CHAPTER I

CASTILE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

There are some characters in history, whose reputation for heroism is beyond reproach in the eyes of the general public. There are others, however, whose claims to glory are ardently contested by posterity, and none more than Isabel of Castile, in whose case ordinary differences of opinion have been fanned by that most uncompromising of all foes to a fair estimate, religious prejudice. Thus the Catholic, while deploring the extreme severity of the methods employed for the suppression of heresy, would yet look on her championship of the Catholic Faith as her chief claim to the admiration of mankind. The Protestant on the other hand, while acknowledging the glories of the Conquest of Granada and the Discovery of the New World, would weigh them light in the balance against the fires and tortures of the Inquisition and the ruthless expulsion of the Jews.

One solution of the problem has been to make the unfortunate Ferdinand the scapegoat of his Queen’s misdeeds. Whatever tends to the glory of Spain, in that, if not the originator, she is at least the partner and moving spirit. When acts of fanaticism hold the field, they are the result of Ferdinand’s material ambitions or the religious fervour of her confessors; Isabel’s ordinarily independent and clear-sighted mind being reduced for the sake of her reputation to a condition of credulous servility.

Such a view has missed the consistency of real life. It is probably responsible for the exactly opposite summary of another critic, who denies Isabel’s superiority to her husband in anything but hypocrisy and the ability to make her lies more convincing. He even fails to admit that, this being granted, her capacities in one direction at least must have been phenomenal, since Ferdinand was the acknowledged liar of his day _par excellence_.

Faced by the witness of the Queen’s undoubted popularity, he sweeps it away with a tribute to Spanish manhood: “The praise bestowed on the character of Isabel is, to no small amount, due to the chivalrous character of the Spaniards, who never forgot that the Queen was a lady.”

Such an assumption must be banished, along with Isabel’s weak-mindedness on religious matters, to the realms of historical fiction. The very Castilians who extol her glory and merit do not hesitate to draw attention in bald terms to her sister-in-law’s frailties. Indeed a slight perusal of Cervantes’ famous novel, embodying so much of the habits and outlook of Spain at a slightly later date will show it was rather the fashion to praise a woman for her beauty than to credit her with mental or moral qualities of any strength.

The Catholic Queen, like other individuals of either sex, must stand or fall by the witness of her own actions and speech; and these seen in the light of contemporary history will only confirm the tradition of her heroism, which the intervening centuries have tended to blur. The odium that sometimes attaches to her name is largely due to the translation of Spanish ideals and conditions of life in the Middle Ages into the terms that rule the conduct of the twentieth century.

“Quien dice España dice todo,” says the old proverb,—“He who says Spain has said everything.”

This arrogance is typical of the self-centred, highly strung race, that had been bred by eight centuries of war against the Infidel. The other nations of Western Europe might have their occasional religious difficulties; but, in the days before Luther and Calvin were born, none to the same extent as Spain were faced by the problem of life in daily contact with the unpardonable crime of heresy, in this case the more insidious that it was often masked by outward observance of rule and ritual.

The greater part of the modern world would dismiss the matter with a shrug of its shoulders and the comfortable theory that truth, being eternal, can take care of itself; but this freedom of outlook was yet to be won on the battlefields of the Renaissance and in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. It would be an anachronism to look for it in Spain at a time when the influence of the new birth of thought and culture had extended no further than an imitation of Italian poets.

Isabel’s bigotry is an inheritance she shared with the greater part of her race in her own day, the logical sequence of her belief in the exclusive value of the divine in man’s nature, as against any claims of his human body. If she pursued her object, the salvation of souls, with a relentless cruelty, from which we turn away to-day in sick disgust, we must remember that Spain for the most part looked on unmoved. Where opposition was shown, as in her husband’s kingdom of Aragon, it was rather the spirit of independence than of mercy that raised its head.

