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The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3

W >> William H. Prescott >> The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3




But the true principles of colonial policy were sadly misunderstood in the
sixteenth century. The discovery of a world was estimated, like that of a
rich mine, by the value of its returns in gold and silver. Much of
Isabella's legislation, it is true, is of that comprehensive character,
which shows that she looked to higher and far nobler objects. But with
much that is good, there was mingled, as in most of her institutions, one
germ of evil, of little moment at the time, indeed, but which, under the
vicious culture of her successors, shot up to a height that overshadowed
and blighted all the rest. This was the spirit of restriction and
monopoly, aggravated by the subsequent laws of Ferdinand, and carried to
an extent under the Austrian dynasty, that paralyzed colonial trade.

Under their most ingeniously perverse system of laws, the interests of
both the parent country and the colonies were sacrificed. The latter,
condemned to look for supplies to an incompetent source, were miserably
dwarfed in their growth; while the former contrived to convert the
nutriment which she extorted from the colonies into a fatal poison. The
streams of wealth which flowed in from the silver quarries of Zacatecas
and Potosí, were jealously locked up within the limits of the Peninsula.
The great problem, proposed by the Spanish legislation of the sixteenth
century, was the reduction of prices in the kingdom to the same level as
in other European nations. Every law that was passed, however, tended, by
its restrictive character, to augment the evil. The golden tide, which,
permitted a free vent, would have fertilized the region through which it
poured, now buried the land under a deluge which blighted every green and
living thing. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, every branch of
national industry and improvement, languished and fell to decay; and the
nation, like the Phrygian monarch, who turned all that he touched to gold,
cursed by the very consummation of its wishes, was poor in the midst of
its treasures.

From this sad picture, let us turn to that presented by the period of our
History, when, the clouds and darkness having passed away, a new morn
seemed to break upon the nation. Under the firm but temperate sway of
Ferdinand and Isabella, the great changes we have noticed were effected
without convulsion in the state. On the contrary, the elements of the
social system, which before jarred so discordantly, were brought into
harmonious action. The restless spirit of the nobles was turned from civil
faction to the honorable career of public service, whether in arms or
letters. The people at large, assured of the security of private rights,
were occupied with the different branches of productive labor. Trade, as
is abundantly shown by the legislation of the period, had not yet fallen
into the discredit which attached to it in later times. [125] The precious
metals, instead of flowing in so abundantly as to palsy the arm of
industry, served only to stimulate it. [126]

The foreign intercourse of the country was every day more widely extended.
Her agents and consuls were to be found in all the principal ports of the
Mediterranean and the Baltic. [127] The Spanish mariner, instead of
creeping along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly
across the great western ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land
trade with India into a sea trade; and the nations of the Peninsula, who
had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became
the factors and carriers of Europe.

The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and
population of its cities, the revenues of which, augmented in all to a
surprising extent, had increased, in some, forty and even fifty fold
beyond what they were at the commencement of the reign; [128] the ancient
and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling, industrious traders; [129]
Valladolid, sending forth its thirty thousand warriors from its gates,
where the whole population now scarcely reaches two-thirds of that number;
[130] Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Granada, naturalizing in
Europe the arts and luxuries of the east; Saragossa, "the abundant," as
she was called from her fruitful territory; Valencia, "the beautiful;"
Barcelona, rivalling in independence and maritime enterprise the proudest
of the Italian republics; [131] Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already
the great mart for the commercial exchanges of the Peninsula; [132] and
Seville, [133] the golden gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be
thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe.

The resources of the inhabitants were displayed in the palaces and public
edifices, fountains, aqueducts, gardens, and other works of utility and
ornament. This lavish expenditure was directed by an improved taste.
Architecture was studied on purer principles than before, and, with the
sister arts of design, showed the influence of the new connection with
Italy in the first gleams of that excellence, which shed such lustre over
the Spanish school at the close of the century. [134] A still more decided
impulse was given to letters. More printing presses were probably at work
in Spain in the infancy of the art, than at the present day. [135] Ancient
seminaries were remodelled; new ones were created. Barcelona, Salamanca,
and Alcalá, whose cloistered solitudes are now the grave, rather than the
nursery of science, then swarmed with thousands of disciples, who, under
the generous patronage of the government, found letters the surest path to
preferment. [136] Even the lighter branches of literature felt the
revolutionary spirit of the times, and, after yielding the last fruits of
the ancient system, displayed new and more beautiful varieties, under the
influence of Italian culture. [137]

