Al Mamun, the host and protector of Alfonso VI., had died in 1075, leaving, his grandson, Cadir, to succeed him as sovereign of Toledo. Abdulaziz, the viceroy of the subject city of Valencia, took advantage of the weakness of the young prince to declare himself independent, and placing himself under the protection of the Christians, undertook to pay a large subsidy to Alfonso VI. in return for his recognition and support. The subsidy was punctually paid, and, in spite of a present of no less than a hundred thousand pieces of gold handed over by Moctadir of Saragossa to Alfonso as the price of Valencia, Abdulaziz retained his hold of the city until his death in 1085. Onthis, numerous pretenders to the government immediately arose, including Moctadir of Saragossa, a purchaser for value, and the two sons of Abdulaziz; while Alfonso took advantage of the confusion that ensued to persuade Cadir to surrender Toledo, much coveted by the Christian king, and to accept, or, more exactly, to retain, for himself the sovereignty of Valencia, under the humiliating protection of Castile. Alfonso cared nothing that Toledo was the inheritance of his youthful ally, the home of his old protector, when he himself was a hunted refugee. He cared nothing that the Valencians were hostile to Cadir, and that powerful neighbors were prepared to dispute his possession. He cared nothing that Moctadir, who had actually purchased the city from Alfonso himself, was on the way to make good his claim. A treaty was forced upon Cadir by which Toledo was surrendered to Alfonso VI. (1085), and the Christian king was bound to place and maintain the unhappy prince in possession of his own subordinate city of Valencia.
Toledo thus became the capital of Christian Spain; and the evicted sovereign, escorted by a large force of Castilian troops under Alvar Fanez, made his sad and solemn entry into Valencia, despised at once by the citizens of Toledo, whom he had abandoned to the Christian sovereign, and by the citizens of Valencia, where his power was maintained by Christian lances. And costly indeed was this Christian maintenance. Six hundred pieces of gold is said to have been the daily allowance of the army of Castilian mercenaries; and the taxes that were necessitated by their presence only added to the unpopularity of the government. Many of Cadir’s Moslem subjects fled from the city; andtheir place was taken by his Christian supporters or pensioners, whose rapacity was, if possible, exceeded by their cruelty. But the coming of the Almoravides gave a new turn to the fortunes of the city. Alvar Fanez and his knights were recalled by Alfonso, and after the defeat of the Christians at Zalaca, in October, 1086, Cadir found himself threatened with immediate expulsion by his own citizens, supported by Mondhir of Lerida, the uncle of Mostain of Saragossa. In this difficulty he once more sought the protection of Christian lances, and applied for aid to the Cid, who immediately advanced on Valencia.
An intriguer, at all times and places, Roderic promised his support to Cadir in return for admission within the walls. He entered into a formal treaty with Mostain that the city should be his, if all the booty were handed over to the Campeador; and he sent envoys to Alfonso to assure him that in all these forays and alliances he thought only of the advantage of Christendom and the honor of Castile. Mondhir, overawed by the appearance of the allied army from Saragossa, hastily retired from before Valencia, where Mostain and his Christian Said were welcomed as deliverers by Cadir.
But although the Cid imposed a tribute upon the unhappy Valencians, he failed to give over the city to Mostain, and assuring Cadir of his constant support, as long as a monthly allowance of ten thousand golden dinars was punctually paid, he withdrew himself from the remonstrances of the disappointed Mostain—to whom he continued to protest his continued devotion—on the plea of a necessary visit to his Christian sovereign in Castile, to explain or excuse his position, and to engage some Castilian troops for his army. Mostain, during his absence, perceiving that he could not count upon so versatile and so ambitious a Said in the matter of the handing over of Valencia, entered into an alliance with his old enemy, Ramon Berenguer, of Barcelona; and the Catalans had actually laid siege to the city when the return of the Cid induced them to abandon their trenches and retire to Barcelona.
If the Cid was a hero of romance, he did not wield his sword without the most magnificent remuneration. At this period of his career (1089-92), in addition to the eighty thousand golden pieces received from Ramon Berenguer, he is said to have drawn fifty thousand from the son of Mondhir, one hundred and twenty thousand from Cadir of Valencia, ten thousand from Albarracin, ten thousand from Alpuente, six thousand from Murviedro, six thousand from Segorbe, four thousand from Jerica, and three thousand from Almenara.
With such an amount of personal tribute, the Cid cannot, says Lafuente, have been greatly inconvenienced by the action of Alfonso VI. in despoiling him of his estates. Supporting his army of seven thousand chosen followers on the rich booty acquired in his daily forays upon Eastern Spain, from Saragossa to Alicante; regardless of Christian rights, but the special scourge of the Moslems; no longer a Saragossan general, but a private adventurer, the Cid could afford to quarrel at once with Mostain and with Alfonso, and to defy the combined forces of Mondhir and Ramon Berenguer.
The rivalry between the Cid and the Catalan was ever fierce in Eastern Spain. The opposing armies met at Tebardel Pinar in 1090, and although the Cid was wounded in the battle, his army was completely successful. Mondhir fled from the field; and Ramon Berenguer was once more a prisoner in the hands of Roderic. Nor was the Christian count released from a confinement more harsh than was generous or necessary until he had given good security for the payment of the enormous ransom of eighty thousand marks of gold.
It is not easy, nor would it be fruitful, to follow the various movements of the Cid at this period of his career. His quarrels and his intrigues with Alfonso of Castile, with Cadir of Valencia, with the various parties at the court of Saragossa, with Ramon Berenguer at Barcelona, and even with the Genoese and Pisans, are neither easy nor interesting to follow. But his principal objective was the rich city of Valencia. Alfonso of Leon, ever jealous of his great and most independent subject, resolved to thwart him in his design; and having secured the co-operation of the Pisans and Genoese, who had arrived with a fleet of four hundred vessels to assist the Cid, the king took advantage of the absence of his rival on some foray to the north of Saragossa to advance upon Valencia, and to push forward his operations to the very walls of the city. Ruy Diaz riposted after his fashion.
Leaving the Valencians to make good the defense of their own city, he carried fire and sword into Alfonso’s peaceful dominions of Najera and Calahorra, destroying all the towns, burning all the crops, slaughtering the Christian inhabitants; and razing the important city of Logrono to the ground. This savagery was completely successful, and met with no reproach. The Cid is one of those fortunate heroes to whom all things are permitted. His excesses are forgotten; his independence admired; his boldness and his success are alone remembered. Alfonso, thus rudely summoned to the north of the Peninsula, abruptly raised the siege of Valencia.
Nor was the king’s action at Valencia without a favorable influence upon the fortunes of the Cid. Far from wresting the city from the grasp of Roderic, Alfonso had rather precipitated the crisis which was ultimately to lead to his triumphal entry as the independent ruler of the city. Cadir was murdered by a hostile faction within the walls; and the Cid, advancing with his usual prudence, spent some time in possessing himself of the suburbs and the approaches to the city, before the siege was commenced in good earnest, in July, 1093.
The operations were carried on in the most ferocious fashion by the attacking force. Roderic burned his prisoners alive from day to day within the sight of the walls, or caused them to be torn in pieces by his dogs under the very eyes of their fellow-townsmen.
The blockaded city was soon a prey to the utmost horrors of famine. Negotiation was fruitless. Succor came not. Neither Christian nor Moslem, neither Alfonso the Castilian, nor Yusuf the Almoravide, nor Mostain of Saragossa, appearing to defend or to relieve the city, Valencia capitulated on the 15th of June, 1094.
