But the free Ro- man-Spaniards, priest-ridden now to an extent which can hardly be realized to-day, sulked as much as they dared from Wamba and his wars, and had to be coerced more than once to follow even a victorious Gothic king. He was too wise and strong, also, to please the churchmen. Erwig, weak and false, suited them better, and to Wamba was given a sleeping draught which rendered him senseless while the conspirators shaved a tonsure on his head, which made the sturdy old general incapable of ruling, for no churchman 66 The Spanish People was allowed to wear the crown. The Church was thus too strong even for Wamba, who gave way to Erwig and retired into a monastery to end his hfe, the last great Gothic king of Spain, tricked out of a throne he had not sought (680). In his turn Erwig was ousted by Egica, a nephew of Wamba, after whom came his son Witiza. The Gothic nobles then made one last struggle to obtain the upper hand ; for the Church and the Roman-Spaniard were quite paramount now. Roderic, the Gothic nobles' nominee, was able to wrest the throne from Witiza, the protege of the bishops (710), but the resulting civil war between the two elements completed the ruin of the monarchy. The feudal Gothic element still held the land, while the towns, which provided the revenues of the country, were mainly Spanish. The ecclesiastical organiza- tion was complete and national, while the feudal element had little cohesion except common blood and interests, which, however, the elective character of the monarchy constantly tended to divide. The romantic story of Roderic's amours with the beautiful La Cava and the introduction of the infidels to Spain by her outraged father may be dismissed as fable. A much better reason existed than that for the fall of the monarchy. The Bishop of Seville (Oppas), intriguing with Witiza's sons for the overthrow of Roderic, arranged with Count Julian, the Eastern-Roman emperor's governor of Ceuta, to send a force of Africans over the straits to strengthen the hands of the ecclesiastical party and finally to crush the landowning Gothic nobles. The Arabs had pursued their conquering march through Syria, Egypt, and north Africa, and had made them- selves masters of Morocco. They wert a newly awakened people, with the zeal and flush of a fresh-born faith, and had hitherto carried all before them. Only a few years previ- ously they had raided the east coast of Spain, and probably, even without invitation, would have made another attempt at invasion. Authorized by the Caliph of Damascus, the Arab / The Berber Invasion 67 chief Musa in 710 sent a small expedition under Tarif to the point now called Tarifa to spy out the strength of the land. He returned to Barbary loaded with booty, and with stories of a people so soft and unwarlike as almost to invite conquest. The next year (711) there went 7,000 savage Berbers — Afro- pre-Semites with a large admixture of Vandal blood — to land, as their far-distant forefathers had done, on the coast of Spain. This was one of the great crises of history, but the actors knew it not. Tarik, the Berber chief, with his wild fanatic soldiery, first set foot on the famous rock which ever after- ward bore his name, Gebel-al-Tarik, assured of an easy vic- tory over a people whose only national bond of cohesion were the canons of the Church, and whose supreme government was a council of bishops. Roderic and his Gothic officers, with their vassal army of 60,000 men, hurried down from the north to do battle not only against the invader, but against the priestly regime that had made the invasion possible. For three days the battle raged fiercely at the junction of the rivers Guadalete and Guadalquivir, where Lake Jauda waters the fertile plain, but on the third day the Berbers were joined by the forces of the churchmen, under the Bishop of Seville and the sons of Witiza,* while Count Julian also, with 5,000 Berbers, turned his arms against his fellow-Christians. The Goths themselves fought stubbornly to the last, but were surrounded and overwhelmed, Roderic disappearing thence- forward from the ken of men, though his crown and sceptre were found on the river bank. The purely Gothic element in Spain was withered up as if by fire. The Spaniards were more inclined to look upon the African intruders as friends than as foes, for had they not come to secure to the Roman-Spanish ecclesiastics the supremacy which the Gothic nobles disputed with them? Everywhere, too, the Jews were in league with * Some Spanish historians assert that they did not join the enemy, but simply deserted. 68 The Spanish People the invader, and city gates opened as if by magic at the approach of the African. The invaders respected property and hfe to an extent unheard of in similar wars, and within two years of Tarik's landing tlie whole country was under the sway of the infidel. Then, when it was too late, the besotted churchmen saw the mistake they had made, and understood that through their ambition Spain, if not Europe, would have to be reconquered foot by foot for the Church of Christ. And for well-nigh eight centuries to come the mighty weapons of the priest — the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, the ire of God, the esteem of men, the greed of gain, pride, patriotism, and hate, every passion that stirs the heart — were all wielded ceaselessly and vehemently by the Spanish clergy in the great struggle which slowly bore onward the Cross and rolled back the Crescent. 27 B. c. TO 710 A. D. Summary of progress during this period In the earlier years of the empire the civil and judicial organi- zation of the whole country was completed. The municipal in- stitutions were the basis of government. General assemblies of burgesses, in two classes (cives and incolas), annually elected the officers — two duumvirs or mayors, two ediles, with questors, Hctors, scribes, etc., the administrative power being supervised by the curia or town council, consisting of the landowning bur- gesses. Frequently the larger and more Roman cities had incor- porated with them a number of neighbouring towns. Each town or group of towns thus formed raised and spent its own taxation, the funds being derived from the contributions of the two classes of citizens and (he rents of the common lands of the township. The towns sent deputies each year to the provincial centre, pri- marily to attend the religions festivals, but really to review the acts of the provincial governor, who, although nominally supreme, was limited by the law and local usage. The provincial funds were derived from the revenues of common lands and mines, customhouses (now first introduced), and a number of small Summary 69 impositions paid by various classes of citizens and towns. Under Vespasian the whole of Spain was granted the privilege of " Latin law," and later Antoninus Caracalla gave to all free Spaniards Roman citizenship. The refinement and luxury of Spain grew greater with the increasing splendour of Roman life, and the colony accompanied the mother city in its degeneration of morals and manners. The introduction of Christianity profoundly influ- enced the social views of Spaniards. Slavery became milder and partook increasingly of the character of territorial vassalage, and the idea of the liberty and sacredness of the individual took firm hold of Spanish imagination. The revivification of institu- tions by the Goths and the subsequent overshadowing of the military feudalism of the Germanic peoples by councils of Latin- inspired bishops gave to Spanish public life during the period under review the direction which it ever afterward followed. The Roman emperors endowed Spain with a complete network of roads, causeways, viaducts, and bridges, of which many still remain, and the fine aqueducts, amphitheatres, baths, and public buildings were also mostly constructed in this period of the domi- nation. Commerce grew enormously with the increase of wealth and means of communication; public schools, of three successive grades, were established in all the large centres ; and, as will be seen in the text, a fever of literary activity overtook Spaniards. The numerous splendid remains still existing in Spain of the architecture of imperial Rome, the sculptures, mosaics, arms, jewels, and ornaments which have been discovered, show that, although the colony rivalled Rome itself in the arts of civiliza- tion, no special feature was developed which marked a distinc- tion of Spanish taste. The incursions of the barbarians, and subsequently the re- newed decadence of the Goths, coming after a long period of Latin decline, led to the disappearance from Spain of most of the elegance and luxury of the Roman period, the models now followed being the rougher productions of Germanic and Prank- ish taste, tinged by the prevailing Byzantine influence. As is pointed out in the text, the Gothic kings gave to Spain the only direct adaptation of the Roman law to the changed circumstances of the times — the first code of laws published in Europe after the fall of the empire, the Lex Visigothorum. They also ingrafted to a slight extent the feudal system on to the older institutions of the country. 70 The Spanish People Summary of what Spain did for the world in this period Some of the greatest writers who glorified Latin literature were Spaniards. Their influence, although attractive, made for decadence, and the national qualities of redundancy and vehe- mence ultimately ruined Latin style. The Christian Spanish writ- ers — Juvencus, Prudentius, Saint Isidore, Saint Brauliiis, etc. — however, did much to keep culture of a sort still alive at a time when darkness was closing in. Industrially and artistically Spain only served the world during this period as a satellite of Rome, though with the Gothic domination she did something to maintain and spread the mingled Teutonic and Byzantine forms of art. More important, however, by far than this, she produced the best and most direct adaptation of the Roman law, the Lex Visigo- thorum or Fuero Jusgo, when all other Teutonic dominations were endeavouring to supersede or destroy the Latin judicial sys- tem. Spain thus transmitted in unbroken line the law of ancient Rome to modern Europe. CHAPTER III MOSLEM SPAIN Effect of the Moorish invasion — The Berbers and the Arabs — Abd-er- Rahman defeated by the Franks — The Mozarabes — The Caliph Abd-er-Rahman — Roncesvalles — Covadonga — The religious influ- ence on the reconquest — Influence of Arab civilization upon Christian Spaniards — Santiago — The caliphs of Cordovas-Growth of fanaticism on both sides — Anarchy in Moslem Spain — Exten- sion of the Christian conquest — Restoration of the caliphate by Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir — Christian tribute to Abd-er-Rahman III — The rise of Castile — Almansor. It has been truly said that the decHne and fall of the Visi- gothic monarchy in Spain was really only the continuation and completion of the downfall of Roman civilization in the country. For reasons already set forth, the Goths infused fresh temporary vigour into institutions during the first cen- tury of their rule, but the inevitable decay was too strong for them, and their disaster was utter and final. The institutions which in early days had been their great source of strength, indeed, contributed not a little to their own discomfiture — greater by far than that of the people they had conquered. The aristocracy of the Roman world had been bureaucratic and official — the aristocracy of a class open to all free citizens, and to which, as we have seen, Spaniards had ready access : whereas the Gothic system depended upon an aristocracy of caste, hereditary and territorial, of which the doors were rigidly closed against Spaniards for all time. The inalienable possession of most of the land by the Goths had the effect 71 72 The Spanish People of enormously increasing the various forms of villainage, and thus further reduced the status of the great mass of the people, whose strongest instinct was that of personal independence. The extraordinary fervidness with which the Catholic form of Christianity was accepted by Spaniards is to a great extent explained by the fact that the Church, at least, was open to them ; and side by side with the hereditary privileged caste of the Goths grew up the ecclesiastical privileged class of the Spaniards themselves. It was the more or less conscious struggle for supremacy of these two classes which consum- mated the catastrophe. The Spaniards — four fifths of the nation — were naturally on the side of their own race ; and as the power of the Church councils increased they looked ever more eagerly to the Church alone for emancipation and reform. In the supreme struggle with the Moors the Gothic nobility therefore found few but unwilling bondsmen to fight for them apart from those of their own race and caste. Hence it was that while the Roman-Spaniard remained after the Moorish victory certainly in no worse position civilly than he was before in many cases, indeed, much better — the Goths were literally swept away, and their system of hereditary.no-'- BiTity"dependirig upon the ownership of land, disappeared. This fact must not be lost sight of, as it profoundly influenced subsequently the organization which grew up in the renascent nationality. The early conquests of the Arabs had not been pri- marily prompted by a desire to proselytize, but to extend the empire of the Caliph of Damascus, and the readiness with which the north African peoples had embraced the faith of Mahomet had not been altogether pleasing to the Ca- liph's tax collectors, who thus saw their tribute materially reduced. The Omeyyad dynasty, moreover, which now reigned at Damascus, was itself of disputed orthodoxy, and had no desire whatever to deplete its treasury for the sake of the faith. And although the Berbers, with the zeal of new The Moslem Conquest ti^ converts and semisavages, who had learned the material but not the spiritual part of their new faith, were inclined to be fanatical, there was at first no attempt whatever on the part of the invaders to convert the Christian population of Spain, which so readily accepted their rule. It was probably not originally the intention of Tarik and his Berbers to coniquer a nation, but rather to plunder a province, and perhaps to retain a foothold on the coast in order to command the straits. But the victory over Roderic had been too complete to stay on the banks of the Guada- lete, and through an unresisting country Tarik marched, in defiance of the orders sent to him by the caliph's wall Musa from the other side of the straits; for the Arab conquerors and masters were jealous and apprehensive to see their wild subject people pursuing a course of conquest on their own account. Sending columns to occupy Cordova and Malaga, Tarik himself pressed forward to royal Toledo, which fell without a blow by the connivance of the Jews, who had a long account to settle with the fallen regime, and exacted it to the utmost tittle. At first there was some plunder and rapine by the Berbers, but before many months had passed, Musa, the Arab wall, with an army of 18,000 men, came across to secure the conquest for himself and his caliph. Casting the Berber leader, Tarik, into prison for daring to exceed his orders, Musa marched onward to the Pyrenees, whence he looked back upon a Spain of which only one corner was now ruled by Christians. In most cases the Christians, and especially the Jews who had accompanied the invaders in vast numbers, had reason to congratulate themselves upon their change of masters. The most absolute religious toleration was allowed, and the exercise of all faiths encouraged. Where no resist- ance was offered to their arms the Moors left the owners in full possession of their lands, with the right of free sale, which they did not previously possess ; while in the towns the prop- erty was retained by the owners on payment of the universal 74 The Spanish People tax of the kharadj (about 20 per cent), and a special head tax upon Christians and. Jews of 48 dirhems per head for wealthy persons, half that amount for the poorer people, and a quarter for the servile classes.* In the districts of the south where resistance had been offered the lands were confiscated, one fifth being retained for the state and four fifths distrib- uted among the Moorish soldiery ; but even here the villains were left in possession, paying to the new lords, in the case of the state one third of the produce, and in case of the soldiers four fifths. The Christians, moreover, were ruled by their own Latin- Visigothic code of laws, administered by their own officers ; and even the Christian priests — though not the polit- ical bishops or the Church as an institution — lived and minis- tered in safety under the rule of the infidel. If, as is generally asserted by contemporaries, Tarik was imprisoned by Musa, he was speedily released to pursue the scattered: remains of the Gothic host under a chief, Pelayo, who had fled to the northwest, while Musa with his army sub- dued the east and northeast as far as the Pyrenees. But soon the caliph in far Damascus grew anxious, perhaps indignant, at these vast campaigns ; which his wall had written to him " were not common conquests, but like the meeting of the nations on the day of judgment," and peremptorily ordered Musa to come and give an account of his actions. As vice- roy in Spain Musa left his son Abdul Aziz, who, after reducing the gallant Gothic Duke Theodomir at Orihuela, near Ali- cante, to the position of a vassal king,f himself held court at Seville, married a Christian lady, and, in true Oriental fashion, was murdered by an emissary of the caliph, who had already * This would represent about 20s., los., and S-5-. respectively, but these sums must be multiplied by about 11 to arrive at the propor- tionate value at the present time. t Theodomir, according to the story, having been driven out of the mountains of Murcia, fled, accompanied only by a page, to the wAled town of Orihuela. There he made a great show of women dressed as warriors on the ramparts, and himself, personating a mes- The Arab Dominion 75 degraded and destroyed his father Musa on his arrival in Da- mascus. Before Abdul Aziz fell he had, to some extent, or- ganized Moorish Spain on the tolerant system to which ref- erence has been made, accepting the governmental machinery already existing, but appointing a Moorish alcaide or gov- ernor to each large town with its dependent villages to replace the Gothic comes, and sending a wali to each province in- stead of the dux. The difficulty in these early days of the Arab domination was not between Christian and Mahome- tan, but between the different sections of the victors them- selves. The Berbers, not without reason, looked upon their own race as the conquerors of Spain ; but their Arab masters treated such pretensions with the scorn of a superior race, who had only recently brought to the Berbers the faith they professed and such civilization as they had attained. The caliphate itself was in the throes of revolution, and leaned first to one side and then to another. From Africa swarmed thousands of tribesmen to the fertile land their brethren had just conquered — Berbers, Touaregs, Copts, and Nubians — hating each other as only savage tribes can, but all, to some extent, recognising the superiority of the Arab, who had brought them into the fold of the Prophet. One amir of Spain after another therefore followed in quick succession on the death of Abdul Aziz. Tribal jealousies and wars contin- ued, in which, although the Arab usually prevailed, the more fanatical Berber gradually forced to the front the idea that the most fervid Mahometan was necessarily the best man. Among the undistinguishable amirs who rose and fell during the first forty years of Arab ascendency one shines through the ages as the principal actor in a series of events senger, with his page as a herald, cleverly cajoled Abdul Aziz into granting him very favourable terms of surrender, Theodomir be- coming a tributary prince of the caliph and a close friend of the Arab Abdul Aziz. The territory around Orihuela was called the land of Tadmir by the Moors centuries after Theodomir had died. 76 The Spanish People of paramount importance in the history of the world. Thith- erto no efifective resistance had been offered to the Arab ad- vance. In less than a hundred years this nomad nation had carried their banner and their faith from the Hindoo Koosh to the Pyrenees unchecked, and by every law they were forced to press onward until they met an insurmountable ob- stacle. Already Alahor, in 719, had conquered without diffi- culty the portion of Gaul which had formerly owed allegiance to the Gothic kings, with Narbonne as its capital, and thence the intruders had spread west to Beaune, seizing Avignon in 730. Then there arose Abd-er-Rahman as Arab governor of southern Gaul, who dreamed of carrying the Crescent to the Rhine and the North Sea. At first he was unsuccessful, and was deposed by the caliph, but in 731 was reappointed Amir of Spain, and after suppressing the disorder of the tribes there and sternly curbing the Berbers and their fanatical Marabouts, he set forth to realize his great dream of making the caliph master of Europe. Northward through Aquitaine to the banks of the Garonne the Saracens swept all before them. Bordeaux fell, and the rich plains of central France lay open to them. But before they could cross the Loire and master northern France a Prankish army lay in their path. Between Poictiers and Tours the forces of Islam met with the Christian host under Charles the Hammer, as he was ever afterward called. The Saracens were confident, for had not the Christians of Spain bowed the head before them as the ripe corn bends before the wind ? And were not these Franks Christians, too? Yes, but with a difference ; for the Franks, instead of being absorbed by a Romanized nation, had ab- sorbed it; the vices of the later empire had not emasculated them, and the powers of church and state were in healthy rivalry, instead of the latter being a mere appanage of the for- mer, as in Spain. And so Abd-er-Rahman fell ; the Hammer stayed the flood of Islam, and in a seven days' fight decided The Arab Dominion 11 that the Cross should prevail. Thenceforward, although the Moors kept Narbonne for some years longer, their power stayed at the Pyrenees. The masterful Arabs had appropriated to themselves the best parts of the Peninsula, especially the smiling south coast, their own fair Andaloos, and had relegated their subject Afri- can peoples, the Berbers and others, to the arid centre and cold rainy north. The Berber, like his far-away relative the Iberian, was a man of strong individuality, with an obstinate reluctance to obey another unless he spoke in the name of a supernatural entity. His saintly class, the Marabouts, had obtained over him a hold similar to that possessed by the priest over the Spaniard; and inflamed by these fanatics against the tolerant and sceptical Arab, the African peoples on both sides of the straits coalesced against their masters. The position was full of danger for the Arab power in Spain ; and before peace could be secured a new division of the country had to be made, in which the Africans obtained a somewhat more equitable share, and the various tribes were allotted districts to some extent climatologically suited to them. Thus the Arabs of Damascus were seated in the beau- tiful Vega of Granada, the Egyptian Moslems occupied the torrid district of Murcia, and the Berbers had their principal seat in the southwest and extending through Estremadura and Castile, and so were constantly in contact with the enemy. During this first forty years of the Moorish domination in Spain, in which the struggle was continuous and the final issues doubtful between Arab and African, the connection of the dependency upon the caliphate grew weaker, until at last the Amir of Spain came to be elected by the various tribal chieftains, and the election was simply confirmed by the caliph at Damascus. Side by side with the new rulers lived the Christians and Jews in peace. The latter, rich with commerce and in^dnstr^,, were content to let'^hif'tnefndfy of their~oppression bv the 7 The Spanish People priest-ridden Goths sleep, now that the prime authors of it had disappeared. Learned in all the arts and sciences, cul- tured and tolerant, they were treated by the Moors with marked respect, and multiplied exceedingly all over Spain ; and, like the Christian Spaniards under Moorish rule — who were called Mozarabes — had cause to thank their new masters for an era of prosperity such as they had never known before. Many Christians adopted the faith of Islam, for they thus escaped the head tax, and, if bondsmen, became free. Their religion previously had probably not gone much beyond a vague deism, with a superstitious regard for the priest, and these elements could be supplied by the newer faith ; but there was no proselytism on the part of the Arabs, and con- version was discouraged, rather than otherwise. It was not until the fanatic political Christian priests, eager for recon- quest, began to arouse the zeal of the Mozarabes that the equally intolerant Berbers in the same spirit began to per- secute in the name of Allah and the Prophet. The empire of Islam itself was too unwieldy to hold to- gether very long in the face of the widely different peoples who composed it and the simple tribal traditions upon which it had been based. The caliphate had existed already three hundred years after the death of the Prophet, when in 750 the reigning Omeyyad at Damascus was deposed by the first caliph of the Abbaside Persian dynasty, who carried the caliphate to Bagdad. The only Omeyyad prince who es- caped the slaughter and destruction of his house was the young Abd-er-Rahman, who fled from his persecutors, and,, after many moving adventures by land and sea, reached Africa where he found among the Berbers of far Maghreb an asy- lum whither the hate of the new caliph could not follow him. From his birth soothsayers had predicted a great future for him. He was clever, strong, ambitious, and the only re- maining son of a long line of powerful sovereigns ; and no wonder that he looked across the straits to fair Andaloos, and The Kingdom of Cordova 79 dreamed of a great empire ,to be founded by him on the jar- ring tribes which now possessed the land. The Syrian party was strong in Spain, and hailed the coming of the son of the Syrian caliphs (755). All the Syrian and Yemen tribes of Islam Spain deserted the representative of the caliphate of Bagdad, and saluted Abd-er-Rahman as sovereign. But many a hard fight had to be fought; treachery and cruelty, as masterly as it was heartless, had to be practised before the young pretender could enter Cordova in triumph, to found there the capital of his empire, the centre for two hundred years to come of the Western world's half-forgotten culture. The Sultan Abd-er-Rahman was one of the Heaven-sent rulers of men. Prompt, yet cautious in council and in war, unscrupulous, overbearing, and proud, he was as ready to wreak terrible vengeance as he was politic to forgive when it suited him. With an energy which carried all before it, he faced and extirpated the forces the caliph sent against him. Tribe after tribe, especially in the north, where the Abbaside cause was strong, revolted, only to be crushed with an iron hand and their leaders crucified. Berber and Yemenite alike acknowledged that at last they had found their master, though during the whole of Abd-er- Rahman's reign the border cities of the north rendered him but sulky homage. The loss of Narbonne and southern Gaul to the Frank was partly the result of this ; and the famous battle of Roncesvalles, of which so much is sung and so little is known, had its origin in the same division among the Moors. Charlemagne, the ally of the new Caliph of Bagdad, had been approached by the Abbaside emissaries in JTJ, with a request that he would cross the Pyrenees and aid the opponents of Abd-er-Rahman. Zara- goza, the emperor was assured, was on the side of the Abba- side, and in the summer of '778 Charlemagne and his Franks crossed the Pyrenees at the pass of Saint Jean Pied de Port, forming a junction with his uncle Bernard, who had advanced by Roussillon and the eastern Pyrenees. Receiving the 8o The Spanish People homage of Pamplona, which, though tributary to the Moor, was wholly Christian, Charlemagne appeared before Zara- goza. What followed is not certain : whether Abdul Melik, Abd-er-Rahman's general, was there before the Frank and prevented his entrance, or whether the latter feared treachery from his friends. The only point upon which all are agreed is that after a successful campaign Charlemagne suddenly re- treated, sacking and pillaging inoffensive Pamplona on his way, and that in the pass of Roncesvalles his rear guard was attacked and cut up by a mixed force of Basques, Spaniards, and, it is asserted, even Moors. Of the legendary slaughter, of the heroism of Roland, of the valour of Bernardo del Carpio, of the hundred and one stories which have been embroidered upon the simple hap- pening of this mountain ambuscade, no account can be given here ; but at least one important fact comes out of the legend, namely, that Spaniards of all sorts and races, though divided enough to be constantly fighting among themselves, had now, for the first time in their history, the early promptings of the nationality of soil, as apart from that of faith or tribal connection, sufficiently strong to permit of a coalition against a foreigner as such. This feeling was again demonstrated a few years later (797), when Alfonso II, encouraged by his suc- cessful raids against the Moors in the south, bethought him to beg the aid of Charlemagne to establish himself in his new conquest, even as tributary of the Prankish emperor. But this the Spanish-Gothic nobles would not endure, and incon- tinently locked up their king in a monastery until he promised that no foreigner should ever be allowed to interfere in strug- gles on the soil of Spain. In the northeast, as yet, no such feeling as this existed; for the close neighbourhood, constant intercourse, common tongue, and common sovereignty of southern Gaul and Cata- lonia had rendered the people of the two regions almost undis- tinguishable. At the beginning of the ninth century, there- christian Catalonia 8i fore, when a crusade was organized at Aquitaine to recover Barcelona from the infidel, no opposition was offered by the Christian population. City after city fell to the Frank with- out a blow until Barcelona was reached. Here^aid, the Moslem governor for Hakam, King of Cordova, stood firm month after month, until, despairing at Hakam's silence to his prayers for aid, he himself escaped from the city and tried to reach Cordova to, press his suit. In an evil hour the Franks captured him, and presented to him the alternative of death or the surrender of the city. The answer of Zaid was to exhort the Barcelonese, Moors, and Christians alike to hold out firmly and so avenge his death. But the Christians were in a vast majority, and surrendered on honourable terms, Zaid being spared. King Louis of Aquitaine entered the city in tri- umph and established a noble Goth, Bera, as tributary count, and thenceforward for two hundred years, first as a vassal state, and subsequently as an independent dominion, Catalonia bravely held its own against the constant attacks of the Mos- lems on the south, sometimes falling into their hands for a space, but always reconquered by the sturdy race that peopled it. From this time (800) for two centuries, though the fron- tiers were constantly changing, and both Christians and Moors frequently raided far into each other's dominions, the soil of Spain may be roughly divided into two fairly distinct zones of possession. That of the Christians was north of a line following the Ebro, the Guadarrama Mountains, and the range which separates the valleys of the Tagus and the Douro, while the Moors were south of that line. The Moors thus had the most fertile and beautiful portion of the Penin- sula, while the Christians possessed the regions which bred the hardiest and healthiest men. After Abd-er-Rahman had consolidated his kingdom of Cordova, independent now of the caliphs of Bagdad, he ruled until his death, in 788, with the tempered severity, wisdom, and justice which made his dominion the best organized in 82 The Spanish People Europe, and his capital the most splendid in the world. By a curious coincidence, or something more, Spain for the second time had thus found its national bond of union in orthodoxy. We have seen how the consolidation of Christian Spain had been effected by fervent Athanasian Catholicism in the face of Arianism.- Mahometan Spain similarly resisted consolidation, until the Omeyyad amir, representing the elective headship of the faithful, came as the champion of the word of the Prophet against the family tradition of the impious Abbasides, heretics of Khorassan. Then African, Egyptian, and Yemen- ite rallied to the cry of the Marabout as they had never rallied to their tribal chiefs, and Cordova became a second Damas- cus. There must be something more than accident in this. The vehement Christian orthodoxy to the interpreted Word and the reverence of the priest which united Spain under the Goths was Iberian in its spirit ; the fanatical Mahometan orthodoxy which had enabled Abd-er-Rahman to consolidate the tribes under his rule, was mainly African ; and the theory that blood relationship existed between the primitive popula- tions on both sides of the straits is borne upon us more strongly than ever. We shall have occasion to remark in the course of this history that in every case hereafter when the African elements rebel against the amirs and caliphate of Cor- dova, and eventually when they destroy it, their discontent arises from the cultured tolerance which accompanied the orthodoxy of the Syrian-Arab reigning house, and which the Africans looked upon as backsliding. While the forces of Mahometan fanaticism were being thus employed by Abd-er-Rahman and his successors to con- solidate their rule ; in the extreme northwest of Spain among the rugged Cantabrian Mountains, a similar spirit of fervour on the Christian side was being assiduously aroused for the purpose of destroying the rule of Islam. All that was left of Gothic chivalry after the battle of Janda fled up into the al- most inaccessible mountains of the north, carrying with it The Christian Recon quest 83 only the holy relics of the saints from Toledo. There can have been but comparatively few Romanized Spaniards among the fugitives, for, as we have seen, the mass of the Christians contentedly remained in their houses and holdings under the Moors; but the defeated remnants of the Gothic army must have found in the Asturian hills a warlike, hardy population, largely Celtic in origin, with an admixture of that Suevian blood which had given so much trouble to the Visigoths. Such elements as these were easy to organize in defence of these secluded valleys ; and when the Arab forces under Alsa- mach, the lieutenant of Alahor, in 718 endeavoured to sub- due this last remnant of Christian rule, they sustained a crushing defeat, which the Christian chroniclers exagger- ated out of all reason, for the purpose of infusing spirit into their ranks and assuring them of the special protection of Providence.* The battle at the Cave of Covadonga was in all probability one of those mountain engagements in which a few men well placed can inflict terrible punishment upon a large force packed into a confined pass with no facility for retreat. In any case, it was decisive as far as it went ; and the Moors in their fertile south, east, and west were content to accept the existence of a tiny mountain principality of Chris- tians in the remote untempting north. Out of this insignifi- cant principality, headed by a Gothic soldier, the Spanish monarchy grew, and the sovereign who at one time aimed at universal dominion, and nearly attained it, was the direct suc- cessor of Pelayo, first, King of Asturias, in his village capital of Canga de Onis. * The Bishop of Salamanca (Sebastian), writing nearly two hun- dred years after the battle, asserts that Pelayo and his little band of 30 men killed the Moorish generar and 124,000 men, besides 63,000 more drowned in the river. The remainder of the Moors to the number of 375,000 took refuge in France. The numbers of the Moors are absurd, and may be reduced by two figures at least, but they perhaps attest the fact that the overthrow was complete and un- looked-for. 84 The Spanish People Pelayo's son-in-law Alfonso — the Catholic, as he was called — felt strong enough in 742 to advancp the limits of his little krflgdom ; for, as we have seen, at this period the Ber- bers and Arabs were at discord, and the defeat of the" forces of Islam by Charles Martel had given fresh confidence to the Christians. The Basque tribes in the western Pyrenees also sympathized with their co-religionists, and a series of raids was made against the Moor, down as far south as Salamanca and Segovia, while the frontiers of the Asturian kingdom were advanced into Galicia and Lusitania on the one side, and ifTttr Biscay on the other. Wherever Alfonso was victorious the Christian faith was established as the sole religion, and everywhere the idea of a divine patronage of the Christian cause was loudly proclaimed by the priests. Covadonga was not a battle, but a miracle ; prophecies without number from altar and hermitage told the people how God himself was on their side ; celestial voices in sweet concert sang over the dead body of the king ; and religious exaltation thus made of the Asturian mountains a shrine, and of a guerilla war of con- quest a sacred crusade. The early organization of the kingdom of Asturias was in all things a continuation of the Gothic system which had ruled Spain before the Arab invasion.* The Fuero Juzgo was still the law, the crown was nominally elective with a quasi-hereditary character, the king was an anointed minister of God as well as a military chief, and the priest was every- where to exhort to zeal and sacrifice. Gradually through the * A few years before the Moorish invasion the prohibition of mar- riages between Goths and Spaniards had been abolished, and in the organization of the kingdom of Asturias the separation of the races was no longer possible, although (like the Normans in England) the tradition of the Gothic blood being the more aristocratic, of course, continued long after all real distinction had disappeared. In the earlier years of the reconquest most of the leading officers were naturally of Gothic descent, and their possession of the border strongholds constituted the nucleus of a new nobility mainly Gothic in feeling. The Christian Reconquest 85 reign of Alfonso I the Christian castles sprang up all along the marches and debatable ground, as far south as the plains of Leon and as far east as Aragon ; and wherever the castles rose the altar had an honoured place, and the soldiers and the churchmen shared labour, peril, and glory. Fruela, the son of Alfonso, less strict perhaps in the mat- ter of faith than his people — for he paid tribute to the Arab Abd-er-Rahman for a portion of his territories — soon found himself at issue both with priests and nobles ; and the fatal division between Spaniards showed itself even in these early days of the reconquest. The Basque tribes were ready to fight the Moor, but would bear willingly no allegiance to a king of Asturias ; and Fruela wasted lives and resources in a long war with his fellow-Christians, and quarrelled with both his nobles and the clergy, until he was murdered in re- venge for his assassination of his brother, of whose influence he was jealous (757). Doubtful Christian as he was, however, Fruela founded a splendid church to the honour of St. Vin- cent, around which sprang up the future capital city of the realm, Oviedo. And so, gradually consolidating the territory they had gained, and holding not infrequent and sometimes not un- friendly communication with the Moors, whose borders ad- joined their own, these petty kings of Asturias lived, quar- relled, prayed, paid tribute, and in due course died or were murdered, until one more important than the rest appeared in the person of Alfonso II, son of Fruela and grandson of Al- fonso I (791), when Hishem, the son of the great Abd-er-Rah- man, reigned over the kingdom of Cordova. The second Al- fonso's ambitions were wider than those of his immediate pre- decessors, for he extended his raids as far as Lisbon, and at least once beat the Moors in a great pitched battle when they attempted to invade his kingdom. He also carried forward his grandfather's plan for an entire organization of his kingdom on the lines of the Gothic monarchy of Spain, 86 The Spanish People and transferred his capital to the rapidly prospering city of Oviedo. But notwithstanding the exhortations of the priests, peo- ple had begun to settle down in something like amity side b'y side, even though they professed different faiths. There was a considerable amount of intermarriage between Moors and Christians.