The close of the Reconquest left the Spanish monarchy in a condition of physical and financial collapse. The maintenance of a great army for ten years, with the resultant casualties of battle, exposure, and disease, had sensibly diminished the population. The treasury had long been depleted. The Queen had pawned her jewels to the bankers of Valencia and Barcelona. Wealthy subjects had been induced to advance funds to the government by methods equivalent to confiscation, and which held out but slender hopes of ultimate reimbursement. National credit was practically destroyed. The absence of the more industrious citizens in military service, the incorrigible idleness of those who remained, had impaired the pursuit of agriculture, upon which the resources of the kingdom depended. Had it not been for the taxes and extraordinary contributions levied upon the Jewish and Moslem tributaries, the war could not have been prosecuted to a successful conclusion. These two sects, which occupied an anomalous position in the body politic, numbered over two million. Although so inferior in numbers, they engrossed the trade and controlled the personal property of the Peninsula. The Jew, who practised with enormous profit the congenial but unpopular profession of usury, converted his gains into money and jewels. The Mudejar, who, after the Conquest, gave place to the Morisco, mindful of the Koranic precept which inculcates industry as a virtue and stigmatizes idleness as a crime, was the most laborious and successful of agriculturists, the most skilful of artisans. Representatives of these two classes directed the operations of the largest mercantile houses in the principal cities, and the commerce of the entire country was practically in their hands. Their prosperity was regarded with an evil eye by their Castilian masters, and the Moslem was especially the object of this animadversion. For generations the former had pursued the glorious but brutalizing calling of arms. With them, every occupation that implied or necessitated the performance of manual labor was considered undignified and degrading. Centuries of unremitting warfare had impressed upon the whole nation a military character, with its inevitable concomitants of pride, tyranny, and insolence; and these sentiments were intensified a hundred-fold by racial hatred and sectarian prejudice. From the earliest times the Moors had been regarded as interlopers, scarcely entitled to the ordinarily indisputable rights of conquest. The acquisition of their domain by Spanish prowess was always considered as the recovery of former inalienable possession, not as new territory wrested from an adversary by dint of superior strength and valor. The establishment of the Catholic faith was, in the opinion of adroit casuists, an additional argument in favor of their title, for it was held that the consecration of altars to Christianity conferred rights which could never be abrogated through occupation by infidels. With the inconsistency of ignorance, the Castilians asserted their title both by inheritance and prescription. They forgot that Spain had ever been the rich prize for which almost every warlike nation of the ancient world had contended. The Visigoths overran and ravaged it in the fifth century, and their occupancy, derived solely from conquest, lasted three hundred years. Then came the Saracens, whose domination, obtained in precisely the same manner, required about the same length of time for the conquest, but endured for more than twice as long. It was evident, therefore, to every mind not obscured by prejudice, that the title of the Moslems, even from the Spanish point of view, was better than that of their conquerors. In more than one respect, indeed, had the followers of Mohammed claims upon the country of their adoption as well as upon the gratitude and admiration of mankind. Their industry and enterprise had developed beyond all precedent the wonderful resources of the Peninsula. Its prosperity had never been so great, its people so happy, its sovereigns so renowned, as at the meridian of the Moslem power. In intellectual attainments, and the skilful adaptation of scientific principles to the practical affairs of life, the subjects of the khalifate far surpassed all their contemporaries. The civilization—if it is worthy of the name—which the Saracens overthrew was infinitely inferior to the one that they created. The Visigoths had scarcely emerged from barbarism. Their monarchs attempted to emulate, in their magnificence and luxury, the brilliant court of the Eastern Empire, and to supply, by the splendor and richness of the materials, the glaring deficiencies in skill and workmanship which characterized the productions of their artisans. They never discarded the savage customs engendered and perpetuated by ages of violence and injustice. Sedentary and industrial occupations were repugnant to the genius of a people whose national traditions from time immemorial had breathed a spirit of truculence and war. And yet, even in their chosen field, they at once demonstrated their inferiority to an enemy who had hardly completed his apprenticeship in arms.

After the Conquest, the insignificant number of Christians saved by the inaccessible fastnesses of the Asturias from Mohammedan subjection had little left but their swords and their independence. Their previous habits had unfitted them for labor. The ungenerous nature of the soil and the severity of the climate offered few inducements for tillage. They had, therefore, no resource but war by which to maintain their existence and repair their broken fortunes. Their children were reared in ignorance and under conditions favorable to the development of the highest degree of ferocity and fanaticism. They were taught to regard their enemies as monsters, unworthy of the name and attributes of humanity, and having nothing in common with the remainder of mankind but an erect form and the capacity of speech. In the course of time, greater familiarity with their adversaries insensibly produced a change of feeling, and many of these absurd and unjust prejudices were modified or entirely discarded. Numerous Mohammedan customs were adopted, especially by the nobility of Castile, whose inherent profligacy especially inclined them to the forbidden and unorthodox license of the seraglio. Moslem kings were not infrequently appointed arbiters of disputes between Christian princes of the blood. In arms, in manners, in costume, in amusements, the despised infidel furnished models to the proud and boorish descendants of Pelayus and his mountaineers. Even the language was contaminated. Thousands of terms familiar to the reader of the Koran were incorporated unchanged into its comprehensive vocabulary, and the noble and sonorous Castilian idiom remains to-day almost one-third Arabic. The system of warfare, the evolutions of cavalry, the adoption of lighter armor, all exhibited the effect of the pervading Moorish influence. Architects from Granada were employed by Castilian monarchs in the construction of palaces, and even by orthodox prelates in the ornamentation of cathedrals. It was the custom of many sovereigns in those turbulent times to intrust their safety to a body-guard of Saracen mercenaries, who could neither be intimidated nor corrupted. The honors paid to deceased Castilian royalty by the Moslems were not inferior to those with which the obsequies of the greatest emirs were celebrated. The court of Granada went into mourning for Ferdinand III., and a guard of Moorish nobles escorted his remains to the tomb. Henry IV. gave audience to ambassadors seated upon a divan and supported by cushions, in the traditional Saracen fashion. The tilt of reeds and the bull-fight, the exercises of the grand arena, which, requiring the greatest address and agility, were so popular with the Spanish chivalry, superseded the ruder and more dangerous exhibitions of the tournament. In innumerable examples, in every phase of the public and domestic life of the Christians, the influence of Mohammedan association was manifested. It is a curious fact, as already stated, that, in spite of this, the deep-seated prejudices of the two races, so far from being eradicated, were scarcely even perceptibly modified. Notwithstanding intermarriages, the formal and elaborate display of public courtesy, the frequency of appeals to royal arbitration, the adoption of official ceremonials by one people, the voluntary solicitation of protection by the other, all appearances of amity were fallacious, and a feeling of irreconcilable hostility constantly prevailed between the two races. Both reduced their prisoners to slavery, a condition which generally implied the most inhuman treatment. The captives taken by the Castilians were branded upon the forehead, a mark of degradation which could never be erased; the slaves of the Moslems were confined in damp and unwholesome dungeons, and compelled to labor daily in the construction of mosques and fortifications. It was no unusual occurrence, when a place had provoked the animosity of either by an obstinate resistance, for the entire population, irrespective of age or sex, to be ruthlessly put to the sword. In the heat of conflict, quarter was seldom expected. Despite the omnipresent and irrefutable evidences of superior knowledge, refinement, and culture, the arrogant and conceited Castilians always stigmatized their adversaries as barbarians. With them, implicit belief in and attachment to the Roman Catholic faith was the infallible touchstone of civilization. Whatever they did not understand they attributed to magic. The mysterious accents of the Arabic language, and the intricate manner in which its characters were combined in the inscriptions which adorned the public edifices, aroused in the minds of the ignorant suspicions of sorcery, with its accompaniments of talismans, amulets, charms, and incantations. The magnificent architectural works of Arab genius were attributed to infernal agency, as beyond the efforts of unaided human power; an opinion still entertained by the Spanish peasantry, who not only firmly believe that the Moslem palaces were constructed by evil spirits, but also ascribe the origin of the gigantic, and apparently eternal, monuments of classic antiquity to the hands of the devil himself.