Indeed the religious persecution was in no way disproportionate to the severity of the criminal procedure of the reign, as will be seen by a glance at the usual sentences passed on those convicted of any crime. The least with which a thief could hope to escape from his judges was the loss of a limb, but the more likely fate was to be placed with his back to a tree, and there, after a hasty confession of his sins, shot or burnt.

Many of Queen Isabel’s contemporaries remark her intolerance of crime and disorder, and a few of the younger generation who had grown to manhood in the atmosphere of peace she had established, condemn her justice as excessive. By modern standards it is undoubtedly barbarous; but long centuries of anarchy had bred a spirit of lust and brutality little above the barbarian level, and only drastic measures could hope to cure so deep-rooted an evil. Isabel herself, throughout her childhood, had been a forced witness of her brother’s policy of “sprinkling rose-water on rebellion” instead of employing the surgeon’s knife; and her strength of character despised the weakness, that under the pretext of humanity made life impossible for nine-tenths of the population.

It is her great achievement that she raised the crown, the mediæval symbol of national justice, from the political squalor into which seventy years of mingled misfortune and incapacity had thrown it, and that she set it on a pedestal so lofty, that even the haughtiest Castilian need not be ashamed to bow the knee in reverence. By this substitution of a strong government for a weak, of impartiality for favouritism, she secured peace at home and thus laid a firm foundation for Ferdinand’s ambitious foreign policy, and the establishment of Spain as the first nation in Europe.

It is perhaps difficult to apportion exactly the respective shares of Isabel and her husband in the administrative measures of their reign; for their unanimity of aim and action was in keeping with their motto _tanto monta_,—“the one as much as the other.” Yet in this connection it is necessary to realize the contrast between the two kingdoms. Aragon, with its three divisions of Aragon proper, Valencia, and the Principality of Catalonia, measured in all scarcely a quarter of the territory of its western neighbour. Moreover the spirit of the people and the democratic character of its laws rendered it a soil peculiarly ill-suited for the growth of the royal prerogative. Thus, in spite of the sovereigns’ best endeavours, it stubbornly withstood their centralizing policy, and the main burden of taxation and governmental measures fell on Castile. The latter, “the corona” or “big crown,” in contradistinction to the “coronilla” or “little crown” of Aragon, continued throughout the Queen’s lifetime to look on her husband as more or less of a foreigner; and all the many documents signed “Yo, El Rey” could not weigh with a true Castilian against Isabel’s single “Yo, La Reina.” It is she, who, when “Los Reyes” are not mentioned together, is hailed to-day in Spain as the chief representative of national grandeur, just as “castellano,” the speech of the larger kingdom, has become synonymous with our term “Spanish.”

The word “Castile” itself conveys to an imaginative mind a picture of that mediæval land of castles, whose ramparts were not only a defence against the Moors but also the bulwark of a turbulent nobility. In vain the Crown had striven to suppress its over-powerful subjects. The perpetual crusade upon the southern border proved too alluring a recruiting-ground for the vices of feudalism; and many a mail-clad count led out to battle a larger following of warriors than the sovereign to whom he nominally owed obedience.

So long as the crusade continued, rulers of Castile could not attempt to disband the feudal levies on which their fortune depended; and each acquisition of Moorish territory was followed by fresh distributions of lands amongst the conquering troops. Sometimes these grants carried with them complete fiscal and judicial control of the district in question, at others merely a yearly revenue; but, whatever the tenure, the new owner and his descendants were certain to take advantage of royal embarrassments and national disorder to press their claims to the farthest limit. A few communities, _behetrias_, succeeded in obtaining the privilege of choosing their own over-lord with the more doubtful corollary of changing him as often as they liked, a process fruitful of quarrels which not unnaturally resulted in their gradual absorption by more settled neighbours.

Since the practice of primogeniture was common in Castile and lands were inalienable, large estates were rapidly built up, whose owners, unable to rule all their property directly, would sublet some of their towns and strongholds to other nobles and knights in return for certain services. These dependencies, or _latifundia_, yielded ultimate obedience not to the King but to the over-lord from whom their commander had received them. On one occasion Alvaro de Luna, the favourite minister of John II., appeared before the castle of Trujillo and demanded its surrender in his master’s name. To this the “Alcayde,” or Governor, replied that he owed allegiance to the King’s uncle, John of Aragon, and would open the gates to none else: an answer typical of the days when aristocratic independence ran riot in Castile.