* The populations on the borders could not for- ever be fighting, and in cities under Arab rule, as we have seen, the most perfect toleration prevailed, and even Chris- tians began to enjoy, and to be proud of, the luxury and ele- gance which accompanied the life of the cultivated Arabs. In Cordova especially, where the taste and Hberality of Abd-er- Rahman and his son Hishem had already raised that most beautiful of all Spanish places of worship, the great mosque, still standing, and the marvellous palaces and enchanting gar- dens were the talk of Spain, an enormous number of Moza- rabes by the end of the eighth century had flocked to the city, and had become converted to the Mahometan faith. So numerous were they, and, as befitted their national character, so zealous, that they became, under Hishem, a power and a danger to the state. The Christian priests in Asturias could not be expected to sit tranquil at the gradual conciliation of Moor and Chris- tian ; and the body of Santiago was opportunely found, to stir again the enthusiasm of the soldiers of the Cross. Far away in the Galician mountains a poor shepherd saw a super- natural light shining. The spot was searched, and in a marble coffin was found the body of the apostle. First a humble chapel, and then a noble cathedral surrounded by a city, arose on the Campus Apostoli, where the saint had lain. Pilgrims flocked and prayed at the shrine of so signal a miracle ; from \ * This was encouraged by several of the kings, especially by Fruela and Aurelio, and probably gave rise to the popular legend of the tribute annually paid by the latter to the Moors of loo Christian virgins. Santiago 87 King Alfonso to the humble Spanish peasant all knew that the saint had thus appeared to lead them again to victory against the enemies of the faith; and later came the story of how, in the time of Alfonso's son Bermudo, the apostle, at the fabulous battle of Clavijo, with flashing blade and prancing charger, led the Christians to victory after every hope had fled. Another story of the same time relates to the supernatu- ral manufacture of " the cross of the angels." Alfonso II, it is said, wished to testify his gratitude to God by causing to be made a splendid cross out of the gold he had captured from the Moors, and intrusted the work to two young stranger men who offered their services. They were shut up with the materials, and in a short time were found to have disappeared, leaving behind them the beautiful processional cross still ex- isting in Oviedo cathedral. It was probably found that the workmen were of Moorish blood, and to avoid scandal the legend was invented.* The spirit which produced these and a hundred similar miracles could not fail in time to have its effect upon a people so devout and imaginative as the Celtiberian race ; and the Mozarabes began to desert the towns under Moorish rule and migrate into the Christian territory, while those who remained in the Moslem parts of the country grew, under the influence of their priests, ever more bitter against the faith of their gov- ernors. Religious rancour on the one side was answered by religious bigotry on the other. Hishem, the son and suc- cessor of the great Abd-er-Rahman of Cordova, was a saint. By him the splendid mosque of Cordova was completed,! and * This gold cross is somewhat Arabic in feeling. It is i6j4 inches high and the same across, covered at the back with fine filigree set with precious stones. There are five medallions in front, with a Latin inscription between them. The date upon it is 808, and it is stated to be an offering by King Alfonso. There is in the same cathedral the original wooden cross carried before Pelayo in his first battles. The cross was covered with gold plates in 828. t This superb edifice stands on the site of a Roman temple of Janus. For the first seventy years after the Arab conquest the Chris- 88 The Spanish People after a few years of reign he became a complete devotee, while his kingdom was as much of a theocracy as the later Gothic monarchy had been. The greatest power in his state was that of the fanatic religious class — mostly Christian per- verts — who had settled in a suburb of Cordova, and were led by a famous Berber holy man, Tahia ben Tahia, who in the last years of Hishem's life wielded the chief power in the state. Hakarn, the son of Hishem, who succeeded in 796, found himself face to face with a revolt promoted by this fanatical element, the Fakihs, in favour of his two uncles. After this revolt had been conquered, the Fakihs stirred vip a revolution in Toledo, which was not finally suppressed until many hundreds of the noble and saintly rebels had been exe- cuted * (807). Again, seven years afterward, the priestly element made a final effort to remove the caliph, who was not devout enough to please them. Cordova was aroused by the fervid denuncia- tions of the Fakihs, and Hakam was besieged in his own palace ; but sallying with a trusty guard he fell upon the sub- urb where the bigots dwelt, utterly razing it, and driving most tian church on the spot was divided, and both forms of worship were conducted therein. Abd-er-Rahman I bought the Christian portion and began the mosque, to the construction of which vast treasures were devoted. It is 360 feet long by 270 feet wide, the roof being low, and the interior presenting the efifect of countless radiating arcades of Moorish triple arches supported by 1,200 marble pillars, mostly the spoils of more ancient Roman edifices. * Toledo had sided with the pretenders Suleiman and Abdallah against Hakam, and had been subdued by Amru, the general of the latter. After the complete defeat of the conspirators, the townspeople of Toledo complained so bitterly of the severity of the governor Yusuf, son of Amru, that Hakam was obliged to remove him, but sent his terrible father in his place. On the visit of Hakam's son, afterward Abd-er-Rahman II, to Toledo, Amru invited the whole of the chief men of the city to a great banquet to meet the heir of the caliph. Four hundred chiefs and gentlemen accepted the invita- tion, and as each one arrived his head was smitten off. The whole of the bodies were cast into a ditch, and the massacre went down to history under the name of " the day of the fosse." christians and Moslems 89 of its inhabitants out of the city.* Hal in order to win to his side the Berbers and renegade bigots, one of his first acts was to allow them to ransack the price- less library upon the formation of which Hakam II had spent his life and treasure, in order that all books of astrology and the forbidden sciences might be destroyed, as they were to the number of tens of thousands — a loss for which all Alman- sor's victories could not make amends. The sultana, who was of Spanish birth, jealous of the overwhelming power of her former lover and favourite, in 996 endeavoured by a harem intrigue to free her son, the caliph, from tutelage. Summoning a general and a powerful force from the African - dominions of the caliphate, the sultana decreed Almansor's banishment. But Hishem was weak, and Almansor easily obtained from him the sign manual which made him master of Moslem Spain, to the confusion of his enemies. Thence^ forward till his death the great Mahomet-ben-Abdallah-abu- Amir was caliph in all but name, and when he died (1002) his favourite son Abdul Malik succeeded him in the gov- ernment of a country whose nominal king was sunk in the effeminate pleasures of his lovely palace of Az Zahra, to which the masterly minister had consigned him. which was his base of operations, where he shortly afterward died. In any case, he died at the time in question at Medina Celi — whether from a wound or from natural illness matters not. Summary loi A. D. 710 TO A. D. 1002 Summary of progress during this period The energies of Christian Spain were monopolized by the re- conquest — one of the most important facts in the history of the world. During these three centuries it was established that the Moslem power was a receding rather than an advancing force. The need of the Christian kings for the aid of their subjects of all ranks had, in the first place, given nev^f force to the Gothic feudal nobles, who conquered and occupied borderlands from the Moslem, and, in the second place, had extended to the towns in the reconquered districts valuable new privileges, which made them more independent than ever. The same influences caused the lower classes to grow greatly in individual freedom, and fostered the natural inclination of the people to that proud as- sumption of the equality of all Spaniards of Christian blood, which makes Spain, socially considered, the most democratic country in Europe. In art, industry, and commerce it may be said that little or no progress" was'made in Christian Spain dur- ing this.7period, though the seeds were sown for "an enormous advance somewhat later. The successive waves of Moslem in- vasion, introducing so many new racial and religious elements — Syrians, Copts, Persians, and Berbers — profoundly altered the ethnology of Spain, and rendered more difficult than ever the complete fusion into one nationality of the several populations already kept apart by the physical conformation of the country. For the main progress during these three centuries we must look to Moslem Spain. There a complete revolution had taken place in the social habits, the language, and the industries of even those Spaniards who remained Christians. Left in the enjoy- ^ ment of all their liberties and treated with mildness, they will- ingly fell into the life of the conquerors, and shared the wealth, prosperity, and high standard of comfort they saw around them. The text of the next chapter will pass in review some of the effects of the new civilization. It will suffice here to say that under the caliphs Moslem Spain became the richest, most popu- lous, and most enlightened country in Europe. The palaces, the mosques, bridges, aqueducts, and private dwellings reached a luxury and beauty of which a shadow still remains in the great mosque of Cordova. New industries, particularly silk weaving. I02 The Spanish People flourished exceedingly, 13,000 looms existing in Qjrdova alone. Agriculture, aided by perfect systems of irrigation for the first time in Europe, was carried to a high degree of perfection, many fruits, trees, and vegetables hitherto unknown being introduced from the East. Mining and metallurgy, glass making, enamelling, and damascening kept whole populations busy and prosperous. From Malaga, Seville, and Almeria went ships to all parts of the Mediterranean loaded with the rich produce of Spanish Mos- lem taste and industry, and of the natural and cultivated wealth of the land. Caravans bore to farthest India and darkest Africa the precious tissues, the marvels of metal work, the enamels, and precious stones of Spain. All the luxury, culture, and beauty that the Orient could provide in retiun found its way to the Mos- lem cities of the Peninsula. The schools and libraries of Spain were famous throughout the world; science and learning were cultivated and taught as they never had been before. Jew and Moslem, in the friendly rivalry of letters, made their country illus- trious for all time by the productions of their study, though the greatest scientific eminence of the Cordovan and Zaragozan stu- dents was not reached until after the period we are now review- ing. Industrially and socially Spain may be said to have touched its highest point of happiness, wealth, and splendour in the time of Abd-er-Rahman-an-Xasir and his successors. Summary of wJmt Spain did for the world in this period It has already been mentioned that the beautiful produce of Spanish Moslem industry and the natural fruits of Spain found their way to all parts of the known world. Xew fruits, flowers, and vegetables were thus made known to Europe. The fashion for learning and literature was kept alive in a dark age by the Jews and Arabs of Spain, although their greatest service to culture was yet to come ; and this fashion, with its re fining influences and the more elegant standard of li\'ing it induced, to some extent penetrated Christian Europe. CHAPTER IV THE WANING OF THE CRESCENT Influence of the Arabs and Jews upon Spanish character and institu- tions — Fusion ,of Moors and Arabs checked by the priests — De- velopment of Arab literature in Spain — ^The arts, sciences, and industries of Christian and Moslem Spain — Discord in Christian Spain — Distinctive traditions of the Christian kingdoms — Fall of the caliphate of Cordova — Sancho the Great of Navarre — The Council of Coyanza — Fernando I of Castile arid Leon — The war of the brothers — Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon — The Cid — The Almoravides — Toledo the Christian capital — The Roman ritual adopted — Urraca of Castile and Leon and Alfonso the Battler of Aragon— The Almohades. The Moslems had now (1002) dominated the greater part of the Peninsula for nearly three hundred years. A re- fined minority of Arabs, with a still more intellectual fol- lowing of Jews and a vast multitude of semicivilized and fanatical African tribesmen, had been deposited as a super- incumbent layer, so to speak, upon a Celtiberian stratum, profoundly saturated with Latin traditions and culture. As we have seen, the base was, to a large extent, Afro-Semitic, but the civilization was almost entirely Roman ; hence it hap- pened that racially there would have been no great diflSculty in an amalgamation of the superincumbent layer with the stra- tum and a blending of the culture of the Semite and the Aryan, but for one comparatively recent element which stood in the way : this was the firm hold that the Catholic form of Chris- tianity had established over the Spanish people, and the fact that the only separate national unity they had ever known 103 I04 The Spanish People was that organized by the Church in the last century of the Gothic monarchy. Similarly the Spanish Moslems — various in race, degree of culture, and social habits — also found their strongest bond of union, when not in actual warfare, in the religious fervour induced by the establishment of the Omey- yad caliphs in Spain, and subsequently in the ostentatious fanaticism of Almansor, when it was seen that the tempo- rary consolidation of the dominion effected by the armed strength of Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir was crumbling. This religious sentiment on both sides — hardly noticeable in the first few years of the Arab domination — grew in strength as the priestly castes struggled for increased influence. The canon of the Caliph Omar (717-720) had enjoined the extir- pation of Christianity at all costs, and, although never obeyed to the full in Spain, it gave to successive Moslem bigots an excuse for oppressing and humiliating the Mozarabes as time went on, and it resulted at various periods in many irritating restrictions being placed on the Christians,* who, as we have seen by their obstinate self-sought martyrdom, met bigotry with bigotry; and the feeling of the two races toward each other, which at first was sympathetic, grew in time to the passionate loathing which we shall see existing in the last days of the domination. But for the progressive religious imbitterment, there was no reason why Spain should not have become a homoge- neous nation by the gradual absorption or amalgamation of the various peoples now established on its soil. A proof ♦ No new Christian churches were allowed to be built nor the old ones rebuilt. Moslems had the right of entering Christian places of worship by night and day. The cross had to be removed from the outside of the churches, and no hymns were to be sung in the hearing of the Moslems. Propaganda was prohibited and conversion of Christians to Islam discouraged. Christians were obliged to stand in the presence of a Moslem, and were prohibited from wearing Arab garb. These were some of the decrees issued at various times, but they were only partially enforced. Arabic Culture 105 of this is seen in the rapid assimilation of institutions dur- ing the period prior to the imbitterment. The names of public officials in the towns were permanently Arabized by the Spaniards at once, although the machinery of municipal government was left untouched by the newcomers.* The comes became al kaid (alcalde and alcaide), the district governor became al wasir (alguacil), the steward became al mohtrib (almotacen), and so forth, through all grades of officials. We have already seen how eager the Mozarabic youth was to learn Arabic, and to study Arabic literature in the splendid schools which existed throughout Moslem Spain; and to such an extent did this fashion spread that in the ninth century the Bishop of Seville considered it necessary to cause the Bible to be translated into Arabic for the use of the Moz- arabes who had lost their Latin speech ; and, to judge from the preface of the lost Hebrew grammar of the great Jewish Spaniard, Solomon Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron), written early in the eleventh century, the Hebrew tongue itself was in danger at that time of being swamped by the fashionable Arabic, a fate which Avicebron himself and his illustrious * The Arab caliphate was a pure autocracy, the successor to the crown being appointed from among his family by the reigning caliph, as is still the case in Mahometan countries. A mexuar or divvan chosen by the monarch formed a council with purely consultative powers, and a hajib or prime minister carried out the behests of the caliph. The walls, who governed provinces in succession to the Gothic dukes, were responsible to the caliph direct, while the wasir (the district governor) and the kaid (the chief of a fortified town with its dependent villages) were responsible to the wall. The cadi ad- ministered justice in the towns, while the cadi of cadis, or chief jus- tice, was the supreme court of appeal. It will thus be seen that, with the exception of the character of the monarchy itself, institutions have been but very little changed except in name. The revenue was raised by the produce of the mines, which were worked by the state, by customs dues on imports and exports, a tithe in kind on produce of every sort, agricultural and industrial, and the head tax on Mo?- arabes and Jews. io6 The Spanish People Jewish successors prevented.* To such an extent had Latin letters been neglected after a hundred and thirty years of Arab rule, that when Saint Eulogius took to Cordova from Pamplona, in 848, copies of Virgil's ^neid and the Satires of Horace and Juvenal, these classics were almost unknown by the Cordovese Christians. Christian Mozarabes served in the Moslem armies, occupied high posts in the caliph's palacej and, in Cordova and Seville at least, usually submitted to the rite of circumcision without repugnance. But the rise of the warlike religious feeling and the graaual advance of the Christian frontiers introduced a new element into the problem, and effectually prevented the complete fusion of races, which at one time appeared probable. The Moza- rabes, with their municipal machinery intact, living to a great extent unmolested in their civil life, retained their autonomy and local existence during the long period that all central, and a large portion of southern Spain was borderland, liable to be captured and ruled alternately by Arab and Chris- tian. Habits and, in some cases, language and relation- ship would make the Mozarabes incline to the side of the for- mer, but the ever-growing influence of religion drew them to sympathy with the latter, and the result, it may be concluded, even if ample proof of the fact did not exist, was that the large Mozarabic town populations stood as much apart as possible from the actual struggle, and made the best of what- ever system they lived under, since a similar tribute was ex- acted from them by either side, and their civil institutions and social life were not in any case seriously interfered with. The existence of these prosperous, organized municipalities, with traditions reaching back to the earliest times, when they suc- * " I considered that the holy tongue was being lost and forgotten. Half the people speak in Idume and the other half in the false tongue of the sons of Kedar, and so our speech is sinking into the depths like lead." (Quoted by Sr. Menendez Pelayo in Historia.de las ideas esteticas en Espana.) Arabic Influence 107 cessively became absorbed in the Christian kingdoms, pre- vented the revival of feudal power in Spain to the same extent as elsewhere in Europe, and once more led to the development of Spanish governmental institutions on the lines of a democracy ruled by representative despots with sacerdotal sanction, rather than by kings held in check by assemblies founded on councils of barons. The Moslem influence on the Mozarabes, however great at first, had by the death of Almansor (1002) already begun to decline before the religious bitterness engendered by the struggle of the reconquest and the bigotry of fanatics on both sides. The process continued as the Christian power ad- vanced, and the ultimate permanent traces left upon the people by the Moors was therefore not so great as is sometimes sup- posed. A considerable number of Arabic words, especially those relating to offices and the sciences, naturally found a place in th e bastard La tin orth e Mo garakg^> which eventually crystallized into the common speeoh of Spain ; but of institu- tions practically nothing vvas" lett, oecause nothing was en- forced upon the subject Christian populations ; and the com- munities were reabsorbed into the Christian kingdoms, it is true, with some little ethnological change, and with new social habits, but otherwise with their Roman-Gothic machinery unaltefe4. At the time of which we are now especially writing — the first three centuries after the Moorish conquest — the influence of Spanish Jews and Arabs upon European letters had not made itself felt. This important influence belongs to a later period, and will be referred to in its proper chronological or- der ; but it should be remarked here that the Arabs brought - but little culture to Spain with them, and most of the prodi- gious intellectual and literary activity which made Cordova and Toledo illustrious under Moslem rule was developed in Spain by the Jews and Moors of Spanish birth. The Arabs themselves, who formed the minority and aristocracy of the io8 The Spanish People invaders, were a new people, with less than a hundred years of united national existence when they arrived in Spain ; and although they possessed much traditionary knowledge from the earlier peoples of the East, with a vivid imagination and a love of poetry, their literary culture was small, while that of the savage Berbers who formed the great mass of the Mos- lems was, of course, nonexistent. The fashion of literary culture did not take hold of the Arabs until the establishment of the caliphate of Bagdad by the Abbasides, when a rivalry was developed between the Omeyyad dynasty in Spain and the usurping dynasty in Bagdad in the collection of rare books and the cultivation of literature as a fine art. The great Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir, who raised the caliphate of the West to its highest greatness and made Cordova a city of palaces,* laid the foundation of the great library, to the enlargement of which his son Ha- kam II and his grandson Hishem devoted their lives, f Persia, Syria, Greece, ancj Italy were ransacked by agents of the Spanish caliphs in search of books. Hakam is said to have sent a thousand gold dinars to Ispahan to obtain the first * The description of Cordova under Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir reads like a fairy tale. The lovely mosque stands to-day a proof that it was not all a fable. Rest houses lined the roads miles before the city was reached, and within the walls the caliph had his Palace of Flowers, his Palace of Pleasure, his Palace of Lovers, andthis beauti- ful Palace of Damascus on the river bank; and the citizensnollbwing the example of their master, imitated his splendour to the extent of their means. The famous suburban town and palace of Az-Zahra, of which no trace stands to-day, was the most enchanting of them all. One third of the revenues of the state were devoted for over twenty years to its construction, and 10,000 workmen are said to have toiled for forty years upon it. Christians and Moslems vie with each other in the praise of the unexampled magnificence, of this palatial suburb, with its fairy gardens, its fountains, its woods of pomegranate and almond, and, above all, its great pleasure house shining with gold and precious stones — the spoils of half a world. t It is said that this library in the palace of Merwan consisted of 600,000 books, in every one of which the caliph had written the name of the author, with the date and place of his birth. Arabic Civilization 109 copy of the Anthology of Abulfaraj, which was read in Spain before it was known in the land of its origin. The schools of Cordova, Toledo, Seville, and Zaragoza, especially the first, under the patronage of the same caliph, attained a celebrity which subsequently attracted to them students from all parts of the world. At first the principal subjects of study were literary, such as rhetoric, poetry, history, philosophy, and the like, for the fatalism of the faith of Islam to some extent retarded the adoption of scientific studies. To these, however, the Spanish Jews opened the way, and when the barriers were broken down the Arabs themselves entered with avidity into the domain of science. Cordova then became the centre of scientific investigation. Medicine and surgery especially were pursued with intense diligence and success, and veterinary surgery may be said to have there first crystallized into a sci- ence. Botany and pharmacy also had their famous profess- ors, and astronomy was studied and taught as it had never been before ; algebra and arithmetic were applied to practical uses, the mariner's compass was invented, and science as ap- plied to the arts and manufactures made the products of Mos- lem Spain — the fine leather, the arms, the fabrics, and the metal work — esteemed throughout the world. Agriculture and horticulture were developed to an extent unheard of be- fore. They became, thanks to the liberality of the caliphs and the science of the students, no longer a dull trade to be fol- lowed by boors, but an attractive pursuit not beneath the at- tention of a scholar. Ibn Zacaria, of Seville, produced a treatise on Agriculture which is full of lore and wisdom even to-day. Canals and water wheels (norias) for irrigation carried marvellous fertility throughout the south of Spain, where the one thing previously wanting to make the land a paradise was water. Rice, sugar, cotton, and the silkworm were all intro- duced and cultivated with prodigious success ; the silks, bro- cades, velvets, and pottery of Valencia, the beautiful damas- cened steel of Seville, Toledo, Murcia, and Granada, the 9 no The Spanish People stamped embossed leather of Cordova, and the fine cloths of Seville brought prosperity to Moslem and Mozarab alike under the rule of the Omeyyad caliphs, while the systematic working of the silver mines of Jaen, the corals on the Andalu- sian coasts, and the pearls of Catalonia supplied the material for the lavish splendour which the rich Arabs affected in their attire and adornment. The development of Spanish-Moorish art was somewhat hampered by the precepts of the Koran, but an innate sense of beauty overcame this difficulty, and produced a style which, although consisting at first of geometrical designs and Cufic inscriptions alone, has gained the admiration of the world for all time. Some beautiful specimens of ivory carv- ing in this style may be studied at the South Kensington Mu- seum, in two caskets of the tenth century, one made for the Caliph Hakam II, and the other for the wife of the great Caliph Abd-er-Rahman-an-Nasir, while a third casket, more exquisite than either, is in Pamplona cathedral, and was made for Almansor. But here distinct anti-Arab influences are vis- ible, men and animals being represented on it, as is also the case with some bronzes found on the site of the famous Cor- dovese palace of Az Zahra, and many other specimens of this period. It is therefore evident that three centuries of contact with Christians and Jews had somewhat relaxed the strict notions of the ruling Arabs. We shall see later how religious bigotry again caused a reaction in Moslem Spain, and how in art, as in other things, the fusion of the two cultures was prevented by difference of faith. A similar phenomenon is noticeable in architecture. The Arabs brought with them^ from Syria an adaptation of the Byzantine style; noble, sim- ple, and severe, like the mosque at Cordova, but obviously in- spired by imperial Constantinople and the later Romans, as were the buildings of Bagdad and Damascus; But with the fanatical upheaval which followed the death of Almansor, and the ever-increasing enmity between Moslems and Christians Arabic Influence on Art III in Spain, all traces of Constantinople were gradually shed, until at last the graceful, exuberant, airy, and utterly unchris- tian beauty of the Alhambra and the Alcazar at Seville stands forth equally free from Cufic stiffness and Christian heaviness — a style evolved by antichristian fervour, purely Moslem and purely Spanish. It will be necessary now to cast a summary glance at the progress of the people in Christian Spain during the period of the reconquest, up to the end of the tenth century, when the energy of Almansor had for a time driven back the Cross to the corners of the Peninsula. As soon as the first Alfonjd had extended his dominions beyond the Asturian mountains it became plain that the Spaniards were not yet a nation to be moved by one impulse, but a number of imperfectly fused races, each of which looked upon its own geographical divi- sion as its exclusive fatherland. In relating the events of the_ earlier reconquest we have already referred to the constant dissensions among the Christians, even in the presence of a common enemy. Galicians held themselves as a different people from the Asturians — as indeed they were and still are ;- Basques and Navarrese had no link beyond their religion with the people of Leon ; and the Catalan was then, as he re- mains to-day, in far closer relationship with the people of southern Gaul than with those of the Spanish Peninsula in which he lived. The Castilian, again, in whom the Iberian was stronger than the Celt, was proudly impatient of the au- thority of a king far away in Oviedo, and was for ever in re- volt, until the independence of Castile from Leon had been, wrested from Sancho the Fat. The temporary division of the realm between the three sons of Alfonso III had accen- tuated these discords and had rendered the conquests of Al- mansor the more easy and complete, although the Christian defeat, together with the anarchy among the Moslems after the death of the victor, gave new cohesion to the Spaniards and fresh energy to their subsequent advance. 112 ' The Spanish People The religious fervour which had presided over the estab- hshment of the kingdom of Asturias from the first victories of Pelayo made that kingdom the depository and transmitter of the theocratic traditions of the later Gothic monarchy, and gave to the priests a power and consideration not possessed by them in the other Christian dominions ; while, in accordance with another Gothic survival, the nobles of Asturias also as- serted their right to elect or, at all events, to confirm the elec- tion of the kings, although the selection was now in practice limited to the family of the reigning sovereign. That the king himself was more dependent than ever he had been upon the goodwill of his nobles to occupy border territories, and so to extend his frontiers, explains the fact that for the first time he (Alfonso II) granted decrees " cum consensu comi- tium et principimn meorum." There is no doubt that the coun- cils of these early Asturian and Leonese kings were a direct continuation of the former episcopal councils of Toledo, but the altered circumstances had increased the lay and dimin- ished the ecclesiastical influence in them; and untl 1020 the episcopal councils confined their attention to ecclesiastical afifairs. In the mountains of Navarre another realm had sprung up where Gothic traditions were weak and the tribal feeling was still in the ascendant. There the king was a purely elective chief. There was nothing sacred or sacerdotal about him. The terms upon which he reigned were a bargain, and his power was discussed and limited before it was conferred upon him. He was sworn to maintain the rights of his constitu- ents, and to adopt no important decision without the coun- sel and consent of 12 ricoshomes or higher nobles. He was bound to divide all his conquests among his own people, and was limited in the exercise of his power by a host of pre- rogatives possessed by the various classes of his subjects; and in every case the grant to him of the crown was condi- tional upon his respect for the rights of those who conferred The Christian Constitutions 113 it upon him. Later this constitution was extended to Ara- gon, which at first was an appanage of Navarre. The organization of Catalonia also proves its origin. There Prankish traditions, rather than Gothic, were in the ascendant, and, as a consequence, the hereditary nature of the sovereignty was established without question, and the feudal principle was much stronger than elsewhere. There, as in the rest of Christian Spain, the Fuero Juzgo of the Gothic kings was adopted as the law, but a large number of new enactments, or " Usages," were added by the counts, to bring the Gothic code into accord with the Prankish senti- ments of the Catalans. The first of the " Usages " were issued by a council of churchmen in Gerona, and confirmed in 1068 by a purely lay Cortes in Barcelona.