Besides the inveterate prejudices arising from antagonistic faiths and protracted warfare, other circumstances intervened to preclude the fusion of the two races after the Conquest. The Spaniard, with characteristic pride, asserted the superiority and predominance of his race and origin, and the slightest suspicion of Moorish blood constituted a blemish which no political or military distinction was ever able to eradicate. The industry of the Mudejares, their frugality, their clannishness, the seclusion of their women, aroused unfavorable comment among a people whose prejudices associated these practices with the name of an hereditary and implacable enemy. It had long been a subject of universal complaint that the larger proportion of the wealth of the kingdom was possessed by these unpopular tributaries. The idle Castilian, whose ancestors had for twenty-three generations subsisted by rapine, could not regard with indifference the plodding industry that conferred upon a subjugated and misbelieving race those substantial benefits which he had always been taught to regard as the birthright of a Christian. It was also publicly stated, to the prejudice of the tributary Moors, that even when they renounced their faith they still adhered to their former laborious habits; that none of them ever entered convents or monasteries; and that their contributions to the Church were not of the value to be expected from the zeal and generosity of sincere proselytes. Their conversion did not bring with it that indulgence and those privileges to which their ghostly instructors assured them they would be entitled; it did not even confer immunity from insult. Until the reign of Henry II. the Mudejares were exempt from the inconvenience of wearing a distinctive mark indicative of their social condition, which, long before imposed upon the Jews, was justly considered a badge of ignominy. After that time, however, they were required to wear upon their caps and turbans a blue crescent “of the size of an orange,” which constantly brought upon them the affronts of children, and not infrequently the taunts and violence of a fanatical populace. In spite of the serious restrictions imposed upon the Mudejares, and the enormous contributions levied upon their industry, they continued to prosper, and at the time of the surrender of Granada they were the most valuable subjects of the Spanish Crown. Policy, based upon a sense of weakness, had long repressed the avarice and envy of the Castilian sovereigns in their relations with a class whose skill and labor were the principal sources of the opulence of the realm. The time had now come when all restraint could be cast aside without danger, and royal aggression, not only sanctioned but suggested and encouraged by ecclesiastical authority, could violate every obligation, human and divine, that had been entered into with a conquered people, whose principal crime was their prosperity, and whose independence had been voluntarily relinquished under solemn treaties which had absolutely guaranteed their personal safety and the unmolested exercise of their civil and religious rights and privileges. A most pernicious maxim, but one entirely consonant with the prevailing sentiments of the age, had been recently adopted, and declared by the highest ecclesiastical authority susceptible of unlimited application. This was that, the original conquest of the Peninsula by the Moors partaking of the nature of an usurpation, or rather of a theft obtained by violence, all treaties or engagements entered into with the descendants of the invaders were valid only so long as the Christians chose to observe them, as having been dictated by necessity and contracted with persons outside the pale of the law. The peculiar casuistry, which deduced from Biblical precedent and the exterminating wars of the Jews analogies whose application wrought such havoc among the conquered nations of Spain and the New World, found no difficulty in the acceptation of the broader, and consequently even more atrocious, principle that no faith whatever was to be kept with infidels. Ecclesiastical ingenuity has never invented more potent weapons for the attainment of absolutism than these two maxims, which, rigorously applied, demonstrated their temporary and apparent efficacy by the utter extermination of millions of nominal enemies of the Spanish monarchy.

By the union of Castile and Aragon and the Conquest of Granada national unity had been secured; it now remained to place the religious establishment of the kingdom upon the same advantageous footing. The Inquisition, an engine of tremendous power, whose operations were attended by the most gratifying results, had, for more than two centuries, been employed in subduing recalcitrant heretics, procuring conversions, and replenishing the exhausted coffers of Church and State. First introduced into Aragon from France, its efforts were mainly directed against the Jews, whose wealth had brought upon them a convenient suspicion of heresy. The main objects of the Inquisition were in reality secular and political. That hideous institution aimed at the establishment of unquestioned sovereignty by the instruments of persecution. Religious dogmas, while nominally of vital importance in its procedure, were but pretexts by which the clergy, and indirectly the orthodox monarch, profited in the acquirement and consolidation of irresponsible authority. The stifling of human thought, the suppression of every branch of knowledge, the prohibition of the exercise of private judgment, the infinite multiplication of offences against religion, the minute gradation of penances, many of them of barbarous and incredible severity, were all means to the accomplishment of one base and ignoble end. The theological aspect of the Inquisition has engrossed the attention of historians to the exclusion of its genuine but concealed objects. That the punishment of heresy was not the real mission of its tribunal is proved by the fact that its sentences were frequently suspended, commuted, or abrogated by the sovereign, conditional on the payment of money. The rich were the especial objects of its hostility; the denunciation of a wealthy person was equivalent to conviction; and if a Hebrew or a Moslem, he could hardly escape the extreme penalty. The mystery of its organization, its unexpected arrests, its secret procedure, its frightful dungeons, the fiendish cruelty of the tortures it inflicted, and the atrocities of its public exhibitions—which partook of the nature of religious festivals, and, with shocking inconsistency, were supposed to be devoted to popular recreation—struck terror into every community and every family.

The successful prosecution of heresy by the Inquisition, as well as the financial advantages it promised, and the increase of ecclesiastical and royal power which followed its establishment, appealed forcibly to the bigoted and arbitrary mind of the Spanish Queen. Not so, however, with Ferdinand, whose experience with that dread tribunal had caused him to regard its operations with disfavor, and who had rendered his orthodoxy liable to suspicion by intrusting to Jewish bankers the administration of the finances of the Crown of Aragon. His remonstrances were, however, unheeded by his obstinate and despotic consort. The Kingdom of Castile had always enjoyed an unquestioned preponderance of authority and prestige in the affairs of the Peninsula. The compact which consolidated the two great realms into one empire expressly conferred upon Isabella the exclusive control of all matters relating to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The right of presentation to benefices—long asserted by Castilian princes as a royal prerogative, and whose exercise, denounced by the Papacy as an usurpation, had repeatedly brought upon them the censures of the Holy See—invested the Queen with a power of vast and indefinable extent over the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who owed their offices to her generosity, and whose revenues were largely dispensed in accordance with her advice. Her policy and her apparent interest induced her, therefore, to consent to the introduction of the Holy Office; and its tribunal was established at Cordova, under the direction of Tomas de Torquemada, first Inquisitor-General of the kingdom, a name of awful prominence in the history of Spanish persecution.