With this moral development of the nation, the public revenues, the sure
index, when unforced, of public prosperity, went on augmenting with
astonishing rapidity. In 1474, the year of Isabella's accession, the
ordinary rents of the Castilian crown amounted to 885,000 reals; [138] in
1477, to 2,390,078; in 1482, after the resumption of the royal grants, to
12,711,591; and finally in 1504, when the acquisition of Granada [139] and
the domestic tranquillity of the kingdom had encouraged the free expansion
of all its resources, to 26,283,334; or thirty times the amount received
at her accession. [140] All this, it will be remembered, was derived from
the customary established taxes, without the imposition of a single new
one. Indeed, the improvements in the mode of collection tended materially
to lighten the burdens on the people.

The accounts of the population at this early period are, for the most
part, vague and unsatisfactory. Spain, in particular, has been the subject
of the most absurd, though, as it seems, not incredible estimates,
sufficiently evincing the paucity of authentic data. [141] Fortunately,
however, we labor under no such embarrassment as regards Castile in
Isabella's reign. By an official report to the crown on the organization
of the militia, in 1492, it appears that the population of the kingdom
amounted to 1,500,000 _vecinos_ or householders; or, allowing four
and a half to a family (a moderate estimate), to 6,750,000 souls. [142]
This census, it will be observed, was limited to the provinces immediately
composing the crown of Castile, to the exclusion of Granada, Navarre, and
the Aragonese dominions. [143] It was taken, moreover, before the nation
had time to recruit from the long and exhausting struggle of the Moorish
war, and twenty-five years before the close of the reign, when the
population, under circumstances peculiarly favorable, must have swelled to
a much larger amount. Thus circumscribed, however, it was probably
considerably in advance of that of England at the same period. [144] How
have the destinies of the two countries since been reversed?

The territorial limits of the monarchy, in the mean time, went on
expanding beyond example;--Castile and Leon, brought under the same
sceptre with Aragon and its foreign dependencies, Sicily and Sardinia;
with the kingdoms of Granada, Navarre, and Naples; with the Canaries,
Oran, and the other settlements in Africa; and with the islands and vast
continents of America. To these broad domains, the comprehensive schemes
of the sovereigns would have added Portugal; and their arrangements for
this, although defeated for the present, opened the way to its eventual
completion under Philip the Second. [145]

The petty states, which had before swarmed over the Peninsula,
neutralizing each other's operations, and preventing any effective
movement abroad, were now amalgamated into one whole. Sectional jealousies
and antipathies, indeed, were too sturdily rooted to be wholly
extinguished; but they gradually subsided, under the influence of a common
government, and community of interests. A more enlarged sentiment was
infused into the people, who, in their foreign relations, at least,
assumed the attitude of one great nation. The names of Castilian and
Aragonese were merged in the comprehensive one of Spaniard; and Spain,
with an empire which stretched over three-quarters of the globe, and which
almost realized the proud boast that the sun never set within her borders,
now rose, not to the first class only, but to the first place, in the
scale of European powers.

The extraordinary circumstances of the country tended naturally to nourish
the lofty, romantic qualities, and the somewhat exaggerated tone of
sentiment, which always pervaded the national character. The age of
chivalry had not faded away in Spain, as in most other lands. [146] It was
fostered, in time of peace, by the tourneys, jousts, and other warlike
pageants, which graced the court of Isabella. [147] It gleamed out, as we
have seen, in the Italian campaigns under Gonsalvo de Cordova, and shone
forth in all its splendors in the war of Granada. "This was a right gentle
war," says Navagiero, in a passage too pertinent to be omitted, "in which,
as firearms were comparatively little used, each knight had the
opportunity of showing his personal prowess; and rare was it, that a day
passed without some feat of arms and valorous exploit. The nobility and
chivalry of the land all thronged there to gather renown. Queen Isabel,
who attended with her whole court, breathed courage into every heart.
There was scarce a cavalier, who was not enamoured of some one or other of
her ladies, the witness of his achievements, and who, as she presented him
his weapons, or some token of her favor, admonished him to bear himself
like a true knight, and show the strength of his passion by his valiant
deeds. [148] What knight so craven then," exclaims the chivalrous
Venetian, "that he would not have been more than a match for the stoutest
adversary; or who would not sooner have lost his life a thousand times,
than return dishonored to the lady of his love. In truth," he concludes,
"this conquest may be said to have been achieved by love, rather than by
arms." [149]

