Part 17

Isabella revived also another ancient custom of her forefathers, that of presiding in person over courts of justice. From city to city she travelled on horseback, making the circuit of her kingdom, regardless of personal fatigue. Side by side with Ferdinand, when he had leisure from foreign complications to accompany her, she sat (not unmindful of the dignity belonging to the crown) with her courtiers around her, to listen with interest, that she might redress wrongs, punish the wrongdoers, and administer justice even to the lowliest of her subjects. Her personal address, and the unbounded respect which her integrity inspired; her proclamation throughout the kingdom that the interests of her people were her interests, re-established such public confidence that, says a writer of that age, "Those who had long despaired of public justice blessed God for their deliverance, as it were, from deplorable captivity." Nor did the sovereigns relax their personal efforts for the restoration of law and order until the cortes had passed measures for the permanent administration of justice. Thus in a few years, from a state of anarchy and misrule, Castile entered upon her "Golden Age of Justice."

The golden age of literature, developed in the next century, has been justly ascribed to the impetus given by Isabella to liberal education, classical and scientific. Under her patronage schools were established in every city, presided over by learned men. The printing press, lately invented, was introduced; foreign books were imported free of duty, while such precedence was given to native literature as led on to the brilliant achievements of the sixteenth century. In social reform precept was enforced by example. In all that was pure, in all that was true, in all that was noble and magnanimous, Isabella, in private life, was a witness unto her people. No calumny of any kind, even in a depraved age, was ever cast upon Isabella of Castile or upon any one of her royal children. But the strongest characteristic of Isabella, that which colored her whole life and gave force to every public action, was her fervent piety and her unfaltering [perhaps blind] faith in the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For all the evils that grew out of the latter she is still branded, even among the liberal-minded of to-day, regardless of her illiberal age, with that worst of all brands, "a religious bigot." This side of her character we will not discuss, but refer our readers to the history of Christianity during the fifteenth century, when the great flood-tide of religious intolerance reached its height.

It was in the fulness of this tide that the great historic events of her reign occurred, viz., the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews, the Inquisition, and the discovery of America. After each of these, for honor or dishonor, we interline the name of Isabella. Yet the conquest of Granada, or the reconquest of every foot of land which the Moors had taken from the Goths, was foreordained in Castilian councils centuries before Isabella was born. The expulsion of the Jews, the so-called "enemies of Christ," was but a part of the same effort "to rid the land of unbelieving invaders." The Inquisition, with all its horrors, was re-established by the Church during that age of intolerance to which the reign of Isabella belongs. Yet these are still named to the dishonor of Isabella.

But the discovery of America, with all its lasting benefits to mankind, is the immortal crown which the world has woven out of her proffered "Jewels;" and with this crown it has crowned Isabella of Castile.

In the marriage contract of the youthful prince and princess it was agreed that Ferdinand should lead the armies of Castile against the Moors as soon as the affairs of the kingdom would permit. The opportunity and the provocation came after twelve years, when the sovereigns sent to demand of the Moors the long unpaid tribute, and received only the defiant answer, "Tell your masters that the Moors who paid tribute to Castile are dead. Our mints no longer coin gold, but steel!" And to prove the efficacy of their steel they sallied forth and took Zahara, one of the strongholds which the father of Ferdinand had taken from the Moors. The chivalry of Spain sprang quickly into well-girt saddles, and the ten years' siege of Granada, "the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain," began in 1481. The Iliad of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors has yet to be written; the Homer of its Iliad has yet to appear. But the closing year of the struggle between Christian knight and turbaned Moor would furnish as stirring incidents, and immortalize the names of its heroes as successfully, as has the Greek Homer the Trojan war.

Those of us who have read the story of the Arab-Moors in Spain, the quick-witted, light-footed, brave-hearted Moors, who coveted the land "flowing with milk and honey" that lay across a narrow strait; who conquered it, redeemed its barren wastes, and made them to blossom as the rose; who, in their quick flight from the Arabian deserts through civilized lands, gathered seeds of knowledge and planted them so freely in the land of their adoption that their planting overspread the earth; who, like the Goths, became enervated when they became stationary, and were no longer able to resist the powerful foe who had from their entrance into Spain sworn their expulsion or their extermination, will be ready to weep when the final retribution comes. Yet come it did, when Ferdinand and Isabella pitched their tents and planted their banners of Castile and Aragon upon the verdant vega, or plain, around Granada.