The capitulation of Granada had been concluded with every indication of sincerity, and with the most solemn assurances with which it is possible to invest the provisions and confirm the faith of treaties. The unsuspecting Moslems did not long remain in ignorance of the duplicity of their conquerors. Excesses were publicly committed by licentious cavaliers, who, instead of undergoing the penalty of death adjudged for such offences, escaped with a gentle reprimand, and were even conspicuously distinguished by the favor of their royal mistress. The seclusion of domestic life, so jealously guarded by Mohammedan custom, was unceremoniously invaded upon the most frivolous pretexts by the rude and insolent soldiery. The mosques, whose possession had been especially guaranteed by the articles of the treaty, were one after another seized and consecrated to the Christian worship. For these flagrant breaches of trust, the stupid and remorseless bigotry of Isabella was largely responsible. The city had hardly passed into the hands of the conquerors, before the advisability of forcible conversion began to be seriously discussed, and the Queen listened with pleasure to suggestions of indiscriminate and compulsory baptism. The efforts of priestly avarice and intolerance, secure in the royal support, began to encroach more and more upon the acknowledged rights of these unfortunate victims of persecution, until a revolution broke out, which threatened the integrity of the newly acquired dominions, and required the entire resources of the kingdom to suppress it. The government of Granada had been left in the hands of three men, whose excellent qualifications, previous experience, and inborn sense of justice rendered them eminently qualified for the difficult task to which they had been assigned. The famous Count of Tendilla was appointed Captain-General of the province. The interests of the Church were committed to Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, a prelate in whose mind fanaticism never attained predominance over the noble impulses which assert the dignity of human nature; and whose liberality, rare in his age and profession, never refused indulgence and compassion to those of different blood or hostile faith. To these two representatives of royal and ecclesiastical authority was added as an adviser, and an interpreter of the treaty of capitulation, which he himself had drafted, Hernando de Zafra, secretary of the Catholic sovereigns, a man of talent, intelligence, and spotless integrity, who enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, and who, while conspicuously devout, was far less tinctured with the prejudices of the time than his theological education and previous associations would seem to imply.

Under the administration of these three dignitaries, the territory of Granada once more assumed an appearance of prosperity. Their probity won the confidence of the Moors, which had been shaken by the arbitrary and indefensible proceedings following the surrender. The capital, fallen into neglect and decay during years of insurrection and war, was repaired; new streets were opened, sanitary regulations were enforced, the markets were again crowded with traders; the Vega, long the scene of desolation, began to blossom once more under the patient hands of the industrious laborer. While a high sense of honor and an unusual diplomatic tact obtained for the Count of Tendilla the respect of his dependents, it was upon the disposition of the Archbishop that the security of the government and the pacification of the Moslems principally depended. The first great difficulty was, in reality, not with the latter, but with the Christian colonists, who had received, in recompense for real or fictitious services, establishments in the city, and whose licentious conduct provoked the animosity of the vanquished, and rendered the streets unsafe at night for wayfarers of every description.

The conduct of the Archbishop was beyond all praise. He endeavored by every conceivable means to improve the condition of his diocese, to revive decaying industry, and to promote the friendly relations of the two races whose previous traditions made complete fusion impossible. He dispensed at all times the most unbounded and discerning charity. He caused public works to be inaugurated, by which the needy poor were provided with employment. His apostolic zeal never stooped to the violence of persecution; his appeals were made to reason alone; and his subordinates, for the effectual performance of their duties, were compelled to learn the Arabic language, in which he himself, although far advanced in years, became sufficiently proficient to employ it successfully for the noble purposes of religious instruction. From the printing-presses, established by his munificence, issued sumptuous volumes printed in Castilian and Arabic, whose perusal might not only arouse the interest of old believer and recent proselyte, but could not fail to alike confirm the faith and facilitate the intercourse of both Christian and Moslem. Under his direction schools were founded; rituals and works embodying the doctrines and discipline of the Church translated; and regular conferences organized, wherein, at stated intervals, the comparative merits of the Christian and Mohammedan creeds were publicly discussed by learned theologians of both religions.

This excellent prelate, whose virtues are the more conspicuous and admirable when contrasted with the generally dissolute character of the ecclesiastics of the Spanish court, voluntarily renounced the larger portion of the emoluments of his office, reserving only what was sufficient for his immediate necessities, and dispensing with the pomp which the dignitaries of the hierarchy were accustomed to assume in the exercise of their calling. Two hundred and fifty persons shared daily the hospitality of his table; his bounty was enjoyed alike by officials of the highest rank, by Moors of every degree, by pilgrims and travellers soliciting alms. In his visits to the sick and the unfortunate he permanently impaired his health. Recognizing the importance of a consistent example, he instituted extensive reforms among the clergy. Their luxury was repressed, their intemperate zeal restrained, the systematic observance of their duties compelled, and those vices which had long been the scandal of the pious were either entirely checked, or, driven from public view, were forced into seclusion for their indulgence. In every possible manner he attempted to relieve the oppressive burdens imposed upon his parishioners by the fiscal regulations. His notaries were forbidden to collect the fees, which formed an important part of the revenues of the archiepiscopal see. He interposed his authority to prevent illegal and oppressive exactions by the tax-collectors. In his sermons, and by the exertion of his authority, he discouraged the practice of professional mendicity, the scourge and the disgrace of both Catholic and Mussulman countries.

With the secular and the ecclesiastical power vested in the hands of such men as the Count of Tendilla and Hernando de Talavera, the greatest results could not fail of accomplishment. The manners of the Spaniards were insensibly reformed. Such was the public tranquillity, that a mere handful of soldiers sufficed for the garrison of the Alhambra and the guard of the captain-general. The pious and unselfish example of the Archbishop soon bore fruit. Great numbers of Moors voluntarily signified their desire to become Christians. In one day three thousand were baptized, not one of whom ever afterwards recanted. These conversions were not obtained through suggestions of temporal advantage or the influence of fear; nor were the proselytes admitted to communion without previous instruction in the doctrines they were expected to profess or the duties they would be required to perform. The affection and respect of the Moslems for their instructor and friend were unbounded. They called him the “Holy Faqui of the Christians.” The churches were found unable to accommodate the increasing numbers of converts, and altars and pulpits were erected in the three principal squares of the city; the nightly brawls excited by the turbulent soldiers of fortune, domiciled by the Conquest in the Moorish capital, became more and more infrequent; a sense of security began to prevail in the community; the relations of noble and vassal were modified, to the decided advantage of the latter; ancient prejudices, confirmed by the enmity of centuries, were softened; and the political union of the two peoples, which could only be effected by a just and conciliatory policy, and upon which, in fact, depended the future prosperity of the Peninsula, seemed at length to offer a flattering prospect of realization.

Under these favorable auspices, for the space of several years, order, tranquillity, and contentment reigned in Granada. The courteous and equitable, but firm, administration of the governor; the blameless life, the humble piety, the sympathetic interest of the Archbishop had awakened the love and compelled the obedience of the tributary Moslems, who compared with wonder and gratification the operation of a system of kindness and justice with the arbitrary and violent measures of the despotism to which they had heretofore always been accustomed. During that period many important and tragic events transpired. Al-Zagal, oppressed with years and calamities and broken in spirit, had gone into voluntary exile. Boabdil, by means of an ignoble and treacherous device, whose adoption was alike unworthy of a monarch and a Christian, had been deprived of the principality for which he had bartered his crown and forced to retire into Africa. Every important provision of the capitulation had been repeatedly violated, and only the tact of those who controlled the government of Granada had prevented the most serious consequences. The Jews, under circumstances of unspeakable cruelty, had been expelled from the kingdom. In the hierarchy changes had taken place which boded no good to the heretic and the suspected apostate. Cardinal Mendoza, Primate of Spain, had died, and Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, a Franciscan friar and the confessor of the Queen, had been promoted to that exalted dignity, whose power and emoluments rivalled those of the crown. The life, the associations, the studies of this man had developed a mind whose feelings were in perfect accordance with the narrow and intolerant spirit of the age. Without indulgence for the inherent weakness of human nature, without patience to await the effect of the deliberate and rational methods of discussion which promote religious conviction, absolutely devoid of generosity, of tenderness, of sympathy, he regarded unquestioning obedience to the Church as the most imperative of all obligations and mortification of the flesh as the most meritorious of virtues. He had recently secured the appointment of Diego de Deza, one of his creatures, to the place of Inquisitor-General, which gave him absolute control of the operations of the Holy Office.