The Moslem commander, Ibn Jahaf, was burned alive. The Moslem inhabitants were treated with scant consideration, and the Cid, as might have been supposed, proclaimed himself sovereign of Valencia, independent of either Christian Alfonso or Moorish Mostain; and at Valencia he livedand reigned until the day of his death, but five years afterward, in 1099. His rule was often threatened by the Almoravides; but as long as the champion lived they could effect no entry within the walls of his city.
For full three years after his death, moreover, his widow Ximena, and his cousin Alvar Fanez, maintained a precarious sovereignty at Valencia. At length, unsupported by Alfonso of Leon, and unable to stand alone in the midst of the Moslems, they retired to Burgos, carrying with them the body of the Cid embalmed in precious spices, borne, as of old, on his faithful steed Babieca, to its last resting place in Castile. Valencia was immediately occupied by the Almoravides, and became once more a Moslem stronghold; nor did it finally pass into Christian hands until it was taken by James the First of Aragon in 1238. The Cid was buried in the Monastery of Cardena, near Burgos; and the body of his heroic wife, Dona Ximena, who died in 1104, was laid by his side in the tomb.
The legend of the marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of Carrion, of their desertion, and of the vengeance of the Cid upon their unworthy husbands, is undoubtedly an invention of the Castilian minstrels.
The legend of the death of the Cid’s son at the battle of Consuegra is certainly fallacious. There is no evidence that a son was ever born to him at all. But he had undoubtedly two daughters, one of whom, Christina, married Ramiro, Infante of Navarre, and the other, Maria, became the countess of Ramon Berenguer III. of Barcelona. The issue of Ramon Berenguer III. was a daughter who died childless, but a granddaughter of Ramiro of Navarre married Sancho III. of Castile, whose son, Alfonso VIII., was the grandfather both of St. Ferdinand and of St. Louis. And thus in a double stream, through the royal houses of Spain and of France, the blood of the Cid is found to flow in the veins of his Majesty Alfonso XIII., the reigning king of Spain.
To understand or appreciate the position that is occupied by the Cid in Spanish history is at the present day supremely difficult. A medieval condottiere in the service of the Moslem, when he was not fighting to fill his own coffers with perfect impartiality against Moor or Christian: banished as a traitor by his Castilian sovereign, and constantly leading the forces of the Infidel against Aragon, against Catalonia, and even against Castile, he has become the national hero of Spain. Warring against the Moslem of Valencia, whom he pitilessly despoiled, with the aid of the Moslem of Saragossa, whose cause he cynically betrayed, while he yet owned a nominal allegiance to Alfonso of Castile, whose territories he was pitilessly ravaging; retaining conquered Valencia for his personal and private advantage, in despite of Moslem or Christian kings, he has become the type of Christian loyalty and Christian chivalry in Europe. Avaricious, faithless, cruel and bold, a true soldier of fortune, the Cid still maintains a reputation which is one of the enigmas of history.
The three favorites of medieval Spanish romance, says Senor Lafuente, Bernardo del Carpio, Fernan Gonzalez, and the Cid, have this at least in common, that they were all at war with their lawful sovereigns, and fought their battles independently of the crown. Hence their popularity in Spain. The Castilians of the Middle Ages were sodevoted to their independence, so proud of their Fueros, such admirers of personal prowess, that they were disposed to welcome with national admiration those heroes who sprang from the people, who defied and were ill-treated by their kings.
The theory is both ingenious and just, yet it by no means solves the difficulty. Ruy Diaz of Bivar, who was one of the proudest nobles of Castile, can scarcely be said to have sprung from the people, nor do we clearly perceive why his long service under Moslem kings, even though he was a rebel against his own sovereign, should have endeared him to the Christian Spaniards, however independent or however democratic. Yet we may learn at least from the character of the hero, ideal though it be, that the medieval Castilians were no bigots, and that they were slaves neither to their kings nor to their clergy.
The people of Aragon no doubt held their king in a more distinctly constitutional subjection. No Castilian chief-justice was found to call the sovereign to order: no Privilege of Union legalized a popular war in defense of popular liberties. But Roderic took the place of the justiciary in legend, if not in history, when he administered the oath to Alfonso at Burgos; and he invested himself with the privilege of warring against an aggressive king, when he routed Alfonso’s forces, and burned his cities, to requite him for his attack upon Valencia.
It is this rebellious boldness which contributed no doubt very largely to endear the Cid to his contemporaries. It is one of the most constant characteristics of his career; one of the features that is portrayed with equal clearness by the chroniclers and the ballad-makers of Spain. For the Cidis essentially a popular hero. His legendary presentment is a kind of poetic protest against arbitrary regal power. The Cid ballads are a pæan of triumphant democracy. The ideal Cid no doubt was evolved in the course of the twelfth century; and by the end of the fifteenth century, when the rule of kings and priests had become harder and heavier in Spain, an enslaved people looked back with an envious national pride to the Castilian hero who personified the freedom of bygone days.
The Cid is the only knight-errant that has survived the polished satire of Cervantes. For his fame was neither literary nor aristocratic; but, like the early Spanish proverbs, in which it is said he took so great a delight, it was embedded deep in the hearts of the people.[3]And although the memory of his religious indifference may not have added to his popularity in the sixteenth century in Spain, it is a part of his character which must be taken into account in gauging the public opinion of earlier days.
From the close of the eighth century to the close of the fifteenth, the Spanish people, Castilians and Aragonese, were, if anything, less bigoted than the rest of Europe. The influence of their neighbors the Moors, and of their Arab toleration, could not be without its effect upon a people naturally free, independent, and self-reliant, and the Cid, who was certainly troubled with no religious scruples in the course of his varied career, and who, according to a popular legend, affronted and threatened the Pope on histhrone in St Peter’s, on account of some fancied slight,[4]could never have been the hero of a nation of bigots. The degenerate Visigoths from the time of Reccared the Catholic to the time of Roderic the Vanquished could never have produced a Cid. Yet, even in the dark days of Erwig and Egica, there was found a Julian, who boldly maintained the national independence against the pretensions of the Pope of Rome. For a thousand years after the landing of St. Paul—if, indeed, he ever landed upon the coast—the Spanish Church was, perhaps, the most independent in Europe. The royal submission to the Papal authority, first by Sancho I. of Aragon, in 1071, and afterward by Alfonso VI. of Leon, in 1085, in the matter of the Romish Ritual, was distinctly unpopular. Peter II. found no lack of recruits for the army that he led against the Papal troops in Languedoc, and King James I., the most popular of the kings of Aragon, cut out the tongue of a meddlesome bishop who had presumed to interfere in his private affairs (1246). It was not until the Inquisition was forced upon United Spain by Isabella the Catholic, and the national lust for the plunder of strangers was aroused by the destruction of Granada, that the Spaniard became a destroyer of heretics. It was not until the spoliationand the banishment of Jews and Moriscos, and the opening of a new world of heathen treasure on the discovery of America, that the Castilian, who had always been independent himself, became intolerant of the independence of others. Then, indeed, he added the cruelty of the priest to the cruelty of the soldier, and wrapping himself in the cloak of a proud and uncompromising national orthodoxy, became the most ferocious bigot in two unhappy worlds.
But in the beginning it was not so. And if the Cid could possibly have been annoyed by Torquemada, his knights would have hanged the Inquisitor upon the nearest tree. No priests’ man, in good sooth, was Roderic of Bivar, nor, save in that he was a brave and determined soldier, had the great Castilian Free Lance anything in common with the more conventional heroes of United Spain.