A great territorial magnate could also renounce the obedience he owed to his sovereign by the simple method of sending a messenger who should, in the King’s presence, make the following declaration: “Señor, on behalf of ... I kiss your hand and inform you that henceforth he is no more your vassal.”

The weakness of the Castilian Crown was further aggravated in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by disputed successions and long minorities; the nobles using the confusion these engendered to wring concessions from the rival claimants, or to seize them from inexperienced child rulers.

“A breastplate would have served him better!” exclaimed the Count of Benavente, when at the beginning of Queen Isabel’s reign he heard of the death of some man bearing a royal safe-conduct.

“Do you wish then that there was no King in Castile?” asked the Queen indignantly; to which the Count replied cheerfully: “Not so! I would there were many, for then I should be one of them.”

His words are the expression of the aristocratic ideal of life in his own day. It was perhaps most nearly realized in the case of the Grand Masterships of the three great Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara. These Orders had been called into existence by the crusade; but their original purpose was gradually obscured by the wealth and influence that made them the resort of the ambitious rather than of the enthusiast. Like the Monastic Orders, their members were bound by vows: obedience, community of property, strict conjugal fidelity, sometimes celibacy; but dispensations could be bought, and the gains to be reaped more than compensated for any theoretical austerities or submission.

The main canon of their creed, war against the Infidel, was readily accepted by every aspirant knight; the only drawback being that his inborn love of fighting led him to take part as well in whatever other kind of war happened to dawn on the horizon, no matter if it were against his own sovereign. How formidable this would prove for the sovereign we can imagine when we learn that in the fifteenth century the combined revenues of the Orders amounted to something like 145,000 ducats,[1] while the Master of Santiago could call into the field a force of four hundred fully-armed cavaliers and one thousand lances. In addition he possessed the patronage of numerous “commanderies,” rich military posts that brought with them the rents of subject towns and villages, and that were eagerly sought by the highest in the land.

Footnote 1:

“The monetary unit of Castile was the ‘maravedi,’ anciently a gold coin of value; but, in the fifteenth century, diminished to a fraction of its former estimation.”—Lea, _History of Spanish Inquisition_, vol. i., Appendix III.

The ducat would be worth about 374 maravedis, or about 8_s._ 9_d._ in English money.

Extreme power and privilege are often their own undoing; and from the fruits of its triumph the Castilian aristocracy was to reap a bitter harvest. Had the fight with the Crown been more strenuous and the victory less certain, the _ricos-hombres_ or great men of the land, might have learned to combine if not with other classes at least amongst themselves; but the independence they had gained so easily they placed in jeopardy by individual selfishness and mutual distrust. It has been said with truth that it was almost impossible to persuade the mediæval Castilian noble to act with his fellows. Pride, ambition, the courage that vaunts itself in duels, the revenge that lurks, dagger-drawn, in back streets or lonely roads: these were the source of constant feuds and internecine warfare, incapable of a final settlement save by the pressure of some outside force.

Nor could the noble, who distrusted the members of his own class, rely in times of danger on the co-operation of his humbler neighbours. Believing that war was the profession of the gentleman, he despised the burgher, the artisan, and the farmer. Like the French “seigneur” he had won freedom from direct taxation as the privilege of his Order, and thus lost touch completely with the _pecheros_ or “taxable classes.” He had appropriated the majority of the high-sounding offices of state, the Grand Constable, the Admiral of Castile, and so forth; but he valued them from the wealth or honour they conveyed, not from any sense of responsibility. The very fact that such offices had tended to become hereditary had done much to destroy their official character. An “Enriquez” was Admiral of Castile, not on account of his seamanship, nor even on the system of the modern English Cabinet because of a certain “all-round” ability to deal with public business, but because his father and grandfather had held the post before him. The _ricos-hombres_ might, from personal motives, defy the government or nullify its measures; but in placing themselves above the law they had lost the incentive to control legislation. A world of experience, or rather a lack of it, separated them from those below, to whom edicts and ordinances were a matter of daily concern.

