This was progress indeed, and the mind, bursting its mediæval fetters, stood forth and took a new survey. With the dawn of the sixteenth century there appeared a universal awakening throughout Christendom. Slumbering civilization, roused by the heavy tread of marching events, turned from royal prison-houses of learning, and beheld with wonder and delight the unfolding of these new mysteries. The dust and cobwebs of the past, which had so long dimmed the imagination, were disturbed by an aggressive spirit of inquiry. The report of exploding fallacies reverberated throughout Europe; and as the smoke cleared away, and light broke in through the obscurity, there fell as it were scales from the eyes of the learned, and man gazed upon his fellow-man with new and strange emotions. For centuries men's minds had been chained to the traditions of the past; thought had traveled as in a treadmill; philosophy had advanced with the face turned backward; knight-errantry had been the highest type of manhood, and Christianity, like its founder, had been made to bear the sins of the many. While its friends claimed for it all the virtues of mankind, its enemies charged it with all the vices. The first efforts of scholastics in their exposition of these new appearances was to square the accumulative information of the day with the subtleties of the schools and the doctrines and dogmas of the past. The source of all knowledge and the foundation of all science were claimed to be in the holy scriptures and in the tenets of the church. Any conception, or invention, or discovery that might pass unscathed these two touchstones was denominated truth, though human reason could not grasp it. Likewise, any stray fact which by these tests failed satisfactorily to account for itself, was pronounced false, though human reason declared it true.
I do not mean to say that all darkness and nescience were swept away in a breath, or that knowledge fell suddenly on mankind like an inspiration; it was enough for some few to learn for the first time of such a thing as ignorance. Although the change was real and decisive, and the mind in its attempt to fathom new phenomena was effectually lured from the mystic pages of antiquity, there yet remained enough and to spare of ignorance and credulity. Searchers after the truth yet saw as through a glass darkly; the clearer vision of face to face could be attained only by slow degrees, and often the very attempt to scale the prison-house walls plunged the aspirant after higher culture yet deeper into the ditch; but that there were any searchings at all was no small advance. Shackles were stricken off, but the untutored intellect as yet knew not the use of liberty; a new light was flashed in upon the mental vision, but the sudden glare was for the moment bewildering, and not until centuries after was the significance of this transitional epoch fully manifest. It may be possible to exaggerate the importance of this awakening; yet how exaggerate the value to western Europe of Greek literature and the revival of classic learning, of the invention of printing, or the influence for good or evil on Spain of her New World discoveries?
Rightly to understand the condition of education in Spain in the fifteenth century, we must remember that mental training and not the acquisition of knowledge was the object of education, and as the object to be attained differed greatly from that which we are now seeking, so the result was proportionately different. The tendency of education in the fifteenth century was toward a more determined reliance and belief in authority and in revelation; the tendency of education in the nineteenth century is toward inquiry and scepticism. As to the comparative value of these results there are of course many differences of opinion, and I shall not discuss them here. We may be sure, however, that in whatsoever direction human mind is trained by other human mind, there is ever present and underlying all activities inexorable progress, an eternal unfolding into ever fairer proportions of all that is best and noblest in mankind.
SPANISH HISTORY.
Our history dates from Spain, at the time when Castile and Aragon were the dominant power of Europe. Before entering upon the doings, or passing judgment upon the character, of those whose fortunes it is the purpose of this work to follow into the forests of the New World, let us glance at the origin of the Spaniards, examine the cradle of their civilization, and see out of what conditions a people so unlike any on the globe to-day were evolved.
Far back as tradition and theory can reach, the Iberians, possibly of Turanian stock, followed their rude vocations, hunting, fishing, fighting; guarded on one side by the Pyrenees, and on the others by the sea. Next, in an epoch to whose date no approximation is now possible, the Celts came down on Spain, the first wave of that Aryan sea destined to submerge all Europe. Under the Celtiberians, the fierce and powerful compound race now formed by the union of Iberian and Celt, broken indeed into various tribes but with analogous customs and tongues, Spain first became known to the civilized world. Then came the commercial and colonizing Phœnician and planted a settlement at Cádiz. After them the Carthaginians landed on the eastern shore of the Peninsula and founded Carthago Nova, now Cartagena. The power of the Carthaginians in Spain was broken by the Scipios, in the second Punic war, toward the close of the third century b. c.; and yet, says Ticknor, "they have left in the population and language of Spain, traces which have never been wholly obliterated."