If history affords no reasonable explanation of his unrivaled renown beyond that which has already been suggested, we find but little in the early poetry to assist us. The Cid ballads impress us “more by their number than their light.” They are neither very interesting in themselves, nor are they even very suggestive. Only thirty-seven ballads are considered by Huber to be older than the sixteenth century. “La plupart de ces romances,” says M. Dozy, “accusent leur origine moderne”; and, according to Mr. Ormsby, they do but little toward the illustration of the Cid, either as a picturesque hero of romance or as a characteristic feature of medieval history.
The great French dramatist scarcely touches the true history of his hero. The scene of the play is laid at Seville, where no Christian king set his foot for a hundred and fifty years after the death of Roderic. The title which he accepted from his employer, Mostain of Saragossa, is said to have been granted by Alfonso of Leon, after the capture of two imaginary Moorish kings, unknown to history, in an impossible battle on the banks of the Guadalquivir, which was never seen by the Cid. The whole action of the play turns upon the moral and psychological difficulties arising from the purely legendary incident of the killing of Chimene’s father by her lover, avenging an insult offered to his own sire, and of the somewhat artificial indignation of the lady, until she is appeased by a slaughter of Moors. Corneille’s drama abounds in noble sentiments expressed in most admirable verse; but it does not assist us to understand the character of the Cid, nor the reasons of his popularity in his own or in any other country. But certain at least it is that from the earliest times the story of his life and his career took a strong hold upon the popular imagination in Spain, and his virtues and his vices, little as they may seem to us to warrant the popular admiration, were understood and appreciated in the age in which he lived, an age of force and fraud, of domestic treason and foreign treachery, when religion preached little but battle and murder, and patriotism was but a pretext for plunder and rapine. Admired thus, even in his lifetime, as a gallant soldier, an independent chieftain, and an ever successful general, fearless, dexterous, and strong, his free career became a favorite theme with the jongleurs and troubadours of the next generation; and from the Cid of history was evolved a Cid of legendary song.
It is most difficult at the present day to know exactly where serious history ends and where poetry and legend begin. Yet the Cid as represented to us by M. Dozy, one of the most acute of modern investigators of historic truth, is not so very different from the Cid represented by Southey, or even by earlier and less critical poets, but that we may form a reasonable estimate, from what is common to both history and tradition, of what manner of man he was. The Cid of the twelfth century legends, indeed, though he may be more marvelous, is by no means more moral than the Cid of history. It was reserved for the superior refinement of succeeding generations, and more especially for the anonymous author of the poem of the thirteenth century to evolve a hero of a gentler and nobler mold; a creature conforming to a higher ideal of knightly perfection. From this time forward we have a glorified Cid, whose adventures are no more historically false, perhaps, than those of the unscrupulous and magnificent Paladin of the legends and romances of the twelfth century, but whose character possesses all the dignity and all the glory with which he could be invested by a generous medieval imagination. And it is this refined and idealized hero; idealized, yet most real; refined, yet eminently human, that has been worshiped by nineteen generations of Spaniards as the national hero of Spain.
Ruy Diaz—as he lived and died—was probably no worse a man than any of his neighbors. Far better than many of them he was, and undoubtedly bolder and stronger, more capable, more adroit, and more successful.
Seven of the Christian princes of Spain at this periodfell in battle warring against their own near relations, or were murdered by their hands in cold blood. Garcia of Castile was slain by the sword of the Velas. Bermudo III. of Leon and Garcia Sanchez of Navarre died fighting against their brother, Ferdinand of Castile. Sancho II. of Castile was assassinated by order of his sister Urraca, besieged by him in her city of Zamora. Among the Christian kings of the century immediately before him, Garcia of Galicia was strangled in prison by the hands of his brothers, Sancho and Alfonso; Sancho Garcia of Navarre was assassinated by his brother Ramon, at Peñalva; Ramon Berenguer II. of Barcelona died by the dagger of his brother Berenguer Ramon; Sancho the Fat, in 967, was poisoned at a friendly repast by Gonzalo Sanchez; Ruy Velasquez of Castile, in 986, murdered his seven nephews, the unfortunate Infantes de Lara; Sancho of Castile, in 1010, poisoned his mother, who had endeavored to poison him. At the wedding festivities at Leon, in 1026, Garcia, Count of Castile, was assassinated at the church door, and the murderers were promptly burned alive by his friends; Garcia of Navarre, in 1030, as an incident in a family dispute about a horse, accused his mother of adultery. Such was the standard of the eleventh century in the north of the Peninsula.
To judge the Cid, even as we now know him, according to any code of modern ethics, is supremely unreasonable. To be sure, even now, that we know him as he was, is supremely presumptuous. But that Ruy Diaz was a great man, and a great leader of men, a knight who would have shocked modern poets, and a free lance who would have laughed at modern heroes, we can have nomanner of doubt. That he satisfied his contemporaries and himself; that he slew Moors and Christians as occasion required, with equal vigor and absolute impartiality; that he bearded the King of Leon in his Christian council, and that he cozened the King of Saragossa at the head of his Moslem army; that he rode the best horse and brandished the best blade in Spain; that his armies never wanted for valiant soldiers, nor his coffers for gold pieces; that he lived my Lord the Challenger, the terror of every foe, and that he died rich and respected in the noble city that had fallen to his knightly spear—of all this at least we are certain; and, if the tale is displeasing to our nineteenth century refinement, we must be content to believe that it satisfied the aspirations of medieval Spain.
THE LAST OF THE CALIPHS—THE RISE AND FALL OF GRANADA—FERDINAND AND ISABELLA—THE GREAT CAPTAIN
Moslemrule in Spain may be conveniently summarized as consisting—first, in the Caliphs of Cordova; second, in the dynasty of the Almoravides; third, in that of the Almohades; and, finally, the kings of Granada.
Concerning the first it may be noted that in the long reign of the last Abdur Rahman were the seeds of its dissolution. Brooking no rival during his lifetime, at his death he found no successor. Then upon the ruins of the great Caliphate twenty independent and hostile dynasties surged. Meanwhile Alfonso was eyeing them from his citadel. At the gates of Valencia was the Cid. For common safety the Moslem rivals looked for a common defender. In Africa that defender was found in Yusuf, the Berber chief of a tribe of religious soldiers known as the Almoravides.
Invited to Spain, he crossed over, and, meeting Alfonso at Zalaca, near Badajoz, on the 23d of October, 1086, he routed him with great and historic slaughter.
Yusuf [says Burke] had come as a Moslem defender, but he remained as a Moslem master. And once morein Spanish history, the over-powerful ally turned his victorious arms against those who had welcomed him to their shores. Yet Yusuf was no vulgar traitor. He had sworn to the envoys of the Spanish Moslems that he would return to Africa, in the event of victory, without the annexation to his African empire of a field or a city to the north of the Straits. And his vow was religiously kept. Retiring empty-handed to Mauritania, after the great battle at Zalaca, he returned once more to Spain, unfettered on this new expedition by any vow, and set to work with his usual vigor to make himself master of the Peninsula. Tarifa fell in December. The next year saw the capture of Seville, and of all of the principal cities of Andalusia. An army sent by Alfonso VI., under his famous captain, Alvar Fanez, was completely defeated, and all Southern Spain lay at the feet of the Berber, save only Valencia, which remained impregnable so long as the Cid lived to direct the defense. In 1102, after the hero’s death, Valencia succumbed, and all Spain to the south of the Tagus became a province of the great African empire of the Almoravides.