The characters of the two great churchmen who in succession dictated the policy of the crown, though widely different in many respects, in general faithfully represent the prevalent ideas and aspirations of every class of society in the kingdom. The aim of both was religious unity, which during the long crusade against the infidel had usurped the place and depreciated the worth of patriotism. Both governed the sovereign, and with the sovereign the monarchy. Both filled the highest ecclesiastical office in the Peninsula, an office second in dignity and power only to the Papacy. Both were zealous patrons of the Inquisition. One recommended the expulsion of the Jews. The other inaugurated the persecution of the Moriscoes. Both commanded armies. Both founded institutions of learning. Both were regarded at Rome as the most valuable servants of the Holy See. Here, however, all resemblance ends. Mendoza belonged to the haughtiest of the Castilian aristocracy; he traced his lineage in a direct line to Roman patricians on one side and to the Gothic Dukes of Cantabria on the other; the Cid was his ancestor, as were also the Lords of Biscay; the blood of royalty coursed in his veins; he was the cousin of Ferdinand and Isabella; he was nearly related to the princely house of Infantado, whose duke took precedence of all Spanish grandees; more than seventy titles of nobility were in his family, which was the first in the Peninsula and one of the most celebrated in Europe.

Ximenes sprang from the people. His ancestry, while respectable and deserving recognition as of the hidalgo class, was not noble. He renounced his baptismal name for that of the founder of his order, the Franciscans. He had no relatives, a fact which afterwards obtained for him the Regency.

The dignities of Mendoza were the most eminent in the hierarchy and the kingdom, and were all conferred before he had reached the meridian of life. He was Bishop of Calahorra and Siguenza, Archbishop of Seville and Toledo, Primate of Spain, a Prince of the Church, Patriarch of Alexandria, Legate of the Pope. He became Chancellor of Castile. He was appointed Captain-General under both Henry IV. and Isabella. He was most prominent in all the events of the civil and the Moorish wars. He won the battle of Olmedo for Juan II. He defeated the King of Portugal on the field of Toro. At twenty-four he was practically minister of state. At sixty-four he planned the last campaign before Granada as commander-in-chief of the besieging army. His hands raised upon the Tower of Comares the archiepiscopal cross of his diocese, the symbol of Christian supremacy and ecclesiastical power.

In habits, tastes, demeanor, and personal appearance a marked contrast existed between the two most famous prelates of the fifteenth century. Mendoza was epicurean, Ximenes ascetic. The table of the Great Cardinal was furnished with every luxury. His garments were of the finest quality, as befitted his rank. Jewels sparkled upon his fingers. His cleanliness excited the wonder and often the disapprobation of the pious, as savoring of heresy. None but youths of distinguished birth were admitted to his household. His morals partook of the laxity of the time. The ladies honored with his attentions were members of the aristocracy, daughters of noble houses, maids of honor to the Queen. His three sons were legitimatized by Pope Innocent VIII. in 1486 and by Isabella in 1487. Through their matrimonial connections, the blood of this famous ecclesiastical grandee has been mingled with that of many of the proudest families of Castile.

While the promotion of Mendoza to the highest offices of Church and State was due partly to his illustrious ancestry and partly to his eminent talents, that of Ximenes was derived entirely from his reputation for piety and wisdom. Honors were literally thrust upon him. With real or affected humility, he attempted to evade the search and disobey the commands of those who wished to raise him to absolute power. He loudly protested his unworthiness. He declared his preference for the duties and the seclusion of a private station. Even while at the height of his greatness, he never abandoned the habits of the monastery. He carried into the splendid archiepiscopal see of Toledo, the highest post in the ecclesiastical system of Europe, the practices of the penitent and the anchorite. Under his cardinal’s robes of scarlet and gold he wore constantly the cowl and knotted girdle of the Franciscan friars. A haircloth shirt, which was never changed, irritated his flesh. His diet was frugal to excess. “He only ate enough,” says his biographer, “to sustain the little life that penance had left him.” His food consisted principally of herbs, his only drink was water. His virtue was impregnable,—even St. Anthony himself might have envied him his constancy under temptation. To him was never imputed the reproach of frequent ablution, the stigma of the Moslem heretic. The constant use of a haircloth undergarment, while not conducive to personal purity, is readily productive of those physical conditions which, in the Middle Ages, were almost infallible signs of a good Christian.

The early life of Mendoza was passed amidst the atmosphere of the most dignified and punctilious court in Europe. His experience from boyhood fitted him for any service to which he might be assigned by the order of his king. He was thoroughly familiar with the arts of diplomacy. He had led his vassals in many a bloody encounter. With the skill of a successful general he had directed the movements of large bodies of troops in action. In every conflict he had fearlessly exposed himself to danger. He was indulgent to the faults of his ecclesiastical inferiors. For the glory of the Church he built and endowed the College of Valladolid. The Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo was a superb monument to his munificence. He expended great sums in charity. The debasing vice of bigotry was far from dominating his character.

The person of Mendoza was tall, erect, and commanding; his features handsome; his bearing that of a soldier and a gentleman; his manners affable and unaffected; in all respects he was the model of dignity, of gentleness, and of courtesy. His influence in the government was so great that he was everywhere known as “The Third King of Spain.” It was said of him as of Cæsar, “Quicquid volebat, valde volebat.”

Ximenes brought to the management of a great empire none of that familiarity with public affairs so essential to the statesman. His life had been bounded by the narrow horizon of the cloister. His reading had been confined to the homilies and polemics of the Fathers. At the assault of Oran, instead of leading his troops, he retired to pray in his tent. The university he established at Alcalá, as a rival to that of Salamanca, was far from realizing his hopes. His appearance disclosed his obscure lineage and his plebeian associations. His form was bent, his face emaciated, his manners shy and awkward. He possessed none of that winning grace which is the common birthright of his countrymen. In the administration of his office he was arbitrary and irascible. His obstinacy was only exceeded by the severity with which he enforced his decrees; his pursuit of heresy and monastic license, only by the vigor with which he encountered and crushed all opposition. His reputation for ability, for learning, for sanctity, for every attribute that evokes the admiring applause of mankind, far surpassed that of his predecessor among all ranks of his contemporaries.

Such were the two churchmen, both of whom had obtained the finest education afforded by their age and country; both founders of great colleges; both gifted with extraordinary talents; both clothed with despotic power; to whose agency is to be principally attributed the absolute annihilation of Jewish and Moslem science and literature in the Spanish Peninsula.

