CHAPTER XXI

MATERIAL AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS, 1479-1517

[Sidenote: Economic medievalism.]

[Sidenote: Privileges of the _Mesta_.]

The Catholic Kings attacked the economic problems of their era with much the same zeal they had displayed in social and political reforms, but without equal success, for medievalism in material affairs was more persistent than in social, political, and intellectual institutions. The same false economic ideas of the past were still operative. Especially was this manifest in the belief that legislation and state intervention in business provided a panacea for all evils, when the real needs were the development of the wealth at hand and the modification of geographical conditions in such a way as to permit of additional productivity. Protection and excessive regulation were the keynote of the laws. As a result manufactures were stimulated on the one hand, and various cities of the two kingdoms became notable industrial centres, but on the other hand, these same industries were hindered by inspections, by laws regulating the fashion and style of goods and fixing prices, wages, and the hours of labor, and by a host of other measures which killed initiative and hindered rapidity of work. In part to promote this artificial industrial life, so that raw wool might be readily procured, the Catholic Kings rec