The rule of these hardy bigots was entirely unlike that of the Ommeyad Caliphs of the West. Moslem Spain had no longer even an independent existence. The sovereign resided not at Cordova, but at Morocco. The poets and musicians were banished from court. The beauties of Az Zahra were forgotten. Jews and Christians were alike persecuted. The kingdom was governed with an iron hand. But if the rule of the stranger was not generous, it was just, and for the moment it possessed the crowning merit that it was efficient. The laws were once more respected. Thepeople once more dreamed of wealth and happiness. But it was little more than a dream.
On the death of Yusuf in 1107 the scepter passed into the hands of his son Ali, a more sympathetic but a far less powerful ruler. In 1118 the great city of Saragossa, the last bulwark of Islam in the north of the Peninsula, was taken by Alfonso I. of Aragon, who carried his victorious arms into Southern Spain, and fulfilled a rash vow by eating a dinner of fresh fish on the coast of Granada.
Yet it was by no Christian hand that the empire of the Almoravides was to be overthrown.
Mohammed Ibn Abdullah, a lamplighter in the mosque at Cordova, had made his way to remote Bagdad to study at the feet of Abu Hamid Algazali, a celebrated doctor of Moslem law. The strange adventures, so characteristic of his age and nation, by which the lowly student became a religious reformer—a Mahdi—and a conqueror in Africa, and at length overthrew the Almoravides, both to the north and the south of the Straits of Gibraltar, forms a most curious chapter in the history of Islam; but in a brief sketch of the fortunes of medieval Spain, it must suffice to say that having established his religious and military power among the Berber tribes of Africa, Ibn Abdullah, the Mahdi, landed at Algeciras in 1145, and possessed himself in less than four years of Malaga, Seville, Granada, and Cordova. The empire of the Almoravides was completely destroyed; and, before the close of the year 1149, all Moslem Spain acknowledged the supremacy of the Almohades.
These more sturdy fanatics were still African rather than Spanish sovereigns. Moslem Spain was administered by a Vali deputed from Morocco; and Cordova, shorn of much of its former splendor, was the occasional abode of a royal visitor from Barbary. For seventy years the Almohades retained their position in Spain. But their rule was not of glory but of decay. One high feat of arms indeed shed a dying luster on the name of the Berber prince who reigned for fifteen years (1184-99) under the auspicious title of Almanzor, and his great Moslem victory over Alfonso II. at Alarcon in 1195 revived for the time the drooping fortunes of the Almohades. But their empire was already doomed, decaying, disintegrated, wasting away. And at length the terrible defeat of the Moslem forces by the united armies of the three Christian kings at the Navas do Tolosa in 1212, at once the most crushing and the most authentic of all the Christian victories of medieval Spain, gave a final and deadly blow to the Moslem dominion of the Peninsula. Within a few years of that celebrated battle, Granada alone was subject to the rule of Islam.
It was in the year 1228 that a descendant of the old Moorish kings of Saragossa rebelled against the Almohades and succeeded in making himself master not merely of Granada, but of Cordova, Seville, Algeciras, and even of Ceuta, and, obtaining a confirmation of his rights from Bagdad, assumed the title of Amir ul Moslemin—Commander of the Moslems—and Al Mutawakal—the Protected of God.
But a rival was not slow to appear. Mohammed Al Ahmar, the Fair or the Ruddy, defeated, dethroned, and slew Al Mutawakal, and reigned in his stead in Andalusia. Despoiled in his turn of most of his possessions by St. Ferdinand of Castile, Al Ahmar was fain at length to content himself with the rich districts in the extreme south of the Peninsula, which are known to fame, wherever the Spanish or the English language is spoken, as the Kingdom of Granada. And thus it came to pass that the city on the banks of the Darro, the home of the proud and highly cultivated Syrians of Damascus, the flower of the early Arab invaders of Spain, became also the abiding place of the later Arab civilization, overmastered year after year, and destroyed, by the Christian armies ever pressing on to the southern sea. Yet, in the middle of the thirteenth century, the flood tide of reconquest had for the moment fairly spent itself. The Christians were not strong enough to conquer, and above all they were not numerous enough to occupy, the districts that were still peopled by the Moor; and for once a wise and highly cultivated Christian shared the supreme power in the Peninsula with a generous and honorable Moslem. Alfonso X. sought not to extend his frontiers, but to educate his people, not to slaughter his neighbors, but to give laws to his subjects, not to plunder frontier cities, but to make Castile into a kingdom, with a history, a civilization, and a language of her own. If the reputation of Alfonso is by no means commensurate with his true greatness, the statesmanship of Mohammed Al Ahmar, the founder of the ever famous Kingdom of Granada, is overshadowed by his undying fame as an architect. Yet is Al Ahmar worthy of remembrance as a king and the parent of kings in Spain. The loyal friend and ally of his Christian neighbor, the prudent administrator of his own dominions, he collected at his Arab court a great part of the wealth, the science, and the intelligence ofSpain. His empire has long ago been broken up; the Moslem has been driven out; there is no king nor kingdom of Granada. But their memory lives in the great palace fortress whose red towers still rise over the sparkling Darro, and whose fairy chambers are still to be seen in what is, perhaps, the most celebrated of the wonder works of the master builders of the world.
After his long and glorious reign of forty-two years, Mohammed the Fair was killed by a fall from his horse near Granada, and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed II., in the last days of the year 1272. Al Ahmar had ever remained at peace with Alfonso X., but his son, taking advantage of the king’s absence in quest of an empire in Germany, sought the assistance of Yusuf, the sovereign or emperor of Morocco, and invaded the Christian frontiers.
Victory was for some time on the side of the Moors. The Castilians were defeated at Ecija in 1275, and their leader, the Viceroy Don Nunez de Lara, was killed in battle, as was also Don Sancho, Infante of Aragon and Archbishop of Toledo, after the rout of his army at Martos, near Jaen, on the 21st of October, 1275; and the victorious Yusuf ravaged Christian Spain to the very gates of Seville.
In the next year, 1276, the Castilian armies were again twice defeated, in February at Alcoy and in the following July at Lucena. To add to their troubles, King James of Aragon died at Valencia in 1276. Sancho of Castile sought to depose his father Alfonso, at Valladolid. All was in confusion among the Christians; and had it not been for the defection of Yusuf of Morocco, the tide of fortune might have turned in favor of Islam. As it was, the African monarch not only abandoned his cousin of Granada, but he was actually persuaded to send one hundred thousand ducats to his Christian rival at Seville in 1280.
The value of this assistance was soon felt. Tarifa was taken in 1292, and the progress of the Moor was checked forever in Southern Spain. Mohammed II. died in 1302, and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed III., who was usually considered by the Moslem historians to have been the ablest monarch of his house. But he reigned for only seven years, and he was unable to defend Gibraltar from the assaults of his Christian rivals.
From this time the court of Granada became a sort of city of refuge for the disaffected lords and princes of Castile, who sometimes, but rarely, prevailed upon their Moslem hosts to assist them in expeditions into Christian Spain, but who were always welcomed with true Arab hospitality at the Moslem capital. To record their various intrigues would be a vain and unpleasing task. The general course of history was hardly affected by passing alliances. The Christian pressed on—with ever-increasing territory behind him—on his road to the southern sea.
In 1319, Abdul Walid or Ismail I. of Granada defeated and slew Don Pedro and Don Juan, Infantes of Castile, at a place near Granada, still known as the Sierra de los Infantes. But no important consequences followed the victory.
