Читать книгу History of the Reformation - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 15

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Spain had for centuries been under Mohammedan domination. The Moslems had overrun almost the whole country, and throughout its most fertile provinces the Christian peasantry lived under masters of an alien faith. At the beginning of the tenth century the only independent Christian principalities were small states lying along the southern shore of the Bay of Biscay and the south-western slopes of the Pyrenees. The Gothic and Vandal chiefs slowly recovered the northern districts, while the Moors retained the more fertile provinces of the south. The political conditions of the country at the close of the fifteenth century inevitably reflected this gradual reconquest, which had brought the Christian principalities into existence. In 1474, when Isabella (she had been married in 1469 to Ferdinand, the heir to Aragon) succeeded her brother Henry iv. in the sovereignty of Castile, Spain was divided into five separate principalities: Castile, with Leon, containing 62 per cent.; Aragon, with Valentia and Catalonia, containing 15 per cent.; Portugal, containing 20 per cent.; Navarre, containing 1 per cent.; and Granada, the only remaining Moslem State, containing 2 per cent. of the entire surface of the country.

Castile had grown by almost continuous conquest of lands from the Moslems, and these additions were acquired in many ways. If they had been made in what may be termed a national war, the lands seized became the property of the king, and could be retained by him or granted to his lords spiritual and temporal under varying conditions. In some cases these grants made the possessors almost independent princes. On the other hand, lands might be wrested from the aliens by private adventurers, and in such cases they remained in possession of the conquerors, who formed municipalities which had the right of choosing and of changing their overlords, and really formed independent communities. Then there were, as was natural in a period of continuous warfare, waste lands. These became the property of those who settled on them. Lastly, there were the dangerous frontier lands, which it was the policy of king or great lord who owned them to people with settlers, who could only be induced to undertake the perilous occupation provided they received charters (fueros), which guaranteed their practical independence. In such a condition of things the central authority could not be strong. It was further weakened by the fact that the great feudatories claimed to have both civil administration and military rule over their lands, and assumed an almost regal state. Military religious orders abounded, and were possessed of great wealth. Their Grand Masters, in virtue of their office, were independent military commanders, and had great gifts, in the shape of rich commandries, to bestow on their followers. Their power overshadowed that of the sovereign. The great ecclesiastics, powerful feudal lords in virtue of their lands, claimed the rights of civil administration and military rule like their lay compeers, and, being personally protected by the indefinable sanctity of the priestly character, were even more turbulent. Almost universal anarchy had prevailed during the reigns of the two weak kings who preceded Isabella on the throne of Castile, and the crown lands, the support and special protection of the sovereign, had been alienated by lavish gifts to the great nobles. This was the situation which faced the young queen when she came into her inheritance. It was aggravated by a rebellion on behalf of Juanna, the illegitimate daughter of Henry iv. The rebellion was successfully crushed. The queen and her consort, who was not yet in possession of the throne of Aragon, then tried to give the land security. The previous anarchy had produced its usual results. The country was infested with bands of brigands, and life was not safe outside the walls of the towns. Isabella instituted, or rather revived, the Holy Brotherhood (Hermandad), a force of cavalry raised by the whole country (each group of one hundred houses was bound to provide one horseman). It was an army of mounted police. It had its own judges, who tried criminals on the scene of their crimes, and those convicted were punished by the troops according to the sentences pronounced. Its avowed objects were to put down all crimes of violence committed outside the cities, and to hunt criminals who had fled from the towns' justice. Its judges superseded the justiciary powers of the nobles, who protested in vain. The Brotherhood did its work very effectively, and the towns and the common people rallied round the monarchy which had given them safety for limb and property.

The sovereigns next attacked the position of the nobles, whose mutual feuds rendered them a comparatively easy foe to rulers who had proved their strength of government. The royal domains, which had been alienated during the previous reign, were restored to the sovereign, and many of the most abused privileges of the nobility were curtailed.

One by one the Grand Masterships of the Crusading Orders were centred in the person of the Crown, the Pope acquiescing and granting investiture. The Church was stripped of some of its superfluous wealth, and the civil powers of the higher ecclesiastics were abolished or curtailed. In the end it may be said that the Spanish clergy were made almost as subservient to the sovereign as were those of France.

The pacification and consolidation of Castile was followed by the conquest of Granada. The Holy Brotherhood served the purpose of a standing army, internal feuds among the Moors aided the Christians, and after a protracted struggle (1481–1492) the city of Granada was taken, and the Moorish rule in the Peninsula ceased. All Spain, save Portugal and Navarre (seized by Ferdinand in 1512), was thus united under Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Sovereigns as they came to be called, and the civil unity increased the desire for religious uniformity. The Jews in Spain were numerous, wealthy, and influential. They had intermarried with many noble families, and almost controlled the finance of the country. It was resolved to compel them to become Christians, by force if necessary. In 1478 a Bull was obtained from Pope Sixtus iv. establishing the Inquisition in Spain, it being provided that the inquisitors were to be appointed by the sovereign. The Holy Office in this way became an instrument for establishing a civil despotism, as well as a means for repressing heresy. It did its work with a ruthless severity hitherto unexampled. Sixtus himself and some of his successors, moved by repeated complaints, endeavoured to restrain its savage energy; but the Inquisition was too useful an instrument in the hands of a despotic sovereign, and the Popes were forced to allow its proceedings, and to refuse all appeals to Rome against its sentences. It was put in use against the Moorish subjects of the Catholic kings, notwithstanding the terms of the capitulation of Granada, which provided for the exercise of civil and religious liberty. The result was that, in spite of fierce rebellions, all the Moors, save small groups of families under the special protection of the Crown, had become nominal Christians by 1502, although almost a century had to pass before the Inquisition had rooted out the last traces of the Moslem faith in the Spanish Peninsula.

The death of Isabella in 1504 roughly dates a formidable rising against this process of repression and consolidation. The severities of the Inquisition, the insistence of Ferdinand to govern personally the lands of his deceased wife, and many local causes led to widespread conspiracies and revolts against his rule. The years between 1504 and 1522 were a period of revolutions and of lawlessness which was ended when Charles v., the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, overcame all resistance and inaugurated a reign of personal despotism which long distinguished the kingdom of Spain. Spanish troubles had something to do with preventing Charles from putting into execution in Germany, as he wished to do, the ban issued at Worms against Martin Luther.