It is impossible for us at this distance of time to fully appreciate the enormous influence wielded by a prelate who dispensed the wealth and patronage of the ecclesiastical establishment of the Spanish monarchy. His capacity for good or evil was practically unlimited. He was the keeper of the royal conscience. The sentiments of every community, the decision of important questions of diplomacy, the adoption of measures vital to the permanence of national existence, the prosecution of war, the negotiation of peace, all depended upon the opinions and advice which emanated from the throne of the metropolitan see of Toledo. When to the prestige and revenues of the primacy were added the mysterious procedure and dreadful energy of the Inquisition, the formidable character of the power possessed by Ximenes may be conjectured. His will was law in every parish in the kingdom. Through the fears and mistaken devotion of a superstitious queen he was already the virtual ruler of Castile. His zeal was the more dangerous from the fact that it was sincere; no element of hypocrisy discredited the motives or impaired the supremacy of this uncompromising fanatic. The sweeping reforms he instituted among the clergy, and the rigor with which all disobedience was punished, awakened the resentment of every ecclesiastic whose lax morality or religious indifference had rendered him the object of official admonition or discipline. Those who appealed to the Pope were thrown into prison. Petitions for indulgence were treated with contempt. Remonstrances were chastised by suspension from functions and deprivation of benefices. The energy of his measures, the rudeness of his manners, the arbitrary, almost brutal, defiance of precedent and custom with which he treated his inferiors, his well-known control over the infamous tribunal whose public sacrifices in the name of religious unity had already terrorized the kingdom, his incorruptibility and self-mortification, invested the office of Ximenes with more than imperial authority. Isabella congratulated herself on her discernment. Her pious ambition was excited. In the hands of this active prelate the Moors of Granada might be speedily Christianized. The slow and pacific methods of Talavera had frequently aroused the displeasure and invoked the censures of the impatient Queen. Her partiality for the eccentric and determined churchman whose enforcement of long-neglected monastic regulations and whose condemnation of the luxurious habits of his subordinates had procured for him the open homage and secret execration of bishop and friar alike, whose inflexible decision, whose disregard of humanity and justice whenever he conceived the interests of the Church were involved, rendered him so offensively conspicuous, suggested him at once as a pre-eminently suitable instrument for the extermination of Moslem heresy and the rapid propagation of the Faith. He was, therefore, ordered to Granada, nominally as the adviser of Talavera in the work of spiritual regeneration, with the secret understanding, however, that his superior rank would exempt him from even the apparent exercise of official duties in a subordinate capacity. His first step, and one of which it is scarcely possible that Isabella could have been ignorant, was to procure a formal authorization from the Holy Office to investigate and punish the crime of heresy.

Armed with this document, and confident in the support of the Queen, Ximenes arrived at Granada in October, 1499. His conduct from the beginning was marked by unflinching audacity and resolution. The prestige of his dignity and the arrogance of his manners at once overawed the gentle Archbishop, who, renouncing the means which had achieved such great success, henceforth abandoned himself blindly to the merciless impulses of his distinguished superior. The latter was not long in profiting by the ascendency he had obtained. He claimed for himself supreme and dictatorial authority in matters not only ecclesiastical, but in questions often affecting the jurisdiction of the civil power. His first measures evinced none of the unrelenting severity of the inquisitor; they were corrupt, politic, conciliatory. The faquis and santons, whose influence with their countrymen was supposed to be the greatest and whose mercenary character had been notorious in the evil days preceding the surrender, were enlisted in the service of conversion by magnificent gifts of silken garments, jewels, and gold. With their zeal quickened by these potent arguments, the new missionaries had no difficulty in securing multitudes of proselytes. Their ardor was further stimulated by forcible representations of the inconveniences and trials which would inevitably be visited upon all who persisted in their adherence to error. Great emulation was excited by these extraordinary inducements to Mohammedan apostasy; each faqui reckoned with pride the number of converts he had conducted to the altar; the unprincipled populace welcomed, with feigned and interested enthusiasm, a religious compliance purchased with the mammon of unrighteousness; the Great Mosque of the Albaycin—in which quarter the Moors had, by a highly impolitic decree, been concentrated after the Conquest—was consecrated to Christianity, and within its precincts more than four thousand alleged penitents received the rite of baptism. This ceremony was effected without previous examination or instruction; and the candidates were equally ignorant of their duties and of the dreadful consequences involved in the sin of recantation. From that moment their moral responsibility was fixed. No excuse could be pleaded for the unconscious maintenance of heretical opinions or even for involuntary infractions of ecclesiastical discipline; the voice of the informer was ever ready to denounce, the hand of the inquisitor to punish.

This triumph of the Faith, while exceedingly gratifying, was proportionately expensive. The entire available revenues of the See of Toledo, amounting to seventy thousand ducats, were expended in its accomplishment. Even this great sum proved insufficient, and Ximenes was forced to pledge his private credit to appease the demands of the crowd of mercenary sycophants and spurious converts who claimed the reward of their abasement and dishonor. Among the sincere disciples of the Prophet, and there were many in Granada, the course of their perfidious brethren was regarded with unconcealed abhorrence. The more earnest and devout of these endeavored to counteract the growing inclination to religious defection by public exhortations and remonstrances. It was not in the imperious nature of the Primate to brook such opposition. The offending faquis were thrown into prison. History has not revealed the nature of the arguments employed to shake their constancy, but the persecuted Moslems were evidently not of the stuff of which martyrs and saints are made. One after another recanted and were baptized; many of their fellow-sectaries profited by their example; resistance was for the time effectually suppressed; and Ximenes pursued, without molestation, his favorite and inexorable method of wholesale conversion. To his narrow and arbitrary mind the employment of the most radical measures seemed to promise the greatest assurances of success. In the furtherance of this idea, and with a view to eradicating the apparent cause of the evil, he now planned what he considered a master-stroke of policy. Without previous notice, a diligent search was made of every house throughout the entire city, and every manuscript in the Arabic language which could be found was seized. The number thus secured amounted to nearly a million. Among them were not only superb copies of the Koran, but relics of the great Ommeyade body of literature, which had been the pride of the imperial court of Cordova, and had been cherished as priceless through many generations; the contents of the public libraries, whose preservation and increase had been the especial care of the enlightened Alhamares; treatises on history and science, which described the events and pictured the intellectual advancement of what had been the most learned and polished of nations; and the literary treasures of every scholar and philosopher in the capital. The works on chemistry, botany, astronomy, and medicine, subjects which had always engaged the diligent curiosity of the Spanish Arab, predominated. There, too, were doubtless to be found many translations of the classics, inheritances from the Grecian school of Alexandria,—henceforth forever lost,—which had found their way into the Peninsula from the distant banks of the Nile. These volumes exhibited in the beauty of their calligraphy and the magnificence of their adornment all the pomp, the pride, the luxury, of Saracen art. Beautiful arabesques in gold, silver, and many colors, embellished pages written with a delicacy and regularity which equalled that of the finest type. The bindings were of inlaid leather; some were embroidered; others were incrusted with tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and jewels; the clasps were of solid gold. All of these inestimable stores of learning were heaped in one immense pile in the centre of the Plaza de la Babal-Rambla, set on fire, and consumed. The importance of this sacrifice to bigotry may be inferred from the fact that there was probably in the entire world no collection of equal extent and value as that destroyed by Ximenes in this historic square, where, in the time of the emirs, national festivals had been celebrated, and the emulation of distinguished warriors in the martial sports of the tournament excited by the presence of the beauty and the gallantry of the Moslem court; where the differences of Castilian princes had been settled by a chivalric appeal to arms; where cultured audiences had witnessed the friendly rivalry of Moorish poets and troubadours, and the reward of the victor had been bestowed by the hand of royalty, all little suspecting that on the scene of their pleasures would one day be exhibited such a melancholy spectacle.