* The most important, and the first, of the written political charters f was that granted for the kingdom of Leon in 1020, a few years after the period now under review. This was the work of a council of bishops and nobles sitting in the city of Leon, and it constituted a veritable revolution in the status of the people. The hereditary right of the serf to the land he tilled was recognised, in order that he might fight the Moor with greater obstinacy in defence of his own. The vassal was for the first time allowed to change his master at his own will, and in numerous ways the servile classes were rendered more independent. Most important of all was the concession to the municipalities of untrammelled administrative and primary judicial functions, subject only to the king. * The " Usages " of Barcelona grafted a regular feudal representa- tive system on the Latin Gothic code. The nobles, divided into counts, viscounts, and gentlemen, were allowed jurisdiction in their several districts, their right over their vassa4s being supreme and only limited by the "custom of the country," which all must obey, just as the right of the king was nominally supreme over the nobles. t That of Sobrarbe, the alleged original of the charter of Navarre, is extremely doubtful, though probably some sort of agreement, written or verbal, existed from the first between the sovereigns and people of Navarre. ti4 The Spanish People * Important charters were also granteil to various towns by the first Counts of Castile, which confiruioil and cxtcndoil the rights of the municipalities and increased Ihc independ- ence of the individual citizen. These, and still more the very liberal charters granted to the city of Najcra, ami others by the King of Navarre (Sancho Ciarcia), all liear the saiiie character. The kings were powerless to fight the Moor and extend their boundaries without the free and lilieral aid of their subjects ; the cities had not much reason to prefer one domination to another, and tiicir assistance had to he bought by the sovereigns by the grant of privileges and immunities, which might repay the citizens for the sacrilices they made. Thus it happened that, according to the king's need, the charters of the various towns and peoples were more or less liberal, and in every case the connnunilies drove as hard a bargain as they could with the sovereign who needed their assistance. We have seen that the political institutions of tiie various divisions of Christian Spain differed according to the circum- stances ; and the same peculiarity is noticeable in the position of the Church. In Asturias and Galicia, which had first been stirred to religions zeal, tlie crusader feeling was para- 1 mount. To a people engaged in a holy war, aided by Santi- ago in person, and in almost daily commune with saints and angels, their own all-pervading devotion was sufficient. Their king was an anointed minister, and they felt the need of no Pope; so for three centuries in the northwest of Spaiiv the Church assumed a truly independent and Spanish charac- ter, hardly even keeping up a semblance of dependence upon the Roman pontilT. Three councils of ecclesiastics, in con- tinuation of the councils of 'Toledo, were held in Asturias and Leon in the tenth century, but they were confined to ecclesiastical matters, and it was not until 1020, when the council already mentioned met in Leon (and another at Co- yanza, in 1050), that the bishops, again in a majority, as in the The Christian Architecture 115 new and more fanciful ideals. In literature there was uothiu}^- specially Spaiii.sh dtirins' this perioil in Spain, (."hristian bishops, like John of Seville Inul (.'yril of Toledo, continued the later Latin traditions with /lives of saints ami the like, while the heroic deeds of the re- vounnest were recorded by the chroniclers Sebastian i^f Sala- manca, whose hislorv extended from tlie accession of Warn- ii6 The Spanish People ba to the death of Ordono I (866), and Sampiro, Bishop of Astorga, who carried the chronicle to the death of Ramiro III (982). A few churchmen in Christian Spain wrote Latin verses on the sacred mysteries, and among the Mozarabes of Cordova especially. Saint Eulogius and Alvaro the Cordovese wrote works in fiorid and questionable Latin ; * but as yet Spanish letters had not shaken ofif the last clinging Roman tatters and assumed a garb of their own. The centralizing system inaugurated by Abd-er-Rahman- an-Nasir of alienating the powerful Arab nobles from the gov- ernment and surrounding himself with Slav mercenaries succeeded for a time in postponing the inevitable disinte- gration of the caliphate, but with the removal of the strong hand of Almansor division and discontent again were able to gain the upper hand. Hishem, the caliph, was still kept in his silken toils by Abdul Melik, the son of Almansor, who walked in his father's footsteps for six years. But when he died and Abd-er-Rahman Sanchuelo, the son of Almansor by a Christian princess, succeeded him, the storm broke. The old Arab aristocracy had been to a great extent crushed, but a new aristocracy of courtiers and parasites had arisen, which, with the Berber generals and the Slav mercenaries, had not spared their greedy exactions under the shadow of Almansor. The scholarly, refined Arab of Cordova had become ever more lax and sceptical with the constant familiarity with Jews and Mozarabes, and with the fashionable devotion to letters and science in the schools, while the numerically superior African element scowled with increasing hate and distrust upon the unrestrained luxury and doubtful orthodoxy of the richer cultivated classes. The division was, however, now not so much racial as social and religious, for the effeminate re- finement of the few meant the abasement of the many ; and the * To this must be added the chronicle of the Arabs usually but erroneously attributed to a certain Isidore of Beja, but certainly the work of a Cordovese. Anarchy in Moslem Spain 117 revolution which broke out in Cordova against the govern- ment of Almansor's half-Christian son was seized upon by the discontented of all Moslem races, and had far-reaching eflfects, of which its first promoters never dreamed. An Omeyyad prince called Mahomet rose (1008) and demanded the libera- tion of the Caliph Hishem, which having effected, he forced the weak caliph to abdicate in his favour, killing Sanchuelo,. and in derision sticking his head upon a cross. Pretending that Hishem had died, Mahomet proclaimed himself caliph,^ under the name of Mahdi. A Berber revolt under Suleiman, aided by Sancho Garcia, Count of Castile, then drove Mahdi out of Cordova to Toledo, upon which the leader, Suleiman, assumed the title of caliph, and in his turn was defeated and expelled by Mahdi in alliance with Ramon Borrell, Count of Barcelona. The unfortunate Hishem was then liberated by the Slav mercenaries and again called Caliph, Mahdi being beheaded, and his son, who had made a stand at Toledo, sacri- ficed with awful cruelty. For a short time matters were tranquil under the restored Hishem, but the insolence of the Slav soldiery disgusted the Cordovese, who suriimoned and welcomed Suleiman, and he again became caliph, and murdered Hishem (1018). Fam- ine and pestilence followed in the footsteps of this cruel civil war, and most of the provincial walls, unable or unwilling to meet the new caliph's demands for aid, refused to acknowl- edge him, and raised a prince of the Omeyyad family to the caliphate, under the title of Abd-er- Rahman IV. For the next twelve years the most complete anarchy prevailed. One so- called caliph after another rose, and in due time was mur- dered or expelled. The provinces refused obedience to the government, and one after another the walls proclaimed themselves independent amirs. On the death of Motad (1031) the caliphate of the West finally fell, amid blood and shame unutterable, and, in place of a united empire of Islam to face the advancing Christian, ii8 The Spanish People there appeared 12 little kingdoms,* jealous of each other, weak and disunited, certain, sooner or later, to fall a prey to their enemies. That they kept a footing so long as they did was not owing to their own unity, but to the division of their foes. While Moslem Spain was thus a prey to anarchy, the Christian kingdoms could more than hold their own. The King of Leon, Alfonso V (son of Bermudo II), was an ener- getic young sovereign, who once more took up his abode in his capital city and occupied his patrimonial domain as the confused hosts of Islam fell back. In his newly rebuilt capi- tal he summoned the great council of bishops and nobles (1020), to which reference has already been incidentally made, the first council of political importance held since the disap- pearance of the Gothic theocracy. There was no pretence of limiting the acts of the council to ecclesiastical affairs, and the 20 laws it passed specially relating to the government of- the realm may be considered as the foundation of the consti- tution of Leon, while the 31 municipal ordinances were a veritable charter for the capital city. The reign of Alfonso V of Leon, like that of his predecessors and successors, was one long story of bloodshed and violence : wars against Cas- tile, the last count of which, Garcia, was murdered in 1026; against Navarre, and against the Moors ; and when, in 1027, Alfonso V fell at the siege of the Moslem town of Viseu, he left to his young son, Bermudo III, a legacy of war which lasted for the rest of his days. ~ The great quarrel was with Sancho the Great of Navarre , (970-1035), who had married the sister of the Count of Cas- tile, and on the murder of the latter by the Velas, proteges of Alfonso V of Leon, Sancho claimed and took Castile in right of his wife, whose younger sister had married Bermudo III. * They were the kingdoms of Malaga, Algeciras, Seville, Toledo, Zaragoza, Cordova, Badajoz, Valencia, Granada, Almeria, Murcia, and the Balearic Isles. The Rise of Castile 119 J Sancho of Navarre was now the most powerful monarch in Spain, ruling as he did Navarre, Aragon, and Castile ; and he had little difficulty in overrunning the dominions of his Leo- nese brother-in-law.* Thanks, however, to the bishops, an agreement at last was made by which the King of Navarre retired from the city of Leon, which he had conquered, and Bermudo's sister married Fernando, second son of the King of Navarre, the latter ceding to Fernando the county of Cas- tile, thenceforward a kingdom, and the portion of Leon which he had occupied in the war. The unhappy Bermudo tried in the following year to upset this arrangement that deprived him of a slice of his territory; but Sancho the Great again marched through Leon, and drove his brother-in-law into the mountains of Galicia, where he was forced to submit. On the death of the powerful Sancho, in 1035, his realm was divided among his four sons, and this division encouraged Bermudo of Leon to make one more attempt to wrest Castile from his young brother-in-law, Fernando; but Castile and Navarre united were too strong for him, and Bermudo died defeated at the battle of Tamaron (1037), when the male line of kings of Asturias and Leon became extinct. In right of his wife, the sister of the dead Bermudo IH, Fernando of Castile claimed the vacant crown of Leon, and his successful seizure of it marks a new departure in Spanish history, since, for the first time, the doctrine of purely heredi- tary claim, even through the female line, was admitted. Castile, which, by the unwise will of Sancho the Great, had again been separated from Navarre and Aragon, thus by the addition of Leon — though on this occasion it was only tempo- rary — became the most powerful realm in Spain. Fer- nando I was a man of exceptional wisdom and energy. De- termined to consolidate his recently united territories, he has- * The pretext for the war was the objection of Bermudo III to the fortification of Palencia, which, although belonging to Castile, is geo- graphically in Leon. I20 The Spanish People tened to confirm to the Leonese the charters that had been granted to them by the Council of Leon in 1020, and sum- moned a new council to meet at Coyanza (1050), which was, in fact, nothing short of a parliament, in which nobles, at the summons of the king, sat with the prelates, although the latter alone voted on ecclesiastical questions, while the entire assembly voted on civil matters. The whole of the charters of Leon and Castile were con- firmed by this important council, but matters of pressing moment in the Church were also dealt with. The practical independence of the papacy of this branch of the Spanish Church had caused discipline to become lax, and all manner of corruption had crept into the ceremonial and liturgies. The great increase of monastic foundations, too, prompted at first by the Christian exaltation of the reconquest, had now become a scandal, and the management of the monastic houses a disgrace. Strict measures were adopted to reform these abuses, all the monasteries being submitted to the rule of Saint Benedict, and brought under the immediate control of the bishops. While this energetic King Fernando I was thus reorganiz- ing his realm, with the intention of subsequently making an advance upon the Moslems, his brothers — sons of Sancho the Great of Navarre — fell out with regard to their respective shares of territory. Garcia, King of Navarre, was at war with his brother Ramiro, King of Aragon, and coveted the territories of Fernando of Leon and Castile. Feigning ill- ness, the elder brother, Garcia, invited Fernando to visit him at Najera ; but, learning on his arrival that a trap was set for him, Fernando escaped from Navarre, and fled to his own territory. It was then Fernando's turn to fall ill and invite Garcia to Castile; but no sooner had the elder brother ap- peared than he was clapped into prison, from which he after- ward escaped by the aid of some Castilian nobles. Swearing vengeance against his brother for this treachery, Garcia as- " The War of the Three Sanchos " 121 sembled a Navarrese army and invaded Castile, but was met and killed by Fernando at the battle of Atapuerca (1054). Fernando, however, forebore to push his victory to extremes, and, keeping only a small corner of Navarre to round off his own Castilian dominions, seated upon the throne of Navarre his nephew, Sancho, the son of the dead King Garcia. Fer- nando then went against the Moors and conquered Viseu and Coimbra, which extended the frontiers of Castile farther south than they had yet permanently reached. The incur- sions of Fernando were pushed farther still, into the valley of the Tagus ; and then, emboldened by success, he laid siege to the important frontier town of Al-Kalaa-en-Nahr (Alcala de Henares), which was the key to the kingdom of Toledo, and though he did not capture it, the King of Toledo only saved his city by consenting to become thenceforward a tributary of Castile. This was the crowning, and the last, triumph of Fernando's life. He had struggled and fought for unity of territory from the first ; but yet so strong was old tradition still in him, that he, like his father, Sancho of Navarre, before him, undid in his death the work of his life, and divided once more his realms between his sons (1065)^ Sancho III inherited Castile, Alfonso Leon, and Garcia Gali- cia and Asturias, while Urraca, his eldest daughter, suc- ceeded to the independent town of Zamora, and Elvira, the younger, to the territory of Toro. Hardly had the great king breathed his last before bitter rivalry arose between the brothers, of which the first outcome was " the war of the three Sanchos." The eldest son, Sancho, King of Castile, discontented at his father's generosity after the battle of Atapuerca, claimed the kingdom of Navarre from his cousin Sancho, by right of Fernando's victory of ten years previously. Sancho of Navarre summoned his other cousin, King Sancho of Aragon, to his aid, and together they inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Castilian Sancho, who with difficulty escaped from the affray (1068). 122 The Spanish People But Sancho III of Castile was determined, if possible, to increase his realm at the expense of somebody, and attacked his brother Alfonso of Leon. The armies of the two brothers met on the river Pisuerga, near Valladolid, and after an in- decisive engagement both kings retired to prepare for a final trial of strength. This took place in 1071, when at the battle of Golpejar the Castilians were signally beaten, and Alfonso of Leon showed in his triumph that he could be magnanimous by allowing his brother to retire without pursuit. But he reckoned without his Sancho. While the Leonese were rest- ing, and rejoicing at the disappearance of their enemies, the Castilians returned, took them in the rear, and cut the whole force to pieces, the unfortunate Alfonso being immured in the castle of Burgos, from which he was only released at the prayers of his sister Urraca, and upon a promise to retire to the monastery of Sahagun, whence he escaped and took refuge with the Moorish King of Toledo, while his ambitious brother. King Sancho, marched through conquered Leon to the realm of his youngest brother Garcia, whom he expelled from his throne of Galicia. But there were the two tiny lordships of his sisters yet to conquer. With but little difficulty he seized the territory of Toro from the younger, but the elder, Urraca, was of the same metal as himself, and withstood him fiercely behind her fortress walls at Zamora. During the siege a Leonese noble lured Sancho to a spot near the moat where he said there was a weak place that might be stormed, and the ambitious king fell, stabbed to death by the dagger of the traitor, not without angry whispers from the Castilians that his murder had been connived at by Urraca, his sister, and his brother, Alfonso of Leon. Sancho's death (1072) made his brother Alfonso VI King of Castile and Leon, and we now enter upon one of the most interesting periods in the history of Spain, partly on account of the importance of the events themselves, and still more "The Brothers' War" 123 because the wealth of tradition, of poetry, and of legend which surrounds the great national hero allows us to obtain for the first time a really clear view of the state of society and morals, both of the Christians and the Moslems. The news of Sancho's murder before Zamora reached Alfonso in his ■ refuge at Brihuega, which town the friendly King of Toledo, Al Mamun, had assigned to him as a residence. Instead of endeavouring to escape, Alfonso hurried to Toledo to inform his courteous host of his accession. It was well he did so, for Mamun had the news, too, and had taken measures to prevent Alfonso's clandestine departure. The Moor was, however, touched by the chivalrous trust of the Christian king, and the two swore friendship and alliance, offensive and defensive, to be binding upon Al Mamun and his immediate successor. Alfonso was greeted with extravagant joy by his loyal Leonese, but the Castilians were sulky and apprehensive, for they knew that their new king had many a grudge and injury to repay. The man who had advised Sancho of Castile to take his treacherous advantage over Alfonso and the Leonese at the battle of Golpejar in the previous year was a Castilian knight, who, although only thirty years of age, already held high command, and was renowned for his skill and daring in combat. Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, the Cid,* as he came to be called afterward, was a truly Spanish type of swashbuckler — a direct ancestor of those swaggering captains who rufifled, gambled, quarrelled, and betrayed in the service of Henry VIII of England and his son, and of those indomitable sol- diers and unconscionable scoundrels who overran America with a handful of men, and by their cruel greed turned a paradise into a hell. Careless of life, his own or that of others, brave to a fault, impatient of restraint, vain and boastful, false * From the Arabic Sidi =: Lord. While Christians usually refer to him by his Arabic title, Moorish writers more often call him by his Christian style. El Carapeador = the Challenger. 124 The Spanish People and covetous, and yet with a certain rough chivalry of an elastic and variable sort, the Cid Campeador, as he is por- trayed both in the Christian poems and chronicle and in the contemporary Arab chronicles,* was the first famous em- bodiment of a distinct national type in which the proud in- dependence of the Iberian prevails, and as such was fittingly seized upon by poets and story-tellers to personify the hero- ism of his race. Considering the part he had borne in the war against the King of Leon, it is not surprising that Alfonso VI distrusted him. An assembly of Castilian nobles had been called at Burgos to go through the form of electing the new king and swearing allegiance ; but Castilians were ever jealous, and the blood of their King Sancho, murdered by a man of Leon at Zamora, was not yet dry. No wonder, then, that they murmured distrust of Alfonso, and sought to make sure that their Castilian liberties should not suffer under the King of Leon. According to the poem (written about fifty years after the Cid's death), the only noble bold enough to beard the new sovereign was his former foe, Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, who, be- fore they would acknowledge him as king, roughly exacted an oath from Alfonso, in the presence of 12 nobles of Cas- tile, that he had not been privy to his brother Sancho's mur- der. As may be supposed, this could not increase Alfonso's love for the bold noble, and we are told : " Three times the Cid has given the oath, Three times the king has sworn. With every oath his anger burned. And thus he cried in scorn : ' Thou swearest me where doubt is none, Rodrigo, to thy sorrow ; The hand that takes the oath to-day Thou hast to kiss to-morrow.' " * For particulars of the Arab writings referring to the Cid, see Dozy, Recherches sur rhistoire de I'Espagne, Leyden, 1881, vol. ii. The Cid 125 and when Alfonso VI was firmly seated on the united thrones of Castile, Leon, and Galicia * he recollected the affront that the Cid had placed upon his sovereign. The utter demoralization of the Moslem power in Spain gave to Alfonso VI an opportunity which he was not slow to accept. The petty Moorish kings had no more idea of patriotism than had the Christians. Each little sovereign was intent on his local interests alone, and one after the other they appealed for support to the strongest man in the Penin- sula, the King of Castile and Leon, whose dominions reached from the Bay of Biscay to the valley of the Tagus. To the King of Toledo, who had sheltered him in his tribulation, Alfonso was bound by treaty, and when the kings of Cordova and Seville attacked the Moor of Toledo the King of Castile came to the aid of his old friend Al Mamun, and captured the cities of Cordova and Seville ; but on the retirement of the Christians they fell into the hands of their own chiefs again. On the death of Al Mamiin of Toledo (1075) and the de- thronement of his eldest son, Hishem Al Kadir, by the fanatic Moslems for his friendship to the Christians, Alfonso's obliga- tions toward the kingdom of Toledo ceased. The new King of Toledo, Yahia, soon displeased his subjects by his tyranny, and they appealed to Alfonso to help them. Nothing loath, the Christian king joined with the King of Seville, Al Mo- tamid, whose daughter he took as a wife — or legalized con- cubine, for he was already married for the second time to Constance of Burgundy — and prepared for the conquest of Toledo. In the meanwhile Valencia, a vassal state of Toledo, revolted; and the viceroy, Abdul Aziz, undertook to pay a heavy tribute to Alfonso in return for his protection and recognition. When, however, Alfonso's army compelled the * The dispossessed Garcia, King of Galicia, had taken refuge with the Moorish King of Seville on Sancho's conquest of his realm. When he came back to claim it his other brother, Alfonso, imprisoned him and kept Galicia, 10 126 The Spanish People submission of Toledo, the terms agreed upon included the complete surrender of the city to the Christians and the rec- ognition by Alfonso of the ex-King of Toledo as King of Valencia, notwithstanding the fact that Alfonso had already sold his new suzerainty of Valencia to the Moor- ish king of Zaragoza for 100,000 gold pieces, and Abdul Aziz of Valencia was paying the Christian tribute as well. The dispossessed King of Toledo accordingly went off to win back his state of Valencia as a tributary of Castile, and the Christian capital was transferred to Toledo (1085). The Cid had been banished from Castile, and had entered the service of the Moslem king of Zaragoza (for, as he is reported to have told Alfonso, all kings, Moslem and Chris- tian, were alike to him so long as they paid him his price) and had taken command of a Zaragozan army to attack Ra- mon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona. He defeated the Christians with great slaughter at Almenara (1081), and brought back the sovereign-count a prisoner. Then he bore the banner of Islam against King Sancho of Aragon (1083) and defeated the Christians again. Such success as this gained for Ruy Diaz not only honour, but that which he coveted still more, for " he fought that he might eat " — riches untold. In 1085 he went to enforce the King of Zaragoza's claim to the overlordship of Valencia, for which the Moor had paid Alfonso; and when the latter was besieging Zaragoza, the news came to him that a new enemy had appeared in the land. A great wave of Berber fanaticism had swept over north Africa, and the savage tribesmen, incited by Marabouts, had everywhere destroyed the rule of the Arab. The African peoples in Spain itself had long ago lost their strength amid the enervating luxury of their Arab rulers, and it occurred to the King of Seville to invite the victorious Berbers over the Straits of Gibraltar to aid the Moslems to withstand the King of Castile, who was fast making all Spain his tributary The Cid 127 and becoming more extortionate every year. The Marabouts (Almoravides, as the Spaniards called them), under their great puritan Moslem leader, Yusuf, crossed from Africa like a swarm of bees and settled on the land. Alfonso, sensible of the danger to the Christian cause, hurried down from Zara- goza to near Badajoz and met the Almoravides at Zalaca. The Christian army had gone from victory to victory, and Alfonso of Castile and Leon was confident in the valour of his men ; but Yusuf was a great tactician, while Alfonso was not, and, taking the Christians in flank and rear, he mowed down the chivalry of Sjiain as the sickle lays the corn. With a band of horsemen only Alfonso fled from the field, and the Castilian army disappeared from the face of the earth. Yusuf, the stern, savage, fanatic, rude and unlettered, kept his word, and retired with most of his army to Africa after he had done his work. His moderation saved Christian Spain, for if he had continued his advance, as Tarik had done in 711, there was nothing to withstand him. But the breath- ing space allowed by his departure enabled Alfonso slowly to reorganize his strength. Alfonso had kept his promise to the young dispossessed King of Toledo, and by the costly lances of Christian knights had established him in Valencia. But with the coming of the Almoravides to Spain, Alvar Fanez and the Christians were withdrawn from Valencia, and the fanatic townsmen turned against their king as a friend of the Christian tyrant Alfonso. The Cid, although summoned by the King of Castile, did not appear in time to fight at the battle of Zalaca ; he probably thought that he might be more profitably employed. In any case, with his own fierce band of mercenary soldiers — men of all nations and condi- tions — and the army of the King of Zaragoza, he raided the kingdom of Valencia, where the unfortunate young king was at issue with his subjects, and finally secured the surrender of the capital by a pair of false promises : first, to the King of Valencia that he would support him against his subjects ; and 128 The Spanish People second, to the King of Zaragoza that he would deliver the realm to him. He did neither completely, but made the King of Valencia pay him a monthly tribute of 10,000 gold dinars, while professing all possible loyalty to the disap- pointed King of Zaragoza. He thought, doubtless, that it was also necessary to give some sort of excuse to his own Christian sovereign for his high-handed proceedings, and while he was plying Alfonso with lying protestations, the King of Zaragoza enlisted his former enemy, the Count of Barcelona, as his ally, and again attacked Valencia on his own account. After this (1089) the Cid seems to have considered himself free to do as he pleased. He was no longer an ofificer in the service of this or the other king, though Alfonso had par- doned him, but an independent freebooter, with a picked army of 7,000 desperadoes, who levied princely blackmail on Chris- tians and Moslems, especially the latter, wherever he could enforce it. The sums he is said to have received are enormous. If the Christian accounts are to be credited — which in this case they probably are not — the Cid was inspired all through with the ex alted C hristia n zeal of _a^crusader. If the Arabic chron- icles are true, he was a plun dering, bloodth irsty cutthroat, without conscience, justice, oh humanity^ He was really, in all probability, a good representative of the rough genera- tion in which he lived. Attacking the Zaragozans and Catalans before Valencia, he defeated them with great loss (1090), capturing, for the sec- ond time, the Count of Barcelona, whom he held to ransom for 80,000 pieces of gold — which were never paid. Alfonso, however, was determined that his too-powerful subject should not become independent sovereign of Valencia, and advanced against the city. The Cid retorted by invading Alfonso's Christian territory, ravaging and slaughtering as he went ; and when the King of Castile abandoned Valencia to protect his The Cid 129 own land, the Cid, finding the gates of Valencia shut against him, sat down before the coveted city to capture it again by siege (1093). If we are to believe a tenth of what the Arab chronicles tell, the man must have been a monster of cruelty. In mere sport human creatures were torn to pieces by savage dogs before his eyes, and every day in sight of the doomed city the prisoners of the previous day were slowly roasted alive. Famine and pestilence inside, the awful Cid outside, reduced Valencia to despair; and at length, after nearly a year's agony, it fell. Then vengeance upon those who with- stood him was wreaked to the full, and for the rest of his life, until 1099, Ruy Diaz reigned in Valencia as king, independ- ent alike of Moslem and Christian. When he died his sov- ereignty fell, and three years afterward his wife Jimena car- ried his body to his native Burgos, there to lie in sanctity and honour in the great monastery of Cardenas until our own days, when in 1842 the bones were moved, thenceforward to be made a tourist's peep show in the townhall of Burgos, the city of the Cid.* The popularity of the Cid as a national hero has never waned. The facts of his history, as told in the Cronica, the poem, the ballads, and in the Chronicle of the Youth of the Cid, leave no doubt as to his real character; but the con- stant assertion that he was moved by Christian zeal, though contradicted by the facts themselves, has been sufficient to surround him with the halo of a saint, while his constant acts of defiance and disloyalty to his sovereign have been condoned because it has flattered and pleased the Iberian spirit to consider them as the assertion of public liberty as against the encroachment of the royal power. The establishment of the Christian capital at Toledo by Alfonso VI is an event of the first importance, as marking * In the cathedral, too, is the ancient box which he and his trusty Martin Antolinez pledged, filled with sand, to two confiding Jews, who accepted his word that it was full of gold. I30 The Spanish People a period of radical change in the position of the Spanish Church in Castile. Alfonso VI had promised the Moors that full toleration should be given to their religion, and that the great mosque of Toledo should continue to be devoted to the faith of Islam. The bishop, a French monk named Ber- nard, however, took advantage of the king's absence to vio- late the agreement, and seized the mosque for Christian wor- ship, greatly to Alfonso's anger. The queen, Constance of Burgundy, was on the side of the churchman, and Alfonso, who naturally was a tolerant man, allowed himself to be led. Already Catalonia and Aragon, which had to some extent kept touch with the papacy, had, at the request of the Pope, Alex- ander II, banished the old Gothic ritual, and had adopted that of Italy (in 1071) ; * and the powerful Gregory VII had en- deavoured to bring the Church of Castile and Leon into the pontifical fold by means of an embassy demanding tribute to Rome, and, above all, the adoption of the Roman ritual in all Spanish churches. The king, though ruled by the French queen and her abettor and countryman, the Bishop of Toledo, probably knew and cared little about liturgies and rituals, and was will- ing to acquiesce ; but the Church itself had thitherto been independent and self-sufficing. Under its asgis alone the little band of Spaniards had issued from the rugged Asturian * Two important councils were held in Aragon vinder Ramiro I. At the last, held at Jaca in 1063, the king acknowledged the authority of the Church as being superior to his own, and granted to the Pope a tithe of all conquests he might make and of the tributes he imposed upon his subjects. This grant was formally approved of by a general meeting of the inhabitants of Jaca, which fact alone marks the great difference between the primitive institutions of Aragon and Castile. The agreement of the whole commonalty, by the votes of such as might be present, to the decisions of the nobles was purely Germanic and feudal — Saxon as well as Prankish. In the native Iberian system it was unknown. The Goths in Spain were a noble class, and spoke for themselves alone; the people's only expression was through the municipality or the Church, not through the nobles. Castile and the Papacy 131 mountains, and by the aid of God and Santiago had con- quered Spain for the Cross. The pontiff had done nothing — not even blessed the enterprise ; and Castilian clergy and lay- men alike, jealous of their independence, fought against the subjection of their national Church to a foreigner. To decide the question, first the ordeal of single combat was adopted, and the champion of the old ritual was the victor; then the ordeal of fire was resorted to, and in a great blazing pile in Toledo the two missals were solemnly cast. The Roman book was consumed and the Gothic missal came forth unscathed. Rejoicing at their victory, the people thought their old na- tional ritual safe ; but, as the proverb arising out of the occa- sion says, "Alia van Icyes, do quieren rcyes," and Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon, with a stroke of the pen, submitted his realms to the Pope's dictation. Thenceforward for seven centuries the papacy strove to fasten and keep its clutch upon the Spanish Church, and the Castilian sovereigns en- deavoured to make use of the papal prestige while keeping the control of their national Church as much as possible in their own hands. The result, as we shall see, was an endless series of political bargains, in which the papacy was finally only partially successful. After Yusuf, the leader of the African Almoravides (Mara- bouts), had defeated the Christians at Zalaca (1086) he had returned to his own land, leaving a portion of his army to aid the King of Seville ; but in the course of three years Alfonso VI had reorganized his forces and again recommenced his raids far into Moslem territory from the vantage ground of his great city of Toledo * and the captured fortress of Aledo. The Cid, too, was ravaging far and wide from his base at Valencia, and once more the King of Seville summoned the Emperor of Maghreb with his puritan Moslem army to roll back the still advancing Christian tide. This time (1090) the * He arrived on one occasion as far as Tarifa, where he rode his horse into the sea as a sign that he had reached the extreme point. 132 The Spanish People Almoravides came in a different mood. The kinglets of Span- ish Islam had failed to take advantage of the Christian de- feat; they were refined and cultured tyrants, making often common cause with Christians against each other, neglect- ing the law of the Koran, and in a hundred ways shocking the stern puritan Moslems, whose aid they invoked in their quarrels. The religious class in Mahometan Spain itself was pro- foundly discontented with their sceptical and tolerant rulers, and seconded Yusuf and the Almoravides when they deter- mined to make a clean sweep of the weak tyrants, whose capitals were, for the most part, centres of fastuous splendour, out of all proportion to their size and wealth ; homes of volup- tuous poetry, of dilettante learning, of bloodshed, misery, and vice. Yusuf began with Granada, wealthy beyond dreams with exquisite works of art. The amir and his family were captured and sent to Africa ; and gold, silver, precious stones, rich stufifs, illuminated manuscripts, ivory carvings, and priceless enamels were distributed among the rough Mara- bout soldiery. The army of Castile was once more defeated, and then from city to city the puritan Africans marched, overthrowing the sovereigns ; until, three years after the death of the Cid, Valencia itself fell into their hands, and all Moslem Spain became a province of the African empire of the Almoravides, under the rule of Ali-Abdul-Hassan, the son of Yusuf, who on his father's death (1107) handed the gov- ernment of Spain to his brother Yemin. This prince inflicted upon Alfonso VI a crushing defeat at Ucles (1108), in which fell the Christian king's only son Sancho, whose mother was Zaida, daughter of the former Arab King of Seville ; and the loss of the battle and his son broke the great Alfonso's heart. With the death of the King of Castile and Leon (1109), after a reign of forty-three years, the impetus given by his energy to the reconquest ceased, and the completion of the task, which would have been easy now in the hands of an able Urraca and Alfonso the Battler 133 Christian king, was indefinitely delayed by local jealousies and incapable leadership. Alfonso's daughter Urraca was already a widow, Ray- mond of Burgundy having been her first husband ; but her character was known to be light and frivolous, and her sub- jects, warlike and impatient of restraint, were unused to the idea of being ruled by a woman, especially an unwise one. Before Alfonso died negotiations had been commenced for her marriage with Alfonso I of Aragon, the great-grandson of Sancho the Great, whose kingdom of Aragon had now been extended south to the north bank of the Ebro. Alfonso the Battler, as he was called, was a young man of great military gifts and boundless ambition, but harsh and rough in manner, and his marriage with Urraca, Queen of Castile and Leon — which, if the parties had been of different character, might have hastened the Christian conquest by four hundred years — was a fruitful source for many years to come of trouble, divi- sion, and bloodshed. After a year of discord the king and his wife separated ; but Alfonso the Battler had no intention of allowing Castile and Leon to slip through his hands, and placed Aragonese garrisons in some of the principal Castilian fortresses, confin- ing his wife in the castle of Castelar. Castile and Leon at once rose in arms in defence of their queen, and demanded a divorce for her on the ground of the consanguinity of Al- fonso and Urraca, who were both descendants of Sancho the Great of Navarre. Alfonso the Battler then invaded Castile, aided by Henry of Portugal,* and inflicted a complete defeat upon his wife's people at Sepulveda (mi), advancing far into Leon. Then for the first time in the history of Spain there arose a new element in the settlement of affairs. Urraca was popu- * Alfonso VI Iiad conferred the county of Portugal on Henry of BurRundy, who with his brother (the first husband of Urraca) had aided him in his struggles with the Moslems. 134 The Spanish People lar with her nobles — two at least of whom were her lovers — but the people in the towns looked with dislike upon her pro- ceedings, as they and the clergy had both regarded unfavour- ably her marriage with Alfonso; and they had no interest in a war which had arisen solely in consequence of that mar- riage.* It has already been explained that successive sov- ereigns of Leon and Castile had granted extremely wide char- ters to many of the cities and towns whose corporate govern- ment was the oldest civilized institution in Spain. These towns had hitherto taken no part in the political afifairs of the country, but they now became the mouthpiece of the citizens and middle classes generally; and at first certain towns in Galicia, to be followed rapidly by others in Leon and Castile, proclaimed the six-year-old Alfonso, son of Urraca by her Burgundian first husband, their sovereign, under the title of Alfonso VILf The initiative had been taken by the towns, but the whole country speedily followed. Henry of Portugal, whose only thought was his own advancement, changing sides and joining the Castilians, together they drove King Al- * The clergy especially were opposed to Alfonso the Battler of Aragon, of whose hatred of the Church they speak with much bitter- ness. He is accused of turning churches into stables, of destroying the famous Monastery of Sahagun, of banishing that famous monk Bernard, Bishop of Toledo, and of the even more celebrated Gelmirez, Archbishop of Santiago. The king's distant relationship with his wife was also a subject for the disapproval of the clergy, and it may be accepted as almost certain that the action of the towns in proclaiming the child Alfonso (the emperor) king was prompted by the clergy, and more especially by Gelmirez, Archbishop of Santiago. See Prudencio de Sandoval, Chronica de Alfonso VII. t The reason why Galicia, especially, proclaimed young Alfonso as king while his mother Urraca lived was that a portion of the province had been granted in fief by Alfonso VI to Raymond of Burgundy on his marriage with Urraca. Alfonso VII (the emperor) is often spoken of as Alfonso VIII, in order to distinguish him from his stepfather Alfonso I of Aragon (the Battler), who assumed the style of Alfonso VII of Castile and Leon by right of his sometime wife Urraca the Queen. The Christian Kingdoms 135 fonso of Aragon away from Astorga and arranged a treaty of peace between him and his wife, which Alfonso the Battler promptly proceeded to break soon after it was signed. But the CastiHan clergy in the meanwhile had settled with the Pope for a declaration of nullity of the marriage between Alfonso and his wife Urraca, and thenceforward the Battler had no excuse for interfering with his wife's dominions ; although the enmity and mutual aggression between the two peoples still continued. The intrusion of the towns into the government of Leon and Castile was resented by the nobles, the clergy wavering from one side to the other, the queen, Urraca, being gener- ally in favour of the nobles. The struggle, which on some occasions reached almost the proportions of a civil war, lasted till the death of Urraca, in 1126, but it was an indication that the growing middle classes in Christian Spain would not suffer the fastening upon them of aristocratic rule, as was happening in the rest of Europe ; and thenceforward the Span- ish municipalities took an important part in governing the country, Alfonso the Emperor, whom they "had first ac- claimed, naturally siding with the towns, when, on Urraca's death, he became unquestionably King of Castile and Leon. Alfonso the Battler of Aragon, his stepfather, in the meanwhile fought ceaselessly against the Moslems, carry- ing the victorious standards as far south as Andalusia, and beating the Almoravides in many pitched battles. Zaragoza became his capital city, Calatayud and Daroca were added to his' dominions, and Aragon became, with the addition of Navarre,* under the indefatigable Battler, only second to Cas- tile in strength. When the king died, at the battle of Fraga (1134), he left no son; but the priests in his latter days had influenced him to make amends for his irreligious youth, and * The King Sancho IV of Navarre in 1076 had been murdered by his brother Ramon, and the Navarrese nobles had proclaimed as their king Sancho of Aragon, the father of Alfonso the Battler. 