The Castilian Church was also in a sense above the law; for the clergy were exempt from ordinary taxation, paying to the Crown instead a small portion of their tithes. Like the nobles they could neither be imprisoned for debt nor suffer torture; while legally they came under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and were subject only to its penalties and censures. Archbishops, bishops, and abbots, were for the most part younger sons of wealthy nobles and shared the outlook and ambitions of their class. The Castilian prelate of the early fifteenth century found it as natural to don his suit of mail and draw his sword as to celebrate Mass or hear confessions. It would not be dislike of shedding blood nor a faint heart that would distinguish him from laymen on the battlefield, but the surcoat embroidered with a cross, that he wore in deference to his profession.

The worldly character of the higher ranks of the clergy had permeated also to the lower; and vice, ignorance, and careless levity sapped the influence of the ordinary parish priest and corrupted the monasteries and convents. Here and there were signs of an awakening, but for the most part the spiritual conscience of the Castilian Church lay dormant.

Its sense of nationality on the other hand was strong; that is to say if dislike of foreign interference and strong racial prejudice deserve such a definition. Partly from very worldliness, local and provincial interests tended to predominate over any claims of a universal Church; and submission to Rome was interpreted with a jealous regard to private ambitions. The members of the episcopate, concerned in the civil wars of Henry IV.’s reign, looked on with cool indifference when a papal legate, vainly seeking to arbitrate between the armies on the eve of a battle, was forced to save his life by flight. Similarly, the Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Castile, thought little of throwing into a dungeon the candidate who, armed with letters of appointment from Rome, had dared to dispute a rich living in the diocese with his own nominee. The Pope was a convenient “King Log”; but his subjects had not the least wish for him to develop the authority of a “King Stork.”

The Castilian Church also displayed her national prejudice, as we shall see later, in her hatred and suspicion of the alien races that formed such a large element of the Spanish population. These had sunk their roots deep in the soil during the centuries of Moorish conquest when, from behind the barrier of the Asturian mountains in the far north-west, the pure Castilian alone had been able to beat back the advancing waves of Mahometanism. As he at length descended from his refuge, where the sword or the hunting-spear had been his sole means of livelihood, he might profess to despise the believers in Allah, from whom he wrested back the land of his fathers, but in practice he was glad enough to accept them as a subject race. The Moorish warriors, who fell on the battlefield or retreated southwards before their foes, left in Christian territory a large residue of the more peaceful Arabs and Berbers, willing to till the fields, work at the looms, and fulfil all those other tasks of civilized national life that the Castilian was inclined to imagine degrading to his own dignity. Left behind also were colonies of prosperous Jews, whose ancestors, hounded from every Christian court, had found a home under the tolerant rule of the caliphs of Cordova.

Agriculture, industry, and commerce thus became stamped, unfortunately for Spain, with the taint of subjection. Not that the Castilian took no share as the years passed in the economic life of his country; for the legislation of the fifteenth century shows the middle and lower classes busily engaged in occupations such as cattle-breeding, sheep-farming, and mining; and, more especially in the south, of fruit-growing, and the production of silk, wine, and oil. The basis of a progressive national life was there; but perpetual war against the Moors and internal discord, combined with racial prejudice against the industrious alien, gave to the profession of arms a wholly disproportionate value.

Many of the towns were in their origin border outposts; and their massive towers, fortified churches, and thick walls, with the suburbs huddling close against them for protection, marked the enveloping atmosphere of danger. Since it had been difficult at first to attract the industrial classes to such surroundings, rulers of Castile had been driven to grant _fueros_ or charters, to the inhabitants embodying numerous privileges and a large measure of self-government. Then the time of danger passed; the Castilian boundary pushed farther south, and other fortified towns were needed to defend it; but the citizens of the old outposts clung jealously to the _fueros_ of their fathers and defied either royal or seignorial control.