The pecuniary loss entailed by this vandalism was of itself immense, but the destructive effect it produced upon society was incalculable. By it perished unique literary monuments which it was impossible to replace; it offered a premium upon ignorance, for through such deeds alone was the favor of the all-powerful sacerdotal order to be secured; it discouraged learning to such a degree that from that time forth no Moslem writer of distinction appeared to illustrate the annals or depict the manners of his race; and it annihilated in a single hour the precious accumulation of ages, from which the modern historian might have collected data relative to Moorish civilization elsewhere unattainable in the world of letters. The intellectual degradation resulting from this intolerant act of Ximenes was most deplorable. All knowledge was thereafter filtered through the narrow channels of ecclesiastical inspection and thoroughly cleansed of every suspicion of heresy; the missal and the breviary supplanted the works of Arabic annalists and philosophers; and the enduring results of this crime against learning and of its pernicious example are still apparent in the remarkably illiterate and fanatical character of the inhabitants of Granada. Three hundred volumes on the science of medicine were saved from the flames, for the library of the University of Alcalá; but no entreaties or remonstrances from his companions could move the ferocious bigot to exempt from the sacrifice volumes whose jewelled covers and clasps of gold represented in themselves a princely fortune.

The destruction of Arabic manuscripts was the first step towards the employment of violence. With characteristic energy, the Primate availed himself of the authority with which he had been armed by the Holy Office. Persons suspected of heresy were summarily seized, imprisoned, tortured; and those who for the moment escaped experienced all the indignities which could be inflicted by the hands of ecclesiastical malice strengthened by boundless power. These outrages, and the repeated violation of the rights granted in their treaty with the crown, aroused the populace to desperation; and the arrest of a widow, whose wealth had attracted the cupidity of the authorities, was the signal for a dangerous revolt. The gates of the Albaycin were closed and guarded. The streets were barricaded. The towers were occupied, and Ximenes, whom the indignant threats of the people openly devoted to death, was besieged by an armed multitude in his palace, from which perilous situation he was with difficulty released by the Count of Tendilla. The news of the insurrection called down upon the tyrannical prelate the wrath of his sovereigns, but the singular credit he enjoyed and the vast influence he was able to wield soon restored him to royal favor.

It was now resolved to carry matters to extremes, and the choice of baptism or death was offered to the Moors, whose rebellion, although provoked by the oppression of their masters, was declared to have caused a forfeiture of all their privileges. The disaffection spread rapidly to the provinces; the mountaineers of the Alpujarras and the adjacent rugged country, which were the resorts of bands of desperate outlaws who entertained intimate relations with the Barbary corsairs, became involved; and the Catholic monarchs, so far from the religious triumph which they had anticipated, saw themselves suddenly confronted by a war which promised to assume formidable proportions. Space will not permit a detailed description of the repeated insurrections and final subjugation of the Moriscoes, and only the more important events of that memorable struggle can be touched upon. The mountain ranges of Southern Spain were admirably adapted to the desultory tactics in which they excelled, and the prolongation of the struggle was the natural consequence of the difficulties of the ground, of the boldness and activity of the insurgents, of the incapacity of the Castilian commanders, and of the proverbial want of discipline and fatal recklessness of the Christian soldiery. The general disarmament of the Moors had deprived them of the greater part of their weapons, but this disadvantage was eventually repaired by the spoils of battle and by the enterprise of Aragonese and Castilian traders, who, undismayed by the prospect of detection and punishment, were always ready, for an extravagant compensation, to furnish the enemies of their king with arms of the most approved pattern and workmanship. The operations of the contending forces were prosecuted with a cruelty hitherto unknown, even in the bloody annals of the Peninsula; and the ultimate triumph of the Spaniards was signalized by acts of such merciless vengeance that the foreign soldiers of fortune, enlisted for plunder and long seasoned by bloodshed, were appalled by their dreadful atrocity. The massacre of the population of a place taken by storm was the rule and not the exception; the wounded remaining on fields of battle were exterminated; prisoners were subjected to horrible tortures; every crime suggested by the incentives of lust, rapine, and hereditary aversion was perpetrated; and the most desirable fate of a captive was to be consigned for life to the tyranny of an unfeeling master dominated by every vice, inaccessible to mercy, and unrestrained by any law either of God or man.

An army of nearly a hundred thousand men assembled, at the summons of the Spanish sovereigns, for the suppression of the insurrection, at Alhendin near Granada. Formidable in numbers alone, this great host was composed of materials very different from the soldiery that had achieved the Conquest. It was indifferently equipped, unorganized, and absolutely deficient in discipline. The flower of the Castilian youth, inspired by the discoveries of Columbus, had sought new scenes of adventure on the shores of mysterious lands beyond the ocean. Commercial pursuits had weakened the military spirit; a peace of many years had impaired the energy of the nation and incapacitated, for the exposure of a perilous service, a people who had been reared and nurtured amidst the din of arms. The blessings of internal tranquillity, almost forgotten in the conflict of centuries, had once more permitted the unmolested exercise of the mechanical arts and the practice of agricultural industry. The better class of citizens, in the full enjoyment of security, were loath to resume, for the sake of a religious principle, whose enforcement promised much danger and trifling advantage, the hazards of the uncertain game of war. The army was therefore mainly composed of the retainers and vassals of the nobility, whose duty required their presence, and an innumerable horde of penniless adventurers, who sought, in the excitements and vicissitudes of a campaign against the infidel, an opportunity for the improvement of their desperate fortunes. Aided by a smaller force operating from Almeria, the rebellion was, after some fighting and much cruel retaliation, put down; the insurgents, impelled by the promise of immunity or the menace of death, consented to embrace the Catholic faith; the ancient chroniclers relate with becoming pride that during a single day ten thousand proselytes were baptized in the Sierra de Filabres alone; and through material inducements, or from the contagion of example, the inhabitants of Baza and Guadix, of the Alpujarras, and of the mountain regions to the south as far as the sea, were reckoned among those who acknowledged the authority of the Church and accepted the doctrines of Christianity.

With the advent of the sixteenth century, a royal decree was promulgated, establishing at Granada the same civil jurisdiction which obtained in the other provincial capitals of the kingdom. The magistracy was nominally divided between the Spaniards and the Moors, but the equality was only apparent, and the preponderance of power virtually remained with the conquerors. Allured by the delusive prospect of a voice in the affairs of the government, and despairing of assistance from their brethren in Africa, whose good offices they had repeatedly but vainly solicited, the Moors of the Albaycin finally consented to baptism. They required, as a condition of their compliance, permission to wear their national costume and to use the Arabic language, privileges which were subsequently made pretexts for oppression. It was also agreed that the Holy Office should not be established at Granada for the space of forty years; a provision which ecclesiastical acumen readily evaded by placing that city under the jurisdiction of the Inquisitorial tribunal of Cordova.

Still dissatisfied with the slow progress made by her ministers in bringing the obdurate Moors within the pale of Christianity, Isabella a second time ordered Ximenes to Granada. Instructed by his prior experience, he conducted himself with more discretion than before; but his proselytes, driven into the Church by hundreds, without previous instruction, remained, like their predecessors, profoundly ignorant of its doctrines and of the responsibilities imposed upon them by their enforced conversion. This time the stay of the Primate was short; his ascetic habits had impaired a constitution never extremely robust; and a pulmonary affection of a serious character, whose symptoms were aggravated by unremitting excitement and toil, speedily developed. The available resources of medical science were unable to relieve his malady, and, abandoned as hopeless by regular practitioners, in the hour of his extremity he was induced to submit to the treatment of a venerable Moorish woman, who combined with Arabic science the mysterious and uncanny ceremonies of the witch and the empiric. Under her ministrations the distinguished sufferer improved with a rapidity which, under other conditions, would have been deemed miraculous; and he was soon able to leave the scene of his labors, owing his life to the skill of a member of that race which he had relentlessly persecuted,—after a career which, however short, had made a more profound and fatal impress upon the policy of the Spanish Crown than that of any other dignitary of his time, and which was destined subsequently to exert a powerful influence upon the political fate and the future civilization of Europe.