136 The Spanish People by his will he left his kingdoms to the Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John. Neither Aragon nor Navarre would accept a foreign com- munity as sovereign; and after much quarrelling, Aragon brought out from his monastery Ramiro the Monk, Alfonso's brother, and made him king, marrying him, by permission of the Pope, with a princess of Aquitaine, while Navarre chose for its sovereign a son of its former native sovereign Sancho IV. Constant wars and dissensions were the result of the fresh separation of Navarre and Aragon, in which Alfonso VII of Castile (the emperor) aided first one and then the other, and sometimes both against the Moslems, until he claimed their fealty, and thenceforward arrogated to himself the title of Emperor of Spain on the strength of it. Ramiro the Monk, of Aragon, soon tired of matrimony and his throne, and summoned the nobles and clergy of Aragon to Barbastro (1137) to accept his abdication in favour of his in- fant daughter Petronilla, who was already betrothed to Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona, sovereign of Cata- lonia, who was proclaimed regent of Aragon — a fortunate and happy arrangement, which thenceforward brought to Aragon the splendid ports and coast of Catalonia, and assured pros- perity to the joint dominions during the lives of Ramon Berenguer and his wife Petronilla. In the meanwhile the rule of the Almoravides had entirely changed the condition of the Mozarabic populations in Mos- lem Spain. The tolerant, refined Arabs themselves were dis- gusted at the rough fanaticism of the Atlas tribes who had displaced their rule, and their discontent was gradually being organized into resistance and revolt ; but the Mozarabes were in much worse case,* and in many districts they found their * Alfonso the Battler of Aragon transported enormous numbers from Andalusia and Valencia after his raids, to repeople the districts he had conquered on the banks of the Ebro. As many as 10,000 families were brought from Andalusia at one time. Almoravides and Almohades 137 position intolerable. The Almoravides were a sect rather than a people, although most of them were drawn from two tribes of the Atlas; and their marvellously rapid success in Africa and Spain had in a great measure been due to religious fervour and to the discontent of the subject peoples with the laxity of the Arabs, rather than to any fitness or aptitude for government in the Almoravides themselves. Success, more- over, had taken away much of the energy which at first made them so terrible; and other Atlas tribes, more fanatical than they, descended from their arid mountains, led by a man who proclaimed himself as Messiah and endeavoured to overturn the African empire of the Almoravides. Their chief was a fanatic of the religious class, the son of a lamp tender in the great mosque of Cordova. Having studied in the East, he commenced by preaching in Spain against the laxity of the Moslems ; and being banished by the Almoravide emperor Ali, he had retired to the Atlas to organize his force. He was at first defeated ; but his successor, Abdul-Mamun, in 1 127 swept away the Almoravide rule in Maghreb, and at the invitation of the discontented and revolted Arabs of Spain, as well as of the chiefs of the Almoravides, who also sought their aid, the Almohades crossed the straits to give the death- l;^low to the oppressive Almoravide rule (1145). \ It was indeed rotten^ to the core, and invited destruction. "The stern puritauism of the sect had already been in fifty years sapped by the easy life and luxurious habits of Anda- loos. The rulers, instead of withstanding the advance of re- finement, as at first, did their best to imitate the overculti- vated preciosity of the Arabs they had supplanted, and to patronize poetry and scholarship, while the rough Atlas Al- moravide soldiers had sunk into the lowest depths of corrup- tion and dissoluteness in the soft surroundings of southern Spain. The Christian raids extended now unchecked to the coasts of Andalusia, and with the fall of the Almoravide em- pire in Africa, Moslem Spain again split up into as many 138 The Spanish People kingdoms as there were towns, each little realm preying upon its neighbours. The Mozarabes and Jews, whom the Almora- vides had persecuted, and in many cases banished, were in a majority in some districts, and proclaimed separate kingdoms and republics or placed themselves under the protection of the Christian kings. In this condition of anarchy the appearance of the Almo- hade — or Unitarian Moslem — host at Algeciras (1145) was welcomed by most peaceful Moslem citizens, who above all yearned for security of life and property, both at the mercy now of the tiny tyrant under whom they lived, or of his ene- mies if his people ventured outside the walls of his strong- hold. The fanatics of the Atlas once more trailed their fierce hordes through the south of Spain, for none of the Moslem princes or self-appointed chieftains were strong enough to withstand them. Algeciras, Seville, Malaga, and t Cordova, soon afterward followed by Almeria and Valencia, fell into the hands of the Africans ; and by 1 149 all Moslem Spain acknowledged the rule of the Mahdi, the seat of whose empire was on the other side of the straits, Cordova being the capi- tal of the wali, who was sent from Barbary to govern the province of Andaloos. Thenceforward cruel oppression, when not extermination, was the hard fate of Mozarabes and Jews wherever Islam was paramount, and every city in Mos- lem Spain had a considerable body of its inhabitants praying, yearning, and secretly working for the triumph of the Chris- tian cause. A. D. 1002 TO A. D. 1150 Summary of progress during this period The various Christian kingdoms had continued to develop their institutions on separate lines. The constant pushing for- ward of the Christian frontiers and the disintegration of the Summary 139 Moslem power, with the consequent oppression of the Mozarabes and Jews by the African fanatics, had brought great populations under Christian rule whose ancestors for centuries had Hved side by side with the Moslems. After the conquest of the king- dom of Toledo great numbers of Mahometan Spaniards also remained under Christian rule. All of these people brought into Christian Spain new habits, new industries, a new philosophy of Hfe, and new racial elements, and set a deep impress upon the future character of the people. The conquest of Toledo as the Christian capital and the new policy of the conqueror toward the vanquished people thus marks a new epoch in the history of Spain. Hardly less important events were the submission of the Church in Castile to the papal dictation, and the federated action of the towns of the northwest in electing Alfonso VII King of Galicia. This, as will be seen in the next chapter, was the fore-- runner of a greater movement which decided the future develop- ment of Castilian institutions. Another event of importance at this time was the periodical meetings in Castile and Leon of the councils of bishops and nobles as legislative assemblies, a develop- ment of the Latin-Gothic theocracy that had existed before the Arab conquest, which marks the growing power and ambition of the nobles in their attitude toward both the king and the lower classes, especially after the Cortes (first so called) of Najera, in 1 137, consisting almost entirely of nobles. Though romance,' culture, and poetry were spreading south from Provence into Spain, the time for the full renaissance of Christian art and in- dustry had hardly yet arrived, although the absorbed Mozarabes and Jews, especially in the east of Spain, were at the end of the period under review bringing new prosperity to the places where they had settled ; and the church architecture introduced into Spain from southern France was assuming the special Spanish- Romanesque character which distinguished it from its original model. The anarchy which for so long afflicted Mahometan Spain during this period had acted injuriously on commerce and in- dustry, though both revived somewhat during the settled rule of the Almoravides, and in the twelfth century commercial treaties were made by several kinglets with Genoa, Pisa, etc. But, as will be seen in the text, the new African domination in- troduced an entirely new spirit in art an d architectu re. Luxury, refinernent, literature, and learning in Moslem Spain had now become a craze and an obsession, as often happens with decadent I40 The Spanish People peoples; and this, among a hundred other signs, showed that neither the Moslem faith nor the races could cope successfully with Christianity and the hardier people of the north. What Spain did for the world in this period The period now under review was the commencement of that in which Spain did a priceless service to the world. It was the Jews of Cordova who first restudied the sciences and philosophy which the Greeks had adapted from the learning of still earlier civilizations. They were followed in time by the Arab scholars; and the universities of Moslem Spain became centres of culture where the knowledge of the ancients was translated by Jews and Arabs into their living tongues, to be transmitted in other lan- guages in due time to all the nations of the earth. At a time when Europe lay in darkness Cordova was the home of the exact sciences ; astronomy, mathematics, medicine, botany, and even surgery, were studied deeply and patiently; and thus, centuries before Erasmus was led back to the original fountain, the clear rill of Greek learning ran unchoked through Cordova to the rest of the world. CHAPTER V RELIGION AND LEARNING IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN The religious bond of union between the Christian Spanish races — The migration of the Mozarabes — Its influence on institutions — Germ of representative institutions — The Hermandades and Span- ish feudalism — Alfonso the Emperor — Alfonso VIII and Eleanor' Plantagenet — Berenguela of Castile and Alfonso IX of Leon- Saint Fernando and the reunion of Castile and Leon — Aragon and Catalonia — Jaime the Conqueror — His vast projects — His con- tests with the nobles — Conquests of Saint Fernando — Intellectual and social progress of Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies — The Troubadours — Castilian language and literature — ^Al- fonso the Learned and his works — The influence of Spanish Jews and Arabs on European learning — Arts and handicrafts — The growth of luxury in Spain — National amusements — The Spanish clergy — The increase of religious intolerance. The coming of the Almohades introduced into Spain the last great infusion of African blood, and the component ele- ments of the Spanish race were now complete. It will be use- ful to consider here to what extent the character of the people had been altered by the successive waves of invasion. It is easy to overestimate the racial influence exercised by invad- ing armies. The terror they cause and the importance of the political events they often produce are apt to make us forget that a few thousand or more of men may easily be assimilated by a race without greatly altering the features of the latter. Although the geographical formation of the country was unfavourable to the racial amalgamation of the peoples of the Peninsula, and even to the present day extraordinary ethno- " 141 142 The Spanish People logical variety continues to exist, yet the long Roman domi- nation of Spain had given to the inhabitants such unity as is to be effected by community of language and law. We have seen that the Germanic invaders had found this unity so strongly established that they were forced to accept it. Sub- sequently the adoption of Athanasian Christianity by the Gothic kings, and the theocratic government which resulted, gave another bond of union to the Spanish people; so that on the arrival of Tarik and his I2,C00 Berbers, Spaniards of all varieties of race could look upon them as foreigners, be- cause different from them in language, creed, and law. The tolerant Arab rule, which gave perfect freedom in these three important particulars to the native peoples in Mos- lem Spain, while it facilitated social assimilation and com- munication, prevented anything like a fusion of race, by en- couraging the Mozarabes to live in separate communities.* While, therefore, a considerable amount of intermarriage must have taken place, it can not have been sufficient to make the Mozarabes other than Spanish in race. The granting of manumission to all Christian slaves and serfs who embraced the creed of Islam by simply pronouncing the formula drew a great number of Spaniards of those classes into the Moslem people, and these latter must have been much more tinged with Spanish blood than were the Mozarabes with Moorish. During the first three centuries of the reconquest the Moors in the captured provinces were generally driven forth or exterminated by the Christians ; but after the capture of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile a different policy was adopted. The enlightened king, who had himself mar- ried an Arab wife, and admired the culture and industry of the Jews and Moslems, encouraged the conquered peoples *A similar process is exhibited in the case of the English Jews, of the present time. Perfect toleration and social equality, while causing them to become English in language and habits, tend to the continued separation of the races by means of religion. Migration of the Mozarabes 143 (Mudejares) to remain under his sway, guaranteeing them complete toleration, and encouraging marriages between Christians and Moors. This unquestionably introduced a large admixture of Moorish blood into the population of cer- tain districts, the effects of which are easily discernible at the present day. At the same time the rigour at first of the Almoravides, and subsequently of the Almohades, caused the migration of large masses of Mozarabes from the Moorish districts to the centre and north of Spain, where they established new com- munities in the districts depopulated by war, bringing with them the arts, handicrafts, and habits which they and their ancestors had learned from the Arabs. Of purely Arabic blood the infusion must have been but small, for the enor- mous majority of the invaders had been Berbers and other peoples of the Atlas, of racial origin and traditions similar to the original Spanish stock. With the exception, therefore, that the newcomers had not had the advantage of Roman civilization, the two elements were not dissimilar, and the racial effect of the admixture was mainly to confirm the already powerful tendency of the people to assert individual independence and to localize patriotism. As the Christian reconquest gradually advanced the towns which fell into the hands of the conquerors or were formed by the establishment of new communities of Mozarabes received charters either from the kings, or, more frequently, from the nobles who held in vassalage from the king fresh districts they had overrun. As has already been observed, the grant- ing of these charters in every case implied a bargain between the town and the lord; and practically for the first time in- troduced anything like feudal relations between the munici- palities and the new military aristocracy, which by right of conquest and grant from the king held the soil. Tlie Roman and Romano-Gothic principle of democracies supervised by high ofificials appointed by a Caesar fell into abeyance; and 144 The Spanish People once more we have in juxtaposition the two ideas : the Ger- manic, in which an hereditary lord of the soil gave protection to vassals living upon it in return for certain services; and the other, the original Iberian tradition, modified by Latin or- ganization of self-constituted democratic municipalities most- ly independent of each other. But the constant presence of an enemy who was more a foe to the lord than to the town made the latter in Spain the more important element in the partnership, and enabled the municipalities during the reconquest to become veritable lit- tle tributary republics under the general rule of the king. The immunities granted by the charters to the towns not only increased the wealth of the latter directly, but also added to their population and importance by driving into them large numbers of rural dwellers, who, by taking refuge in the free cities, escaped the individual oppression and extortion ex- erted by the lords of the soil outside the possessions of the tributary chartered towns.* When, however, the recon- quered country became more settled and the Moorish enemy less to be feared, the nobles endeavoured to override the char- ters their predecessors had granted, and, taking advantage of the feebleness of royal authority, began to oppress and pillage towns, and generally to assert feudal tyranny, such as ex- isted in France, Germany, and England. Then it was, at the * It must not be forgotten that in nearly every case there was a considerable territory attached to the towns outside the walls, some of it being private property, but most of it belonging to the commune. The towns themselves were not by any means exclusively industrial, but depended largely upon the tillage of their territories; and their interior organization, for the most part — though the varieties of type were many, according to the origin of the community — was not purely democratic, but a compromise between democracy and aristocracy. There was a distinct division of classes in the towns, the " gentle- men villains " {caballeros villanos) sitting in the town councils and forming the mounted portion of the municipal forces. In many towns half of the councillors only were gentlemen, the other half being free citizens of lower rank, who were elected specially to represent the interests of their class. The Municipalities 145 end of the thirteenth century, that the strength of the munici- palities and of the Latin democratic idea became apparent, and the foundation was laid of the modern state of Spain. The action of the municipalities at this juncture finally prevented the predominance of feudal privileges in the king- dom of Castile and Leon, and formed the nucleus of the rep- resentative government which ruled Spain for over two hun- dred years. Thirty-four towns met by deputy in 1295 and signed a solemn act of brotherhood under the title of the " Hermandad de Castilla." The incorporation sets forth that since the death of Alfonso X pillage and aggression had been rife in Castile, and that for the defence of the king's authority and the greater repose of the country the towns formed them- selves into a confederacy with a common seal and periodical meetings. A joint armed force was raised, strong enough to withstand any individual noble, and if any member of the brotherhood suffered wrong he was fully avenged ; even if the king's officers acted illegally they were punished. The meetings of this important confederacy, to which other towns — to the total number of 100 — speedily adhered, were called extraordinary Cortes, and not only passed rules for their own defence, but also adopted laws which were sent to the sovereign and enforced as if they had been royal de- crees. The victory of the communities over the feudal ele- ment was, however, not won without a hard and long strug- gle, as will be seen in the course of this history ; nor was the victory even for a time complete, or Spain might probably have developed into a federal republic like Switzerland. This, at least, the nobles prevented by bringing themselves and their vassals into the jurisdiction of the towns, of which, espCr cially in the south, they captured and corrupted the municipal government. In the struggle between the two powers the king supported both alternately, in order to hold the balance, and finally obtained for himself the right of nominating- may- ors and aldermen, which in the course of time, as will be 146 The Spanish People related, ruined both the municipal independence and the democratic national representation, and turned Spain into a pure despotism depending upon popular but inarticulate consent. Alfonso VII (the emperor) passed his life in advancing the standard of the Cross against the disorganized Almoravides. Once the fortune of war brought the Moors to the gates of Toledo; but in 1147 Alfonso, with a combination of Mediter- ranean powers anxious to suppress piracy, of which Almeria was the centre, conquered that city, and soon afterward (11 50), saddened by the death of his wife, Berenguela of Cata- lonia, the emperor abdicated, unwisely again dividing his realms between his two sons, Sancho becoming King of Cas- tile and Fernando of Leon. Seven years afterward, when the newly victorious Almohades were besieging Almeria, the emperor again donned his warlike harness and beat back the besiegers, but died of fever immediately afterward, leaving his two kingdoms under different monarchs. Another kingdom also sprang up in the Peninsula during the reign of Alfonso the emperor. It has already been re- lated that Alfonso VI granted Portugal north of the Douro as a tributary county to Henry of Burgundy, who had mar- ried Alfonso's younger daughter Teresa. Both the Bur- gundian and his wife from the first endeavoured to make their territory independent, and Alfonso VII more than once was forced to resort to- arms to compel his aunt to obedience, until at length the lady herself, as lax in her life as had been her sister Urraca, was expelled by her Portuguese vassals, . and her son, another Alfonso (Enriquez), was proclaimed sovereign. Alfonso Enriquez at once took the offensive against his cousin and suzerain, Alfonso VII of Castile, but was brought to his knees and recognised the overlordship of the latter. Alfonso VII of Castile then accorded to Alfonso Enriquez of Portugal the absolute dominion over all lands he might conquer from the Moors and occupy south of the The Kingdom of Portugal 147 Douro ; and with this incentive the Portuguese prince promptly carried his banners to the Tagus, gaining a signal victory over the Moors at Ourique in 1139, after which he thought himself strong enough to proclaim his complete in- dependence of Castile. Alfonso VII hurried to teach his tur- bulent cousin another lesson of obedience, when the bishops and priests intervened ; and the emperor was weak enough to allow the question to be referred to the Pope (Innocent II), who decided in favour of Castile. The Portuguese, however, cleverly offered to hold his do- minion as a vassal of the Holy See, and although Innocent II himself could hardly go back on his own decision, his suc- cessors, Lucius I and Alexander III, accepted the Portuguese offer, and Alfonso Enriquez was acknowledged King of Por- tugal by Rome. . Thenceforward, and on perfectly insufficient grounds, the realm of Portugal was separated from that of Spain, and the interference of the papacy in the affairs of the Peninsula, and of Christendom generally, was accepted with- out demur. Sancho III, King of Castile, eldest son of Alfonso VII the Emperor, died a year after his accession (11 58), leaving to his infant son, Alfonso III of Castile,* a realm torn with civil war,f and open, almost defenceless, to the raids of the vigor- * The enumeration is confusing, in consequence of the frequent union and separation of Castile and Leon. This Alfonso III of Castile alone is almost always known as Alfonso VIII, which really would have been his style if he had been King of Leon as well. t The pretext for the civil war was the appointment by the will of King Sancho III of Gutierre Fernandez de Castro as guardian of the infant King Alfonso III (VIII). The great rival family of Lara resented this, and the kingdom was split into two warring fac- tions during the minority, although the Castros surrendered the regency to the nominee of their rivals, who then cruelly persecuted the Castro faction. This gave to Fernando II of Leon (the uncle of the infant king) an excuse for interference and for the seizure by the King of Navarre (Sancho the Wise) of a slice of the Rioja. The Laras were finally victorious, after a sanguinary battle at Huete, and the Castros took refuge among the Moors. 148 The Spanish People ous Almohades, who reached as far north as Avila in their destructive incursions. The Africans, too, were determined in their efforts to subdue the now separate little kingdom of Portugal, and after years of fighting were on the point of winning the important fortress of Santarem, when the death of the Moslem emperor, Yusuf ben Yacub, threw the Moors into a panic, and Fernando II, King of Leon, hurried to the aid of Alfonso Enriquez in time to inflict a disastrous defeat upon the Moslems. Civil strife and little internecine wars between Castile, Leon, and Aragon continued until the young King Alfonso III (VIII) of Castile gained his majority, when all was changed. He married wisely and happily in the same year (1170) Eleanor Plantagenet, daughter of Henry II of Eng- land, and with enormous energy, ability, and diplomacy brought Castile into a condition of safety and order. The Almohades were allowed no rest; and notwithstanding the jealous enmity of the other Christian states at the success of the King of Castile, the latter extended his borders farther and still farther south to Jaen and Andujar, and on one occa- sion reached the extreme point of Algeciras, and bade de- fiance to the Almohade emperor across the straits. This was more than could be borne, and in the following year (1195) the Moors inflicted a great defeat upon him at Alarcos, where the Castilians lost 20,000 men. This encouraged the King of Leon, Alfonso IX (son of Ferdinand II and grand- son of Alfonso the Emperor of Castile), to invade the realm of his Castilian cousin, and the war was only ended by the marriage of Alfonso IX of Leon to Berenguela, daughter of Alfonso III (VIII) of Castile by Eleanor Plantagenet. Berenguela was a woman of exceptional strength and ability. She had originally been betrothed to Conrad of Swabia, son of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, but had repudiated the arrangement when she came of age ; and her marriage with Alfonso IX of Leon was in all respects a wise Castile and Leon 149 one, as it again portended the reunion of the realms of Leon and Castile. But Innocent III was riding roughshod over the nations of Christendom. He had already forcibly dis- solved a marriage between Princess Teresa of Portugal and this very Alfonso IX of Leon who was to marry Berenguela, and had excommunicated both bride and bridegroom; and now he pronounced the new marriage invalid on the same ground of consanguinity,* Leon being placed under the papal interdict. For seven long years the semi-wedded pair and the king- doms of Leon and Castile struggled against the pontifif's de- cision, and in the interval several children were born to Al- fonso IX of Leon and Berenguela ; but in the end the prin- cess had to return to her own country, an unmarried mother, though the Pope, with a fine disregard for consistency, recog- nised the children as legitimate, and Fernando, the eldest son, remained with his father as the heir to Leon. The crushing defeat of the Castilians by the Moors at Alarcos had been followed by a renewed quarrel and a little war between Castile and Leon; but Alfonso III (VIII) of Castile was burning to retrieve his disaster, and contrived a coalition between all the Christian powers, to which the Popes (Innocent III and Urban II) granted the privileges and indulgences of a crusade. The Almohades answered by themselves preaching a jehad, and Christian knights from all Europe flocked to fight, under the banner of the Cross, the zealous warriors of Islam. Ten thousand horse and four times as many foot marched as a vanguard under Don Diego Lopez de Haro. Pedro II of Aragon led in person his own powerful army, while Al- fonso III headed his Castilian host, and the brothers Giron commanded a vanguard of 40,000 men. Churchmen and princes, nobles and knights, of all lands, vied with each other * Alfonso IX of Leon was the grandson, and Berenguela the great- granddaughter, of Alfonso VII of Castile (the emperor). ISO The Spanish People in their zeal and splendour, although the chroniclers hint that the foreign adventurers were far more trouble than they were worth, and most of them turned back when they reached the torrid south. But the native armies, as they threaded their way through the passes of the Sierra Morena, guided by Mozarabes, heard news which raised their hopes to the high- est. The African troops brought over by the Almohade emperor had already offended, by their savagery and inso- lence, the native Andalusian Moslems, most of whom were partly of Spanish blood, and 'division consequently reigned in the hosts of Islam. Deserters led the Christians by defiles to a position from which the Almohades might be surprised, and like a torrent the chivalry of Castile, Aragon, and Na- varre swept down upon Mahomet ben Yacub and his body- guard of 10,000 negroes and 3,000 camels. In the midst, of the fight the Andalusian Moslems withdrew, and the great battle of Navas de Tolosa was won * (1212). Thencefor- ward the Moslem power in Spain was a decaying one, and the great forward Christian movement which followed both on the side of Castile and Aragon reduced the dominion of Islam within a generation to one insignificant kingdom, which survived, almost on sufferance, for another two cen- turies, but never extended its borders. Two years after the battle Alfonso III (VIII) of Castile * The Christian chroniclers give the principal honour of this great victory to Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, who, with many other prelates, was foremost in the fight. It is said that when Alfonso hirri- self had begun to despair the archbishop assumed command of the vanguard, and with irresistible dash led the Christians to victory. The peasantwho is said to have guided the Christian host by themoun- tain defiles to surprise the Moslem was, so the churchmen tell us, no other than Saint Isidore, the patron saint of Madrid, whose plough- ing was done for him by angels while he was at prayer. Legends innumerable have been' woven around the story of this memorable victory, and Alfonso himself wrote to the Pope that 100,000 Moslems were killed and 25,000 Christians; but however that may be, the defeat was serious enough to cripple the Almohades for ever and to break irretrievably the power of Islam in Spain. Berenguela of Castile 151 died, leaving a son of eleven years of age, who became Henry I of Castile. Once more, as in the days of Alfonso's minority, the Laras objected to the regent chosen by the nobles and clergy on the death of the young king's mother, Eleanor Plantagenet, a year after her husband. The king's aunt Ber- enguela, the papally repudiated wife of Alfonso IX of Leon, was the regent selected, and a wiser or more patriotic ruler it would indeed have been difficult to find. But Alvaro Nufio de Lara contrived to seize the regency, though swearing to Berenguela not to impose frtsh burdens upon the people or to conclude treaties with foreign countries without her consent. Don Alvaro violated his oath almost as soon as it was pronounced, and the nobles and prelates of Castile met in Cortes at Valladolid, and prayed Berenguela to resume the direction of affairs. Before, however, she could act, Don Al- varo, as regent, dissolved the Cortes, and cruelly persecuted Berenguela and her friends. But the little King Henry, while playing in the courtyard of the bishop's palace at Pa- lencia, suddenly met his death by a tile blowing loose and falling on his head, and Berenguela became legally Queen of Castile. The first thing was to gain possession of her son Fer- nando, who was in the keeping of his father, the King of Leon. If Alfonso IX learned that his eldest son was heir to Castile he might make him serve his own ambition. So by an arti- fice Alfonso was persuaded to allow his son to visit Castile before he learned of young King Henry's death. When Fer- nando arrived his mother, Berenguela, convoked the Cortes of nobles and prelates of Castile at Valladolid (1217), and after receiving their homage as queen, at once abdicated in favour of her son Fernando — famous afterward for all time as Fer- nando the Saint, under whom Castile and Leon were again united, to be severed no more. The Laras, supported this time by Alfonso IX of Leon, the King of Castile's father, again promoted civil war ; and once more the armies of father 152 The Spanish People and son, of husband and wife, met. The queen-mother Ber- enguela, as heroic in war as she was diplomatic in council, at length, partly by arms and partly by negotiation, effected peace and alliance; and Fernando III of Castile was free to embark upon the great career of conquest which gave the valley of the Guadalquivir to the Christians, after five hun- dred years of Moslem^ domination. While he was besieging Jaen (1230) Fernando learned from his mother (Berenguela) that his father, Alfonso IX of Leon, had died, leaving by will his kingdom divided between his two daughters Sancha and Dulce * by his first (and also papally repudiated) wife, Teresa of Portugal. The reunion of the realms had been the dream of Berenguela's life ; and while summoning her son to come in person, she hurried to Leon, and, convoking" the nobles, caused Fernando to be proclaimed king; then proceeding to the Portuguese frontier, she arranged with the mother of the infantas — like herself a former wife of Alfonso IX of Leon — for an equitable surrender of the infantas' claims. Thus Leon and Castile became permanently one, and the foundation of a united Spanish monarchy was laid (1230). Almost simultaneously with the consolidation of Castile and Leon and the advance of Saint Fernando into Andalusia, a similar process was being effected in another Christian na- tion of the Peninsula. We have had on many occasions to remark that the lines of development in the northeast of Spain had been different from those of the northwest. We have seen that the kingdom of Asturias, gradually developing into * In order to strengthen the hands of his daughters, Alfonso IX had negotiated a marriage between the elder, Sancha, and the victori- ous and powerful young King Jaime I of Aragon. The latter was already married to Eleanor, the youngest daughter of Alfonso III (VIII) of Castile, a half-sister of Berenguela, and consequently aunt to Fernando III, and a divorce was granted by the Pope on the usual ground of consanguinity; but before the matter could be completed Alfonso IX of Leon died, as here related, and Fernando of Castile ascended the throne of Leon. Jaime the Conqueror therefore did not marry the infanta. The Kingdom of Aragon 153 Leon and Castile, was evolving a practically newborn civ- ilization out of the debris of the ancient systems which had preceded it — a civilization which was neither entirely Ger- manic aristocratic, nor Ibero-Latin democratic, but a com- promise between the two, dictated by the special circum- stances of the reconquest. The entrance into Spain by land was much easier and more frequented on the east end of the Pyrenees than on the west ; and from the earliest times the populations of the coast of the Gulf of Lyons and southern Gaul had fused with those on the northeast coast of Spain. Frankish influence, as we have seen, had ruled Catalonia since its conquest from the Moors at the beginning of the ni^th cen- tury, and its princes had during most of that period also held large territories on the north of the Pyrenees, as the early Visigoths had done before them. The French relationship was therefore very much stronger in Catalonia than in any other part of Spain, and ethnologically and socially the coun- try was, and still remains, absolutely distinct from Castile. The principality of Catalonia had by the marriage of Pe- tronilla, daughter of Ramiro the Monk of Aragon (1137), been joined to the latter kingdom, so far as regarded the per- sonality of the monarch, although the laws in each case re- mained intact, and the autonomy of the states was preserved. Li Aragon, too, the traditions of government were different from those of Castile. From the first erection of Aragon into a lordship by the King of Navarre the feudal nobility had been more powerful and independent than had been the case in northwestern Spain, where the later Gothic tradition of a sacerdotal king with an ecclesiastical council had survived, and where the reconquest was looked upon as a divinely in- spired crusade. The kings of Aragon, like those of Navarre, were the creations of a need ; they were not the semi-divine transmitters of the theocratic monarchy of the last Visigoths, but superior feudal chiefs, chosen first by their fellow-chiefs because it was necessary to have one leader over many. The 154 The Spanish People King of Aragon was reminded on every possible occasion that his power was strictly subject to the law, and that he would only be regarded as king while he did right. Both in Aragon and Catalonia the higher nobles, who held " hon- ours," were practically independent sovereigns with power of life and death over their subjects, and were only bound by the " Usages " ; and though in ordinary civil cases the king's law court was supreme, in all questions of dispute between the sovereign and the nobles in Aragon the supreme judge or arbitrator was the irremovable justiciary, with knights and nobles as assessors. The feudal nobles of Aragon and Cata- lonia had not found themselves at issue with the common people to the same extent as those of Leon and Castile, be- cause both in Aragon and Catalonia the Ibero-Latin idea of democratic independence under a supreme Caesar was com- paratively weak, and the Germanic aristocratic system was in accordance with the general feeling of the population. The 'result of this was that the nobles and the towns, to which charters had been given very liberally by the crown and the feudal lords, made common cause to prevent encroachment by the royal authority ; and the deliberative assemblies both of Aragon and Catalonia included representatives of the towns (1133) before such a thing was heard of in Cas- tile (1169).* It will thus be seen that the Cortes of Aragon and Catalonia, like the Parliarnent of England, grew out of councils of territorial barons ; whereas in Castile and Leon the Cortes sprang from the association of free towns, while the earlier ecclesiastical and feudal assembly retained a separate * The Cortes of Aragon consisted of nobles, clergy, and burgesses, the nobles at a later period dividing their order into two branches, higher and lower. The brasos deliberated apart, and their joint final decisions were conveyed by the nobles to the king. The king convoked the Cortes and proposed legislation, but no large supplies could be obtained without the vote of the Cortes. It is plain that the nobles played the principal part; but the king, being head of the executive and of the armed forces, was practically master. Jaime the Conqueror 155 existence as the sovereign's council. This explanation is necessary in order that the divergent march of affairs in the two groups of kingdoms in the Peninsula may be rightly understood. --' Pedro II of Aragon and Catalonia, the grandson of Ra- mon Berenguer IV of Barcelona, by his marriage with Petro- nilla, Queen of Aragon, had a son born to him at Mont- pellier in 1208. The kings of Aragon by constant intermar- riages with the princely houses in southern France had ob- tained large territories on the north side of the Pyrenees, and were a? much interested in the affairs of France as in those of Spain. Simon de Montfort, with a great rabble of cru- saders, was harrying Toulouse, Beam, and Provence on the pretext of stamping out the Albigensian heresy; and in one of the many diplomatic phases of the affair, Jaime, the infant heir of the King of Aragon, was betrothed to marry the daughter of the Count of Toulouse, Simon de Montfort re- taining the custody of the child prince (121 1). The truce thus sealed was soon broken, and the armies of Toulouse and Aragon were defeated in 12 13 by de Mont- fort, King Pedro of Aragon falling in the fight, leaving his five-year-old heir in the hands of the enemy. Aragon was a prey to civil discord, but united in its demand to have its young sovereign restored to it. Pedro II of Aragon had, re- ceived his crown from the Pope, and held his kingdom as a papal fief,* and on 1;he intervention of the Pope, after much negotiation, the child. King Jaime, was at last (1214) handed over to his subjects in his city of Narbonne, whence he was carried to Lerida, and there received the oath of allegiance * This action on the part of Pedro II was bitterly resented by the Aragonese nobles; and when on the king's return he endeavoured to raise the funds to pay the papal tribute, the higher nobility or hereditary ricos homes formed a league sworn to resist all attempts of the Pope to exert his suzerainty. The subsequent quarrels which continued to occur between Aragon and the papacy were founded upon these events. 