“Ce sont de veritables petits états,” says Mariéjol, speaking of the Castilian municipalities in mediæval days; but the description that implies peculiar powers shadows forth also peculiar difficulties. The city that would keep its independence would have to struggle continually against the encroachments both of the Crown and of neighbouring territorial lords. It must for this purpose maintain its own militia, and, most arduous of all, watch carefully lest it should fall into subjection to its very defenders. Not a few of the municipal councils came in time to be dominated by a class of “knights,” or nobles of secondary rank, whose quarrels and feuds endangered industry and filled the streets with bloodshed.

The principal civic official was the “regidor”; but the Crown had by the early fifteenth century succeeded in introducing in many cases a representative, the “corregidor,” whose business it was to look after royal interests. His presence was naturally resented by the more influential citizens and, where he dealt corruptly with the people, disliked by all; but an honest corregidor, who was unconnected with local families and therefore without interest in the local feuds, and who had no axe of his own to grind, was a Godsent help to the poorer classes.

Besides appointing corregidors, the Crown had also begun to influence the municipalities in another way, through a gradually increasing control of the “Cortes,” or national parliament of Castile. This body consisted of three “Estates”; the nobles, whether _ricos-hombres_ or _hidalgos_ of lesser grade; ecclesiastics; and the Third Estate, or “Commons.” On an occasion of outward or obvious importance, when a succession or a Council of Regency were under dispute, or if an oath of homage to a new sovereign or the confirmation of some unprecedented act were required; all three “Estates” would meet together at whatever town the King happened to be staying. Such was a “General Cortes.”

An ordinary Cortes was of a very different character; for, since its business mainly concerned taxation, only the Commons, or “taxable” element of the population was in the habit of attending. In the early days of Castilian history the number of places represented was unlimited; but a right that in the disordered state of the country was both expensive and tiresome, if not actually dangerous, was regarded as a burden by most of the municipalities. By the fifteenth century only seventeen cities and towns sent members to the Cortes. These were: Toledo, Burgos, Seville, Cordova, Murcia, Leon, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, Zamora, Cuenca, Jaen, Valladolid, Madrid, Toro, Soria, and Guadalajara, while Granada was added after her conquest in 1492.

The “Procuradores,” or representatives, were in theory free to act at their own discretion; but in practice they went tied by the instructions of their fellow-citizens. Nor had they much scope for independence in the Cortes itself; for though they might and did air their grievances and press for reform, redress rested with the Crown and did not precede but follow the assent to taxation. All legislative power was in fact invested in the King; who might reject, amend, or accept suggestions as he thought fit.

“We hold that the matter of your petition is to our service.” “We command that it shall take effect.” Such phrases expressed sovereignty in a gracious mood, and all were satisfied; while the absence of royal sanction sent the _procurador_ back to his city, his efforts wasted. He could, of course, on the next occasion that the King, in need of money, summoned his deputies to grant it, refuse the supply; but in the meantime three more years might have elapsed and conditions and needs would have altered. Moreover a system of bribes and flattery went far to bring the Commons into line with the royal will; while the shortsighted complaints of some of the municipalities at the expense of maintaining their representatives paved the way for the Crown to accept the burden, thereby establishing an effective control over those who became practically its nominees.

That the towns missed the future significance of this change is hardly surprising. The civil wars that devastated Castile had taught the people that their most dangerous enemies were not their kings but the turbulent aristocracy; and they often looked to the former as allies against a common foe. In the same way the more patriotic of the nobles and ecclesiastics saw in the building up of the royal power the only hope of carrying the crusade against the Moors to a successful conclusion, or of establishing peace at home. At this critical moment in the history of Castile, national progress depended on royal dominance; and it was Queen Isabel who by establishing the one made possible the other.

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