A sequence of calamities, traceable to royal perfidy and ecclesiastical usurpation, was now about to descend upon the Spanish monarchy. The apprehensions of the inhabitants of the Serrania of Ronda had been aroused by reports of the injustice and violence visited upon their countrymen of Granada. The Moorish citizens of the ancient capital and its environs were now all nominally Christians. The persuasive methods of Talavera and the severity of Ximenes had enrolled upon the registers of the Church more than seventy thousand proselytes. Under the circumstances, the professions of a vast majority of these were necessarily insincere. It was an example of the organization of hypocrisy upon a gigantic scale, where religious principle was subordinated to material interests, and an outward observance of superstitious rites was accepted as an equivalent of earnest devotion and genuine piety. These reputed converts had not, however, by any means abandoned the faith of their forefathers. They diligently celebrated its rites in secret. Their children were early, and with secrecy, instructed in the doctrines of Islam. In defiance of royal decrees, they practised many suspicious ceremonies not recognized even by orthodox Moslems, performed incantations, wore talismans and charms. A concealed system of communication was established between them and their brethren in the provinces; and each important event that took place in the city was known within a few hours to every inhabitant of the sierras. The Moors of the Serrania of Ronda did not receive the Gospel with the same docility as their kinsmen of the Alpujarras, whose doubts had been speedily removed by the cogent argument of a hundred thousand armed men. The missionaries, who tried to carry matters with a high hand, were maltreated and driven away. The mountaineers rose; the country was swept by bands of merciless brigands; the corsairs of Africa repaired in large numbers to the scene of booty and adventure; the passes were barricaded; and the region in the vicinity of Ronda assumed the appearance of a fortified camp. Offers of amnesty, conditional on baptism, were received with scorn. An army under Don Alonso de Aguilar, the Count of Cifuentes, and the Count of Ureña then entered the mountains. The Moors, evacuating their villages, slowly retired to the Sierra Bermeja, where they made a final stand. The impetuosity and want of discipline of the Christians lured them into a disadvantageous situation, whence there was no escape. After a day of fighting, they were surrounded in the darkness and routed with frightful slaughter. Don Alonso de Aguilar, Francisco Ramirez de Madrid, chief of ordnance of the Spanish army, and many other cavaliers, were killed; and the mountain slopes were strewn with the bodies of soldiers who had been butchered as they fled. The victory of the Sierra Bermeja was the only important one gained by the insurgents in the long course of the Morisco wars. It was productive of no substantial advantage; and its only permanent effect was to exasperate the Queen, who, now regarding herself as the injured party, devoted henceforth all her energy to the oppression of a heretic race whose existence she considered a blemish upon her piety and a scandal to her dominions.

The submission of the Moors, during the gradual subjugation of the Peninsula, had left large numbers in different conditions of life scattered through the provinces of the various kingdoms. A few had early apostatized; many were held in a state of servitude; but by far the larger portion enjoyed a nominal freedom, and purchased immunity from molestation by the payment of tribute. All who complied with the laws regulating their responsibilities to the government were allowed the peaceful exercise of their religious ceremonies. The principal wealth of the Castilian nobility consisted in the industry of these their intelligent and laborious dependents. On what are now known as the dehesas and despoblados—“pastures” and “deserts”—of Castile and Estremadura, the Moorish agriculturists produced from an ungrateful soil the wheat which supplied the population of the entire Peninsula. These invaluable tributaries of the Spanish Crown had never evinced the slightest concern for the fate of their fellow-sectaries contending for liberty and religion on the distant banks of the Genil. Not only had they failed to manifest their sympathy, but the extraordinary contributions for the prosecution of the war levied upon the products of their thrift largely contributed to the successful termination of a struggle in whose result they naturally must have felt a more than passing interest. Had their feelings been sufficiently ardent to have induced active and armed co-operation, the difficulties of the Reconquest must have been vastly increased. As it was, their apathetic and selfish conduct was far from securing them immunity from persecution. The malignant bigotry of the Queen, flinging to the winds every sentiment of justice, piety, and humanity, had now usurped over her better nature an imperious and undisputed dominion; and on the twelfth of February, 1502, she published an edict ordering the banishment of all the Moors of Leon and Castile. The extraordinary lack of political discernment disclosed by such a step affords painful evidence to what dishonorable and injurious expedients a mind of more than ordinary capacity may be impelled by the fury of religious passion. These objects of her animadversion were, as a class, her most faithful, obedient, and valuable subjects. They had always observed the laws with scrupulous fidelity. Those most prejudiced against their blood and their belief had never imputed to them the crimes of sacrilege, of conspiracy, of treason. Under their patient and skilful hands, the most unpromising regions, heretofore abandoned by native ignorance and sloth as totally unproductive, now blossomed with unsurpassed fertility. Their industry filled the granaries of the kingdom; there was no other available source of supply, and with their expulsion a famine was imminent; in the future, as was subsequently demonstrated, there were none competent or willing to take their place. The slaves of her powerful vassals, serfs who represented infinite blood and treasure expended in the service of the crown, were not originally exempted from the force of this sweeping decree, and the infringement of private rights resulting from the arbitrary confiscation of this property, without excuse or recompense, promised disastrous political complications. These considerations had, however, no weight in the mind of the obstinate Isabella. The fact that in the midst of a Christian population an infidel community was suffered to exist, especially after the Moslems of Granada had declared their adherence to the Faith, was repugnant to her intolerant nature, and a standing reproach to the religion she professed. In support of her policy, she coined the atrocious maxim, worthy of the ingenious casuistry of a Jesuit, “It is better to prevent than to punish; and it is right to punish the little for the crimes of the great.” The vicarious sufferings of the Castilian Arabs were now to atone for the offences of the rebels of Granada, with whom they had nothing in common but a similar origin and an inherited creed, and in whose behalf they had never exhibited the slightest indication of countenance or sympathy. The enforcement of this measure, whose inhuman provisions subjected the unhappy objects of its severity to the treatment due outlaws and criminals, was only partially observed. At the very beginning it was seen that, if carried out to the letter, a considerable part of the kingdom would become a barren and uninhabited solitude. The decree was therefore revoked. A compromise, by which the delicate scruples of the Queen were satisfied, was effected,—baptism was substituted for exile; the scenes of indiscriminate and wholesale aspersion were repeated; a large and industrious population bartered their religious convictions for safety, and, by the force of a royal proclamation, were transformed from a self-respecting body of colonists into a nation of hypocrites.

