In any country, such a decay in the national character and power would be accompanied by a corresponding, if not an equal, decay in its literature; but in Spain, where both had always been so intimately connected, and where both had rested, in such a remarkable degree, on the same foundations, the wise who looked on from a distance could not fail to anticipate a rapid and disastrous decline of all that was intellectual and elegant. And so, in fact, it proved. The old religion of the country,—the most prominent of all the national characteristics,—the mighty impulse which, in the days of the Moors, had done every thing but work miracles,—was now so perverted from its true character by the enormous growth of the intolerance which sprang up originally almost as a virtue, that it had become a means of oppression such as Europe had never before witnessed. Through the whole period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which we have just gone over,—from the fall of Granada to the extinction of the Austrian dynasty,—the Inquisition, as the grand exponent of the power of religion in Spain, had maintained, not only an uninterrupted authority, but, by constantly increasing its relations to the state, and lending itself more and more freely to the punishment of whatever was obnoxious to the government, had effectually broken down all that remained, from earlier days, of intellectual independence and manly freedom. But this was not done, and could not be done, without the assent of the great body of the people, or without such an active coöperation on the part of the government and the higher classes as brought degradation and ruin to all who shared in its spirit.
Unhappily, this spirit, mistaken for the religion that had sustained them through their long-protracted contest with their infidel invaders, was all but universal in Spain during this whole period. The first and the last of the House of Austria,—Charles the Fifth and the feeblest of his descendants,—if alike in nothing else, were alike in the zeal with which they sustained the Holy Office while they lived, and with which, by their testaments, they commended it to the support and veneration of their respective successors.[267] Nor did the intervening kings show less deference to its authority. The first royal act of Philip the Second, when he came from the Low Countries to assume the crown of Spain, was to celebrate an auto da fé at Valladolid.[268] When the young and gay daughter of Henry the Second of France arrived at Toledo, in 1560, that city offered an auto da fé as part of the rejoicings deemed appropriate to her wedding; and the same thing was done by Madrid, in 1632, for another French princess, when she gave birth to an heir to the crown;[269]—odious proofs of the degree to which bigotry had stifled both the dictates of an enlightened reason and the common feelings of humanity.
But in all this the people and their leaders rejoiced. When a nobleman, about to die for adherence to the Protestant faith, passed the balcony where Philip the Second sat in state, and appealed to him not to see his innocent subjects thus cruelly put to death, the monarch replied, that, if it were his own son, he would gladly carry the fagots for his execution; and the answer was received at the time, and recorded afterwards, as one worthy of the head of the mightiest empire in the world.[270] And again, in 1680, when Charles the Second was induced to signify his desire to enjoy, with his young bride, the spectacle of an auto da fé, the artisans of Madrid volunteered in a body to erect the needful amphitheatre, and labored with such enthusiasm, that they completed the vast structure in an incredibly short space of time; cheering one another at their work with devout exhortations, and declaring that, if the materials furnished them should fail, they would pull down their own houses in order to obtain what might be wanting to complete the holy task.[271]
Nor had the principle of loyalty, always so prominent in the Spanish character, become less perverted and mischievous than the religious principle. It offered its sincere homage alike to the cold severity of Philip the Second, to the weak bigotry of Philip the Third, to the luxurious selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and to the miserable imbecility of Charles the Second. The waste and profligacy of such royal favorites as the Duke of Lerma and the Count Duke Olivares, which ended in national bankruptcy and disgrace, failed seriously to affect the sentiments of the people towards the person of the monarch, or to change their persuasions that their earthly sovereign was to be addressed in words and with feelings similar to those with which they approached the Majesty of Heaven.[272] The king—merely because he was the king—was looked upon substantially as he had been in the days of Saint Ferdinand and the “Partidas,” when he was accounted the direct vicegerent of Heaven, and the personal proprietor of all those portions of the globe which he had inherited with his crown.[273] The Duc de Vendôme, therefore, showed his thorough knowledge of the Spanish character, when, in the War of the Succession,—Madrid being in possession of the enemy, and every thing seeming to be lost,—he still declared, that, if the persons of the king, the queen, and the prince were but safe, he would himself answer for final success.[274] In fact, the old principle of loyalty, sunk into a submission—voluntary, it is true, and not without grace, but still an unhesitating submission—to the mere authority of the king, seemed to have become the only efficient bond of connection between the crown and its subjects, and the main resource of the state for the preservation of social order. The nation ceased to claim its most important rights, if they came in conflict with the rights claimed by the royal prerogative; so that the resistance of Aragon in the case of Perez, and that of Catalonia against the oppressive administration of the Count Duke Olivares, were easily put down by the zeal of the very descendants of the Comuneros of Castile.
It is this degradation of the loyalty and religion of the country, infecting as it did every part of the national character, which we have felt to be undermining the general culture of Spain during the seventeenth century; its workings being sometimes visible on the surface, and sometimes hidden by the vast and showy apparatus of despotism and superstition under which it was often concealed even from its victims. But it is a most melancholy fact in the case, that whatever of Spanish literature survived at the end of this period found its nourishment in such feelings of religion and loyalty as still sustained the forms of the monarchy,—an imperfect and unhealthy life, wasting away in an atmosphere of death. At last, as we approach the conclusion of the century, the Inquisition and the despotism seem to be everywhere present, and to have cast their blight over every thing. All the writers of the time yield to their influences, but none in a manner more painful to witness, than Calderon and Solís; the two whose names close up the period, and leave so little to hope for the future. For the “Autos” of Calderon and the “History” of Solís were undoubtedly regarded, both by their authors and by the public, as works eminently religious in their nature; and the respect, and even reverence, with which each of these great men treated the wretched and imbecile Charles the Second, were as undoubtedly accounted to them by their contemporaries for religious loyalty and patriotism. At the present day, we cannot doubt that a literature which rests in any considerable degree on such foundations must be near to its fall.[275]
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.