156 The Spanish People of the Cortes of Catalonia and Aragon, consisting of prelates, nobles, and 10 burgesses from each city. The legate of the Pope had been the spokesman and leader in the affair, and the infant king had been seated on the knees of the Archbishop of Tarragona during the cere- mony. The legate it was also who appointed the governors and the regent of Jaime's realms during the minority ; and in all things it was apparent that the influence of Rome as suzerain of Aragon was in future to be paramount. The king's uncle Sancho was regent, but was opposed by most of the feudal nobles of Aragon, who sided with another uncle, Fer- nando the Monk. While the nobles and regent were quar- relling the young King Jaime was growing up strong and masterful, and before he was ten years old took matters into his own hands, escaped from his keepers, fled to Zaragoza, and there threw himself into the arms of his subjects. Thenceforward until his death the life of Jaime the Con- queror, King of Aragon, -was one of constant strife. A brutal, strong, crafty man, rough and dissolute, but one of the great leaders of the world, he did for Aragon what Saint Fernando did for Castile, and much more ; for while Fer- , nando and Jaime both added fresh Moorish kingdoms to their own, and left their territories consolidated — the two great rival realms of Spain — Jaime alone entered upon a far-reach- ing foreign policy, which, though it was unsuccessful in its prime object, the foundation of a great Romance empire, yet impressed upon Aragon traditional lines of expansion to which are owing indirectly Spain's greatness and ultimate downfall. Jaime's first successful forward movement was upon Ma- jorca,* the Moorish inhabitants of which, it was said, had * The expedition to Majorca was purely Catalan, and the Catalan nobles and prelates were liberal in their contributions; but Aragon had nothing directly to gain by it and there the war was unpopular, while an attack on Valencia was desired by the Aragonese, Jaime the Conqueror 157 piratically molested Catalan commerce, and in 1228 the King of Aragon came back to his city of Tarragona a victor, having added the Baleares to his dominions. Ten years afterward Valencia was conquered and constituted a separate realm, with a constitution moulded upon that of Catalonia; * and later still the territory down to Jativa and Alicante was added to his conquests. But by this time Castile, on her side, had reached down to the frontiers at Murcia, and there was no room for the farther expansion of Aragonjn that direction. There was, however, a large field for Jaime's vast ambition on the north, and thither he turned his steps. Jaime had wedded Eleanor of Castile, ^nd by her had a son, Alfonso, but divorced her on the ground of consanguinity (see page 152, n.). He had then married Yo- lande, daughter of Andrew, King of Hungary, by whom he had other children ; and although he could hardly help his first- born inheriting the inland realm of Aragon, the conqueror's dream was to extend the .control of Catalonia over the princi- palities of the south of France in favour of his sons by Yo- lande. In the long-drawn-out intrigues to effect this he was naturally opposed by the Kings of France, who were grad- ually absorbing the country in the south, and Jaime avow- edly championed the cause of the Romance nationality against the northerner. Divorces, remarriages, and tricks of * As indicating the constitution of conquered kingdoms generally at this time, it -may be mentioned that the realm of Valencia Was divided pro rata among those who had contributed, either in purse or person, to the conquest. The greater nobles obtained " honours " — i. e., large estates with full feudal privileges, "the 380 knights who undertook to garrison and guard the new territory received as many fiefs from the crown, and the bulk of the soil was distributed among other lower orders. It was soon found that the latter — the only taxpayers — were alienating their lands to the privileged orders (the nobles and the Church), and constant enactments were made to impede this, but with little success. Throughout Jaime's reign he made great efforts in all his dominions to prevent the alienation of lands both by one noble to another or by a citizen to a noble, but, notwithstanding all enactments, alienation continued to take place. 12 158 The Spanish People all sorts were resorted to; but events turned out badly for Jaitae's schemes, and his vast plot failed. By the treaty of "Corbeil (1258) Saint Louis gained the suzerainty of most of the south of France, and Jaime's hopes of a Romance em- pire were dashed to the ground, though he retained his moth- er's domain of Montpellier and some other territories. But his ambition was boundless, and ever seeking for fresh outlets; and in addition to lifelong attempts by marriages, divorces, extorted wills, and even by brute force, to obtain the reversion of the kingdom of Navarre, he now dreamed of an alliance which should give to his house the kingdom of Sicily, and perhaps the empire of the East. Jaime's eldest son Alfonso, with whom he had always been at issue, died childless in 1260, and Pedro and Jaime, the king's sons by Yolande, were soon quarrelling with each other and with their father about their inheritance. Jaime, the younger, was the king's favourite, and to him was assigned the Balearics and the French dominions, while gedro, the elder, was to inherit the Spanish realms and marry Constance, daughter of Manfred, King of Sicily, greatly to the indignation of both the Pope and the King of France, for Manfred was in open revolt against the papacy. But clever Jaime married his; daughter Isabel to Philip, Dauphin of France, and so para- lyzed one of the elements opposed to his plans.* ' In a history of the Spanish people, however, what is even of more importance than the conquests and foreign policy of Jaime I is his attitude toward his nobles and his influence on the laws of Catalonia and Aragon. Circumstances, which * It will be recalled that Manfred, the second son of the Emperor Frederick 11, had, like his father and elder brother, Conrad of Swabia, been excommunicated, and the kingdom of Sicily granted by Pope Urban IV. to Charles, Duke of Anjou. For centuries afterward this was a subject of dispute between the crown of Aragon — which under Pedro seized Sicily — the French kings, and the house of Lorraine as descendants of the Dukes of Anjou. The mother of Jaime was the daughter of the Lord of Montpejjier by Eudoxa, daughter of Emmanuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople. Feudalism in Aragon 159 have already been explained, gave to the nobles in that part of Spain an amount of power and privilege unknown else- where. The possession of land implied no other obligation than military service, and that to an extent strictly limited by law, the ordinary taxation falling entirely on the towns and unprivileged orders. From the first Jaime's masterly spirit rebelled against the overweening power of the nobles, especially in Aragon, his constant policy being to reduce it by siding with the citie^ ; and civil war between the king and sections of nobles accord- ingly continued during the whole of the reign. In 1226 a strong federation of the towns of Catalonia and Aragon was formed in imitation of the Hermandad of Castile, but with the, object of defending the interests of the middle and trading classes against both king and higher nobles; and in the lastr years of Jaime's life (1274) practically the whole of the greater feudal barons were in arms against him.* But he had lost no opportunity in the meanwhile of propitiating the rapidly growing commercial classes ; and when the Cortes were sum- moned to Lerida to arbitrate between Jaime and the greater nobles, it was evident that the former had the representatives in his favour, and the nobles refused to abide by their deci- sion. Jaime's youngest son, Fernando, was on the side of the nobles, but he was overcome by his brother Pedro and * It should be explained that the higher nobility consisted of ricos homes de natura, or hereditary owners of inalienable semi-inde- pendent fiefs, few in number, but petty sovereigns in all but name. It was the swollen privileges of this class, and not those of the smaller nobles and knights, which were a constant menace and danger to the king, and to some extent*also to the people. One of the extraordinary privileges of the-higher NAragonese nobles was that of being allowed to renounce allegiance to the crown when it suited them, and to make "war against the king or each other, although the sovereign had the right of summoning them to accept arbitration on their grievances, in which case it was their duty to suspend hostilities. When thus summoned, the nobles usually found some fault with the terms of the reference or the constitution of the tribunal, and continued in their own course, as in the case mentioned above. i6o The Spanish People drowned ; while the higher nobles received a hard lesson from the king; sure now, as he was, of the support of the majority of his subjects. The greater nobles for the first time in Catalonia and Aragon were brought to their knees, and Jaime and his son Pedro triumphed all along the line. Thenceforward feudalism existed in Aragon, as elsewhere, but it was powerless to act against the king alone, as it had formerly done, and was forced to make common cause with the cities in the Cortes. Thanks to this and the general tend- ency of Jaime's legislation, the institution of serfdom gradually died out, and parliamentary institutions attained great vigour. Jaime found in force in Catalonia the old Fuero Juzgo qi: Gothic legal code, modified by the local " Usag^^s," which had been adopted by previous rulers, and the king's efiforts were directed mainly to adapt this to the newer circumstances of the time. But in Aragon the case was different. There no fresh additions had been made to the Fuero Juzgo, except by a traditional charter of Sobrarbe, which was supposed to have been granted by the first King of Navarre, In Aragon, accordingly, Jaime promulgated a new code at Huesca in 1247, which laid down a complete system of procedure, the Gothic Fuero Juzgo being still more than at first permeated by the spirit of the Justinian Code ; and a similar though in some cases different charter was granted for Valencia after the conquest. In these codes and charters one clear tendency is apparent, as indeed was inevitable in laws founded on Latin models, namely, the extension of pop- ular rights and liberties and the limitation of the privileges attached to the hereditary ownershipof land. This, it may be considered, was Jaime the Conqueror's principal contri-. bution to the making of the Spanish people. How the foreign policy first inaugurated by him was largely instrumental in unmaking the nation must be explained in a future chapter. In the sister realm, thanks to his mother's wisdom, Fer-' nando III found himself, in 1230; undisputed sovereign of his Fernando the Saint i6i paternal realm of Leon and his maternal inheritance of Castile, at peace with Aragon, and able td return to the Moorish con- quests which his accession to Leon had interrupted. The Almohades, broken by the great battle of Navas de Tolosa (1212), could offer now no unitdd front to the Christian ad- vance. A powerful Moslem Snbiiard, Mahomet ben Hud, descended from the kings of Zairagoza, had seized upon the sovereignty of the greater part of southern Spain, and he- roically endeavoured to reconsc^lidate the kingdom of Cor- dova. But he lived too late. Fdrnando III swept down from his point of vantage in the Sierra Morena. Ubeda and Baeza were occupied, and in 1236 the imperial city of Cordova, the seat of the caliphs, fell, and the banner of the Cross waved over the minarets of the peerless mosque raised by the piety of Abd-er- Rahman. The fairy palace of Az Zahra had long ago disappeared in the fanaticism and anarchy which fol- lowed the death of Almansor ; the learning and science of which Cordova had been the world centre had mostly gone elsewhere ; but the city had done enough for fame. Roman patrician colony, city of palaces, capital of a great dynasty, sacred home of a fervent faith, magic laboratory where the culture of the ancient world had been transmitted into the civ- ilization of the new — these, and much more, had been beauti- ful Cordova; Henceforward a ruin beautiful still in decay, she stands silent in the ranks of vanished but unforgotten glories by the side of Athens, Rome, Carthage, and Constantinople. But the progress of the Cross stayed not even here. Gra- nada, a vassal of the Christian king, aided in the reduction of Seville. By land and sea Fernando beleaguered the city of the Wady al Kebir-^Guadalquivir in future for all time^ and on November 23, 1248, the ICing of Castile entered the city in triumph ; and all Spain was nominally under Christian rule but the little tributary kingdom of Granada, when Fer- nando IH died in his capital of Seville, four years after the conquest of the city. 1 62 The Spanish People Fernando had pursued unceasingly his wise mother's plan of consolidating the realms of Castile and Leon. The Fuero Juzgo was still the law of the land, but successive kings had granted to innumerable towns and individuals charters, im- munities, and privileges which agreed neither with the gen- eral law nor with each other. The settlers in border districts and newly conquered territories had in many cases been granted powers of forming " communities," as they were called, which were in many respects little republics, with the right of raising and spending revenues, of forming munici- palities, and possessing freedom of jurisdiction greater even than that enjoyed by the most favoured of the towns which had received charters from the greater nobles. In this state of confusion the first step toward a unified legislation was to ascertain how the existing law stood; and this Fernando did by appointing a committee of jurisconsults to translate and simplify the Fuero Juzgo, and then to draft a more modern code on its foundation. The saintly king died before his task was complete; and to his more famous son, Alfonso X the Learned, belongs the glory of having carried out his father's idea in the Siete Partidas, one of the most complete and important legal codes ever promulgated. •^ It is now time to glance at the intellectual and social prog- ress of the Spanish nation, which in some respects may be said to have come into existence during the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries. We have seen that in the early days of the Arab domination, when the culture of the ruling race and of the Jews who accompanied them was greater than that of the Christian populations, Arabic was the fashionable tongue even among the Spanish Mozarabes of the more cultivated class, while those of the lower class who embraced the reli- gion of Islam naturally adhered to the language of their new faith. But with the advance of the Christkn conquest and the continued efforts of bigots on both sides— to .^separate the people of the two creeds, a reaction set in; and while The Spanish Language 163 the mass of the Mozarabes must have understood something of Arabic speech and adopted a number of Moorish words, their ordinary speech was the bastard Latin that had been handed down to them by their forefathers. Considering that for some centuries the Mozarabic popu- lations of the south were surrounded by influences quite diverse from those which environed the Christians in the newly formed northern kingdoms, it will not be surprising that the Latin dialect spoken by the Mozarabes and by many of the Mudejares, who after the conquest of Toledo chose to remain under Christian sway, was very different from that which formed the common speech of the Asturians and Galicians. During the whole period of the reconquest the battle of the tongues continued. There was first and foremost the ancient Basque, spoken by the mountaineers of Navarre and Biscay, which, however, remained cooped up in its own home and never descended to the plains, for it was an exotic speech apart, with no affinity to the modern tongues. Then there were the Bable, or Latin dialect, spoken in Asturias, and that of Galicia and Portugal, a soft speech, with greater resem- blance to the later Latin than any other, but simplified in construction by contact with the races whose original tongue had been of Teutonic formation. This was the prevailing speech of the Christian Spaniards during the first four or five centuries of the reconquest, but it had in the later years to fight hard against a kindred rival, and the struggle at last ended in a drawn battle. The constant intercourse already mentioned between southern France and Catalonia, and the dominion held over both lands for centuries by the same monarchs, introduced first through Barcelona, and subsequently to Aragon, that variety of Romance called the langue d'oc, the tongue of the troubadours, which came to be divided in Spain into two forms, the poetical-and literary Lemousi and the colloquial Catala, which was, and i's, the usual speech of the people. 1 64 The Spanish People What, however, gave to this language its great impetus was the flocking into Jaime the Conqueror's court at Barcelona of those troubadours and the humbler juglars who sang their verses, who had been driven out of Provence by the ruthless harrying of De Montfort's crusaders. Minstrels before had come thence to the courts of the Spanish kings and had met with welcome ; now they flocked by hundreds, with their Le- mousi speech and tricks of verse; and from town to town, from castle to castle, they spread through the land, petted, pampered, imitated, and made much of by a people who for hundreds of years had been too busy fighting the infidel to create a literature of their own. The best of the bards, poets who recited their own heroic or amorous verse, were received with open arms in the courts of kings and great nobles ; a seat at the table was ever vacant for them, and an open-eared audience ever ready to applaud their lays. The juglar, too, perhaps with special gift of voice or manner, was a welcome guest at every board. And so through the whole descending scale to the mimes, the musi- ^cians, and buffoons, all speaking in Lemousi, they carried to the people throughout north and central Spain novel models of construction, old folk-tales put into new lilting verse, and fresh ideas of the use to which words could be put; a revelation to most, but to many a revival of a tradition, or. a memory of the Moorish minstrels and story-tellers, of the Jew- ish and Arab poets, whom long ago they or their forefathers had heard and imitated. I A people with keen literary instincts and florid speech 'like the Spaniards, long deprived as they had been of the ' exercise of letters, caught the fever of literary production, as their ancestors had done in Roman times, and the fashion of verse-spinning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries degen- erated into a craze. Soon the common speech of northwest- ern Spain — Galician — akin as it was to the fashionable Pro- vencal, assumed sufficient flexibility to be used for verse; The Spanish Language 165 and the Cantigas of Santa Maria of Alfonso X, and some of the ballads in the Cancionero of Baena, remain to show that long after Castilian speech was common and Spanish litera- ture existed the Galician tongue was still by preference used for higher verse. With the forward movement, the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI, and the rigour of the first Almoravides, a great migration of Mozarabes came northward to settle in Castile ; and the establishment of the court at Toledo, where the Mozarabic dialect of course was spoken, introduced this more virile form of speech into the king's court, and already in the middle of the twelfth century a full-fledged epic in this tongue existed in the Poem of the Cid, though it is highly improb- able that even that was the first piece of Castilian verse pro- duced. But with the accession of the learned Alfonso X of Castile and Leon (1252) the Castilian language assumed the commanding position it was in future to occupy, and Cas- tilian literature in its broader setise may be said to com- mence.* Up to this time, as in the Poem of the Cid, the model had invariably been French Proven9al lyrics ; but with Al- fonso the Learned Castilian literature, both in prose and verse, adopts methods of its own. Berceo, the great ecclesi- astical Castilian poet (1200-1265?) whose metre and matter Dante followed, wrote copiously and floridly of martyrdoms and miracles ; and though he sought his subjects from French sources (especially Gautier de Coinci) his style is full of Span- * When Saint Fernando conquered Cordova, 1236, he gave to the inhabitants a translation of the Fuero Juzgo into Castilian as their code^of laws. The Rhymed Chronicle of the Cid is in Castilian of the same period, and also other poems: the Libre dels tres Reyes Dorient, the Vida de Santa Maria Egipciaqua, and the fifst Castilian lyric, Razon feita Amor. It was subsequent to these works, and a hundred years after the poem of the Cid was written in Castilian in imitation of the French chansons de geste. (hat Alfonso X employed Galician as a vehicle for his higher verse in the hymns to the Virgin. 1 66 The Spanish People ish spirit, exhibited by him for the first time in what is now the language of Spain, and he formed a school of verse, which existed after him for two hundred years. It is a truism to say that poetry precedes prose in the lit- erature of a nation, and that the first form of prose is usually history or chronicle. We have seen that chronicle had been almost the only profane writing in the low Latin of the first Christian reconquerors ; we now find history the earliest ex- isting form of Castilian prose, if we except the translation of the Fuero Juzgo given by Fernando III to the Cordovese. The History of the Goths, it is true, had originally been writ- ten in Latin by Rodrigo Jimenez de la Rada, Archbishop of Toledo; but at the instance of Saint Fernando a Cas- tilian translation was made, probably by the archbishop him- self. It was, however, at the instance of Fernando's son, Al- fonso the Learned, that the first great prose works in Castilian literature were undertaken. It has become a fashion of later years to decry Alfonso's achievements in letters, because he was a failure as a politi- cian, as we shall see when we review the events of his reign ; but, considering the circumstances of his time, it is difficult to overrate either his own prodigious mental activity or his undying services to Castilian literature. The language of the nation was as yet not definitely fixed ; the sciences and ancient learning which the Jews and Arabs of Cordova and Toledo had kept alive in the ages of darkness had influenced foreign countries, England and Italy especially, far more than they had Christian Spain ; for here religious bitterness and the racial hatred of centuries of struggle stood in the way. But to the wise Alfonso learning had no religion and no race, and he braved the bigots by enlisting in his army of writers and translators pien from all quarters, both of Spain and the East,* to aid him in his task. No science' had slumbered so * In his Versos de Arte Mayor, Alfonso mentions that he learned the secret of the philosopher's stone, " by means of which I oft in- Spanish Letters 167 profoundly in Europe since the days of ancient Greece as astronomy. To the Moslems the study of the stars forcibly appealed, and Cordova, in rivalry with Bagdad, took up this relic of learning, as it seized upon all other branches of the forgotten knowledge of Greece. Early in the eleventh cen- tury a Spanish Moslem of Cordova named Al Hazen went far beyond his fellows at Bagdad or elsewhere in his astro- nomical and optical discoveries and writings. He was fol- lowed by the more famous Averroes, one of the great philoso- phers of all times (1116-1198), the translator and reviver of Aristotelian * learning, which he popularized in modern Eu- rope, and the first translator into Latin of the Almegist of creased my store," from an Egyptian philosopher whom he had brought from Alexandria. Alfonso gives his secrets to the world in verse, but to our eyes they do not seem to amount to much. * It is impossible in the space at our disposal to speak adequately of the immense influence exercised by Averroes's works on European thought. Translations of his works into Latin were eagerly made by English, French, and Italian scholars; and Oxford, Padua, and Paris counted hundreds of disciples of the great Arab. But, although his ideas on natural, revealed, religion powerfully led to the adoption of broader theological views by so many scholars, and ultimately influenced the simplification and purification of the Christian faith, the philosophy he inculcated was simply that of the school of Aris- totle. Averroes was not even acquainted with Greek, but translated into Arabic from a Hebrew text. His great glory it is to have prac- tically introduced Aristotle to the Western world. Mention must also be made of the great opponent of Averroes's philosophy, the famous Majorcan Christian doctor, Ramon Lull (1235-1315), an author of prodigious fertility, who spent a long life and stupendous gifts in preaching and teaching throughout Europe the truth of Christianity as demonstrated by reason and logic. His influence upon the me- dieval Christian universities was greater than that of his famous Arab predecessor, inasmuch as to him was due the study of the Oriental languages in Oxford, Paris, and Bologna; and the Lullian school of rational Christianity existed, especially in Catalonia and north Italy, for centuries. Lull was alternately attacked and exalted by the Church and the Inquisition, his works being placed upon the Index Expur- gatorius and removed therefrom many times ; and the controversy can not yet be said to be finished, although Lull has been " beatified " by the Church. 1 68 The Spanish People Ptolemy. But the Christian prelates and ignorant soldiers of early Spain had looked upon the heavenly phenomena as beyond human study, and had frowned down all attempts at investigation, except to read portents, favourable or other- wise, to the Christian cause from the wonders of the skies ; and it must have needed sturdy courage in Alfonso, long be- fore he was king, to compile in his father's palace at Toledo his Alfonsine Tables, a com.plete recalculation and correction of the tables of Ptolemy and the colossal Libros de Saber de Astronomia, in Castilian. Alfonso's literary activity was uni- ■ versal. Guidebooks to games of draughts, chess, dice, and tables ; treatises on music, philosophy, alchemy, and law ; a translation of the Bible from the Hebrew ; poems in Castilian and Galician ; a great universal history, written by a combina- tion of scholars under the king's own editorship ; * and, above all, the world-famed code of law called the Siete Partidas — these are only some of the results still existing of Alfonso's learning and enterprise. The Siete Partidas superseded the old Fuero Juzgo of the Goths, and was not only a legal code, but a guide to the conduct of every rank of citizen, from the king to the serf, in all relations and acts of life. It not only dictates laws, but gives reasons for them, and con- tains in every line information which enables us to estimate the stage of social progress which had been reached by the Spanish nation at this period (1252-1284). It is no exag- geration to say that Alfonso X of Castile found the Spanish language a doubtful dialect, and left it a majestic, rich, and noble national tongue, with a vigorous literature of its own. We have already remarked that the main exciting influ- * Of this history only three books were finished. It was com- menced about 1260, and I have recently discovered a hitherto un- known copy, illuminated on vellum, in perfect condition, in the Duke of Wellington's library. This copy is dated 1378, and is the earliest of which I have any knowledge. Spanish Letters 169 ence upon the literary awakening of Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was French Proven9al, more especially in poetry and belles lettres; but it would be unjust and mis- leading to suggest that the example of Cordova and the learning of the Spanish Jews and Arabs had not to some ex- tent penetrated Christian Spain before Alfonso X boldly translated some of their teachings into Castilian. ' Ramon, Archbishop of Toledo (1130), had turned into Latin some Arabic treatises ; here and there in the border ballads of Spain Arab forms of verse were followed ; the great Spanish Jew poet, Judah ben Samuel the Levite, in the beginning of the twelfth century introduced an occasional line of what we now call Castilian into his Hebrew verses; and the Moza- rabes, and Spanish-speaking Mudejares who remained among the Christians, must have brought with them some memories of the Arab culture in the midst of which they were reared, as it is certain they brought with them their handicrafts and artistic models. There was another class which carried to Spain, as indeed it carried to the rest of the world, echoes of the learning of ■ Cordova and Toledo before the era of Alfonso X, namely, the Jewish physicians, who practised in almost every court in Europe. The literary revival in Spain, therefore, and the victory of the Castilian language, which was inaugurated by Fernando III and continued by his son, Alfonso the Learned, may be said to have received its inspiration as to form from the Provencal, and in its substance largely from the Jews and Arabs, who had translated into Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic the learning of the ancient Greek. The Moorish influence on art and handicrafts in the for- mation of a new national Spanish style of decoration was 1 infinitely greater than in literature. It is true that in Chris- Itian architecture the inspiration still came from France, and \already the so-called Gothic forms were being grafted upon the simpler style, which the Spaniards had evolved out of the I70 The Spanish People Angevin-Romanesque ; * the influence of the Arab being only seen — and that mainly in domestic buildings — where the Mudejares, or tolerated Moors, were largely in excess of the Christians in numbers. The rigid religious tenets en- forced at first by the Almoravides, and afterward by the Almo- hades, had tended to eliminate from Arab-Spanish art the cor- ruptions which contact with Christian styles had introduced : and the more graceful ornamentation which we now know as Alhambresque had taken the place of the stiff Cufic and semi- Byzantine forms of the earlier Arabs. The damascened and chased arms and metal work made by the Mudejares of Almeria, Murcia, and Seville were in great request all over Spain ; and the domestic furniture used in most of the better-class Christian houses, being largely made by Mozarabic and Mudejar workmen, in the thirteenth century showed everywhere traces of Arabic design of the more graceful and flowing character developed under the Almohades,f while the great number of beautiful carved ivory caskets of the same period and style still existing in Span- ish cathedrals prove that even for the preservation of sacred Christian relics there was no objection to the use of these works of art, permeated though they were with the spirit of Islam. The manufacture also of the lustred pottery at Mal- aga, Manises, and elsewhere continued after the Christian conquest as before, and not only was the ware prized through- out the worid,t but it must have been used all over Spain; * See especially the great west portico of Santiago cathedral (twelfth century), of which a fine reproduction exists in the South Kensington Museum. t A good specimen will be found in the South Kensington Mu- seum, called the Botica de los Templarios. No. 1764. • * ^Pf.^"^'"^ of tfi's ware, a description of the industries of Valencia m the fifteenth century, quoted by Senor Riafio, says: " Above all is the beauty of the gold pottery so splendidly painted at Manises which-, enamours every one so much that the Pope and the cardinals and the princes of the. world obtain it only by favour, and are surprised that such excellence and noble works can be made of earth." Spanish Industries 171 and, as is evident, the Arab ornamentation largely influenced the designs used on the Spanish Christian pottery made at Talavera and elsewhere; while the glazed Mosaic tiles so largely used in building, the great wine jars of Catalonia, the porous alcarazas of Andujar, and the well brims continued for centuries afterward to exhibit the forms and colours which were introduced to Christian Spain by the Mudejar and Moza- rabic workmen. A most significant social eflfect was also produced upon the Spanish people by the comparatively easy contempora- neous conquests of Andalusia by Fernando the Saint, and of Valencia by Jaime the Conqueror of Aragon. Cordova, Seville, Murcia, and Valencia were by far the richest and most luxurious of Spanish cities ; by the middle of the thir- teenth century both Castile and Aragon knew that the Mos- lem, who had thitherto been to them a standing menace, could trouble them greatly never again. TJie wealth of the captured cities, the lessons of luxury taught to the Christians by the hosts of Mudejares and Mozarabes, and encouraged by the commercial Jews who lived among them, the new sense of national security — all tended to relax the stern simplicity which had characterized the Christian Spaniards during the first centuries of the struggle. Nor was this all. The crowding of thousands of foreign knights into Spain to fight for the Cross, and the fashionable craze for poetry and entertainments promoted by the trouba- dours and their followers, added to the growing self-indul- gence of the Christian conquerors. It would appear that Jaime the Conqueror of Aragon first took fright at this tend- ency of his subjects. He issued a decree in 1234 setting forth the lamentable increase in extravagance both in food and dress, and ordering that in future no subject of his should sit down to a meal of more than one dish of stewed and one of roast meat, unless it were dried and salted. As much game might be served as the diner pleased, on condition that it had 172 The Spanish People been hunted and killed by the eater. It was strictly forbidden that juglars or minstrels should sit at table with ladies and gentlemen, while the most rigid rules were laid down against the abuse of gold, silver, and tinsel trimmings on dresses of men and women ; and the employment of ermine and fine furs was rigidly restricted. In the south, after the conquest of Seville and Cordova, matters were worse still, and only four years after his acces- sion Alfonso X, with the concurrence of his Cortes, issued in Seville a complete sumptuary edict forbidding the use of gold or silver tinsel in the adornment of saddles or shields, except as a narrow border. No jingling bells might be used as trimmings except on saddle cloths at the cane tourneys, and no embroidered devices were allowed on housings. No fine milled cloth might be worn by common people, nor were the garments to be pinked into fantastic shapes or trimmed with ribbon or silk cords, the penalty for infraction being the loss ef one or both fhurnbs. Women, even, were forbid- den to wear any bright colours, to adorn their girdles with pearls, or to border their kirtles or wimples with gold or sil- ver thread. How seriously the vice of gluttony had spread is seen by Alfonso's undertaking to obey his own edict in this respect, limiting the number of dishes of meat on a table to two, and one of bpught game. The extravagant expendi- ture on wedding feasts is also condemned in this decree. No presents of garments might be given, and the whole cost of the wedding outfit was not to exceed 60 maravedis, and not more than 20 guests might be invited. Moors, it appears, were already, dressing like Christians, and this was strictly forbidden. They were to wear no red or green cloth, no white or gold shoes ; their hair was to be parted plainly in the mid- dle, with no curl on the top ; and they were ordered to grow a full beard. Although the penalties for violation of these regulations were savage in the extreme, they can hardly have been efifectual, for a fresh set of rules was issued two Sumptuary Edicts 173 years later, in which the king agreed to limit his table ex- penditure to 150 maravedis a day,* and ordered the ricos homes (higher nobles) to eat more sparingly and spend less money. All the members of the royal household were directed to dress more modestly ; no white fur, scarlet breeches, gilt shoes, or cloth-of-gold hats were allowed ; and priests, who it appears had been decreasing the size of their tonsures and ruffling in fine colours, were sternly ordered to shave the whole of their crowns and wear a rope around their sad-coloured garments, f No man, however rich, was to buy more than four suits of clothes a year, two fur mantles, and one rain-cape. No er- mine, silk, gold, or silver tissue, no slashes, trimmings, or pinked cloth might be worn ; no crystal or silver buttons were allowed, and lawn and silk for outer garments were to be re- served for royalty. The punishments prescribed for Jews and Moors were brutal in the extreme, torture or death being com- pulsory for the sHghtest violation of the law ; but the punish- ment of the ricos homes was to be left to the king's discretion. Another great social change came over the Spanish peo- ple in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a result of the prosperity of the country and the subjection of the Moors. The games in the splendid Roman arenas and circuses had, like all other material signs of Latin civilization, disappeared * It should be understood that, though the sovereign suggested subjects for legislation to the Cortes, and sometimes caused bills to be drafted and laid before them, the act usually originated with the Cortes, and always took the form of a presentment or petition to the king; who, if he approved of it, signed and promulgated it as an edict. The proposal, therefore, that Alfonso should set a good ex- ample with regard to his living originated not with the king himself but with the Cortes. t The manners of the clergy both in Castile and Aragon had be- come shamefully corrupt. The councils and synods of prelates in both countries were constantly issuing canons denouncing profligacy. In 1274 a council in Aragon found it necessary to forbid the clergy from wearing on their garments any embroidery, gold or silver but- tons, or buckles either at their necks or wrists. No embroidered or pointed shoes, striped robes, or long hoods were to be allowed, 13 174 The Spanish People before the invading tides of Islam. The Moors brought with them their own public amusements. The story-teller and the minstrel, the mimic warfare of the tourneys, feats of horse- manship, and the baiting of bulls and boars delighted the pleasure-loving population of the south ; but for the first two centuries of the reconquest the Christians of the north were too seriously employed, too devout and uncultured, to care for luxurious public shows; and the tilting and trials of strength in which they indulged were more in the nature of preparation for war than the diversions of peace. The first form of pubHc amusement apart from these ex- V hibitions of arms was the romeria, or joint pilgrirnages to special sanctuaries on days of the patron saint. These degen- erated into pleasure fairs, where dancing and music solaced the pilgrims after their devotions were over. But with the capture of Toledo, the migration of large numbers of Moza- rabes northward, and the crowding of foreigners, especially Provencals, into Spain rapidly changed these simple amuse- ments. Oriental splendour began to be displayed in the •J tourneys and cane plays,* which last had been borrowed from the Arabs. The Castilian and Aragonese magnates began to rival each other in the extravagance of the martial shows with which they celebrated their wedding feasts and other J rejoicings. Running at the ring, bullfights, f tournaments, * The cane tournament (jtiegos de canas) continued to be the great show diversion of the Spanish court until late in the seventeenth century. It consisted of bands of horsemen under the leadership of the higher nobles, each band bearing some special device or particular colour in clothes, streamers, standards, and housings. One band ran against another, casting harmless cane javelins when they came near, and then suddenly wheeled round and retreated in order. The grace and dexterity with which this was done, the perfection of the horse- manship, and the ingenuity or splendour of the devices decided the contest, which was run in heats, the band finally victorious receiving the prize. A similar diversion is common in Morocco at the present day, although the canes (jerud) are now dispensed with. t The first recorded bullfight according to modern ideas was given at a marriage feast at Avila in 1 107, and by the end of the thirteenth Popular Pastimes 175 and cane plays were seized upon as a pretext for pomp and magnificence. The troubadours, the juglars, the minstrels, the mimes, who hung about every castle and great house, were expected to produce endless new devices and gallant inven- tions, which should bring honour to their masters. The old Iberian spirit cropped up again in their amusements, as in their literature. Showy, pompous, and redundant, the Span-\, iards of the thirteenth century, like those of the third, seized upon all that was glib, glittering, and fantastic both in the diversions of the Moors and the inventions of the Provencals ; and every town in Spain now vied with its fellows in the fre- quency and brilliancy of its public amusements. To this period also may be attributed the birth of the Spanish stage, long afterward to become the principal form of intellectual expression of the nation. Sacred mysteries had for some time been represented in the churches ; but the wandering troubadours and juglars had evidently by this time begun to introduce profane and objectionable features into these representations, and one of the laws of the Siete Partidas sternly forbids this.