In the reign of Yusuf (1333-54) was fought the great battle of the Salado (1340), when the Christians, under Alfonso XI., were completely successful; and the capitulation of Algeciras three years later deprived the Moslems of an important harbor and seaport. Day by day—almost hour by hour—the Christians encroached upon Granada, even while cultivating the political friendship and accepting the private hospitality of the Moslem. Their treacherous intervention reached its climax in 1362, when Peter the Cruel decoyed the King Abu Said, under his royal safe-conduct, to the palace at Seville, and slew him with his own hand.
With Mohammed or Maulai al Aisar, or the Left-handed, the affairs of Granada became more intimately connected with the serious history of Spain. Al Hayzari, proclaimed king in 1423, and dethroned soon after by his cousin, another Mohammed, in 1427 sought and found refuge at the court of John II., by whose instrumentality he was restored to his throne at the Alhambra in 1429. Yet within four years a rival sovereign, Yusuf, had secured the support of the fickle Christian, and Muley the Left-handed was forced a second time to fly from his capital. Once again, by the sudden death of the new usurper, he returned to reign at Granada, and once again for the third time he was supplanted by a more fortunate rival, who reigned as Mohammed IX. for nearly ten years (1445-54). At the end of this period, however, another pretender was dispatched from the Christian court, and after much fighting and intrigue, Mohammed Ibn Ismail, a nephew of Maulai or Muley the Left-handed, drove out the reigning sovereign and succeeded him as Mohammed X.
Yet were the dominions of this Christian ally unceasingly ravaged by his Christian neighbors. Gibraltar, Archidona, and much surrounding territory were taken by the forces of Henry IV. and his nobles; and a treaty was at length concluded in 1464, in which it was agreed that Mohammed of Granada should hold his kingdom under theprotection of Castile, and should pay an annual subsidy or tribute of twelve thousand gold ducats. It was thus, on the death, in 1466, of this Mohammed Ismail of Granada, that a vexed and harassed throne was inherited by his son Muley Abul Hassan, ever famous in history and romance as “The old king”—the last independent sovereign of Granada.
Meanwhile, Henry’s only daughter Joanna being regarded as the fruit of the queen’s adultery, he was deposed, but restored after acknowledging as his heiress his sister Isabella, who subsequently, through her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon, joined the two most powerful of Spanish kingdoms into one yet more powerful State.
To return now to Muley Abul Hassan.[5]For many years after his accession he observed with his Christian neighbors the treaties that had been made, nor did he take advantage of the civil war which arose by reason of Joanna’s pretensions to add to the difficulties already existing, and in the spring of 1476 sought a formal renewal of the old Treaty of Peace.
Ferdinand, however, made his acceptance of the king’s proposal contingent upon the grant of an annual tribute; and he sent an envoy to the Moslem court to negotiate the terms of payment. But the reply of Abul Hassan was decisive. “Steel,” said he, “not gold, was what Ferdinand should have from Granada!” Disappointed of their subsidy, and unprepared for war, the Christian sovereigns were content to renew the treaty, with a mental reservation that as soon as a favorable opportunity shouldpresent itself they would drive every Moslem not only out of Granada, but out of Spain.
For five years there was peace between Abul Hassan and the Catholic sovereigns. The commencement of hostilities was the capture of Zahara by the Moslems at the close of the year 1481; which was followed early in next year, 1482, by the conquest of the far more important Moorish stronghold of Alhama, not by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella, but by the followers of Ponce de Leon, the celebrated Marquis of Cadiz. Alhama was not merely a fortress. It was a treasure-house and a magazine; and it was but five or six leagues from Granada. The town was sacked with the usual horrors. The Marquis of Cadiz, having made good his position within the walls, defied all the attacks of Abul Hassan, and at the same time sent messengers to every Christian lord in Andalusia to come to his assistance—to all save one, his hereditary enemy, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, chief of the great family of the Guzmans. Yet it was this generous rival, who, assembling all his chivalry and retainers, was the first to appear before the walls of Alhama, and relieve the Christians from the threatened assault of the Moslem. The days of civil discord had passed away in Castile; and against united Christendom, Islam could not long exist in Spain.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand, seeing that war had finally broken out, started from Medina del Campo, and marched with all speed to Cordova, where he was joined by Isabella early in April, 1482. The Inquisition had now been for over a year in full blast at Seville. The fires of persecution had been fairly lighted. The reign of bigotryhad begun, and the king and queen were encouraged to proceed from the plunder of the Jews or New Christians to the plunder of the Moslems. Ferdinand accordingly repaired in person to Alhama, with a large train of prelates and ecclesiastics of lower degree. The city was solemnly purified. Three mosques were consecrated by the Cardinal of Spain for Christian worship. Bells, crosses, plate, altar cloths were furnished without stint; and Alhama having been thus restored to civilization, Ferdinand descended upon the fruitful valley or Vega of Granada, destroyed the crops, cut down the fruit trees, uprooted the vines, and, without having encountered a single armed enemy in the course of his crusade, returned in triumph to Cordova. A more arduous enterprise in the following July was not attended with the same success, when Ferdinand attacked the important town of Loja, and was repulsed with great loss of Christian life. An expedition against Malaga, later in the year, undertaken by Alfonso de Cardenas, Grand Master of Santiago, and the Marquis of Cadiz, was even more disastrous, for a small body of Moors in the mountain defiles of the Axarquia fell upon the Christian marauders, and no less than four hundred “persons of quality” are said to have perished in the retreat, including thirty commanders of the great military order of Santiago. The Grand Master, the Marquis of Cadiz, and Don Alfonso de Aguilar escaped as by a miracle, and the survivors straggled into Loja and Antequera and Malaga, leaving Abul Hassan and his brother Al Zagal, or the Valiant, with all the honors of war.
But the successes of the Moor in the field were morethan counterbalanced by treason in the palace. By Zoraya, a lady of Christian ancestry, Muley Abul Hassan had a son, Abu Abdallah, who has earned a sad notoriety under the more familiar name of Boabdil. Jealous of some rival, or ambitious of greater power, the Sultana and her son intrigued against their sovereign, and having escaped from the State prison, in which they were at first prudently confined, raised the standard of revolt, and compelled Abul Hassan, who was thenceforth more usually spoken of as the Old King, to seek refuge on the sea-coast at Malaga.
Boabdil, jealous of the success of his father and his undo at Loja and in the Axarquia, and anxious to confirm his power by some striking victory over the Christians, took the field and confronted the forces of the Count of Cabra, near Lucena. The battle was hotly contested, but victory remained with the Christians. Ali Atar, the bravest of the Moorish generals, was slain by the hand of Alfonso de Aguilar, and Boabdil himself was taken prisoner by a common soldier, Hurtado by name, and fell into the hands of the victorious Count of Cabra.
The captivity of Boabdil, the Little King, el Rey Chico, as he was called by the Castilians, was the turning point in the history of the Moorish dominion in Spain. Released on payment of a magnificent ransom provided by his mother Zoraya, and bound to his Christian captors by a humiliating treaty, he returned to Granada, disgraced and dishonored, as the ally of the enemies of his country. Driven out of the capital by the forces of his father, who had returned to occupy the great palace-fortress of Alhambra, Boabdil and his mother retired to Almeria, thesecond city in the kingdom; and the whole country was distracted by civil war.
Yet for four years the Castilians refrained from any important expedition against Granada. Their tactics were rather those of Scipio at Numantia. For Delay was all in favor of Disintegration.