The Spaniard was a knight-errant, in its literal sense, [150] roving over
seas on which no bark had ever ventured, among islands and continents
where no civilized man had ever trodden, and which fancy peopled with all
the marvels and drear enchantments of romance; courting danger in every
form, combating everywhere, and everywhere victorious. The very odds
presented by the defenceless natives among whom he was cast, "a thousand
of whom," to quote the words of Columbus, "were not equal to three
Spaniards," was in itself typical of his profession; [151] and the
brilliant destinies to which the meanest adventurer was often called, now
carving out with his good sword some "El Dorado" more splendid than fancy
had dreamed of, and now overturning some old barbaric dynasty, were full
as extraordinary as the wildest chimeras which Ariosto ever sang, or
Cervantes satirized.

His countrymen who remained at home, feeding greedily on the reports of
his adventures, lived almost equally in an atmosphere of romance. A spirit
of chivalrous enthusiasm penetrated the very depths of the nation,
swelling the humblest individual with lofty aspirations, and a proud
consciousness of the dignity of his nature. "The princely disposition of
the Spaniards," says a foreigner of the time, "delighteth me much, as well
as the gentle nurture and noble conversation, not merely of those of high
degree, but of the citizen, peasant, and common laborer." [152] What
wonder that such sentiments should be found incompatible with sober,
methodical habits of business, or that the nation indulging them should be
seduced from the humble paths of domestic industry to a brilliant and
bolder career of adventure. Such consequences became too apparent in the
following reign. [153]

In noticing the circumstances that conspired to form the national
character, it would be unpardonable to omit the establishment of the
Inquisition, which contributed so largely to counterbalance the benefits
resulting from Isabella's government; an institution which has done more
than any other to stay the proud march of human reason; which, by imposing
uniformity of creed, has proved the fruitful parent of hypocrisy and
superstition; which has soured the sweet charities of human life, [154]
and, settling like a foul mist on the goodly promise of the land, closed
up the fair buds of science and civilization ere they were fully opened.
Alas, that such a blight should have fallen on so gallant and generous a
people! That it should have been brought on it too by one of such
unblemished patriotism and purity of motive, as Isabella! How must her
virtuous spirit, if it be permitted the departed good to look down on the
scene of their earthly labors, mourn over the misery and moral
degradation, entailed on her country by this one act! So true is it, that
the measures of this great queen have had a permanent influence, whether
for good or evil, on the destinies of her country.

The immediate injury inflicted on the nation by the spirit of bigotry in
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, although greatly exaggerated, [155]
was doubtless serious enough. Under the otherwise beneficent operation of
their government, however, the healthful and expansive energies of the
state were sufficient to heal up these and deeper wounds, and still carry
it onward in the career of prosperity. With this impulse, indeed, the
nation continued to advance higher and higher, in spite of the system of
almost unmingled evil pursued in the following reigns. The glories of this
later period, of the age of Charles the Fifth, as it is called, must find
their true source in the measures of his illustrious predecessors. It was
in their court that Boscan, Garcilasso, Mendoza, and the other master-
spirits were trained, who moulded Castilian literature into the new and
more classical forms of later times. [156] It was under Gonsalvo de
Cordova, that Leyva, Pescara, and those great captains with their
invincible legions were formed, who enabled Charles the Fifth to dictate
laws to Europe for half a century. And it was Columbus, who not only led
the way, but animated the Spanish navigator with the spirit of discovery.
Scarcely was Ferdinand's reign brought to a close, before Magellan
completed, what that monarch had projected, the circumnavigation of the
southern continent; the victorious banners of Cortes had already
penetrated into the golden realms of Montezuma; and Pizarro, a very few
years later, following up the lead of Balboa, embarked on the enterprise
which ended in the downfall of the splendid dynasty of the Incas.

Thus it is, that the seed sown under a good system continues to yield
fruit in a bad one. The season of the most brilliant results, however, is
not always that of the greatest national prosperity. The splendors of
foreign conquest in the boasted reign of Charles the Fifth were dearly
purchased by the decline of industry at home, and the loss of liberty. The
patriot will see little to cheer him in this "golden age" of the national
history, whose outward show of glory will seem to his penetrating eye only
the hectic brilliancy of decay. He will turn to an earlier period, when
the nation, emerging from the sloth and license of a barbarous age, seemed
to renew its ancient energies, and to prepare like a giant to run its
course; and glancing over the long interval since elapsed, during the
first half of which the nation wasted itself on schemes of mad ambition,
and in the latter has sunk into a state of paralytic torpor, he will fix
his eye on the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, as the most glorious epoch
in the annals of his country.


