He began his task, however, too late. He was already sixty-seven years old, and when he died, eleven years afterwards, he had been able to bring it down no further than to the union of the crowns of Castile and Leon, in 1037,—a point from which it was afterwards carried, by Sandoval, to the death of Alfonso the Seventh, in 1097, where it finally stops. Imperfect, however, as is the portion compiled in his old age by Morales, we can hardly fail to regard it, not, indeed, as so wise and well-weighed an historical composition as that of Zurita, but as one marked with much more general ability, and showing a much more enlightened spirit, than the work of Ocampo, to which it serves as a continuation. Its style, unhappily, is wanting in correctness;—a circumstance the more to be noticed, since Morales valued himself on his pure Castilian, both as the son of a gentleman of high caste, and as the nephew of Fernan de Oliva, by whom he was educated, and whose works he had published because they had done so much to advance prose composition in Spain.[203]
Contemporary with both Zurita and Morales, but far in advance of both of them as a writer of history, was the old statesman, Diego de Mendoza, whose fresh and vigorous account of the rebellion of the Moors in 1568 we have already considered, noticing it rather at the period when it was written than at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was first given to the world, and when Siguenza, Ribadeneyra, Mariana, Sandoval, and Herrera had already appeared, and determined the character which should be finally impressed on this department of Spanish literature.
Of this group, the first two, who devoted themselves to ecclesiastical history, and entered into the religious discussions of their time, were, perhaps, originally the most prominent. Ribadeneyra, one of the early and efficient members of the Society of Jesuits, distinguished himself by his “History of the Schism in the English Church,” in the time of Henry the Eighth, and by his “Lives of the Saints.” Siguenza, who was a disciple of Saint Jerome, was no less faithful to the brotherhood by whom he was adopted and honored, as his life of their founder and his history of their Order abundantly prove. Both were men of uncommon gifts, and wrote with a manly and noble eloquence; the first with more richness and fervor, the last with a more simple dignity, but each with the earnest and trusting spirit of his peculiar faith.[204]
From the nature of their subjects, however, neither of them rose to be the great historian of his country;—an honor which belongs to Juan de Mariana, a foundling, who was born at Talavera in 1536, and whose extraordinary talents attracted the attention of the Jesuits, then fast advancing into notice as a religious power. Having gone through a severe course of studies at Alcalá, he was selected, at the age of twenty-four, to fill the most important place in the great college which the members of his society were then establishing at Rome, and which they regarded as one of their principal institutions for consolidating and extending their influence. After five years, he was removed to Sicily, to introduce similar studies into that island; and, a little later, he was transferred to Paris, where he was received with honor, and taught for several years, lecturing chiefly on the works and opinions of Thomas Aquinas, to crowded audiences. But the climate of France was unfriendly to his health, and in 1574, having spent thirteen years in foreign countries, as a public instructor, he returned to Spain, and established himself in the house of his order at Toledo, which he hardly left during the forty-nine remaining years of his life.
This long period, which he devoted to literary labor, was not, however, permitted to be as peaceful as his merits should have made it. The Polyglot Bible published by Arias Montano at Antwerp, in 1569-72,—which was at first received with great favor, but afterwards, by the intrigues of the Jesuits, was denounced to the Inquisition,—excited so bitter a quarrel, that it was deemed necessary to inquire into the truth of the charges brought against it. By the management of the Jesuits, Mariana was the principal person employed to make the investigation; and, through his learning and influence, they felt sure of a triumph. But though he was a faithful Jesuit, he was not a subservient one. His decision was in favor of Montano; and this, together with the circumstance that he did not follow the intimations given to him when he was employed in arranging the Index Expurgatorius of 1584, brought upon him the displeasure of his superiors in a way that caused him much trouble.[205]
In 1599, he published a Latin treatise on the Institution of Royalty, and dedicated it to Philip the Third;—a work liberal in its general political tone, and even intimating that there are cases in which it may be lawful to put a monarch to death. At home, it caused little remark. It was regularly approved by the censors of the press, and is even said to have been favored by the policy of the government, which, in the time of Philip the Second, had sent assassins to cut off Elizabeth of England and the Prince of Orange. But in France, where Henry the Third had been thus put to death a few years before, and where Henry the Fourth suffered a similar fate a few years afterwards, it excited a great sensation. Indeed, the sixth chapter of the first book directly mentions, and by implication countenances, the murder of the former of these monarchs, and was claimed, though contrary to the truth of fact, to have been among the causes that stimulated Ravaillac to the assassination of the latter. It was, therefore, both attacked and defended with extraordinary acrimony; and at last the Parliament of Paris ordered it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman. What was more unfortunate for its author, the whole discussion having brought much popular odium on the Jesuits, who were held responsible for a book which was written by one of their order, and could not have been published without permission of its heads, Mariana himself became more than ever unwelcome to the great body of his religious associates.[206]
At last, an occasion was found where he could be assailed without assigning the reasons for the attack. In 1609, he published, not in Spain, but at Cologne, seven Latin treatises on various subjects of theology and criticism, such as the state of the Spanish theatre, the Arab computation of time, and the year and day of the Saviour’s birth. Most of them were of a nature that could provoke no animadversion; but one, “On Mortality and Immortality,” was seized upon for theological censure, and another, “On the Coinage of the Realm,” was assailed on political grounds, because it showed how unwise and scandalous had been the practices of the reigning favorite, the Duke of Lerma, in tampering with the currency and debasing it. The Inquisition took cognizance of both; and their author, though then seventy-three years old, was subjected first to confinement, and afterwards to penance, for his offences. Both works were placed at once on the Index Expurgatorius; and Philip the Third gave orders to collect and destroy as many copies as possible of the volume in which they were contained. As Lope de Vega said, “His country did not pardon the most learned Mariana when he erred.”
His treatment on this occasion was undoubtedly the more severe, because among his papers was found a treatise “On the Errors in the Government of the Society of Jesuits,” which was not printed till after its author’s death, and then with no friendly views to the order.[207] But the firm spirit of Mariana was not broken by his persecutions. He went forward with his literary labors to the last; and when he died, in 1623, it was of the infirmities which his extreme age had naturally brought with it. He was eighty-seven years old.
The main occupation of the last thirty or forty years of his life was his great History. In the foreign countries where he had long lived, the earlier annals of Spain were so little known to the learned men with whom he had been associated, that, as a Spaniard, he had felt mortified by an ignorance which seemed disrespectful to his country. He determined, therefore, to do something that should show the world by what manly steps Spain had come into the larger interests of Europe, and to prove by her history that she deserved the consideration she had, from the time of Charles the Fifth, everywhere enjoyed. He began his work, therefore, in Latin, that all Christendom might be able to read it, and in 1592 published, in that language, twenty out of thirty of the books, of which it consists.
But, even before he had printed the other ten books, which appeared in 1609, he was fortunately induced, like Cardinal Bembo, to become his own translator, and to give his work to his countrymen in the pure Castilian of Toledo. In doing this, he enjoyed a great advantage. He might use a freedom in his version that could be claimed by no one else; for he had not only a right to change the phraseology and arrangement, but, whenever he saw fit, he might modify the opinions of a book which was as much his own in the one language as in the other. His “Historia de España,” therefore, the first part of which appeared in 1601, has all the air and merit of an original work; and in the successive editions published under his own direction, and especially in the fourth, which appeared the very year of his death, it was gradually enlarged, enriched, and in every way improved, until it became, what it has remained ever since, the proudest monument erected to the history of his country.[208]