* It is noticeable that in denouncing century the sport was common. One of the laws of the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X forbids prelates to attend bullfights. * It will be interesting to reproduce at length this article of the law as a specimen of the earliest Castilian prose. It will be seen that very little alteration has taken place in the language since it was born. Speaking of the clergy, it says: " Nin deben ser facedores de juegos de escarnios, porque los vengan a ver gentes como se facen: e si otros homes los ficiesen, non deben los Clerigos y venir, porque facen muchas villanias e desaposturas, nin deben otros estas cosas facer en las Iglesias: antes decimos que los deben echar de ellas deshonrada- mente, ca la Iglesia es de Dios. . . . Pero representacion hay que pueden los Clerigos facer; asi como de la nascencia de nuestro Senor lesu Cristo, en que muestra como el angel vino a los pastores, e como los dijo como era nascido lesu Cristo. E otrosi de su aparicion, como los Reyes Magos le vinieron a adorar, e de su resureccion, que muestra que fue crucificado, e resucito al tercero dia: tales cosas como estas, que mueven al home a facer bien, e haber devocion en la fe. pueden las facer, e ademas porque los homes hayan remembranza que segun aquelias fueron las otras hechas de verdad: mas esto deben 176 The Spanish People these early actors, the law takes care to distinguish them from " those who play on instruments and sing to solace kings and i other great gentlemen " ; and although the vagabonds found ' their burlesque representations of Judas or the devil and their indecent dances banished from the Church, we know that they carried their talents elsewhere; and within a cen- tury and a half after the publication of the Siete Partidas the embryo Spanish drama had become a favourite diversion not only of the vulgar who gaped at buffoons, but of the fine gen- tlemen and ladies of the courts, who listened to tlie witty con- ceits in the rhymed eclogues and dramatic narratives of Juan de Encina and his followers. We have seen that in nearly all respects an important revolution had taken place in the life of the Spanish people during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They had in the latter century absorbed much of the Moorish refinement and the luxury of the south and east, and a share of the newer culture of the Romance peoples through Catalonia facer apuestamente e con muy gran devocion en las cibdades grandes donde hobiere Arzobispos e Obispos, e con su mando de ellos, . . . e non los deben facer en las aldeas nin en los lugares viles, nin per ganar dinero con ellas." (" Nor should they be performers in scorn- ful plays for people to go and see as they do ; and if other men should perform such, clergymen ought not to attend them, because they — i. e., the performers — do many knavish and scandalous acts. Nor should any persons whatever do such things in the churches; on the contrary, we declare that they should be cast out with reprobation, for the Church belongs to God. . . There are representations, how- ever, in which clergymen may act; such as those of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, showing how the angel came to the shepherds and told them that Christ was born. And also how he appeared, how the kings came to worship him, his resurrection, showing the cruci- fixion and resurrection on the third day. Such things as these move men to do well and be devout in the faith, and may be done in order to remind men that they really happened. But they must be per- formed with great decency and devotion in the large cities, where there are archbishops and bishops who may order them, . . . and they must not be represented in villages nor poor places, or for the pur- pose of gain.") The Birth of Intolerance 177 and Aragon. The middle classes had grown greatly in wealth and independence both in the east, with the busy looms of Barcelona and Valencia and their prosperous commerce throughout the Mediterranean, and in Castile, where the in- dustries of the Mudejares and Mozarabes and the greater demand for the fine wools of the vast wandering flocks en- abled the chartered towns to maintain armed forces of their own, and to combine irresistibly for the protection of their interests. With this increased wealth, security, and general well- being there came — as it had come in succession to other peoples who had enjoyed it — an easy, tolerant scepticism, which, if continued, would have meant decay. But the Span- iards were a newborn people, and their time for decay was not yet. The clergy as a class were now disorganized, corrupt, and immoral, but they were as bigoted and cruel, as avid of power and wealth, as ever they had been, and some of the more earnest of them were determined to withstand the laxity which is born of self-indulgence, and to bring unity to the peoples and power to their own order by forcing all Span- iards to conform to the rigid doctrines of the Church. The idea was not a purely Spanish one, for so long as the Iberian was allowed perfect individual freedom he was not intolerant of the acts of others. Successive generations of bigoted churchmen, together with centuries of fighting, had caused a racial loathing of the Moslems and Jews to exist, which extended in time to their creeds ; but although there had been religious disabilities, and sometimes cruel persecution, on both sides, yet, speaking generally, the Christian and the Moslem had for some centuries found a modus vivendi which allowed' each to live in peace after his own fashion, unless ■ he went out of his way to invite opposition. The extension of the civil power of the papacy, and more especially the masterful ambition of Innocent III, had led to the crusade" ordered from Rome against the heretics of 178 The Spanish People the south of France, to which reference has been made. An inquisition had been ordered by Innocent, with tremendous powers direct from Rome, to bring back all heretics to the faith on pain of confiscation of property, spiritual excom- munication, and bodily punishment. There was in Provence at the time (1206) a fanatical young Spanish monk, whose burning zeal rebelled against the corruption of his fellow- churchmen, and he conceived the idea of forming an order of preachers who, poor and chaste, should renounce the ease of the cloister and preach the living faith in the high- ways and byways to all men. The bishops and cloistered clergy frowned at such an innovation, but who could stand against the zeal of Dominic? Not canons or councils; not even popes ; and the stern, uncompromising future saint had his way. With words of fire, so long as words would serve, with devastating armies when blood was demanded, flinching at no cruelty, showing no mercy, Dominic carried the word of God through Languedoc; and when Pedro of Aragon fell fighting for his heretic brother-in-law of Provence against sacerdotalism at Muret (1213), his fellow-Spaniard, Dominic the monk, bore the great crucifix before the host of De Mont- fort, and eagerly shared in the massacre of those who resisted a ready-made doctrine. The task of Dominic's order thence- forward was to bear from its great superior in Rome, and from the popes whom he ruled, the right of examination and persecution of those whose orthodoxy was doubted ; and the papacy fixed yet more firmly than ever its grasp upon the bodies of Christian men. Although the realm of Aragon, as we have seen, had from the earliest times been more subservient to the Pope than Castile, its king, Pedro, had fallen fighting against his patron ; but Jaime the Conqueror had been seated on the throne by the Church, and throughout his reign, at the bidding of Rome, the persecution of heretics continued. Translations of Spain and the Papacy 179 the Bible in the vernacular were prohibited, all public office was closed to those suspected of heterodoxy and obstinate heretics were burned. It is true that Jaime was tender to the Jews, who nearly monopolized the commerce of his do- minions and paid him well, for they were by far the richest of his subjects. But they, too, were forced to see their sacred books mutilated and burned, and were compelled to listen in silence to the preaching of the Dominicans ; and the Sara- cens of Valencia were treated more harshly still.* It was a small beginning, but, inflamed by the priests, the ignorant populace caught the fever of intolerance, and followed the Jews and Mudejares with curses and insults whenever they dared to show themselves outside of their quarters. In Castile, Alfonso the Learned tempered the zeal of the Pope. and the inquisitors as well as he might; but Jaime of Aragon was content to buy oblivion for his many offences against the faith by letting the churchmen work their way with the bodies of his subjects. f The evil seed of intolerance * In 1247, on the pretext of an intended revolt of the Moslems of Valencia, Jaime issued a decree for the expulsion of the whole of them from the kingdom. This would have meant complete ruin, especially to the nobles and knights who held the land, and energetic remon- strance was offered to the king, not only from the Moors themselves, but from the nobles, knights, and municipalities. The Moors of Jativa offered the king 100,000 besants for permission to remain in their homes. When, however, Jaime remained obdurate, a general rising of Moslems took place, and in the mountainous districts the war dragged on for years. One hundred thousand Moors were ex- pelled from the kingdom; but, notwithstanding the incitement and admonition of the Pope, it was found impossible to clear the whole territory of its principal inhabitants, and the cruel edict was allowed to fall into abeyance. t In addition to Jaime's scandalous immorality, which more than once had been reproved by the Pope, the king caused the tongue of his confessor, the Bishop of Gerona, to be cut out, for which he had to make public penance.^ He had married his son to the daughter of the Pope's enemy, Manfred of Sicily, and his juggling with the marriage vows, both of himself and others, to suit his political ends needed the frequent good offices of the papacy. It was therefore necessary that he should please the Pope in some things. i8o The Spanish People was thus sown in Aragon; but as the power of the priests grew and rulers used religion for their ends, it spread through- out Spain, and produced plentiful harvests of misery and suf- fering for centuries to come. The thirteenth century thus saw the entrance of the Span- ish people into the circle of cultured European nations. The civilization they had evolved out of the turmoil of warring races and alternate dominations had received its breath of life from the traditions of old Rome; but the abundant Afro- Semitic blood in the race and the element of far Eastern culture — the tastes and arts of Syria and Persia introduced by the Arabs — had given to Spanish civilization features which distinguished it from that of any other Western nation. The fatalism and indifference to life which is a characteristic of the Afro-Semitic races had made the Spaniards bold fighters apd cruel conquerors. When the need for fighting and conquering was nearly over and the people might have settled down vmder the softening effects of peace, there came from papal Rome the baleful breath of intolerance and blew into a flame, which later grew to a furnace, the spark, always lingering in the Iberian breast, of jealousy and hatred of the man in the next valley or the next town ; of the man who dressed differently, who spoke differently, or worshipped a different god. And so, simultaneously with the uprising of a new people enjoying advantages of climate, position, and soil such as had been vouchsafed to no other European nation, there entered into the heart of the race, unhappily only too ready to receive it, the virus which in time to come was to turn all its gold into dross, to doom its fertile fields to barrenness, to blight its industry, to mock the genius of its people, and in the end to condemn a great nation for centuries to impotence, poverty, and degradation. Summary i8i A. D. II50 TO A. D. 1300 Summary of progress during this period Spain had now taken a foremost place in the cultured nations of Europe. The conquest of Valencia by Aragon, and the whole south of Spain but Granada by Castile, had made those two king- doms great commercial powers, as inheritors of the industry and trade of the conquered Moors. The inclusion in the Christian dominions of so many Mozarabes, Mudejares, and Moriscos had profoundly influenced the artistic tastes, the architecture, the social life, and the prosperity of the whole of Spain. The Latin dialect of the Mozarabes had, under Alfonso X (the Learned), evolved a literature of its own, and had become the dominant speech of Spain. Simultaneously with the advance of Moslem civilization from the south, another type of civilization invaded Spain from the north in this period. The events related in the text and the increasing wealth of Spanish courts sent hosts of poets, reciters, and musicians flocking to Spain from Provence. Glib, theatrical, and verbose, and akin in blood to the Spaniards of northeastern Spain, their influence upon literature and manners was great and permanent. Politically the Christian healms were now organized on the lines they ultimately followed. In the triple state of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia the national parliaments were established with the three estates growing out of feudal traditions, though T aiiBe the Conqueror had to some extent checked the feudal povver of the nobles. In Castile the strong autonomous towns had asserted themselves, and had (1295) federated their strength to resist the growing turbulence and encroachment of the nobles ; and both in Leon iSnd Castile the representatives of the town cotmcils of the principal cities now sat in the Cortes at the sum- mons of the king (1169). In Aragon and Catalonia Jaime the Conqueror had compiled his famous code of laws from the Lex Visigothorum and the local " Usages," adapted to later times, and in Castile Alfonso the Learned had also adapted and trans- lated into Castilian the Fuero Juzgo (Siete JPartidas), a model which served the rest of^urope as an adaptation of the Roman law. With the settlement of language and the poetic example of the Troubadours, literature throve exceedingly under the patron- age of the kings of Castile and Aragon. The learning of the \ 1 82 The Spanish People Greeks, which had filtered through Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin to the rest of Europe, had previously hardly touched Christian Spain in its passage. Alfonso X now had much of it turned into the Peninsular tongues by the Jews, Mozarabes, and Moriscos, to whom it was familiar. Spain was no longer isolated. The Chris- tian ships from the east coast sailed throughout the Mediter- • ranean; wool, fruit, wax, soap, and wine went in quantities to England, Flanders, and France ; and the coming of the foreigners to fight in her crusade had familiarized Spanish Christians with foreign speech, thought, and progress. Spain at this period was, in fact, a group of newborn, thriving Christian realms with vast ambitions and infinite possibilities. Summary of what Spain did for the world in this period With the exception of the growing exportation of her prod- ucts — the silks of Valencia, the arms of Almeria and Toledo, the gold tissues, the pottery, and glass of Andalusia, and the fruits, leather, wine, wax, and wool which found their way now through- out the world — Spain's principal contributions to human advance- ment in this period were intellectual. The schools of philosophy founded respectively by Averroes and Ramon Lull, the latter especially, moved scholars throughout the world to controversy; the universities, from Oxford to Padua, sought new inspiration and knowledge from Spanish sources, and Spanish-Jewish physi- cians and men of science were in every European court. The service rendered to religious enlightenment by the lifelong efforts of Ramon Lull to reconcile revealed religion with reason and knowledge was, however, counterbalanced by the spread in Eu- rope of the fierce persecuting spirit, which was so largely owing to Saint Dominic, another Spaniard. CHAPTER VI POLITICAL PROGRESS OF CATHOLIC SPAIN Reign of Alfonso the Learned — The Cortes— Revolt of Sancho IV — Anarchy in- Castile — Guzman " the Good " — Fernando IV and Maria de Molina — Aragon — The conquest of Sicily — The revolt of the Aragonese nobles, — The Privilege of Union — Pedro the Ceremonious of Aragon — Abrogation of the " Union " — Castile under Alfonso XI — The growth of the Cortes — Pedro the Cruel of Castile — Revolt of the Castilian nobles — Civil war — Pedro's treatment of his English auxiliaries — Murder of Pedro and acces- sion of Henry II of Trastamara. Alfonso the Learned was unfortunately very far from wise. His enlightened efforts to bring book learning within reach of his people and his extraordinary editorial activity were accompanied by a complete ineptitude in the wider science of government and in a knowledge of mankind. Vaguely ambitious, but without sufficient fixity of purpose to carry through great schemes, he incurred vast expenses in preparations which, in most cases, produced nothing but disappointment. Like his greater father-in-law, Jaime of Aragon, he, too, dreamed of far-reaching foreign policies. He conceived his house to have some shadowy claim upon Gascony, which, as we have seen, was being held by Simon de Montfort for Henry III of England ; and the King of Castile, siding with some of the unorthodox nobles, marched to assert his supposed right by besieging Bayonne. But the splendid young heir to the English crown, Edward Plantagenet, was marriage- 183 1 84 The Spanish People able, and Alfonso was easily induced to transfer his own claims to Gascony, such as they were, to his sister Eleanor on the condition of her marriage with Edward. Of the stately coming of the English prince with his nobles to wed the Princess of Castile at Burgos (1254) the chronicles of the times are full. How Edward towered head and shoulders over all others, how he kept his vigil before the altar of the monastery of Las Huelgas, near Burgos, previous to his receiving the honour of knighthood from the king, and how splendid were the garments and gifts of the guests, there is no space here to tell. Suffice it to say that, though the magnificence dazzled the court scribes who wrote the history of these events, the people, whose main participation in them was the payment of increased burdens, took a different view ; and the arbitrary debasement of the coinage and the unwise attempt to conjure away scarcity by fixing the price of com- modities, in which Alfonso was followed by so many of his successors, only deepened popular discontent. The subjects looked with contempt upon a sovereign who only adopted policies to abandon them, and spent most of his time in poring over mysterious books and consorting jvith unorthodox persons full of uncanny lore. The church- men, too, shook their heads sagely at the hints that black magic and witchery were behind it all ; and the nobles, with the king's brother Philip at their head and the Laras support- ing him, thought that privileges which should bring to their order in Castile the same power as that wielded by the nobles of Aragon might be wrung from the student king.* The great project of Alfonso's life was to be elected em- peror in right of his mother, who had been a daughter of Conrad of Swabia, eldest son of the great Emperor Fred- * The most highly prized of these was the strict limitation of the feudal aids they were forced to render to the sovereign, and the 'sub- mission to an impartial judge of all questions between the king and the nobles. Alfonso the Learned 185 erick; and at the Diet of Frankfort, in 1257, after the death of Conrad, Alfonso X and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, were rivals for the imperial crown. Both sides claimed the victory, and both made preparations for an appeal to arms. Louis IX, jealous of the aggrandizement of an English prince, accorded all his support to Alfonso, while the successive pontiffs obstinately resisted his claims; for whatever might be the case with Aragon, Castile, and especially Alfonso, suffered the encroachment of papal authority in Spain with impa- tience. For years Alfonso spent treasure and time upon his hopeless candidature. Rome always stood in the way, and at length the choice of Rudolph of Hapsburg for emperor (1273) finally put an end to the hopes of the King of Castile. When Alfonso was victorious over the Moors in the Al- garves, he consented to surrender his conquest to the King of Portugal, on condition that he married Alfonso's natural daughter Beatrice ; and the discontent thus caused was seized upon by the nobles to formulate their demands upon the king. To their surprise, instead of taking up arms against them, like Jaime of Aragon, Alfonso summoned a Cortes at Burgos to consider their complaints. The burgesses of the towns holding charters direct from the king were summoned^ as was usual now, and if Alfonso had stood firm, it is cer- tain that the powerful, rich, armed municipalities would have supported him ; for at the Cortes of Almagro only the year before (1272) most of the commons' grievances had been met and remedied. But Alfonso was apparently only too willing to purchase peace at any price with the nobles, who at once gained all they asked; and then, fearing a trap, they fled to the territory of Granada until they satisfied themselves that the king meant no harm to them. Alfonso's wars with the revolted Moors of the south were constant. At first he had the assistance of Al Hamar, the King of Granada, who was a tributary of Castile; but the revolt of the Moors of Murcia, over whom Granada had for- 1 86 The Spanish People merly been suzerain, was seconded by Al Hamar, and for several years after 1262 the forces of Castile were at war with those of Granada, while Jaime of Aragon re-conquered Murcia, and at the treaty of peace in 1266 loyally surrendered it to Alfonso. During the absence of Alfonso in France, in furtherance of his imperial claims, however, a fresh rising of the Moors of Andalusia took place; and Fernando, the eldest son of the king, who was regent in his absence, hur- ried south with an army to resist them, but unfortunately died at Ciudad Real on the way. The old Gothic ideas of election of the person of the sovereign from the members of the royal house still lin- gered. By the Roman law, and by Alfonso's own Partidas (which, however, had not yet been generally promulgated, but granted only to certain towns), the eldest son of the dead prince, Fernando,* became heir to the crown, but the Visigothic rule favoured the adult second brother. VAlfonso's second son, Sancho, lost no time, but hurried to Ciudad Real and obtained the adherence of several of the nobles there assembled. He then overcame the African allies of the re- volted Moors, and on the strength of his victories pressed his father to confirm his so-called election to the heirship by the nobles at Ciudad Real. Alfonso lacked courage either to consent or refuse of his own action, and summoned a council of nobles and churcljj^ men to decide. The choice fell upon Sancho, who was acknowledged as heir at the Cortes of Segovia in 1276, and the two children of Fernando — Alfonso and Fernando — fled to Aragon with their mother, Blanche, f sister of King Philip ' * He and his successors were always known by the name of In- fantes de la Cerda, from certain bristles growing from a mole on his cheek. His descendants, the dukes of Medina-Cell, bear the name to this day. t They were accompanied in their flight by Violante, the Queen of Alfonso X, a sister of Pedro HI of Aragon, who espoused the cause of the legitimate heir, Alfonso de la Cerda, the eldest son of the dead Revolt of Sancho of Castile 187 the Bold of France. The action of Sancho toward his nephews was a good indication of the character of the man. Sent anew against the rebelhous Moors of Andalusia, he diverted much of the resources placed at his disposal to the winning of adherents to his own ambitious plans against his father. When the principal nobles of Castile had been gained, Sancho threw aside the mask, called a Cortes at Valladolid, formally deposed his father, and himself assumed the royal style. In the meanwhile Alfonso X, cooped up in his only loyal city of Seville, denounced his undutiful son with the aid of the Pope, and implored the assistance of the African Moslems to replace him on the throne of Castile. With their aid Alfonso brought some of the rebel nobles to their senses, and Sancho sought a reconciliation. The weak king, who by solemn testament had established as his heirs the children of his eldest son, now received the submission of Sancho and his brothers, acknowledging the first as heir of Castile, his brother Juan to be King of Seville and Badajoz, and the youngest brother, Jaime, to be King of Murcia. Alfonso thus, when he died (April 5, 1284), left behind him abundant sources of contention 'between his descendants. Sancho be- gan by brushing aside the claims of his brothers to be con- sidered as tributary kings by virtue of Alfonso's will, and then found himself face to face with his nobles. It has already been explained that in Castile and Leon the feudal nobility never obtained the same power as they wielded else- where; but the movement that was progressing in the rest of Europe, to raise the power of the sovereigns by the help of the middle classes and the weakening of the nobles, had Fernando. Pedro of Aragon, however, subsequently came to terms with Sancho, on condition of the conquering of a portion of Navarre and the division of the spoil between them, and Alfonso X then en- tered into negotiations with the King of France for the disinheritance of Sancho and the recognition of Alfonso de la Cerda as heir. 1 88 The Spanish People reached Spain, and, as we have seen, the Castilian nobles had won the first trick in the game through the weakness of Alfonso X. They doubtless thought that the aid they had given to the rebellious Sancho would secure them still fur- ther concessions, and lost no time after his accession in formu- lating their demands. The jealousy of the leading nobles had to a great extent split up their confederacy, and a number of turbulent " leagues,'' inimical to each other and to the- towns, sprang up, the result being a state of complete an- archy. Bands of marauders roamed through the country, assuming the name of one or another league, murdering and pillaging as they went. Outside the fortified walls of the towns no man's life was safe ; and then it was that the munici- palities, each one a little tributary republic, with its forces of horse and foot, its system of defence, and its considerable encircling territory (much of it communal property), joined together in their " brotherhoods " to protect the interests of the confederacy, and incidentally to strengthen the crown. The king's legislative power was well-nigh absolute, for he could summon to the Cortes the representatives of any or all of his tributary towns, and only such of the nobles and clergy as he pleased,* while his choice as to the time and place of the meeting, or of convoking a Cortes at all, was quite unfettered. When, therefore, the nobles found that Sancho IV (the Ferocious), very far from granting fresh concessions, was inclined to cancel many of those already given, they had no alternative but armed revolt against the king. Headed by Sancho's brother, the Infante Juan, they first demanded the dismissal of the king's favourite, Lope de * As the nobles had exempted themselves from all direct taxation, their attendance was not needed for the kings to obtain supply when money payment had to a large extent replaced feudal aids; and during this and the next century the sovereigns gradually discontinued sum- moning them except to take the oath of allegiance and those holding ofKcial positions. Revolt of Castilian Nobles 189 Haro; and to the extent of depriving Haro of some of his enormous weahh the king was ready to oblige them. Nego- tiations were therefore concluded for withdrawing from the favourite some of his grants and for summoning a Cortes at Alfaro (1288). But the proceedings ended in a free fight, in which Haro was killed and the king himself in dire danger; whereupon civil war again broke out, Haro's son and a party of nobles proclaiming young Alfonso de la Cerda as king, with the support of the King of Aragon. Sancho's danger was great, but he met it like a man and a king. First marching against the rebels and inflicting a defeat upon them, he made terms with the King of France by which the latter abandoned the cause of his young cousin, Alfonso de la Cerda, in exchange for the kingdom of Murcia, which Sancho ceded to France; and he also concluded an alliance with Portugal. In the midst of his turbulent reign he was forced to march south to face a new African invasion which came to attack his Moorish tributary, the King of Granada. The Castilians repelled the African Moslems, who re-embarked at Algeciras, but Sancho was unable to capture that town, though he was more fortunate at Tarifa, which city surrendered to the Christians in 1292, and was given in keep- ing to the Knights of Calatrava, with a subvention of 2,000,000 maravedis a year * — an arrangement altered the fol- * The foundation of the monkish militant Order of Calatrava, in imitation of the Knights Templars, is a good specimen of the way in which fiefs were granted by the Spanish kings during the reconquest. Alfonso VII of Castile (the Emperor) had confided the keeping of the important border castle of Calatrava to the keeping of the Knights Templars on his way to attack Almeria (1147), but on the advance of the Almohades ten years afterward the Christians abandoned the place. Sancho III then offered the castle and territory of 28 square leagues of country round it to any one who could win and hold it. The offer was accepted by two Cistercian monks — Ramon, Abbot of Fitero, and Diego Velasquez — and with the aid of the Arch- bishop of Toledo, who supplied them with funds and forces, the two monks won the fortress. The adventurers were shortly afterward constituted a knightly monkish order under the rules of Saint Bene- 14 I go The Spanish People lowing year by the undertaking of the famous Alfonso Perez de Guzman to defend the town for a subsidy of 600,000 mara- vedis annually. The king's brother Juan, on the collapse of a third at- tempt at rebellion, had taken refuge in Morocco, and offered the Moors (1293) to recapture Tarifa. Failing in this, owing to the heroism of the defender, he obtained possession of the son of Guzman, a child of tender years, and bringing him within sight of the walls summoned the father to sur- render the town or witness the decapitation of his innocent son. Guzman had pledged his word to hold Tarifa at any cost, and disdained to allow his love for his child to override his duty. With brutal cruelty and ostentation the Infante Juan beheaded the child before his father's eyes, and Alfonso Perez de Guzman the Good became henceforward one of the national heroes. For eleven years Sancho the Ferocious was King of Castile — eleven years of uninterrupted bloodshed and an- archy ; and when (in 1295) he died, he had abated no jot of the insolent armed aggression of the nobles. The heir was a child of nine, Fernando IV, and the regent appointed by the king's will was his wife, Maria de Molina, whose relation- ship with Sancho had made the legality of their marriage questionable, the Pope having always refused to grant a dis- pensation to them. The turbulent Infante Juan, the young king's uncle, once more raised the standard of revolt, and proclaimed himself king, with the support of the Moorish King of Granada. The Regent Maria sent the greatest of the nobles, Haro and the Laras, to combat the rebel with their forces ; but they joined diet by a papal bull (1164); and the aid of the knights being fre- quently solicited for the winning of places from the infidel, the pos- sessions of the order grew very extensive, and the grand masters of this and of the other orders of Santiago, Montesa, and Alcantara, which were formed after its example, became persons of enormous wealth and vast patronage, possessing almost sovereign powers. Maria de Molina 191 the insurgents, and for a time the regent and the child king had no city on their side but Valladohd, which was itself wav- ering. A Cortes summoned in the city, however, by the re- gent acknowledged Fernando IV as king (1295), but he had against him not only the rebel Infante Juan, but a powerful combination of Portugal, Aragon, Navarre, France, and Granada, all of which, bent upon the dismemberment of Cas- tile and Leon, united in proclaiming Alfonso de la Cerda as King of Castile, as he unquestionably was by right, and the Infante Juan King of Leon. Maria de Molina was heroic and wise. Appealing with some success to the loyalty of the nobles, but with much greater success to the towns, she collected around her in Val- ladohd the elements of defence. The Pope tardily sent her the dispensation which legitimized her son; Guzman the Good, having saved Tarifa and driven the Africans over the straits, stood by her side manfully; and the brave queen, fostering the " brotherhoods " of towns and summoning Cortes every year, held her own until her son Fernando reached the age to govern (1300). Unhappily the youth was influenced by the base Infante Juan and the Laras, and immediately after his majority was proclaimed he turned upon the mother to whom he owed his crown and demanded strict account of her stewardship during his minority. The free towns were indignant at the vile in- gratitude, and Medina del Campo, where the Cortes of Leon were to meet, intimated to the king that the gates would be shut against him unless he came accompanied by his mother. The magnanimity of Maria de Molina was, however, proof against all the ingratitude of her son, and of those who had been his enemies; and the queen, appearing by the side of Fernando in the Cortes, begged the latter, if only out of affection for her, to be loyal to their king, after which she proved triumphantly the honesty and purity of her adminis- tration during the king's minority. 