FOOTNOTES

[1] Ante, Part I., Chapter 6.

[2] Among the minor means for diminishing the consequence of the nobility,
may be mentioned the regulation respecting the "privilegios rodados";
instruments formerly requiring to be countersigned by the great lords and
prelates, but which, from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, were
submitted for signature only, to officers especially appointed for the
purpose. Salazar de Mendoza, Dignidades, lib. 2, cap. 12.

[3] Ante, Introd. Sect. 1.

[4]A pertinent example of this policy of the sovereigns occurred in the
cortes of Madrigal, 1476; where, notwithstanding the important subjects of
legislation, none but the third estate were present. (Pulgar Reyes
Católicos, p. 94.) An equally apposite illustration is afforded by the
care to summon the great vassals to the cortes of Toledo, in 1480, when
matters nearly touching them, as the revocation of their honors and
estates, were under discussion, but not till then. Ibid., p. 165.

[5] The same principle made them equally vigilant in maintaining the
purity of those in office. Oviedo mentions, that in 1497 they removed a
number of jurists, on the charge of bribery and other malversation, from
their seats in the royal council. Quincuagenas, MS., dial. de Grizio.

[6] See a letter of the council to Charles V., commending the course
adopted by his grandparents in their promotions to office, apud Carbajal,
Anales, MS., año 1517, cap. 4.

[7] Yet strange instances of promotion are not wanting in Spanish history;
witness the adventurer Ripperda, in Philip V.'s time, and the Prince of
the Peace, in our own; men, who, owing their success less to their own
powers, than the imbecility of others, could lay no claim to the bold and
independent sway exercised by Ximenes.

[8] Ante, Part I., Chapter 19.--"No os parece á vos," says Oviedo, in one
of his Dialogues, "que es mejor ganado eso, que les dá su principe por sus
servicios, é lo que llevan justamente de sus oficios, que lo que se
adquiere robando capas agenas, é matando é vertiendo sangre de
Cristianos?" (Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 3, dial. 9.) The sentiment
would have been too enlightened for a Spanish cavalier of the fifteenth
century.

[9] In the cortes of Calatayud, in 1515, the Aragonese nobles withheld the
supplies, with the design of compelling the crown to relinquish certain
rights of jurisdiction, which it assumed over their vassals. "Les
parecio," said the archbishop of Saragossa, in a speech on the occasion,
"que auian perdido mucho, en que el ceptro real cobrasse lo suyo, por su
industria. ***** Esto los otros estados del reyno lo atribuyeron a gran
virtud: y lo estimauan por beneficio inmortal." (Zurita, Anales, tom. vi.
lib. 10, cap. 93.) The other estates, in fact, saw their interests too
clearly, not to concur with the crown in this assertion of its ancient
prerogative. Blancas, Modo de Proceder, fol. 100.

[10] Such, for example, were those of great chancellor, of admiral, and of
constable of Castile. The first of these ancient offices was permanently
united by Isabella with that of archbishop of Toledo. The office of
admiral became hereditary, after Henry III., in the noble family of
Enriquez, and that of constable in the house of Velasco. Although of great
authority and importance in their origin, and, indeed, in the time of the
Catholic sovereigns, these posts gradually, after becoming hereditary,
declined into mere titular dignities. Salazar de Mendoza, Dignidades, lib.
2, cap. 8, 10; lib. 3, cap. 21.--L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 24.

[11] The duke of Infantado, head of the ancient house of Mendoza, whose
estates lay in Castile, and, indeed, in most of the provinces of the
kingdom, is described by Navagiero as living in great magnificence. He
maintained a body guard of 200 foot, besides men-at-arms; and could muster
more than 30,000 vassals. (Viaggio, fol. 6, 33.) Oviedo makes the same
statement. (Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.) Lucio Marineo,
among other things in his curious _farrago_, has given an estimate of
the rents, "poco mas 6 menos," of the great nobility of Castile and
Aragon, whose whole amount he computes at one-third of those of the whole
kingdom. I will select a few of the names familiar to us in the present
narrative.