And yet we as readily accept the inevitable. We have known that it was impossible for Isabella to allow any portion of her dominions to be possessed by a people alien in race, language, customs, and religion; to see the Crescent triumphant over any site that had been hallowed by the Cross. To the Spanish Christian the fall of Granada was only the final victory of a righteous war. It was the triumph of his race, his nation, and his creed. And, looking back over the long march from Asturias to Granada, he claimed to have invaded no man's right; every victory but won back what was his own: every step retraced by the Moors but left him in possession of another portion of his inheritance from his forefathers.

The Arab-Moors claimed also hereditary rights. For nearly eight hundred years the Moors had held possession of that strip of land between the "Snow Mountains" and the blue sea, in Southern Spain. One cannot but feel respect for the brave Moorish king of Granada, who said, when threatened with invasion, "Our mint no longer coins gold, but steel!" In this last great chivalrous war, a war for race and creed and country, all honor is due to the vanquished, who poured out their blood like water for their homes and their religion. The details of this heroic death-struggle belong to history rather than to biography. Yet Isabella was the great animating spirit of the war. Her tent was side by side with that of Ferdinand, and her counsel was ever wise and practical.

And near the royal tents were others which she erected, where the wounded in the fray might have medical aid and tender nursing. Thus our "Warrior Queen," with a woman's heart, provided the first Army Hospital on record. The tents were burned down, but a substantial city arose, as if by magic, to take their place. The knights would have called it "Isabella," but she named it "Santa Fe," the city of Holy Faith. And this city helped to bring the war to a close. The Moors knew by it that Isabella had come to stay until she had added Granada to the crown of Castile.

Another form rises before us as we look back four hundred years across the vega of Granada to the city of Sante Fe. We forget for a time the Christians and the Moors, we see only the great queen and the great discoverer. The man of science, Christoforo Colombo, had been lately dismissed from the court at Sante Fe. The sovereigns had no time for adventurers seeking aid to discover unknown lands when the reconquest of their own was just within their grasp. Cast down, but not discouraged, Columbus, all alone, was retracing his steps across the vega, en route for a port from whence to sail for England, when the queen sent a royal summons for him to return, and he reached Sante Fe just in time to be present at the surrender of Granada. Let me add that while the Moors as a nation fell with Granada, they were not as individuals banished from Spain until the reign of Philip II., the great-grandson of Isabella.

[Illustration: Ferdinand and Isabella. The surrender of Granada.]

We all know the story of Columbus. At this time he was but a penniless mendicant travelling on foot from court to court, seeking patronage to enable him to prove the truth which his great mind had grasped, the rotundity of the earth. The subject had given him no rest for eighteen years. He had discussed it before wise men in council assembled; he had pleaded with royalty in vain; at the court of Isabella, for the first time, he laid his plans and discussed his projects before a woman. The world to-day pays its tribute of four hundred years to Columbus, the World-finder. All honor to the brave man who, firm of faith and fearless of fate, unfurled his sails upon an unknown sea, and planted the cross and the banner of Castile upon an unknown land. All honor, too, to Queen Isabella of Spain, who, with "faith in things unseen," had the courage to say, "I will undertake the enterprise for mine own crown of Castile," and from whose presence Columbus went forth to discover a land he never dreamed of, and to open a gate for the exodus of nations across the pathless sea. The same pen that signed the capitulation of the Moors and the contract with Columbus, signed also an edict for the expulsion of all unbaptized Jews from Spain between March and July of 1492. This edict condemned to perpetual exile from one to eight hundred thousand of Spain's most wealthy subjects. The coast was lined with vessels of every kind, and size, busy with the transportation of these unhappy victims, when Columbus was seeking for vessels and men to cross the "Sea of Darkness." And now we are beginning to understand the momentous events that culminated in the reign of Isabella. We find that religious enthusiasm, inspired during the long wars with the "Infidel Moors," developed into religious bigotry. In the Jews, Spain expelled the most wealthy portion of her subjects; in the Moors, the most industrious; the wealth and industry of the nation were sacrificed for race and creed. And then within its own race and creed arose a new foe to combat; with equal energy and blind zeal Spain crushed Protestantism within her borders through the terrors of the Inquisition.

But let us not lay the whole blame of such intolerant Christianity upon the unfortunate woman who fell heir to the crown of Castile during the period when the Church of Rome had the power to bind the consciences of men. Let us remember that as a woman Isabella was an honor to her sex; as a Christian she lived devoutly; as a queen she ruled wisely for the uplifting of her nation, and that the only censure the world casts upon her is the fortitude with which she said "Infidelity must be banished from the land."