192 The Spanish People The fortress of Algeciras was still held by the African Moors, and against it Fernando IV determined to lead his forces, while his ally, Jaime II of Aragon, attacked Almeria by sea. Assembling Cortes in Madrid, Fernando obtained from them the necessary resources; but no sooner was he before the fortress than his self-seeking nobles began to play him false, and to demand concessions as a premium for their loyalty; whereupon he patched up a peace with the Moors and retired to Burgos. Shortly afterward the tributary King of Granada again began to cause trouble, and Fernando went to join his army at Alcaudete. When he arrived at Martos, the contemporary chroniclers * say, that two brothers Car- vajal were brought before him for the murder of Don Juan de Benavides and were hastily condemned to death, although they solemnly protested their innocence and prayed for an opportunity of proving it. The accused, by Fernando's orders, were cast from a high precipice, and in the act of death summoned the king to meet them before the High Tribunal within thirty days. Needless to say, Fernando fell ill, and died at Jaen on the thirtieth day after (1312), and he accordingly goes down to history under the name of Fer- nando the Summoned. Before relating the events of the brilliant reign of Fer- nando's successor to the crowns of Leon and Castile it will be advisable to glance at the progress of affairs in the sister realm of Aragon after the death of Jaime the Conqueror (1276). We have related in an earlier page that the Coii- queror's eldest son, Pedro, inherited the Spanish dominions of his father, while Jaime, the younger, obtained the French territories and the Balearic Isles as tributary to his brother, the King of Aragon. Pedro, afterward called the Great, in- herited the foreign policy of his father, with a large share of * It is perhaps hardly correct to say that contemporary chronicles tell this doubtful story. It is first related by Ben Al Hatib fifty years after it is supposed to have happened, Aragon and Sicily 193 his determination and ability. His first acts after he was crowned in Zaragoza were to crush the attempted rising of nobles in Catalonia * and the revolt of the oppressed Moors in Valencia, and to prove to his subjects, including his brother, the tributary King Jaime of Majorca, that the mantle of the greater Jaime had fallen upon worthy shoulders. The ambition of Jaime the Conqueror to found a powerful Romance empire had been defeated by the progress of France southward, but the marriage of Pedro with the daughter of Manfred of Sicily opened out a wider prospect still toward the east, and dictated the foreign policy of Aragon for cen- turies afterward. On the death of the Emperor Conrad. IV, Duke of Swabia, his infant son Conradino succeeded under the tutelage of the excommunicated Manfred of Sicily, his uncle. The papacy was at daggers drawn with the empire and the house of Swabia, and the Pope nominated Charles, Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily, who defeated and killed Man- fred at the battle of Benejvento (1266), and entered into the government of his realm, shortly afterward executing the boy Conradino, titular King of Sicily, Duke of Swabia, and prospective emperor (1268). Charles of Anjou, the papal nominee, was a tyrant. Al- ready, when the boy king Conradino was sacrificed, the French usurper was detested ; and the cry for vengeance from the victim, as he threw his glove from the scaffold among the spectators, resounded in many a Sicilian heart. When the story and the glove were carried to Aragon, Jaime the Con- queror and his son Pedro saw that here was a kingdom almost ripe for their grasping. It was a task for Pedro, rather than for his father, for Pedro's wife was the daughter of King Man- fred and the aunt of Conradino. * The excuse for the rising was that Pedro had neglected to pro- ceed at once to Barcelona, after being crowned at Zaragoza, in order to take the oath to observe the privileges of Catalonia and receive the subsequent homage of the Catalans. 194 The Spanish People But it was a serious undertaking, for it meant defiance to the papacy, which claimed Aragon as a fief and had placed Jaime the Conqueror on his throne. When Pedro III was crowned he took the first step, and throwing off the suze- rainty to which his grandfather had submitted, he solemnly declared that he owed no allegiance to Rome. No church- man was allowed to aid him in assuming the royal symbols, and Pedro openly defied the Pope to interfere with him in his own kingdom. Then a strong fleet was prepared in Barcelona and Valencia, and, all indifferent to the papal ex- communication, Eedrg_JIL of Aragon made ready to assert his wife's right to her dead father's crown. The massacre of Frenchmen in Palermo, known by the name of the Sicilian " Vespers," precipitated matters. Charles of Anjou hurried with a fleet to Messina, bent upon punishing his subjects, but Pedro of Aragon was before him. Anjou's fleet was destroyed by the Aragonese sailor, Pedro Querel, and soon the King of Aragon was master of Sicily, to the en- thusiastic joy of the inhabitants. In vain Anjou challenged Pedro to combat at Bordeaux, for the Pope forbade the challenger himself to attend the lists, although the chivalrous, unstable King Jaime of Majorca, Pedro's brother, attended and answered defiance to Anjou and all his crew.* The Pope (Martin IV, a Frenchman) had a better way of dealing with Pedro than by personal combat, and, exer- cising his asserted right of suzerainty over Aragon and Cata- lonia, proclaimed a crusade against them and granted the * Edward I of England was to have presided at the lists, at which 100 French knights were to run against lOO Aragonese. Pedro him- self hastened to the tryst, but was warned in time that treachery and massacre were meant, and escaped in disguise. The Pope gave rigid orders for the abandonment of the affair, and neither Edward I nor Anjou was present. King Jaime, however, appears to have arrived on the scene at the hour originally fixed, and to have gone through the form of defiance, a record of his proceedings having been officially drawn up. It will be seen that Jaime subsequently opposed his brother's policy of expansion. France and Aragon 195 joint crowns to Philip of Valois, the son of Philip the Bold, who, with the aid of his father, advanced to take possession of his Spanish realm. This was a golden opportunity for the ambitious feudal nobles of Aragon. Jaime the Conqueror, after his long life of struggle with them, had in the end somewhat humbled them ; but KingJPedro's need was their gain, and they sulked aside and imposed hard conditions as a return for their aid. The towns, rich Barcelona and Gerona particularly, stood by the king manfully, and by their aid he obtained some successes over the French invaders, re- gaining Gerona, which they had seized, and destroying their fleet, thanks to the. skill of the famous Roger de Lauria. The savage attacks on the French by the African auxil- iaries of Aragon, the Almogavares, completed the discom- fiture of the invaders ; and the vast crusading army of 100,000 men, led by the dying Philip the Bold in person, retraced its steps by the road it had come through the desolated towns whose populations the soldiers of the Cross had massacred on their way (1285). Thus it happened that, though the King of Aragon be- came King of Sicily, with undefined dreams of expansion toward the Holy Land and the far Orient, two French princes were established as claimants for his crowns, and the power of the papacy was cast permanently on the side of France in the coming secular struggle between that country and Aragon. Castile, be it remembered, had no vital points of dispute with France, for Navarre and Aragon formed a buffer between her and the French Pyrenean frontier; but thenceforward the eyes of Aragon and Catalonia turned steadily eastward to Italy, and by every road they sought to reach it they found a Frenchman in their way. The different, interests of the two principal Spanish kingdoms must not be- lost sight of, because, as will be seen later, it affords a key to much that would otherwise be uijintelHgible. At the hour of Pedro's greatest need, in 1283, his recal- 196 The Spanish People citrant nobles met in the Cortes of Tarragona and formulated a series of complaints and demands such as had never before been presented to a sovereign ; and on this occasion the greater towns also complained of a foreign policy which pledged them to vast expenditure without due consultation. A few months later, at a Cortes held at Zaragoza, the prudent king acceded to all the extravagant conditions imposed by the nobles, and subsequently embodied in the Privilege of Union, which was five years afterward accepted by Pedro's son.* It was only at this cost that Pedro gained the aid of his nobles in support of his " spirited foreign policy " ; but withal the support was only partial and grudging, for it was a serious matter to fight against the Pope, and even the flighty King Jaime of Majorca sided with the enemies of his brother. It was while making preparations for a punitive expedition against his brother Jaime that Pedro the Great of Aragon died (1285) — one of the few worthy kings at a period when it was difficult for sovereigns to be otherwise than bad. Pedro left to his eldest son, Alfonso III of Aragon, his Spanish dominions, and to his younger son, Jaime, the king- dom of Sicily. The former was at sea with Lauria on his way to punish his uncle Jaime, King of Majorca, when his father died ; and he humbled the island before he returned to take possession of his inheritance. In his first proclamation to his people after his landing he assumed the title of King of Aragon, Majorca, and Valencia and Count of Barcelona ; but as he had not yet sworn to protect the privileges of his sub- jects, the nobles seized upon this as a means of humiliating him. Prohibiting him from assuming the royal state or title until he had received his investiture, they summoned him * This was not only a reiteration of al! the early conditions limiting and checking the exercise of the royal power, but it gave to subjects the le^al right to combine an'd make war upon their sovereign if they considered that he had failed in his part of the bargain. The Privilege of Union 197 to Zaragoza, where he was forced to apologize before even the conditional loyalty of the nobles was proffered him. Proceeding from one insolence to another, the league of nobles at last offended many of their own order who stood by the king, and for the next three years a destructive civil war between the two parties of nobles raged, generally speak- ing, to the disadvantage of the king. At length, at a Cortes at Zaragoza in 1288, the sovereign^ was constrained to grant the famous Privilege of Union, which legally confirmed the concessions already seized by the nobles. The king was prohibited from proceeding against any member of the Union without the accord of the chief justice and the -Gortes ; * he was bound to summon Cortes in November of every year at Zaragoza, in which the members would elect the king's council for the following twelve months. These and several similar concessions reduced the royal power to a minimum, and at a later period, as will be seen, the grant was not only cancelled but every record of it destroyed. Pedro the Great had left Sicily to his second son, Jaime; and Roger de Lauria, with the Aragonese fleet, succeeded in securing his peaceful establishment. But with an inimical French king in Naples opposite, and the cease- less intrigues of Rome, the position was untenable perma- nently, both in Sicily and Aragon, unless some modus vivendi could be arrived at. Edward I of England was the chosen arbitrator, and laboured ceaselessly to bring about an accord, meeting on one occasion Alfonso of Aragon personally on the * A few years afterward (1301) an important case was decided which gives an interesting example of the supremacy of the law in Aragon, and of the manner in which disputes between the king and the nobles were decided. A number of the nobles had risen in arms on the pretext that the king owed them some sums of money. At the Cortes of Zaragoza of 1301 permission was given for the case to be submitted to the chief justice, who decided in favour of the king, condemning the nobles to the forfeiture of their fiefs and various terms of banishment. ig8 The Spanish People Isle of Oleron, when terms were arranged. But the tardiness or bad faith of the parties stood in the way, and the treaty was left unfulfilled. Matters were aggravated also by the appearance in Jaca of papal legates from Nicholas IV, haughtily demanding of Alfonso III the immediate release of the Prince of Salerno, the son of the Anjou Ring of Naples, whom he held prisoner in Barcelona. Alfonso him- self was also summoned to appear before the Pope within six months, and to refrain from aiding his brother of Sicily. At length, tired of a struggle in which many of his own subjects were against him, Alfonso gave way ; and by the treaty of Tarascon (1291) he submitted humbly to the Pope, who recognised him as King of Aragon and Majorca, while Sicily was to be abandoned to young Charles of Anjou, the Prince of Salerno, and Alfonso himself was to marry Eleanor of England. Before, however, tlje treaty could be carried into efifect, and in the midst of the preparations for the mar- riage, Alfonso III of Aragon died, and Jaime of Sicily be- came his heir. Again the agreement fell through, for the new king, Jaime II of Aragon, had no intention, if he could help it, of giving up Sicily, where he was very popular. Leaving his brother Fadrique * and Roger de Lauria in charge of his Sicilian kingdom, Jaime II hurried to Zara- goza to receive the investiture of his new kingdoms, effected an alliance with Sancho IV (the Ferocious) of Castile, and then sought by negotiation to gain his ends. The papacy was in the throes of violent change, and there had been no stable pontiff for some years, when Boniface VIII mounted the throne, and with a strong hand arranged matters to his liking. By the treaty of Anarqui Jaime of Aragon was to submit to the Pope, to marry the daughter of Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples, and to surrender all claim to Sicily ; upon * Alfonso III in his will had requested his successor, Jaime, to cede Sicily to this prince when he (Jaime) should succeed to Aragon. Aragon and Sicily 199 which the Pope would raise his ban and recognise him as King of Aragon. But there was a secret treaty, by which Jaime was to furnish a fleet to enable the King of France treacherously to attack England, and Jaime was made by the Pope King of Corsica and Sardinia. But they had reckoned without their Sicilians. The in- habitants of the island had not shaken off the yoke of Anjou to be quietly handed back at the pleasure of potentates whom they never saw, and they promptly repudiated the ar- rangement and proclaimed the Infante Fadrique as their king. As in duty bound by his treaty, Jaime II of Aragon sent expeditions to expel his brother from the realm which he himself had bartered away. The King of Sicily's navy was scattered by his old friend Roger de Lauria, against him now ; but still stout Fadrique would not give in. Then Charles of Anjou, with special papal powers, tried his hand, and failed disastrously ; and Fadrique's firmness finally had its reward in his recognition by all as King of Sicily^ on condition of his marriage with the daughter of the Anjou King of Naples, and the adoption of the latter as his heir.* Jaime II did not obtain possession of his new islands of Sardinia and Corsica without opposition from the Genoese and Pisans, who had held them for centuries ; but at length, in 1324 and 1326 respectively, he entered into his nominal sovereignty, though for many years afterward the islands were Aragonese in little more than name. Jaime II himself died in 1327, leaving as his successor his son, Alfonso IV, * As a pendant to this war the famous expedition of the Catalans to the East took place in 1302. A large number of Catalan and Ara- gonese adventurers had fought for Fadrique, and when the war ended they formed a body of 4,000 foot and 500 horse, under Roger de Flor and Berenguer de Enteneza. and accepted the offer of Andronicus, Emperor of Constantinople, to enter his service against the Turks. After extraordinary adventures and varied success, they dominated the whole of Macedonia, and subsequently Athens itself, the dukedom of which they offered as a fief to Fadrique. 200 The Spanish People the whole of whose nine years' reign was taken up by wars and quarrels between Catalonia and Genoa with regard to the control of the navigation of the Mediterranean, and the dis- cords raised by Alfonso's second wife, Eleanor of Castile, in the interests of her own children and to the prejudice of Pedro, the son of Alfonso by his first marriage and his successor to the crown in 1336. From the first day of his reign Pedro IV of Aragon was face to face with his nobles, and the greater part of his long reign was occupied in his dissensions with them. The new king was an overbearing, ambitious man, a great stickler for his rights and the letter of the law, which character gained for him the title of Pedro the Ceremonious. When, therefore, the Catalan and Valencian nobles demanded that he should take the oath to preserve the liberties of those dominions before being crowned as King of Aragon in Zaragoza and receiving the homage of the Catalans and Valencians as such, the king refused ; and the nobles, except the Aragonese, ab- sented themselves in a body from the coronation, and con- tinued to frown upon him when, according to the Constitu- tion, he presented himself at Lerida and Valencia to receive the investiture of Catalonia and Valencia. This was the beginning of a faction war, of which the immediate cause was the dissensions between Pedro and his stepmother, Eleanor of Castile, and her two sons, Fernando and Juan, to whom the late king had left important inde- pendent lordships, which Pedro was disinclined to recognise. Alfonso XI of Castile took up arms in defence of his nephews' rights, and Pedro, with the Union of nobles mostly against him, was obliged to give in and submit the question at issue to jurists. These naturally pronounced in favour of the two young Infantes Fernando and Juan, who thus retained the estates their father had left them. After seven years of civil discord, Pedro IV bethought himself that his tributary King Jaime of Majorca, his brother- Civil Conflicts in Aragon 201 in-law. and cousin, had not yet paid homage, and as Jaime was at war in his French dominions with Pliilip of Valois, it seemed a favourable opportunity for seizing Majorca with all the forms of law. When King Pedro had become master of the Baleares, he followed Jaime to his county of Rous- sillon, from which he expelled him, and finally to his lordship of Montpellier, where Jaime fell in battle, and his young son, another Jaime, was captured by his merciless uncle and car- ried to Barcelona. The lords of the Union, who looked upon Pedro IV with growing suspicion, soon found another good reason for fighting him under the strong leadership of his own next brother, the Infante Jaime, Count of Urgel. On one occasion only had the crown of Aragon passed to a woman, when Pe- tronilla succeeded her father, Ramiro the Monk (i 137) ; but on that occasion the royal power was vested from the first in her husband, the Count of Barcelona, and there were powerful na- tional reasons for the arrangement. Pedro the Ceremonious, having no sons, endeavoured to avail himself of this prece- dent for settling the crown on his daughter Constanza, to the exclusion of his next brother Jaime. This was held to be an infraction of the Constitution, and the Union legally rose in arms against the king.* And not nobles alone, but the bur- gesses and"lsmall gentry joined forces with the Union, and demanded the king's presence at a Cortes in Zaragoza to renew his oath to respect the privileges' of his subjects. Pedro dared not refuse, and was received with cold courtesy by his offended subjects, to whom he granted every concession de- manded, although he previously made a secret declaration that if he were forced to go beyond the letter of the law his concessions would be of no value. Pedro made good use of his opportunities in Zaragoza, and managed to divide the nobles, attracting to his side the * The king's contention was that his brother had forfeited his rights by taking the part of the late Jaime, King of Majorca, 202 The Spanish People powerful Don Lope de Luna and a number of others who were opposed to the extreme measures of their colleagues. Summoning a new Cortes in Barcelona, with the pretended object of reconciliation, the king now thought himself strong enough to strike a blow at the nobles. Their leader, the In- fante Jaime, heir to the crown, was poisoned as soon as he arrived in the city, and the announcement of the king's legis- lative proposals drove the Union to open war. Led by the king's younger half-brother, Fernando, they gained at first some successes ; but Pedro's adherents met the army of the nobles at Epila, near Zaragoza, and utterly routed them with terrible slaughter, the Infante Fernando being captured, and murdered shortly afterward at his brother's table (1348). The loss of the principal nobles of the Union at Epila was a deathblow to the feudal cause in Aragon ; but the Valen- cian nobles were still in arms in their capital, and they had to be crushed before the king's triumph was complete. Before dealing his final blow King Pedro summoned a Cortes at Zaragoza, and there, in the presence of all, he took the parch- ment upon which was engrossed the terms of the Privilege of Union and with his dagger hacked it into shreds, and ordered to be expunged for ever all ofificial record or mention of such a grant. Then hurrying to Valencia, he dealt with the rest of the rebels. The city was being swept by the plague, and panic had seized upon the inhabitants. The terrible news of Epila, and of the violent abrogation of the Privilege of Union, came to the nobles like a sentence of doom, and when they met the king's forces at Mislata they were defeated, and submitted to their angry sovereign. There was no mercy shown to the leaders ; and thenceforward the nobles of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia took their seats in the parliaments, and shared the government with the king and the burgesses, but they were an oligarchy no more. In justice to Pedro it should be mentioned that he only Feudalism Crushed in Aragon 203 abrogated the overbearing Privilege of Union, which had been wrung from his predecessors in their hours of weakness ; he made no attempt to infringe upon the general charter of Aragon, which made the sovereign himself subject to the law and perfectly protected all ranks of citizens from illegal oppression on the part of their kings. Pedro, indeed, when he had established his supremacy of arms, increased the power of the chief justice, who in future was practically irremovable, and by a number of enactments which increased the security of the private citizen proved that he understood the policy of securing the sympathy of the middle classes. The birth of a son to Pedro IV by his third wife, Eleanor of Sicily, put an end to one of the causes of civil strife in Aragon by providing a direct male heir to the crown ; but a few years later it gave rise to exactly similar dissensions to those which had occurred at the end of the former reign, Pedro's fourth wife, Sibyl de Foix, being the object of the bitter persecution of her husband's son Juan. Aragon was already feeling some of the troubles entailed by the possession of colonies. Sicily had for the present been lost to her by Fadrique's treaty with the King of Naples ; but Sardinia, only half subdued by the Aragonese, and still cov- eted by the Genoese, kept Pedro at war in the Mediterranean for well-nigh forty years, and drove him at last to consent to a divided dominion, which his subjects considered a dis- grace to him and them (1386). When the Union was in arms against him Pedro had en- tered into an alliance with Pedro the Cruel of Castile, the terms of which included the murder of their respective brothers — Don Fernando, who was duly killed, as already related, after he was captured at Epila, and Henry of Trasta- mara, the elder half-brother of Pedro of Castile. Pedro of Aragon did not carry out the latter part of the agreement, but espoused the cause of Henry the Castilian pretender, and aided him and his French allies in the long series of wars The Spanish People which ended in die mnrder of Pedro the Cmd and the deva- tioa erf Heniy of Tiastamara te the Casriliaii tfaime. The re- 5i£:s of iZiis laag and ingkirioiis series of wars was of no £res.t inqtcxfance to Ars^oiL. except in. weaikewaag Castile and oUiging^ Fiance by exposing England, Castile's allj; 'z~z it I^ Valewia and Catalo-ia esfaansted and disoon- rented ar the Ic-g imtai op tion to the peacebil Mediterranean trade fnHn \diich diey creir their weahh; and wben Pedro TV died, in 13I87. after a rdgn of fifty-- for the pur- pose of satisfying the soldiery that Flanders ^\•as for a time freed of Spanish pikes (Januarj', 1561). But the mischief was already done. A wide breach between sovereign and people had been opened, which could never again be bridged. De 366 The Spanish People Granvelle was the butt for the hatred of all men. Orange and Egmont resigned their seats at the council board as a protest against him. Montigny was sent to Spain to represent the view of the Flemish nobles to Philip, and in the meanwhile De Granvelle in Flanders and bigoted Alba in Madrid could only fume and bluster, urging Philip to treat Flandefs as he treated Spain. But Philip was in no hurry. He coldly directed his sister to enforce the law at all costs — " the law " meaning in this case burning and torturing some of the most industrious and useful citizens of the states, which she knew, and said, she had no power to do ; for the Flemish governors and princes refused to persecute and slay their fellow-subjects at the bidding of a foreign tribunal. Thus matters went from bad to worse. Philip, unmoved and sphinxlike, suddenly, when it was too late, sacrificed De Granvelle in 1564, and for a few months the prospect was more hopeful, for Margaret was a Fleming who knew her countrymen from the first had disliked the persecution, which she foresaw would be worse than useless. The Flemish nobles came back to the council ; Philip was all smiles, and his letters were gravely kind. But he still continued to insist upon the execution of the edict, notwithstanding Margaret's assurance that it was impossible, as the number of Protestants was large, and she could not burn whole populations. The inquisitors and officers appointed by De Granvelle, too, still continued their cruelty and corruption, and the dishonesty of those in authority who sought to grow rich before the im- pending avalanche fell increased the discontent of honest folk. In vain showy, shallow Egmont went to Madrid to beg the king to let Flanders govern itself in the old way. He was flattered and delayed, while sterner orders than ever went to Margaret to slay and spare not, for Philip was hardening his heart for the effort by which he thought he was to attain unity in Flanders by means of religion, even as had been done in Spain. Philip and Flanders 367 Alba fretted in the Spanish Council of State at Philip's slowness. " Make a clean sweep, once and for all," he said, " of these heretics." His king meant to do it if needful, but in his own good time. He knew that an army of pikes alone would finally be efficacious in such a case, and money, as we have seen, was hard to get. But by the end of 1565 his arrangements were made, and he hurled his thunderbolt. In a formal letter to his sister he announced his unbending will that the Inquisition should proceed with the utmost rigour to stamp out heresy, no matter at what sacrifice. " Let all pris- oners be put to death, and suffer them no longer to escape through the neglect, weakness, or bad faith of the judges. If any judges are too timid to execute the edicts, I will re- place them by men who have more courage and zeal." Mar- garet wept and passionately protested. The governors of the provinces, she said, \vould not burn 60,000 or 70,000 persons for her. The great Flemish nobles deserted the regent ; they, at all events, would have no hand in such a hellish business, although they were Catholics. Then the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry of the north, most of them Protestants, arose and loudly declared that no Spaniard should burn them or theirs for their faith. To Protestant England flocked ship- loads of fugitives, clamouring for aid and countenance from those whose blood was already boiling at the atrocities which the Inquisition had committed on English sailors and traders in Spain. Elizabeth did not wish to quarrel with Philip, for Marie Stuart and the Guises were still a danger to her, but the cry of the Netherlanders found an echo that stirred the heart of all England, and, much as the queen might denounce such rebels to the Spanish ambassador, she and her ministers, and more particularly the Puritan party of them, shut their eyes and ears tightly to the help that was freely given to those who called themselves in derision of their enemies the Beggars of the Sea. Then came the outburst of Protestant fury — the 368 The Spanish People wrecking of churches and desecration of altars. The Regent Margaret could but weep, for she saw the tide of tragedy rising which was to drown her native land in blood, and wrest from the hands of her brother's race the best part of their ancient patrimony. But Philip himself was blind and oblivious to all but the blood-boltered Christ, before whom he writhed in a maniacal agony of devotion, sure in his dark soul, as were so many of his countrymen, that the Divine finger pointed from glory alone upon him as the one chosen man who was to enforce upon earth the rule of the Most High, with — as a necessary consequence — Philip of Spain as his viceie^ent. Only once, even in appearance, had he wavered ; but when news came to him that Orange had become a Protestant and had fled to Lutheran Germany to organize resistance, he knew the time had come when he must fight to the death for his Flemish dominions, or his system of enforced religious unity must fall to the ground, and the political predominance of Spain over Europe was doomed. He would go to Flanders himself, he said, though he probably never meant it ; but, in any case, the ferocious Alba would go as his right arm. Like a blight the news fell upon the Netherlands. To England fled thou- sands of afifrighted ones, for whom the very name of Alba was already a terror. Margaret herself threatened to re- tire if he came. Her brother took her at her word, and when the cruel Toledan duke marched with his army into Flanders (September, 1567) the regent washed her hands of the coming massacre of her countrymen and was coldly dismissed. Elizabeth and her council were in a panic at- the near neighbourhood of strong Spanish forces, for all Europe knew now that the great struggle of the creeds was to commence, and were uncertain where the blow was first to fall. Hugue- nots, Lutherans, and Anglicans were ranged on the one side ; Philip, with solid Spain behind him, the Pope, and Catholics Alba in Flanders 369 generally, on the other; with Catharine de Medici cleverly balancing in France for her own advantage, and Elizabeth in England alternately hectoring and simpering, blowing hot and cold, as Leicester or Burghley was paramount in her council, but generally helping the Flemings as far as she could without open war with Philip. Alba went about his hideous work with cold precision, no doubts assailing his mind as to the righteousness of his acts. The highest heads were to be struck at first, and Eg- mont and Horn, both Catholics, fell treacherously on the scaffold because they were leaders and beloved, while Bergues and Montigny were done to death in Spain for the same rea- son.* They were sacrificed not for heresy, but as a warning * It was long believed by a certain school of writers that Philip sacrificed his only son and heir, Don Carlos, at this juncture for his supposed heresy. There is, however, now no room for doubt that the wretched youth, who from his birth was deformed and weak- minded, had become a dangerous lunatic after an accident to his head, and that his death was the result of his malady. His behaviour, even as early as 1563, was so violent and scandalous as to cause deep grief to his father; and as the prince grew older he became worse. There is a probability that he was approached by friends of the Netherlands, or perhaps by the Ruy Gomez peace party in Spain, and wished to be given the task of pacifying the Flemings. The king's refusal to let him go drove him to frenzy, and he tried to kill both Alba and Car- dinal Espinosa. His hatred for his father was that of a homicidal maniac, and he divulged to his young uncle Don Juan that he would kill the king. His arrest by the king himself was therefore necessary. His ravings in prison and his refusal of nourishment for days together were acts of an hysterical imbecile with homicidal crises. Whatever may have been the result of the long trial — of which the records were destroyed — the wretched young man condemned himself to death (1568) by his own aberrations and excesses, and the story of his murder in prison is one of the many fabrications of the arch liar Antonio Perez. The death of Carlos took place only a few weeks before that of the beautiful Queen Isabel de Valois, his stepmother and originally his own proposed bride, to whom he was so madly attached. The story of her love for him is of course absurd, and his extravagant affection for her and his aunt Juana, also a proposed bride for him, was the obsession of a lunatic rather than the longings of a lover. 370 The Spanish People that there must be no more talk of the rights of Flanders as against Philip's will. Then, though the affrighted people flocked to church, and all was calm — for crafty Orange in Germany had not yet given the war cry — the massacre of Flemish men and women. Catholics and Protestants, com- menced. A devastating tornado of slaughter swept through the populous, industrious communities, and the Flemings humbly bent their heads to the storm. On the 1st of July, 1570, Alba thought he had conquered, and from his splendid throne in Antwerp announced that Philip in his great clem- ency had granted an amnesty to all his faithful people. Her- esy and revolt, he dreamed, were terrorized to death, and Holland, Flanders, and Artois held together with Spain by the iron band of religious uniformity. But Alba and his master over rated their murderous vic- tory. The alcabala, as we have seen, was ruining Spanish industry by limiting the consumption of food and manufac- ttires to the places where they were produced and increasing their price to an extent which made them unable to compete with foreign produce. Spain itself was bleeding to death, but the trade and commerce of Flanders were then the richest in the world, and might be made to produce vast sums in taxes. Alba was in dire straits for money ; his fierce soldiery was unpaid, and from the Castilian Cortes not a real over the ordi- nary and extraordinary grants of 1 50,000,000 maravedis a year could be obtained. At great sacrifice, Philip had arranged to borrow from the Genoese bankers a large sum for Alba's urgent need. The money was sent by sea at the lenders' risk, and most of the ships that carried it were chased by Hugue- not and Dutch privateers into English ports, and there seized early in 1569 by Elizabeth, who applied the money to her own uses. Passionate protest, threats, and cajolery were exerted in vain to induce her to surrender it. She was quite as solvent as Philip, she said, and would borrow it herself. The Spanish ambassador, a hot-headed, insolent plotter, in close league Alba in Flanders 371 with Elizabeth's enemies,* was contumaciously expelled the country. Alba and Philip embargoed Enghsh property in Flanders and Spain, and Elizabeth retorted by seizing ten times as much Spanish property in England. Yet Philip dared not go to war with her, as Alba frankly told him, for with her aid Orange might raise Holland, and the King of Spain and the Indies could not squeeze another ducat from his distressed country, for he had pledged or sold everything he possessed. So to the rich commerce of Flanders he and Alba turned for relief. The Netherlanders always had a keen eye to their own interests and were skilful financiers. When therefore Alba tried to fix the alcabala, or tenth penny, upon them, they knew it meant ruin to their commercial pre-emi- nence, and they rose at last to face the tyrant in defence of their pockets more fiercely than they had' ever risen to fight for their autonomy or their religious liberty. Thenceforward the causes of faith and sound finance were linked together, and the stubborn Dutchmen stood shoulder to shoulder until the battle of Protestantism and of freedom was won. Of the incidents of the awful struggle details can not be given here. Massacre, without truce or mercy, cowed the Catholic Wallons and broke their spirit ; but, through it all, Holland and Zeeland stood firm under the great leader Orange. There were two parties in Philip's councils, the party of unrelenting bigotry, led by Alba and Cardinal Espi- nosa, and that of peace and diplomacy, of which the king's only friend, Ruy Gomez, was the leader. In the absence of Alba, the latter party was paramount, and Philip himself be- came disgusted at the fruitless and endless slaughter in Flanders of Protestants and Catholics alike. Alba's own hard heart was well-nigh broken at his failure, for he could not * He had commenced plotting with the imprisoned Marie Stuart as soon as he arrived, and was the principal mover in the Ridolfi plot, which was supported by the Duke of Norfolk and other English Catholic nobles. 372 The Spanish People kill all Holland. The English and the rebels held the sea, and arms and supplies came in plenty to Zeeland, while no Spanish ship dared to approach a Flemish harbour with- out strong escort, and Spanish commerce was well-nigh harried off the seas by privateers, and pirates who called themselves so. Philip thought he was doing a holy work, and if it suc- ceeded the sacrifice of life would not, in his view, have weighed a feather in the balance; but to sacrifice life, and especially the lives of Catholics, without object or result, was distasteful to him, for he had no love of blood for its own sake. Alba was therefore recalled in disgrace* (i573). and a new governor, Requesens, pledged to mildness and conciliation, was sent, to persuade, rather than drive, the Flemings to unity with Spain, the intention of the king being doubtless first to win back the Belgian Catholics who had been driven away by Alba's severity and the imposition of the " tenth penny," and then subsequently to deal with the Protestant Dutchmen separately and without mercy. In the meanwhile matters were growing ever more wretched in Spain itself. It has already been pointed out that on the retirement of Charles the temporary burst of in- dustrial activity that had succeeded the discovery of America was on the decline, and that the enormous expenses of the emperor's wars had reduced the resources of Spain to penury. A financial genius of the first order, with despotic power, might perhaps have rehabilitated public credit and have re- stored to some extent the prosperity of the citizens. But Philip was, if possible, a worse financier and political econo- mist than his father, while the great struggle to which he had * Alba himself boasted that he had burned or executed 18,000 per- sons in the Netherlands, in addition to the far greater number he massacred during the war, many of them women and children. Eight thousand persons were burned or hanged in one year, and the total number of Alba's Flemish victims can not have fallen short of 50,000. Philip's Fiscal System 373 pledged himself called for the employment of ever-increasing treasure, and he dragged his country still farther down the slope of bankruptcy. His system of raising money was to seize private remittances from the Indies ; to levy forced loans on prelates, nobles, and wealthy persons; to borrow largely on the most usurious terms, which were afterward repudi- ated ; and, above all, to sell crown seigniories, offices, and titles of nobility conferring exemption from ordinary taxation, and so to reduce future revenue. While the Cortes ceaselessly protested against these measures, the alternatives they pro- posed were, if anything, worse. Their remedies for national exhaustion took the form of prohibiting the export of precious metals, or their use in any form but coin, the hampering, and sometimes the suspension, of export of goods even to Amer- ica ; the arbitrary fixing of prices, with the foolish idea of rendering commodities cheaper, but with the real result of paralyzing industry ; and the enactment of furious laws against extravagance in dress and eating by the upper classes, which laws were regularly disregarded after the first few weeks. The depletion of agricultural labour by the short- lived activity in the towns and by the constant drain of men for America and the wars had thrown large tracts of land out of cultivation,* while the ever-growing estates of the Church and nobles in mortmain badly cultivated, and pay- ing no taxation, threw upon the remaining landed classes an increasing burden, which in many cases made the soil not worth cultivating. Vagrancy and beggary were appallingly prevalent; the Church and the monasteries were crammed to overflowing with insolent idlers; the strangling of industry by alcabalas, tolls, and inland customhouses, the craze for elegance, pleas- * Spain, the finest wheat-growing country in Europe, was obliged by famine to import large quantities of wheat on several occasions in the reign of Philip, who was forced to connive at the violation of his own edict and permit the importation of it even from England. 