Yet the merciless devastation of fields and crops was carried on with systematic and dreadful completeness. Thirty thousand destroyers of peaceful homesteads, granaries, farmhouses, and mills were constantly at work, and ere long there was scarce a vineyard or an oliveyard, scarce an orchard or an orange-grove existing within reach of the Christian borders. Under cover of the treaty with Boabdil, this devilish enginery of destruction was steadily pushed forward, while the old king and his more vigorous brother El Zagal were prevented by domestic treason from making any effectual defense of their fatherland. Some of the border towns, moreover, fell into the hands of the Christians, and many forays were undertaken which produced rich booty for the marauders. Ferdinand in the meantime occupied himself rather with the affairs of the Inquisition and of foreign policy, while Isabella was personally superintending the enormous preparations for a final attack on Granada. Artillery was cast in large quantities, and artificers imported from France and Italy; large stores of ammunition were procured from Flanders. Nothing was hurried; nothing was spared; nothing was forgotten by Isabella. A camp hospital, the first, it is said, in the history of warfare, was instituted by the queen, whose energy was indefatigable, whose powers of organization were boundless, and whose determination was inflexible. To representher as a tender and a timid princess is to turn her true greatness into ridicule. But her vigor, her prudence, and her perseverance are beyond the vulgar praise of history.
Meanwhile, Granada was gradually withering away. The “pomegranate,” as Ferdinand had foreseen and foretold, was losing one by one the seeds of which the rich and lovely fruit had once been all compact. The old king, defeated but not disgraced, blind, infirm, and unfortunate, was succeeded too late by his more capable brother, El Zagal, a gallant warrior, a skillful commander, and a resolute ruler. But if “the valiant one” might hardly have held his own against the enormous resources of the Christians in Europe, he was powerless against the combination of foreign vigor and domestic treachery. The true conqueror of Granada is Boabdil, the rebel and the traitor, who has been euphemistically surnamed the Unlucky (El Zogoibi). Innocent, perchance, of the massacre of the brave Abencerrages, he is guilty of the blood of his country.
The capture of Velez Malaga by Ferdinand, already well supplied with a powerful train of artillery, in April, 1487—while El Zagal was fighting for his life against Boabdil in Granada—was soon followed by the reduction, after a most heroic defense, of the far more important city of Malaga in August, 1487. But the heroism of the Moslem woke no generous echo in the hearts of either Ferdinand or Isabella. The entire population of the captured city, men, women, and children—some fifteen thousand souls—was reduced to slavery, and distributed not only over Spain, but over Europe.
A hundred choice warriors were sent as a gift to thePope. Fifty of the most beautiful girls were presented to the Queen of Naples, thirty more to the Queen of Portugal, others to the ladies of her court, and the residue of both sexes were portioned off among the nobles, the knights, and the common soldiers of the army, according to their rank and influence.
For the Jews and renegades a more dreadful doom was reserved; and the flames in which they perished were, in the words of a contemporary ecclesiastic, “the illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of Ferdinand and Isabella.” The town was repeopled by Christian immigrants, to whom the lands and houses of the Moslem owners were granted with royal liberality by the victors. The fall of Malaga, the second seaport and the third city of the kingdom of Granada, was a grievous loss to the Moors; and the Christian blockade was drawn closer both by land and by sea. Yet an invasion of the eastern provinces, undertaken by Ferdinand himself in 1488, was repulsed by El Zagal; and the Christian army was disbanded as usual at the close of the year, without having extended the Christian dominions.
But in the spring of 1489 greater efforts were made. The Castilians sat down before the town of Baza, not far from Jaen, and after a siege which lasted until the following December, the city surrendered, not, as in the case of Malaga, without conditions, but upon honorable terms of capitulation, which the assailants, who had only been prevented by the arrival of Isabella from raising the siege, were heartily glad to accept. The fall of Baza was of more than passing importance, for it was followed by the capitulation of Almeria, the second city in the kingdom, and bythe submission of El Zagal, who renounced as hopeless the double task of fighting against his nephew at the Alhambra, and resisting the Christian sovereigns who had already overrun his borders. The fallen monarch passed over to Africa, where he died in indigence and misery, the last of the great Moslem rulers of Spain.
In the spring of 1490, Ferdinand, already master of the greater part of the Moorish kingdom, sent a formal summons to his bondman, Boabdil, to surrender to him the city of Granada; and that wretched and most foolish traitor, who had refrained from action when action might have saved his country, now defied the victorious Christians, when his defiance could only lead to further suffering and greater disaster.
Throughout the summer of 1490, Ferdinand, in person, devoted himself to the odious task of the devastation of the entire Vega of Granada, and the depopulation of the town of Guadix. But in the spring of the next year, Isabella, who was ever the life and soul of the war, took up her position within six miles of the city, and pitched her camp at Ojos de Huescar at the very gate of Granada.
And here was found assembled, not only all the best blood of Castile, but volunteers and mercenary troops from various countries in Europe. France, England, Italy, and even Germany, each provided their contingent; and a body of Swiss soldiers of fortune showed the gallant cavaliers of the Christian army the power and the value of a well disciplined infantry. Among the foreigners who had come over to Spain in 1486 was an English lord, the Earl of Rivers, known by the Spaniards as El Conde de Escalas,from his family name of Scales, whose magnificence attracted the admiration of all, even at the magnificent court of Isabella.
But the destruction of Granada was not brought about by these gilded strangers, nor even by the brilliant knights and nobles of Spain. It was not due to skillful engineers nor to irresistible commanders. The gates were opened by no victory. The walls were scaled by no assault. The Christian success was due to the patient determination of Isabella, to the decay and disintegration of the Moorish Commonwealth, and, to some extent, to the skillful negotiation and diplomatic astuteness of a young soldier whose early influence upon the fortunes of Spain has been overshadowed by the greatness of his later achievements.
For among all the splendid knights and nobles who assembled in the camp of Isabella, the chroniclers wellnigh overlooked a gay cavalier of modest fortune, the younger brother of Alfonso de Aguilar, distinguished rather as a fop than a warrior—Gonsalvo Hernandez of Cordova, whose fame was destined to eclipse that of all his companions in arms, and who has earned an undying reputation in the history of three countries as “The Great Captain.”
The life of Gonsalvo de Cordova is interesting as being the history of a brave soldier and an accomplished general, who flourished at a very important period of the history of Europe. But it is further and much more interesting as being the history of a man who united in himself many of the characteristics of ancient and of modern times. His bravery was the bravery of an old Castilian knight, andalthough he had many splendid rivals, he was pronounced by common consent to be their superior. Yet his individual courage was the least remarkable of his qualities. He was a general such as the Western world had not known for a thousand years, and he was the first diplomatist of modern Europe. In personal valor, in knightly courtesy, in brave display, he was of his own time. In astute generalship, and in still more astute diplomacy, he may be said to have inaugurated a new era; and although greater commanders have existed after him, as well as before him, he will always be known as “The Great Captain.”
The conquest of Granada marks an epoch, not only in the history of Spain, but in the history of Europe; and Gonsalvo was the hero of Granada. The expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy is a subject of almost romantic interest, very nearly preferred by Gibbon to his own immortal theme; and Gonsalvo in Italy was the admired of all French and Italian admirers. The succeeding expedition of Louis XII. was scarcely less interesting, and the part played by Gonsalvo was even more remarkable. At his birth artillery was almost unknown. At his death it had become the most formidable arm of offense; it had revolutionized the rules and manner of warfare; and it was employed by The Great Captain in both his Italian campaigns with marked skill and success.