"Bury me in Granada, the brightest jewel in my crown," she said, when dying, in far-off Castile, November 26, 1504. The way was long and the December winds were cold as the royal cortege, with knightly escort, wended its way across the barren heights of Central Spain into the beautiful valley of Andalusia, across the lovely vega, past Santa Fe, up the rugged slope of the acropolis of Granada into the Chapel Isabella, near the unrivalled Alhambra. Here in the very heart of the last Moorish capital, while the whole nation mourned, they laid all that was mortal of the great queen, whom Lord Bacon has named "the corner-stone of the greatness of Spain."

Twelve years later, January 23, 1516, they laid King Ferdinand beside her, "the wisest king that ever ruled in Spain." (Prescott.) Their grandson, Charles V., now summoned the finest artists in the world to prepare royal mausoleums for Ferdinand and Isabella and for his parents, Joanna of Castile and Philip of Burgundy. The cathedral of Granada is the Spanish temple of victory. It covers the site of an ancient Moorish mosque. Within its royal chapel one may read, in bas-relief, the whole story of the reconquest of Spain. On either side of its high altar kneel the life-size statues of the final conquerors; while in solemn, stately magnificence, the royal mausoleums of purest Carrara marble, with their reclining portrait figures of Ferdinand and Isabella in soft, time-tinted alabaster, tell us that here the nation, "redeemed from bondage," laid their deliverers to rest. And here, at the close of nearly four hundred years, a hand from across the sea lays this tribute, with a garland of white roses and a wreath of olive leaves and immortelles, upon the tomb of ISABELLA OF CASTILE.

[Signature of the author.]

NICHOLAS COPERNICUS

By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D.

(1473-1543)

[Illustration: Copernicus. [TN]]

The life of Nicholas Copernicus furnishes a signal example of the accordance between profound religious sentiment and the utmost inquisitiveness respecting the secrets of nature and the laws of the universe.

The birthplace of genius is sometimes found nestled amid the fairest scenes, and the opening years of life are favored with appeals to curiosity and imagination, such as stimulate the exercise of the intellect; but the lot of Copernicus, as a boy, was cast in one of the flattest, tamest, and most uninteresting parts of Germany. Not far from the banks of the Vistula, on the way to the free city of Dantzic, lies a fortified town named Thorn, where the river is crossed by a wooden bridge, and the place is adorned by a bronze statue of our philosopher--for there he was born. His father was a merchant, and in the municipal records his father's name appears as a freeman admitted to the franchise in 1462. In 1472 or 1473 a son was added to the family, and the parents had a horoscope taken of the child, who appeared at thirty-eight minutes past four on January 19, 1472, according to some; at forty-eight minutes past four in the afternoon of February 19, 1473, according to others; the exact instant of the nativity being an important point in astrological calculations, which, in those days, inspired in fathers and mothers the deepest concern. At all events, Copernicus was deemed to have entered the world under a lucky planet, and it was augured that he would turn out a man of distinguished talent. About ten years before Martin Luther studied at Mansfield, and then at Eisenach, and rambled about the quaint streets, singing Christmas carols in the town where he was born, Nicholas Copernicus passed through a similar course of education. He did so under some old-fashioned pedagogue, who no more dreamed of the scientific fame of his pupil than did Trebonius of the approaching celebrity of young Master Martin. Copernicus would there learn to read, to write, to construe Latin, and to commit to memory hymns, prayers, and catechisms. Whether as a lad he studied Greek is uncertain; but, as his parents seem to have been wealthy, he would enjoy greater advantages than his still more illustrious contemporary; hence at an early period he was sent to Cracow, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. Mathematics formed his favorite pursuit, and by the thorough acquisition of its principles and modes of reasoning he laid the basis of his subsequent eminence. But he took a degree as doctor of medicine; and according to the comprehensive methods of culture which obtained in those days, he paid attention to painting, and made some proficiency as an artist. Scholars were at that period accustomed to travel, and Copernicus proceeded from Cracow to Bologna; and in that city of feudal palaces and towers he would find a school of painting to cultivate his artistic taste, as well as a university where he could study astronomy. There he entered upon divers calculations connected with the position of the earth and the plan of the heavenly bodies. Then proceeding to Rome, he became there a mathematical professor, and won vast renown. Soon after the commencement of the sixteenth century he returned to the banks of the Vistula, and having been ordained to the priesthood, had a canonry at Frauenburg, on the Frische-Haeff, bestowed upon him by his uncle. The cathedral is described as a handsome building of brick, erected in 1342, in an elevated part of the town, overlooking the flat sandbanks of the Elbing, as it flows on its way to the Baltic. In connection with his canonry, Copernicus had some contention about his official rights, the nature of which does not appear. All we know is that he settled down in that quiet, out-of-the-way corner of the world, heedless of worldly ambition and indifferent to ecclesiastical honors and emoluments. He was no sceptic, no free-thinker, nor do we find him taking a part in the theological controversies of his age. No mention is made of what he thought and did in relation to the grand quarrel between Luther and Leo, or the Diet of Worms, or the burning of the bull at the gates of Wittenberg, or the other stirring events of the Reformation; only we know he remained a Catholic, a quiet, self-contained, thoughtful, devout man, childlike in his religion, trustful in his piety, and exemplary in the discharge of clerical duties. We can picture him going through the usual routine of canonical services in Frauenburg Cathedral, full of faith and prayer. With this vocation he coupled medical practice. He turned to good charitable account that proficiency in the healing art which he had acquired at Cracow, and visited the sick and the poor, bringing upon himself the blessing of those who were ready to perish. But the nature of his intellect, sharpened by studies at Bologna and Rome, gave him special advantages in the pursuit of astronomical knowledge; and as he had a decided taste in that direction, what time he could spare from the cathedral and the treatment of the sick he devoted to the study of the heavens. "He went very little into the world; he considered all conversation as fruitless except that of a serious and learned cast, so that he formed no intimacies except with grave and learned men." Alone at midnight he would watch the stars; in his study with his books he would inquire of the ancients; and then the profound thoughts passing through his mind he would exchange with the "grave and reverend seigniors" of his acquaintance.