374 The Spanish People ure, and show, and the great number of Church holidays had now made most Spaniards adverse to. labour; while the enor- mous number of so-called nobles or gentry, who looked upon all trade or handicraft as beneath them, added to the already existing prejudice against useful work. Thus soon had the curse of extended empire and unsup- ported ambition produced its baleful effects. While Spanish fields remained untilled and Spanish industry dying, the strongest and best of the sons of Spain were swaggering in Milan, Naples, or Sicily ; were garrisoning fortresses in north Africa, dying by thousands in the unknown wilderness of South and Central America, and fighting the hopeless battle against the forces of freedom in the Netherlands. Spain, indeed, had undertaken a work too great for her strength, and though her people stood by their self-imposed task of the religious unification of Christendom with a te- nacity which astonished and deceived the world, the end was inevitable, and that end was ruin. Upon the overburdened and poverty-stricken commoners of Castile the weight of world-wide expenditure fell. The Aragonese and Catalans, with their solid class parliaments, could, and did, take care of themselves. Milan, Naples, and Sicily were oftener a source of expense than of revenue, while barefaced corruption and malversation of Spanish officers diverted most of the State revenues from America, even when the galleons were not cap- tured on their way by the English privateers. With Spanish commerce nearly swept from the sea, with Spanish trade well-nigh dead, and the much-vaunted King of Spain a bankrupt without a rag of credit with foreign bankers, there was never any thought, either by monarch or nation, of a surrender of principle. In a month Philip might have pacified the Netherlands by giving full liberty of con- science, which would have left him the sovereignty of a con- tented and prosperous state ; he might have insured the firm friendship of England and perfect safety for his commerce Spirit of the Spanish People 375 by acknowledging some equality of creeds. All other ques- tions were subsidiary to this. There was room and to spare in the wide Americas for Hawkins, Drake, and Cavendish, as well as for Philip, if Spain had been content to abandon the fetish of religious unity, in which, it is true, its own interior national solidarity was bound up, but which was not politically neces- sary for other countries. The attitude of Spain during the sixteenth century and its extraordinary fidelity to an idea must not be attributed alone, as it usually is, to the personal character of the mon- arch. Phihp II, in his gloomy pride, his mystic devotion, his overpowering individuality, was but the personification of the spirit of his people ; for through disappointment and de- feat, through misery, poverty, oppression, and suffering, they followed him with loyal devotion, almost with worship, to the unhappy end. We have in earlier chapters traced, step by step, the development of the Spanish character from the elements out of which it was formed ; we have noticed its intense personality, its ecstatic veneration for divine forces, of which each individual conceived itself to be a part, its constant yearning for distinction by sacrifice in vanquishing the forces of evil. We have also remarked the fervid avidity with which, as a consequence, the people threw themselves into the spirit of knight-errantry. By the middle of the six- teenth century the glamour of giants and ogres and captive princesses was insufficient to satisfy minds which the litera- ture of the Italian renaissance had rendered more practical and contact with foreign peoples had enlightened, but the introspective individuality of Spaniards was still as strong as ever, and sought for a fresh direction in which it might be displayed. The religious fervour which first demonstrated itself in Isabel the Catholic, the exaltation induced by the Inquisition, and the ascetic mysticism which at once was the chief char- acteristic and the main policy of Philip II, provided for the 3/6 The Spanish People Spanish people the direction for which their spirit yearned. Priests and friars were ever present. In court, in camp, and in everyday Hfe the atmosphere of rigid unified religion en- veloped all things and persons. Hard, severe, and ascetic, as a protest against Moorish grace, cleanliness, and elegance, and equally against the sensuous beauty with which the Ital- ians had invested their worship, the Spanish mind revelled in the painful, self-sacrificing side of religion, which appealed to their nature. They became a nation of mystics, in which each person felt his own community with God, and, as a con- sequence, capable of any sacrifice, any heroism, any suffer- ing in His cause. The ruling idea was one of celestial knight- hood, of daring adventure to rescue the cause of suffering Christ, even as the now waning knight-errants had under- taken to rescue ill-treated ladies. Saint Teresa de Jesus, Saint Ignatius Loyola and his marvellous company, and Saint Juan de la Cruz, with their visions and their ecstasies, were merely types ; there was hardly a monastery without its fasting seer or its saintly dreamer, hardly a nunnery without its cata- leptic miracle worker, hardly a barren hillside without its hermit, living in filth and abject misery of the flesh, but with the exalted conviction of his personal community with God. Not churchmen alone, but laymen and soldiers, too, were swayed by the same strange thought, and went forth to work or war in a spirit of sacrifice, relieved by orgies of hideous immorality. Philip himself, living like a hermit and toil- ing like a slave in his stone cell, practising rigid morti- fications, and undergoing the voluntary suffering in which he gloried, was beloved by his people, because he was moved by the same instinct that they were. He led them, it is true, but he did so because they wished to tread the same road. There was no great wealth behind this nation, except such as might be obtained by labour; it was ignorant and backward, with none of the ethnological solidarity which Spirit of the Spanish People 377 lends force to a people. The English were more hardy and persistent, the French were more advanced, the Germans were more thoughtful and intelligent, the Italians were more refined; but yet, withal, none of them had this irresistible impetus which made Spaniards soldiers of Christ, each man inspired by a mystic strength beyond his own, and which gave to the Spanish nation in the sixteenth century a pre- dominance in Europe which neither its resources nor its stage of development warranted. It was this extraordinary exaltation which led Philip to intrigue in the new meeting of the Council of Trent (1562) to prevent the unification of Christendom on any lines but his own. French and German bishops, and a strong party in the Vatican itself, endeavoured to adopt resolutions per- mitting the marriage of priests and the administration of the sacrament in two kinds ; but PhiHp haughtily dictated his will to the prelates, and when finally the Pope (Pius IV) remon- strated with him for thus meddling in doctrinal affairs, the pontiff was rated like a schoolboy by the Spanish ambassador, Vargas, and his bulls conveying the decisions of the council were contemptuously shut out of Spain because one of the res- olutions was supposed to touch, ever so lightly, upon the om- nipotence of Philip over the Spanish Church. When Pius died, in 1665, a very different man mounted the throne of Saiijt Peter. Michael Ghislieri (Pius V) was as arrogant as Philip himself, and a bitter' struggle was inevitable. Pius purposely provoked it by issuing fresh bulls enjoining some reforms in Church administration. These bulls, as before, were refused currency in Spain, unless with Philip's counter- sign, and the Pope then opened his batteries by peremptorily ordering the bulls to be promulgated in the Spanish terri- tories in Italy. The Spanish viceroys threatened to imprison any bishop who obeyed the Pope, and the latter excomnm- nicated the viceroys. But the bishops and clergy had all to look to Philip for their places and pay and obeyed the king. 378 The Spanish People Then, in revenge, Pius refused to renew to Philip the right of selHng the crusade bulls, but the Spaniards dared not refuse to buy them of their king, and the Pope's permission was for a time dispensed with. Threats and reproaches were showered from Rome on Philip for allowing the Inquisition to keep the Archbishop of Toledo (Carranza) in prison, and for spending the princely revenues of the see in building his vast monastery palace of the Escorial on the wild mountain side of the Guadarrama. But finally the Pope had to confess himself beaten, for to Philip and his people their great mission of unification needed no papal sanction, though it might claim its aid. Another good instance of the way in which this fanatical feeling overrode all considerations of humanity, of justice, and even of self-interest, is seen in that most wicked and dis- astrous measure, the expulsion of the Moriscos from Anda- lusia. During the reign of Charles the whole of these people were nominally absorbed in the Catholic Church, and were in gradual process of amalgamation. Edicts had been passed forbidding them to wear their Moorish garb or to speak any language but Spanish, but they were industrious and prosperous, and their large special contributions to the em- peror's treasury in times of need had caused the edicts to be very lightly enforced. Many of them, especially in the king- dom of Granada, secretly kept to the religion of their fathers, though openly conforming to Christianity. Their Christian neighbours, hating them for their thrift and prosperity, were not long after Philip's accession in finding a pretext for attacking them. They imported slaves from Africa to aid in their tillage, and this was prohibited by petition of the Cor- tes of 1560. It was a heavy blow to them, but still heavier was the edict of 1563 forbidding them to possess arms of any sort. The policy was continued in 1567, when an order was issued prohibiting any distinction of garb or appearance, and commanding that no woman should walk abroad with a cov- Moriscos of Granada 379 ered face,* that no fastenings should be put upon the doors of Morisco houses, that Spanish names and the Spanish lan- guage alone should be used, and, above all, that the indul- gence in warm baths, that special luxury of the Moslem, should be discontinued. The people were quiet, hardworking, thrifty folk, but to see all their traditions trampled upon was more than they could bear. First they tried, as before, evasion and bribery, and in the meanwhile those who knew them best, such as Mendoza, Marquis of Mondejar, hereditary governor of Gra- nada, tried to bend Philip to wiser councils. But the fanatical churchmen of the Alba party were now paramount (1567), and no mercy could be expected from them. At length (Christmas, 1568) the storm burst. From the mountains there swept down upon Granada a force of Moslem fanatics, sacking Christian houses and desecrating Christian shrines. Over the fair Vega passed a horde of incarnate demons, leav- ing only desolation behind them, and then to the savage fast- nesses of the Alpujarras they retreated to erect a new Moslem kingdom under Aben Humeya, one of the prophet's kin. Through Andalusia and Valencia the news of the revolt of Islam spread. Thousands, who had well-nigh forgotten the great days of their forefathers under the caliphs, sprang to arms ready to die for the faith and the traditions that once had been so glorious. Army after army of Christians were hurled upon them with the openly avowed object of massacre — not war. Wom- en and children, as well as men, were slaughtered in cold blood. How many thousands fell in the attacks and in- evitable reprisals it is impossible now to say. Six thousand helpless women and children fugitives were sacrificed in one * This practice had taken such firm hold of the people of the south of Spain that traces of it remain to the present day in Andalusia, wheje the women of the poorer class constantly cover the lower part of the face with the corner of a shawl. In Peru and Chili the custom is even more universal. 38o The Spanish People day by the Marquis de los Velez, but still the churchmen were not satisfied. In the council chamber and the cathedral they cried for blood, and ever more blood — just as the same men did for the blood of Flemish heretics at the hands of their chief Alba. In vain the civil governors, and even sol- diers, advocated some moderation, some mercy. Deza the inquisitor and Espinosa the cardinal in their purple robes knew no mercy for those who denied their sacred right to impose a doctrine upon other men. Tired at length of the complaints of the churchmen against the slackness of the soldiers, Philip decided to send his bril- liant, handsome young base-brother Don Juan to suppress the rising. The bastard of Austria was gifted and beloved be- yond most men of his time ; he was only twenty-two, and it was thought that he would be too high for the priests to attack and too inexperienced to do otherwise than carry out to the letter his brother's orders. The hanging of Moriscos was ill suited to his chivalrous temper, and he chafed under the dictation of the merciless orders he had to execute. Every Morisco in Granada was to be sent to arid Castile, and those who resisted or were unable to travel were to be hanged (1569). In despair, thousands of innocent creatures, many of them really Christians, were hounded from the fair fields which they and theirs had tilled for centuries, and driven forth to slavery. In the meanwhile the war continued in the mountains. Division had broken out in the so-called Moorish kingdom, and Aben Humeya, sunk in licentiousness, was murdered ; the Spanish troops had conquered and had been conquered in partial engagements over and over again ; but at length Don Juan successfully stormed Galera, the country was ex- hausted, and the Moorish king begged for terms of peace. Don Juan himself was on the side of clemency, but the churchmen in Philip's council would have none of it. Death or slavery for every creature of Moorish blood in the king- Moriscos of Andalusia 381 dom of Andalusia was the stern command. From their beau- tiful plains, cultivated like gardens, from the fair white cities which glistened on the slopes, from the stony mountains that these people had made to smile with painfully watered crops, they were cast out, even as their brethren of Granada had been. In chains and through the deep winter snows of the Sierra Morena they were dragged in hopeless gangs to Cas- tile, many to die upon the road, and the rest to linger in servitude among strangers. Don Juan, with a heavy heart, carried out the fell decree, and by the end of 1570 Andalusia was clear of Moriscos, and at the same time clear of its best and most useful citizens. A few men, like Mondejar, Ruy Gomez, and Don Juan himself, saw this and deplored it bit- terly, but the vast number of Spaniards and their king saw nothing, knew nothing, regarded no cruelty, cared for no interest ; they had been selected to do God's work in extirpat- ing unbelief, and woe to those who stood in his and their way. But zealot as Philip was, he had considerations to take into account of which his subjects knew nothing. His sys- tem was already breaking down ; his eternal discussions and the sending of documents backward and forward, his insist- ence in directing everything himself, enabled alert adver- saries, like Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici, to learn all his plans long before they were put into execution.* The second plot in which Philip entered — to murder Elizabeth, through Ridolfi, the Duke of Norfolk, and many of the Eng- * The long marriage juggle of Elizabeth is a good instance of this; and also the action both of Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici when the latter had been drawn into an interview with Alba, at Bayonne, on the occasion of the meeting of Catharine and her daughter, Philip's third wife. The French queen mother found that she was expected to pledge herself to extirpate every Huguenot from France; and although she pretended to approve of the treaty, she soon found a way out of it, while Elizabeth's counter-move was to sugsrest a mar- riage between herself and the young King of France. Ehzabeth and Catharine understood perfectly that to have allowed Philip to rule the policy of either country would be ruin to both. 26 o 82 The Spanish People lish Catholic nobles — was discovered and frustrated ; he was befooled and betrayed in his design to buy Hawkins and his fleet to attack England. Cecil, who had his spies everywhere, knew exactly the persons with whom the King of Spain was plotting, and was sometimes really at the bottom of the pre- tended plots himself ; and yet Philip, conscious though he was of failure in Flanders through the English help to Orange, constantly discovered and derided for his futile conspiracies against Elizabeth, with his galleons captured regularly at sea, and their crews hanged by English pirates, beggared in credit, and with disaster surrounding him on all sides, dared not openly quarrel with the " heretic " queen who had frus- trated all his proud plans. Storm as the churchmen and sol- diers might at her " insolence " and her wickedness, Philip, to save his own country from utter ruin, was obliged to open his ports at last to English trade (1573) without restitution of the vast plunder that had been taken from him four years before ; he was forced to condemn the granting by the Pope of the bull excommunicating the English queen, and he was fain to shut his eyes to the sturdy support from England which kept alive the revolt in Holland. For it was evident now that he could never overcome Protestantism in Europe unless England were friendly to him. If England were made Catholic, by the murder of the queen or otherwise, so much the better ; but, in any case, Protestant or Catholic, England must be appeased. This of itself is sufficient to show the weakness of Spain's pretension ; the end she sought could only be gained by a sacrifice of principle, to the extent of holding a candle to the leading Protestant power. But though the king saw this, his blinded people did not. For them England was an insignificant half-savage island that had fallen into the hands of a gang of heretics, who would collapse in terror at the very name of Spain. They knew that their commerce was devastated by English sailors, and that their king's enemies were supported by English men, Lepanto 383 arms, and gold ; but they, lived still in their fool's paradise, inflated with the idea of the fabulous wealth of their king, who was in the depths of poverty, boasting of the overwhelm- ing power of their country, which was unable to defend its own property, and buoyed up with the conviction of Divine assistance, when failure met them on every side. All this, they said, was a trial specially sent to them by God to prove their steadfastness. He, in His good time, would strike for His own cause and theirs, and they never lost their faith. In the hour of exaltation, after the Moriscos had been expelled from Andalusia (1570), Philip was in Seville with Don Juan, when there arrived a special legate from the Pope. Pius V was still on bad terms with Spain, and the Venetian republic had usually made common cause with France against Aragonese objects ; but they were now both in trouble, for the Turks were besieging the Venetian island of Cyprus, and its capture was a danger for all Christian states on the Mediterranean. So the Pope offered Philip the crusade bull again and greater power than ever over the Spanish Church, if he would join his galleys to those of Rome and Venice and conquer the Turkish navy. Philip distrusted the Venetians and had no love for the Pope, but after much prayer to the bones of Saint Fernando and much heated persuasion from Don Juan he consented to the request. Cyprus fell to the Turk before Philip's clumsy method enabled a fleet to be prepared, but by the summer of 1571 a fine force was collected at Messina: 208 galleys, 6 galeasses, and 50 small craft, with 29,000 soldiers and 50,000 sailors and oarsmen, formed one of the greatest naval dis- plays ever seen on the main. Don Juan was in command, and religious exaltation now found its apogee. It was a true cru- sade ; every man on the fleet fasted, confessed, and was ab- solved. A crucifix was at the prow of every galley, blessed banners waved overhead, and the cry which the splendid young prince in white velvet and gold sounded as the call 384 The Spanish People to battle was " Christ is your general. You fight the battle of the Cross." Jesuits and monks crowded the ships of the crusading fleet; prayer, sacrifice, and self-denial were the watchwords of the Christian host. The navies met in the Bay of Lepanto on the 7th of October, 1571, and the Turks made a brave show, for they had thitherto been victorious. But who could withstand a spirit such as that shown on the Spanish side? The Turkish predominant sea power in the Mediterranean was destroyed for ever, and Don Juan was the Christian hero, saint and soldier both, whom men and women throughout southern Europe hailed almost as a demi- god. He, too, was a Spaniard, tinged with the fanatical belief of his countrymen, and he dreamed of great Christian em- pires to be won in north Africa, in the East — who knows where? He was but a yotith, and success and adulation turned his head. Philip could not afford , risky adventures. He was cold and irresponsive, and left his brother without money or sup- port. Tunis and Goleta were recaptured by the Turk and the Spanish garrisons were slaughtered. Don Juan stormed and prayed, but marble Philip had no notion of allowing his plans to be diverted or controlled for the benefit of his bas- tard brother, and he moved not. Sage advisers were placed by the side of the young prince, but his enthusiasm won them over to his heated dreams. At length Philip deter- mined to remove him from the scenes of his triumph and his ambition, and sent him as his viceroy to Flanders, where affairs needed a conciliatory hand. Requesens had begun by separating the Catholic Belgians from Orange and his Dutch Protestants ; but the latter, who were determined never to trust Spaniards again, turned a deaf ear to his insincere approaches, and more than held their own by force of arms. Philip was, as usual, short of money, and the Catholic Flemings were chafing still at the presence of a large force of unpaid murderous, ruffianly Ital- Don Juan of Austria 385 ian and Spanish soldiers, who would not move out of the country without their pay. To them every Fleming, Catholic and Protestant, was the same — an inferior creature, to be insulted and plundered, if not murdered. In vain the Catholics and Requesens had prayed Philip to send money to get rid of these ruffians, or all would be lost. Philip was bankrupt of means and credit, and matters were growing worse and worse, when Requesens died (March, 1576). Urgent messages were sent to Spain by Philip's most faithful adherents that unless the troops were sent away Catholic Flanders would soon be as utterly lost to Spain as Protestant Holland. It was then that the un- happy king, at his wits' end, decided to send Don Juan to Flanders, with orders to conciliate the Belgic provinces at any cost, and to order the Spanish troops out of the country. But the young prince's wild plans had been frustrated, and he was in no conciliatory mood. The Pope (Gregory XIII) and others had already whispered to him that if he could not be emperor of the East, he might, with the Spanish troops, make a dash from the Netherlands, conquer England, liber- ate and marry the captive Marie Stuart, and bring England and Scotland into the fold of the Church. Don Juan listened and was lost. The nuncio hinted at the plan to Philip, and Don Juan himself disobeyed orders and rushed to Madrid to urge his views. Philip was grim and silent, but he knew his brother must be suppressed, or he would lead him into trouble; for with Holland against him and his own Catholic Flanders doubtful, his only chance of averting utter ruin was to keep friendly with England. So Don Juan was sternly sent on his way to Flanders to coax the mutinous troops to march to Italy and win back the Catholic Flemings by kindness. He went with bitter- ness in his heart, and he arrived too late. The murderous rabble had swooped down upon Antwerp (November 4, 1576), and in one appalling day had reduced the richest city in 386 The Spanish People Europe to a reeking shambles. Catholics joined to Protes- tants now, standing shoulder to shoulder in defence of their homes and children, and when Don Juan arrived at Luxem- burg he found that he would only be allowed to enter the states as governor on terms dictated by the burghers. He prayed in vain to Philip to let him stand and fight. The answer was, " Make peace on any terms consistent with my sovereignty,'' and from this formula Philip would never move. At length money was borrowed to give the troops an instalment of their pay, and they marched sulkily away, followed by the curses of a united nation ; while Don Juan, with all his hopes gone and with hatred in his heart, entered Brussels amid a joyful populace who had wrung from the Spaniard the promise of toleration and forgiveness for the past. The victor of Lepanto hated his task, and foolishly rebelled against it. With every wild, incoherent letter his brother's heart hardened, for the villain Perez was at the king's ear, whispering suspicion and distrust of the ambitious bastard. Don Juan, heartbroken at neglect and mad with impatience, disobeyed orders, treacherously seized the fortress of Namur, and defied the Flemings. Then a war of reconquest was in- evitable. Don Juan was left to die in misery and disap- pointment (October, 1578), and a cooler brain than his, Alex- ander Farnese, of Parma, son of Philip's half-sister Marga- ret, was sent to win Flanders again for Spain, and, if possible, to crush Orange and his Protestant Dutchmen. Almost simultaneously with this events happened which altered Philip's prospects. For twenty years he had striven to keep friendly with Elizabeth of England. As we have seen, he had been insulted, defied, and robbed ; his rebellious sub- jects had been supported against him for years, and looked now to the English queen as their mistress ; his ambassadors had been contemptuously expelled from England, and- his every plan had been frustrated by the clever statesmanship The Annexation of Portugal 387 of the " heretic " queen. Yet he dared not retahate, except by the constant secret subornation of conspiracy and mur- der, and by the giving of timid, insufficient aid to the dis- loyal English and Irish Catholics. He knew that France hungered for the fine harbours of Belgium, and that any national movement of his against EngHnd would have meant a close alliance between Catharine de Medici and the Eng- lish queen, which would have brought both nations against him. If, moreover, he deposed Elizabeth to make Marie Stuart queen and raise the French Guises to power in Great Britain as well as in France, it might have resulted in the crushing of Protestantism; but, in any case, it was certain to make France the preponderant power and dwarf Spain. So, for twenty years, Philip never went beyond cautious plot- ting against Elizabeth. But in August, 1578, there fell in a foolish, unnecessary crusade against the Moors Philip's harebrained young nephew Sebastian, King of Portugal, and he was succeeded by his aged childless uncle. There were many claimants to the old king's succession, but none so powerful as the King of Spain. The Portuguese people themselves chose Don Antonio, a doubtfully legitimate relative of the royal house ; but bribery of nobles, systematic terrorism of high and low, were prac- tised by Philip, and when the cardinal king died, in 1580, Philip was ready with an army under Alba and himself to take possession of his new kingdom.* The Portuguese were weak and divided, the nobles all bought or banished, and Philip slowly proceeded in the wake of his army to be crowned King of Portugal ; while the fugitive Don Antonio, * Philip's fourth wife, Anne of Austria, died at Badajoz while on this journey, and soon after her most of her surviving children died. Philip remained a widower for the rest of his life. A most affecting series of letters from him to his two elder daughters by his third wife, written during this voyage, has been published by M. Gachard, Paris, 1884, in which Philip's grief for his domestic bereavements and his affection for his children are strongly expressed. 388 The Spanish People hunted from town to town, in hourly danger, at length escaped to France, and thence to England, to be a sharp weapon in the hands of Elizabeth and Catharine against Philip for the rest of his life. The possession of Portugal by Spain enormously in- creased Philip's power for harm both to England and France. The portion of America allotted by the Pope to Portugal went with the mother country, as well as the vast African do- minions and the hold on India, while the splendid harbour of Lisbon gave to Spain what she had never had — a good central port of easy access on the Atlantic. Philip had taken care to fulfil all the constitutional forms : he had been ac- cepted by the regents and by the Portuguese Cortes, so that neither England nor France could legally question his right ; and it seemed as if at last the tide of fortune had turned for him. Other things, too, favoured Philip for the moment. The King of France, Henry III, was childless, and only one life — a bad one — stood between the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, the hereditary enemy of Spain, and the French crown. This obviously meant a recommencement, in a more bitter form than ever, of civil war in France, and turned the Guises, the Catholic leaders, entirely to Spain as their only support in their ambitious views for themselves. An agree- ment was therefore soon made, by which the Guises under- took to be Philip's humble servants and to serve Spanish in- terests instead of French in case their cousin Marie Stuart became Queen of England. Philip probably did not depend overmuch upon this en- gagement of the Guises, but he knew that by supporting their cause he could keep them too busy in France for them to trouble him in England. So gradually in Philip's slow mind the great plot matured by which the world might, after all, be made Catholic. Incautious Marie Stuart, in her prison, was in close communication with the Spanish ambassador, and she, too, was drawn into the dangerous series of con- The Invasion of England 389 spiracies that ultimately brought her to the scaffold. Spies were everywhere, and every communication to and from the wretched woman was read by Elizabeth's ministers. More and more bitter grew the relations between the English queen and Philip, who now for the first time felt safe from France, which he knew, with the Guises in his pay, he could plunge into a civil war at any time he wished. Drake's murderous depredations on Spanish shipping and treasure drove Philip's subjects mad with thirst for vengeance, and redoubled their fanatical hate of the heretics. Parma's diplomacy had pacified the Catholic Flemings, and the King of Spain must have thought now that the national dream of which he had well- nigh despaired might yet come true. But the business of the invasion and conquest of England was a great one, and could not be undertaken lightly. There were two parties of English and Scottish Catholics : the French or moderate party, which predominated at the Vatican, and the extreme Jesuit party, which looked with horror upon the possibility of shifty James Stuart — even if he called himself a Catholic — succeeding to his mother as Queen of England and Scotland. The latter party were all- powerful in Philip's councils, and soon persuaded him that his own claim to the English crown was a perfect one after that of Marie, since James was excluded by his " heresy." * The unfortunate queen had fallen entirely into the hands of the Spanish party, and in June, 1586, disinherited her son in favour of Philip. As usual, money was Philip's main difficulty. The cost of invading England was so enormous, as estimated by his great admiral, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, that, even in its greatly modified f and, as it turned out, impossible form, * It will be recollected that a daughter (Philippa) of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche Plantagenet, married John I of Portugal, and a daughter of his by his second wife married Henry III of Castile. t His plan was to raise a vast force to sail direct from Spain — 150 great ships, 320 smaller craft, 40 galleys, 240 pinnaces, with 30,000 390 The Spanish People the plan was far beyond the means obtainable from Spain itself. A large sum had therefore to be obtained from the Pope (Sixtus V), and the most extraordinary series of in- trigues resulted, in order that the papal aid might be obtained without unmasking to the Pope Philip's subsequent inten- tions with regard to the crown of England.* Sixtus was clever and frugal; he had no desire to aggrandize Philip politically; and he was surrounded by French and Italian cardinals, who were determined, if possible, to prevent the domination of England and Scotland by Spain. Partly, how- ever, by trickery, and partly by appeals to his religious zeal, Sixtus was induced to give to Philip a free hand, and only imposed as a condition that the million gold crowns which he promised should not be payable until the Spaniards actu- ally landed in England. From this point no cajolery, no menace, would move him, for he distrusted Philip most pro- foundly. All Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and Naples rang with preparations for the great expedition, while the fanaticism of the people, already inflamed at Marie Stuart's death, was raised to fever heat by the denunciations by the priests of the wicked Elizabeth, and assurances that the oppressed people of England were looking to Spain alone for salvation from the handful of heretics that held them down. Forced loans were raised from nobles and clergy, from merchants and manufacturers ; taxes and extortions of all sorts were resorted seamen and 70,000 soldiers and 1,600 horses. The cost was to be 3,800,000 ducats = £470,000. It was felt that the concentration and sea transport of such a force as this from Spain was impossible. * Philip, although he was constantly plied with arguments and genealogies by the Jesuit party, led by Father Persons, and by the representatives of the English Catholic nobility to prove his own absolute right to the English crown (which, like all claims derived from the house of Lancaster, was valueless without parliamentary sanction), knew that he would not be allowed to treat England as an appanage of Spain. His own intention, though carefully kept in the background, was to confer the English crown upon his dearly beloved eldest daughter by his third wife, Isabel Clara Eugenia, to whom he left the sovereignty of Flanders. The Armada 391 to to raise funds ; but withal, tlie poverty and misery of the country seemed to forbid the vast sums required being raised. In 1 586 the Cortes told a dismal story of distress to the king, and only voted the usual 450,000,000 maravedis spread over three years, with the assurance of many deputies that even this could never be paid by their constituents. Every mem- ber of Cortes was now largely bribed ; but when the Armada was nearly ready for sea, in April, 1588, the Cortes were summoned, and a demand made for 8,000,000 ducats (£1,000,- 000). They were dismayed, and boldly told the king that such a sum was impossible. But the altar and the confessional were set to work in every corner of Spain, and by their influ- ence over the populace the deputies were screwed up to the point of voting a new excise upon food, which well-nigh com- pleted the ruin of the unhappy country, and for the next two centuries blighted agriculture and industry under the hated name of the " Millions." Poverty dogged the great plan of invasion from the be- ginning. Philip worked like a galley slave, arranging every little detail ; corruption, fraud, and waste were rampant, and thousands of ducats were stolen by officers while the king was haggling over one. No initiative or responsibility was allowed to officers, however high, under Philip's system, and the constant need for referring to the centre of Spain from dis- tant places caused paralysis and delay. First the fleet was to sail in 1587, but nothing was ready — neither arms, men, nor ships. Then Drake outwitted the spies, and made a dash for Cadiz, destroying the shipping there and preventing the sail- ing of the Armada for that year. Provisions went rotten and had to be replaced ; bad weather delayed the concentra- tion of ships ; the fine old sailor Santa Cruz died of a broken heart at Philip's unjust reproaches. Money, money, and ever more money was the cry, for wages ran on as the months slipped away, and thousands of waiters and idlers had to be fed. Jealousy and indiscipline reigned supreme among the 392 The Spanish People nobles and officers, and Philip was obliged to choose a fool and a coward to command the fleet because of his hig^ rank. \ Failure was inevitable from the first, except- under arcum- * stances wholly favourable. Santa Cruz foresaw it; Parma foretold it, and b^ged Philip to let him make peace with EJigland in reality, by turning the sham n^otiations then being- carried on to real ones; even the miserable Medina Sidonia knew it, and urged Philip, when the fleet was drivei into Corunna stormbeaten, to abandon the expedition. The plan agreed upon was for Parma to stand ready at Dunkirk with a large army, mainly Flemings, Germans, and Italians, ready to be shipped in punts, whose passage across to the mouth of the Thames was to be protected by the Armada. Ever3^thing depended upon the fleet being able to hold the straits while the, boats crossed, and this largely de- pended upon the weather. The long delay of the Armada in sailing from Lisbon, and its ignominious return to Corunna, disabled and scattered (June 19), after three weeks at sea, drove P^rma to despair, for his soldiers were unpaid, scourged with deadly pestilence, and already disheartened, and his sailors mostly were disaffected Flemings. Medina Sidonia, too, as soon as he sailed, b^^an to damour for Parma to come out and meet or support him, and in answer to appeals, which became more frantic and craven as the helplessness of the Armada became apparent, he invariably was told curtly that not a punt would be moved nor a man available until the ships of the fleet had cleared and held the narrow sea. But, whatever experts might say, the Spanish nation and king had no thought of feilure. Were not their ships the biggest that sailed the sea? Were not their soldiers the best in Europe? And, above all, was not this God's own battle? And once again the old inflated delusion carried the nation away. 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