Gonsalvo Hernandez was born at Montilla, near Cordova, in 1453, of the noble and ancient family of the Aguilars. After a boyhood and youth devoted, not only to every manly sport and pursuit, and to the practice of arms, but to the study of letters, and more especiallyof the Arabic language, he made his first appearance in serious warfare on the field of Olmedo, fighting under the banner of the Marquis of Villena. On the death of Prince Alfonso, Gonsalvo returned to Cordova. His father had already died; and according to the Spanish law of primogeniture the whole of the rich estates of the family of Aguilar passed, on the death of Don Pedro, to his eldest son Alfonso, while nothing but a little personal property, a great name, a fine person, and “the hope of what he might gain by his good fortune or his valor” was inherited by Alfonso’s younger brother.
Cordova was obviously too small a field for Gonsalvo de Aguilar; and in the course of the eventful year 1474, having just arrived at man’s estate, he proceeded to Segovia, and distinguished himself among the young nobles who crowded to the Court of Isabella, by his prowess at tournaments and all warlike games and exercises; and he soon became celebrated for his personal beauty as well as for his valor, distinguished for his fascinating manners, and, above all, by an eloquence rarely found in a young soldier of two-and-twenty. He was generally known as “the Prince of the Youth”; and he supported the character by an almost royal liberality and ostentatious expenditure entirely incompatible with his modest fortune.
In the war of succession between Isabella and her niece, Gonsalvo served under Alfonso de Cardenas, Grand Master of Santiago, in command of a troop of one hundred and twenty horsemen; and he particularly distinguished himself at the battle of Albuera.
And now, in the camp before Granada, he was wellpleased once more to sun himself in the smiles of his queen and patroness, whose presence in the camp inspired every soldier with enthusiasm. Isabella appeared on the field superbly mounted and dressed in complete armor, and continually visited the different quarters, and held reviews of the troops. On one occasion she expressed a desire to have a nearer view of the city, and a picked body of men, among whom was Gonsalvo de Cordova, commanded by the Marquis Duke of Cadiz, escorted her to the little village of Zubia, within a short distance of Granada. The citizens, indignant at the near approach of so small a force, sallied out and attacked them. The Christians, however, stood their ground so bravely, and performed such prodigies of valor under the very eyes of Isabella herself, that no less than two thousand Moslems are said to have fallen in that memorable affray.
It happened one night, about the middle of July, that the drapery of the tent or pavilion in which Isabella was lodged took fire, and the conflagration was not extinguished until several of the neighboring tents had been consumed. The queen and her attendants escaped unhurt, but a general consternation prevailed throughout the camp, until it was discovered that no more serious loss had been experienced than that of the queen’s wardrobe.
Gonsalvo, however, who on more than one occasion showed himself at least as practical a courtier as Sir Walter Raleigh, immediately sent an express to Illora, and obtained such a supply of fine clothes from his wife, Doña Maria Manrique, that the queen herself was amazed,as much at their magnificence as at the rapidity with which they had been obtained.
But this incident led to even more important results than the amiable pillage of Doña Maria’s wardrobe; for in order to guard against a similar disaster, as well as to provide comfortable winter quarters for the troops, Isabella determined to construct a sufficient number of houses of solid masonry to provide quarters for the besieging army, a design which was carried out in less than three months. This martial and Christian town, which received the appropriate name of Santa Fe, may be still seen by the traveler in the Vega of Granada, and is pointed out by good Catholics as the only town in Andalusia that has never been contaminated by the Moslem.
But in spite of the attractions of all these feats of arms and exhibitions of magnificence, and of all the personal display and rash adventure which savors so much more of medieval chivalry than of modern warfare, Gonsalvo was more seriously engaged in the schemes and negotiations which contributed almost as much as the prowess of the Christian arms to the fall of Granada. He had spies everywhere. He knew what was going on in Granada better than Boabdil. He knew what was going on in the camp better than Ferdinand. His familiarity with Arabic enabled him to maintain secret communications with recreant Moors, without the dangerous intervention of an interpreter. He kept up constant communications with Illora, and having obtained the allegiance or friendship of the Moorish chief, Ali Atar, he gained possession of the neighboring fortress of Mondejar. He sent presents, in truly Oriental style, to many of the Moorish leaders in Granada who favored the party of Boabdil, and he was at length chosen by Isabella as the most proper person to conduct the negotiations that led to the treaty of capitulation, which was signed on the 25th of November, 1491.
The nature and the effect of this Convention are well known. The triumphal entry of the Christians into the old Moslem capital; “the last sigh of the Moor,” and the setting up of the Cross in the palace-citadel of Alhambra, not only form one of the most glowing pages in the romance of history, but they mark an epoch in the annals of the world.
TORQUEMADA AND ISABELLA—THE NEW TRIBUNAL—THE PENALTY OF UNSOUND OPINIONS—THREE CENTURIES OF SHAME
Thehistory of Spain assumed a new phase when, at the fall of Granada, the attention of potentates and people ceased to be absorbed by the excitement of a great religious war. Then the past and the romance of it ended and the history of modern Spain began.
Before proceeding with the latter, a name and a tribunal detain attention. The one is Torquemada. The other is the Inquisition. Burke has described them both, as follows:
The Inquisition, established in Italy by Honorius III. in 1231, and in France by St. Louis in 1233, was formally introduced into Spain by Gregory IX. in 1235, by a Rescript of April 30th, addressed to Mongriu, Archbishop-Administrator of Tarragona, confirming and explaining previous Briefs and Bulls upon the subject of the repression of heresy; and prescribing the issue of certain Instructions which had been prepared at the desire of his holiness by a Spanish saint, the Dominican Raymond of Penafort. From this time forward, Bulls on the subjectof the Inquisition into heresy were frequently issued; and the followers of Dominic were ever the trusted agents of the Holy See.
The first suggestion of the serious introduction of the Tribunal of the Holy Office into Castile, at the end of the fifteenth century, is said to have come from Sicily. An Italian friar bearing the suggestive name of Dei Barberi, Inquisitor-general at Messina, paid a visit to his sovereign Ferdinand at Seville in 1477, in order to procure the confirmation of a privilege accorded to the Sicilian Dominicans by the Emperor Frederic II., in 1233, by virtue of which the Inquisitors entered into possession of one-third of the goods of the heretic whom they condemned. This dangerous charter was confirmed in due course by Ferdinand on the 2d of September, 1477, and by Isabella on the 18th of October; and very little argument was required on the part of the gratified envoy to convince his sovereign of the various temporal and spiritual advantages that would follow the introduction of the Tribunal, that had so long existed in an undeveloped form in Sicily and in Aragon, into the dominions of his pious consort, Isabella of Castile.
In the middle of the year 1480 there was as yet no court of the Holy Inquisition established in Spain. At length, pressed by the Papal Nuncio, by the Dominicans, by her confessor, most of all by her husband, Isabella gave her consent; and at length, in August, 1483, the Inquisition was established as a permanent tribunal. Tomas de Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor-general of both Castile and Aragon. Subordinate tribunals were constituted; new and more stringent regulations were made; the victimssmoked from day to day on the great stone altar of the Quemadero.
The life of Tomas de Torquemada is the history of contemporary Spain. Born of a noble family, already distinguished in the Church by the reputation of the cardinal his uncle, Tomas early assumed the habit of a Dominican, and was in course of time appointed prior of an important monastery at Segovia, and confessor to the young Princess Isabella. His influence upon that royal lady was naturally great; his piety pleased her; his austerity affected her; and his powerful will directed, if it could not subdue, a will as powerful as his own. Brought up far away from a court whose frivolities had no charm for her, and where, under any circumstances, she would have been considered as a rival if not a pretender, the counsels of her confessor, both sacred and secular, were the most authoritative that she could expect to obtain. It has been constantly asserted that the friar obtained from the princess a promise that, in the event of her elevation to the throne of Castile, she would devote herself to the destruction of heretics and the increase of the power of the Church. Such a promise would have been but one of many which such a confessor would have obtained from such a penitent, and would have been but the natural result of his teaching. Nor is it surprising that in the intrigues that preceded the death of Henry IV., and the War of Succession that immediately followed it, the whole influence of the priesthood should have been cast on the side of Isabella and against her niece Joanna. For ten years, says the biographer of his Order, the skillful hand of Torquemada cultivated the intellect of Isabella; and in duecourse the propitious marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon, far from removing his pupil from his sacerdotal influence, brought him a new and an equally illustrious penitent. Torquemada became the confessor of the king as well as of the queen.