The Ptolemaic hypothesis of the universe was then in fashion. It was supposed that the earth was the centre of celestial motions, that the sun, the moon, and the stars revolved around the world which we inhabit. Not that the Pythagorean hypothesis was totally forgotten. There were those who believed that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of the great circle in which the heavenly bodies perform their evolutions; but the Ptolemaic hypothesis had the ascendency beyond all doubt; and with this hypothesis Copernicus could not rest satisfied. It appeared to him beset with insuperable difficulties. True enough, the rotation of the heavens around the earth seemed to be what the human eye beheld, as anyone watched sunrise and sunset. But what the senses thus presented, reason, in its ponderings, was led to contradict. For the notion of a huge mechanism like the celestial sphere, spinning round the terraqueous globe as its pivot looked unreasonable. To explain it in any way on mathematical principles needed a most complicated array of cycles and epicycles. Symmetry and simplicity were wanting in the theory. _A priori_ objections started up against it. If the senses pointed to the earth as a centre, reason pointed to a centre elsewhere. Copernicus studied the works of ancient philosophers on the question. He examined mathematical traditions and criticised the opinions of learned professors. He found accounts of those who had asserted the motion of the earth. "Though," he says, "it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in former times liberty had been permitted to others to figure as they pleased certain circles for the purpose of demonstrating the phenomena of the stars, I considered that to me also it might be easily allowed to try whether, by a supposition of the earth's motion, a better explanation might be found of the revolution of the celestial orbs. Having assumed," he goes on to say, "the motions of the earth, by laborious and long observation I at length found that if the motions of the other planets be compared with the revolution of the earth, not only these phenomena follow from the suppositions, but also that the several orbs and the whole system are so connected in order and magnitude, that no one part can be transposed without disturbing the rest and introducing confusion into the whole universe." What Copernicus was in search of was some simple and symmetrical theory of the appearances of the heavens which would relieve him of the complexity and confusion attendant on the Ptolemaic system so popular in the schools. He started from an _a priori_ point of reasoning--the only one thought of in his day--but he came to certain conclusions which _a posteriori_ examination in after times abundantly confirmed.

[Illustration: Copernicus.]

He believed that the earth is spherical; that the earth and the sea constitute a wonderful globe; that the motions of the heavenly bodies are circular and uniform, or compounded of circular and uniform motions; that the earth revolves on its own axis, and also performs a journey along its own orbit round the sun; that the sphere of the fixed stars is immensely distant, and that it is impossible to explain the motion of the planets upon the supposition of the earth being their centre. And he distinctly remarks: "It does not shame us to confess that the whole space in which the moon revolves, together with the earth, moves along a great orbit among the planets, round the sun every year; that the sun remains permanent and immovable, whatever may be its apparent motion." It must be kept in mind throughout any careful study of his theory, that it was an _hypothesis_ framed to remove difficulties connected with older systems; that he sought to bring conceptions of the universe into harmony with reason, instead of giving way to impressions made by the senses, or to the authority of world-honored teachers, either in other days or in his own; nor can we omit adding that, while he found fault with the Ptolemaic cycles and epicycles, he constructed similar devices of his own.