With the death of Isabella, which occurred at this time, the Moriscoes were relieved from the persecution of a vindictive and persevering enemy. The permanent elimination of her influence from the politics of the Peninsula did not, however, improve the condition of the recent victims of her fiery and unrelenting zeal. The system by which she governed; the infamous maxims which guided her conduct in the relations existing between sovereign and subject; the shameless violation of treaties; the audacious usurpations of the clergy; the prejudices engendered by years of oppression, were perpetuated by her successors, and adopted by their ministers as an essential part of the policy of the crown. The reverence with which her memory is regarded is to be attributed, not so much to the greatness of her abilities, eminent as they were, but to their misapplication; not to the military achievements of her armies, but to the sanguinary revenge they inflicted upon vanquished enemies; not to the blessings of a wise, a just, and a stable government,—the most substantial foundation upon which the fame of a monarch can be erected,—but to the inauguration of measures which eventually purged the kingdom of misbelievers, who were the source of its material wealth and of its commercial and agricultural prosperity. A princess who could deliberately repudiate the obligations of national honor can scarcely be regarded in the light of a public benefactor. The patroness of the Inquisition has but a slender claim to the admiration of posterity. The popularity of Isabella is based upon the fact that she was the representative of contemporaneous popular sentiment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no proceeding was so meritorious as the torture of heretics. All questions of political expediency were rigidly subordinated to the claims of what was universally regarded as a paramount religious duty. The progressive decadence of Spanish power dates from its very establishment, and is directly traceable to the incessant intervention of ecclesiastical authority in civil affairs, and to the awful consequences resulting from the unlimited application of the atrocious principle that national faith and public honor must be always sacrificed to the interests of the Roman Catholic religion.

The different aspects under which the same things appeared, during the sixteenth century, to people of a common nationality, living under the same laws and professing the same doctrines, are remarkable. During the bitter persecutions in Castile, the Aragonese Moslems retained their privileges unimpaired. Not only that, but while the spirit of fanaticism was driving the tributaries of Isabella by thousands to simulated conversion, Ferdinand issued a decree granting to the Moors of Valencia the enjoyment of their religious and social rights in perpetuity. On the one hand, therefore, was the most radical suppression of individual thought and action; on the other, a toleration worthy of the most enlightened statesmanship, and, it must be added, little to be anticipated under the circumstances. But the sagacity of Ferdinand never willingly countenanced the employment of force in matters of religion. His jealousy of power caused him to resent the encroachments of the priesthood; and he secretly discouraged the oppression of a race which he recognized as controlling the material resources upon whose maintenance depended the preservation of his dignity and prestige.

During the twelve years that intervened between the death of Isabella and that of Ferdinand, the Moors enjoyed comparative peace and immunity; and the advent of Charles V. brought at first no unfavorable changes in their political or social conditions. That prince was scarcely seated upon the throne which he had inherited, and by whose acceptance there devolved upon him responsibilities of the greatest moment and the government of a people of whose disposition and character he was profoundly ignorant, when serious internal disturbances began to menace his authority. In Castile, the Comuneros, a conspiracy of nobles and municipalities, arose to assert their ancient privileges, impaired by foreign influence; and, at the same time, the Valencian populace banded together under the name of Germania, or Brotherhood, to repress the growing insolence of the aristocracy. The encroachments of the latter had long been a serious grievance in the kingdom of Valencia. Its members, ever since the Conquest, had maintained an insulting deportment with their inferiors, which had exasperated the latter beyond all endurance. They borrowed money of wealthy merchants and repaid them with curses and ridicule. The establishment of a regency had weakened the administration of the laws; the nobles were not slow to observe the advantages which a virtual interregnum afforded the development of private ambition; and, in the assertion of obsolete feudal privileges, every wrong which avarice or hatred could suggest was inflicted upon the citizens of a rich and defenceless community. The Moors, who were the vassals of the Valencian nobles, were not infrequently the instruments of their malevolence, and shared with their masters the general obloquy which attached to their conduct. The organization of the Germania had an important and disastrous effect upon the fortunes of the former. Their lot was cast with their lords, and the predominance temporarily acquired by the rebels through the incapacity of the Viceroy proved fatal in the end to the liberties of the vassal. The popular cry of infidel was raised by the insurgents, who numbered many ecclesiastics in their ranks, and sixteen thousand Moslems submitted to the infliction of compulsory baptism. The Emperor, who seems to have inherited with his dominions a taste for persecution, was not satisfied while a single Mohammedan remained within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Crown. With great difficulty he extorted a bull from the Pope which absolved him from the oath he had taken to observe the ancient laws and treaties of the kingdom, and expressly authorizing the reduction to slavery of every Mussulman whose scruples or obstinacy might prevent him from renouncing the belief of his fathers. Secure of Papal sanction, Charles now issued a proclamation requiring the Moors, under mysterious but unspecified penalties, to become Christians within ten days. The latter, who did not manifest the submissive spirit of their brethren, maintained a sullen demeanor, and, disposing of their personal effects for whatever they could obtain, prepared to go into exile. The publicity of their intention, however, defeated it; the authorities forbade the sale of their property as well as their departure, and nothing remained for them but apostasy or armed resistance. The former alternative was embraced by far the greater number. With such a multitude individual aspersion was impossible; the water of regeneration was sprinkled over kneeling thousands with branches of hyssop, and more than one unrepentant infidel, who had submitted with secret disgust to an obnoxious ceremony, was heard to mutter, “Praise be to Allah! Not a drop defiled me!”

The rural communities of Valencia regarded the prospect of conversion with even more disfavor than did the inhabitants of the capital. The ecclesiastical commissioners sent to enforce the royal edicts were excluded from the dwellings of the peasantry, who refused to hear their exhortations. In some localities open violence was manifested; the Baron of Cortes, who had urged submission, was killed by his retainers, and his body left to be devoured by swine. Resistance to royal authority was soon followed by organized revolt, and the Sierra de Espadan became the seat of a formidable insurrection. Including the banditti who habitually infested the mountains, and the African freebooters who hailed every disturbance as a source of plunder and profit, the army of the rebels amounted to more than four thousand well-armed men. A farmer named Selim Carbaic was elected their general, whose natural abilities and the valor of whose followers maintained for months an unequal struggle with the combined resources of the monarchy. Overcome at last, two thousand of the insurgents with their leader perished in a single battle; and a general amnesty was declared, under the sole condition by which any Moslem was now permitted to retain life or liberty. The Moors of Catalonia and Aragon were tendered the same alternative. Without hesitation they preferred hypocrisy to martyrdom; and by the year 1526 there no longer remained within the limits of the Spanish Peninsula a single individual who dared to openly acknowledge his belief in the creed of Mohammed.

This flattering result having been finally accomplished, it was now considered advisable to reform the proselytes. In nearly all localities where the Moriscoes predominated they occupied an anomalous position, so far as their spiritual welfare was concerned, for they were practically living without any religion. They neglected to conform to the ordinances or to observe the canons of the Church whose pale they had entered under compulsion. The evasion of their duties was connived at by the priests, who, so long as their parishioners were quiet and regularly paid their contributions, closed their eyes to all formal irregularities, and never troubled themselves with the instructions which it was their office to impart. This indulgence was further secured by donatives that exempted unwilling sinners from penance, whose vexatious performance might always be commuted for a pecuniary consideration. In the sight of the clergy, spiritual duties were thus entirely obscured by the more palpable advantages to be derived from worldly benefits and the maintenance of their flocks in ignorance,—a policy which at the same time confirmed their authority and increased their revenues. But the Moriscoes, while they shunned the mass, could not with safety resort to any other source of religious consolation. They were more than suspected of practising the rites of Islam in secret; but the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. In the eyes of devout Christians, who did not fail to notice and reprobate their shortcomings, they were regarded as something worse than Pagans. Although they possessed all the requisites of good citizenship, and their intercourse with their neighbors was marked by every evidence of honor and probity, these qualities were ignored when their religious consistency was called in question.