If the establishment of the Inquisition was the fulfillment of Isabella’s vow, and the realization of the aspirations of her tutor, his appointment as Inquisitor-general, although it necessitated the choice of another confessor, did not by any means withdraw him from his old sphere of influence. He ceased not to preach the destruction of the Moslem, even as he was employed about the destruction of the Jew; and if Isabella was the active patroness of the war in Granada, there was a darker spirit behind the throne, ever preaching the sacred duty of the slaughter of the infidel and the heretic of every race and nation.
Torquemada was at once a politician and an enthusiast; rigid, austere, uncompromising; unbounded in his ambition, yet content to sacrifice himself to the cause that made him what he was. His moral superiority to the Innocents and Alexanders at Rome, his intellectual superiority to the Carrillos and the fighting bishops of Spain, gave him that enormous influence over both queen and king which his consuming bigotry and his relentless tenacity of purpose induced him to use with such dreadful effect. Aggressive even in his profession of humility, Torquemada was insolent, not only to his unhappy victims, but to his colleagues, to his sovereigns, to his Holy Father at Rome. He was, perhaps, the only man in Europe who was more masterful than Isabella, more bloodthirsty than Alexander; and he was able to impose his own will on both queen and pope.Rejecting in his proud humility every offer of the miter, he asserted and maintained his ecclesiastical supremacy even over the Primate of Spain. Attended by a body-guard of noble youths who were glad to secure at once the favor of the queen and immunity from ecclesiastical censure by assuming the habit of the Familiars of the Holy Office, the great destroyer lived in daily dread of the hand of the assassin.
Fifty horsemen and two hundred foot-guards always attended him. Nor was it deemed inconsistent with the purity of his own religious faith that he should carry about with him a talisman, in the shape of the horn of some strange animal, invested with the mysterious power of preventing the action of poison.
On the death of Torquemada in September, 1498, Don Diego Deza was promoted to the office of Inquisitor-general of Spain. Yet the activity of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal was rather increased than diminished by the change of masters, and an attempt was made soon afterward to extend its operations to Naples. But Gonsalvo de Cordova, who was then acting as viceroy, took upon himself to disregard not only the demands of the Inquisitors, but the orders of Ferdinand (June 30, 1504), and to postpone the introduction of the new tribunal into the country that he so wisely and so liberally governed. After the recall of his great representative, some six years later, Ferdinand himself made another attempt to establish the hated Tribunal in Italy in 1510. But even Ferdinand did not prevail; and Naples retained the happy immunity which it owed to the Great Captain.
If no error is more gross than to suppose that the establishment of the Inquisition was due to popular feeling in Spain, it is almost equally false to assert that it was the work of the contemporary popes. Rome was bad enough at the end of the fifteenth century; but her vast load of wickedness need not be increased by the burden of sins that are not her own. The everlasting shame of the Spanish Inquisition is that of the Catholic kings. It is not difficult to understand why the poor and rapacious Ferdinand of Aragon should welcome the establishment of an instrument of extortion which placed at his disposal the accumulated savings of the richest citizens of Castile. It is yet easier to comprehend that Isabella, who was not of a temper to brook resistance to authority in Church or State, should have consented to what her husband so earnestly desired. The queen, moreover, was at least sincerely religious, after the fashion of the day; and was constrained to follow the dictates of her confessor in matters judged by him to be within his spiritual jurisdiction, even while she was, as a civil ruler, withstanding the Pope himself on matters of temporal sovereignty.
It is the height of folly to brand Isabella as a hypocrite, because we are unable to follow the workings of a medieval mind, or to appreciate the curious religious temper—by no means confined to the men and women of the fifteenth century—that can permit or compel the same person to be devoted to Popery and to be at war with the Pope, and find in the punctilious observance of ceremonial duty excuse or encouragement for the gratification of any vice and the commission of any crime. But that the nobility and people of Castile should have permitted the crown to impose upon them a foreign and an ecclesiastical despotism, is at first sight much harder to understand. No one reason, but an unhappy combination of causes, may perhaps be found to explain it.
The influence of the queen was great. Respected as well as feared by the nobles, she was long admired and beloved by the mass of the people.[6]The great success of her administration, which was apparent even by the end of 1480; her repression of the nobility; her studied respect for the Cortes; all these things predisposed the Castilians, who had so long suffered under weak and unworthy sovereigns, to trust themselves not only to the justice but to the wisdom of the queen. The influence of the clergy, if not so great as it was in France or Italy, was no doubt considerable, and, as a rule, though not always, it was cast on the side of the Inquisition. Last and most unhappy reason of all, the nobility and the people were divided; and, if not actually hostile, were at least ever at variance in Castile.
The first efforts of the new tribunal, too, were directed either against the converted Jews, of whose prosperity the Christians were already jealous, and for whose interested tergiversations no one could feel any respect; or againstthe more or less converted Moslems, toward whom their neighbors still maintained a certain hereditary antipathy. The New Christians alone were to be haled before the new tribunal. The Old Christians might trust in the queen, if not in their own irreproachable lineage, to protect them from hurt or harm.
The number of subordinate or subsidiary tribunals of the Holy Office was at first only four; established at Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Ciudad Real. The number was gradually increased, during the reign of the Catholic kings, to thirteen; and over all these Ferdinand erected, in 1483, a court of supervision under the name of the Council of the Supreme, consisting of the Grand Inquisitor as President, and three other subordinate ecclesiastics, well disposed to the crown, and ready to guard the royal interests in confiscated property.
One of the first duties of this tremendous Council was the preparation of a code of rules or Instructions, based upon the Inquisitor’s Manual of Eymeric, which had been promulgated in Aragon in the fourteenth century. The new work was promptly and thoroughly done; and twenty-eight comprehensive sections left but little to be provided for in the future.
The prosecution of unorthodox Spanish bishops by Torquemada on the ground of the supposed backslidings of their respective fathers is sufficiently characteristic of the methods of the Inquisition to be worthy of a passing notice. Davila, bishop of Segovia, and Aranda, bishop of Calahorra, were the sons of Jews who had been converted and baptized by St. Vincent Ferrer. No suspicion existed as to the orthodoxy of the prelates, both of whom weremen distinguished for their learning and their piety. But it was suggested that their fathers had relapsed into Judaism before they died. They had each, indeed, left considerable fortunes behind them: and it was sought to exhume and burn their mortal remains, and to declare the property—long in the enjoyment of their heirs and successors—forfeited to the crown; and, in spite of a brief of Innocent VIII., of the 25th of September, 1487, the attempt was made by the Spanish Inquisitors. Both prelates sought refuge and protection by personal recourse to Rome (1490). Bishop Davila, in spite of the urgent remonstrances of Isabella herself, ultimately secured the protection of Alexander VI. and was invested with additional dignities and honors. Bishop Aranda was less fortunate. He was stripped of his office and possessions, and died a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo in 1497.