[Sidenote: Portugal a Real National Monarchy in 1500]
Portugal, the older and smaller of the two states, had become a conspicuous member of the family of nations by the year 1500, thanks to a line of able kings and to the remarkable series of foreign discoveries that cluster about the name of Prince Henry the Navigator. Portugal possessed a distinctive language of Latin origin and already cherished a literature of no mean proportions. In harmony with the spirit of the age the monarchy was tending toward absolutism, and the parliament, called the Cortes, which had played an important part in earlier times, ceased to meet regularly after 1521. The Portuguese royal family were closely related to the Castilian line, and there were people in both kingdoms who hoped that one day the whole peninsula would be united under one sovereign.
[Sidenote: The Spanish Kingdom in 1500]
From several standpoints the Spanish monarchy was less unified in 1500 than England, France, or Portugal. The union of Castile and Aragon was, for over two centuries, hardly more than personal. Each retained its own customs, parliaments (Cortes), and separate administration. Each possessed a distinctive language, although Castilian gradually became the literary "Spanish," while Catalan, the speech of Aragon, was reduced to the position of an inferior. Despite the continuance of excessive pride in local traditions and institutions, the cause of Spanish nationality received great impetus during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was under them that territorial unity had been obtained. It was they who turned the attention of Spaniards to foreign and colonial enterprises. The year that marked the fall of Granada and the final extinction of Mohammedan power in Spain was likewise signalized by the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, which prefigured the establishment of a greater Spain beyond the seas. On the continent of Europe, Spain speedily acquired a commanding position in international affairs, as the result largely of Ferdinand's ability. The royal house of Aragon had long held claims to the Neapolitan and Sicilian kingdoms and for two hundred years had freely mixed in the politics of Italy. Now, in 1504, Ferdinand definitely secured recognition from France of his rights in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Spain was becoming the rival of Venice for the leadership of the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in Spain under Ferdinand and
Isabella]
While interfering very little with the forms of representative government in their respective kingdoms, Ferdinand and Isabella worked ever, in fact, toward uniformity and absolutism. They sought to ingratiate themselves with the middle class, to strip the nobility of its political influence, and to enlist the church in their service. The Cortes were more or less regularly convened, but their functions were almost imperceptibly transferred to royal commissions and officers of state. Privileges granted to towns in earlier times were now gradually revoked. The king, by becoming the head of the ancient military orders which had borne prominent part in the struggle against the Mohammedans, easily gained control of considerable treasure and of an effective fighting force. The sovereigns prevailed upon the pope to transfer control of the Inquisition, the medieval ecclesiastical tribunal for the trial of heretics, to the crown, so that the harsh penalties which were to be inflicted for many years upon dissenters from orthodox Christianity were due not only to religious bigotry but likewise to the desire for political uniformity.
In population and in domestic resources Spain was not so important as France, but the exploits of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great wealth which temporarily flowed to her from the colonies, the prestige which long attended her diplomacy and her armies, were to exalt the Spanish monarchy throughout the sixteenth century to a position quite out of keeping with her true importance.
2. THE OLD HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
[Sidenote: The Idea of an "Empire" Different in 1500 from that of a
"National Monarchy">[
The national monarchies of western Europe—England, France, Spain, and Portugal—were political novelties in the year 1500: the idea of uniting the people of similar language and customs under a strongly centralized state had been slowly developing but had not reached fruition much before that date. On the other hand, in central Europe survived in weakness an entirely different kind of state, called an empire. The theory of an empire was a very ancient one—it meant a state which should embrace all peoples of whatsoever race or language, bound together in obedience to a common prince. Such, for example, had been the ideal of the old Roman Empire, under whose Caesars practically the whole civilized world had once been joined, so that the inhabitant of Egypt or Armenia united with the citizen of Britain or Spain in allegiance to the emperor. That empire retained its hold on portions of eastern Europe until its final conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but a thousand years earlier it had lost control of the West because of external violence and internal weakness. So great, however, was the strength of the idea of an "empire," even in the West, that Charlemagne about the year 800 temporarily united what are now France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium into what he persisted in styling the "Roman Empire." Nearly two centuries later, Otto the Great, a famous prince in Germany, gave other form to the idea, in the "Holy Roman Empire" of which he became emperor. This form endured from 962 to 1806.