Enriquez, admiral of Castile, 50,000 ducats income, equal to $440,000.
Velasco, constable of Castile, 60,000 ducats income, estates in Old
Castile.
Toledo, duke of Alva, 50,000 ducats income, estates in Castile and
Navarre.
Mendoza, duke of Infantado, 50,000 ducats income, estates in Castile and
other provinces.
Guzman, duke of Medina Sidonia, 55,000 ducats income, estates in
Andalusia.
Cerda, duke of Medina Celi, 30,000 ducats income, estates in Castile and
Andalusia.
Ponce de Leon, duke of Arcos, 25,000 ducats income, estates in Andalusia.
Pacheco, duke of Escalona (marquis of Villena), 60,000 ducats income,
estates in Castile.
Cordova, duke of Sessa, 60,000 ducats income, estates in Naples and
Andalusia.
Aguilar, marquis of Priego, 40,000 ducats income, estates in Andalusia and
Estremadura.
Mendoza, count of Tendilla, 15,000 ducats income, estates in Castile.
Pimentel, count of Benavente, 60,000 ducats income, estates in Castile.
Giron, count of Ureña, 20,000 ducats income, estates in Andalusia.
Silva, count of Cifuentes, 10,000 ducats income, estates in Andalusia.

(Cosas Memorables, fol. 24, 25.) The estimate is confirmed, with some
slight discrepancies, by Navagiero, Viaggio, fol. 18, 33, et alibi. See
also Salazar de Mendoza, Dignidades, discurso 2.

[12] "En casa de aquellos Principes estaban las hijas de los principales
señores 6 cavalleros por damas de la Reyna 6 de las Infantas sus hijas, y
en la corte andaban todos los mayorazgos y hijos de grandes 4 los mas
heredados de sus reynos." Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 4,
dial 44.

[13] "Como quier que oia el parecer de _personal religiosas_ é de los
otros letrados que cerca della eran, pero la mayor parte seguia las cosas
por su arbitrio." Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part 1, cap. 4.

[14] Lucio Marineo has collected many particulars respecting the great
wealth of the Spanish clergy in his time. There were four metropolitan
sees in Castile.

Toledo, income 80,000 ducats.
St. James, " 24,000 "
Seville, " 20,000 "
Granada, " 10,000 "

There were twenty-nine bishoprics, whose aggregate revenues, very
unequally apportioned, amounted to 251,000 ducats. The church livings in
Aragon were much fewer and leaner than in Castile. (Cosas Memorables, fol.
23.) The Venetian Navagiero, speaks of the metropolitan church of Toledo,
as "the wealthiest in Christendom;" its canons lived in stately palaces,
and its revenues, with those of the archbishopric, equalled those of the
whole city of Toledo. (Viaggio, fol. 9.) He notices also the great
opulence of the churches of Seville, Guadalupe, etc., fol. 11, 13.

[15] See Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 11, 140, 141, 171, et loc. al.--From
one of these ordinances, it appears the clergy were not backward in
remonstrating against what they deemed an infringement of their rights.
(Fol. 172.) The queen, however, while she guarded against their
usurpations, interfered more than once, with her usual sense of justice,
on their application, to shield them from the encroachments of the civil
tribunals. Riol, Informe, apud Semanario Erudito, tom. iii. pp. 98, 99.

[16] See Part I., Chapter 6, of this History.

[17] See examples of this in Riol, Informe, apud Semanario Erudito, tom.
iii. pp. 95-102.--Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 14.

[18] Riol, Informe, apud Semanario Erudite, tom. iii. p. 94.--L. Marineo,
Cosas Memorables, fol. 182.

[19] Oviedo bears emphatic testimony to this. "En nuestros tiempos há
habido en España de nuestra Nacion grandes varones Letrados, excelentes
Perlados y Religiosos y personas que por suos habilidades y sciencias hán
subido á las mas altas dignidades de Capelos é de Arzobispados y todo lo
que mas se puede alcanzar, en la Iglesia de Dios." Quincuagenas, MS.,
dial. de Talavera.--Col. de Cédulas, tom. i. p. 400.

[20] "Lo qne debe admirar es, que en el tiempo mismo que se contendia con
tanto ardor, obtuvieron los Reyes de la Santa Sede mas gracias y
privilegios que ninguno de sus sucesores; prueba de su felicidad y de su
prudentísima conducta." Riol, Informe, apud Semanario Erudito, tom. in. p.
95.

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