The Romans, after driving out the Carthaginians, attacked the interior Celtiberians, who fought them hard and long; but the latter being finally subjugated, all Hispania, save perhaps the rugged north-west, was divided into Roman provinces, and in them the language and institutions of Rome were established. Forced from their hereditary feuds by the iron hand of their conquerors, the Celtiberians rapidly increased in wealth and numbers, and of their prosperity the Empire was not slow to make avail. From the fertile fields of Spain flowed vast quantities of cerealia into the granary of Rome. The gold and silver of their metal-veined sierras the enslaved Spaniards were forced to produce, as they in succeeding ages wrung from the natives of the New World the same unjust service. The introduction of Christianity, about the middle of the third century, brought upon the adherents of this religion the most cruel persecutions; which, however, instead of destroying it but rooted it the more firmly. Some say, indeed, that Saint Paul preached at Saragossa, and planted a church there; however this may be, it was not until the conversion of Constantine that Christianity became the dominant religion of the Peninsula.
The fifth century opens with the dissolution of the empire of the Romans, for the barbarians are upon them. Over the Pyrenees, in awful deluge, sweep Suevi, Alani, Vandals, and Silingi. The Suevi, in a. d. 409, take possession of the north-west, now Galicia; the Alani seize Lusitania, to-day Portugal; and the Vandals and Silingi settle Vandalusia, or Andalusia, the latter tribe occupying Seville. Blighted by this barbaric whirlwind, civilization droops; the arts and sciences introduced by the Romans fall into disgrace; the churlish conquerors will have none of them; and the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, turning toward its original seat, flees the inhospitable west and takes refuge in the capital of the eastern empire, which thereafter becomes the depository of the wrecks of classic learning. In their dilemma the Romanized indigenes call to their help the less uncouth Visigoths. In 427 the Vandals pass into Africa. Between 455 and 584 the Visigoths conquer the Romans and subjugate the Suevi; so that now their kingdom stretches from the bank of the Loire to Gibraltar. Thus to the Latin is added the Gothic element; the Latin language, corrupted as it had become, gains upon, or rather for the most part holds its original advantage over the Gothic tongue, and becomes the basis of the modern Castilian, with such grammatical simplifications as the northern taste renders necessary.
ADVENT OF THE MOORS.
Still the great Peninsula seethes and bubbles like a caldron over the furnace-fires of its progressional unrest. Two centuries of contentions between states, and between kings and nobles, aggravated by the usual convulsions incident to elective monarchies, suffice to bring upon them a new foe. The crescent of Islam, resting on Mecca and threatening at once the Bosporus and the Pillars of Hercules, flames suddenly out at its western horn over fated Spain. At Algeciras, near Gibraltar, in 711, in great force, the Mauritanian Arabs, or Moors, effect a landing, invited thither by Count Julian, commander of Andalusia, in revenge for the violation of his daughter by Rodrigo, last of the Gothic kings. Routing the Visigoths in the battle of Jerez de la Frontera, in five swift years the Saracens are masters of all save the mountainous north-west; and penetrating Aquitania, the kingdom of the Franks is prevented from falling into their hands only by the decisive victory won by Charles Martel at Tours in 732. An emirate under the caliphate of Bagdad is established at Córdova, and multitudes of Syrian and Egyptian Mahometans flock to Spain. Thus pressed, to the rugged mountains of Asturias, under Pelayo, one of their national heroes, flee such Christians as will not submit. There the wreck of the Visigothic kingdom takes refuge; there stubborn patriots rally and nurse their nationality betimes in the caves of the Pyrenees, waiting opportunity to deliver their country from the yoke of the hated Infidel. In 755 Abdurrahman, the last caliph of the dynasty of Ommiades, having escaped the massacre of Damascus, wrests Spain from the hands of the Abbassides and founds the caliphate of Córdova, which then formed one of the four great divisions of the Prophet's dominions. Moorish kings now take the place of Moorish emirs, and thus is governed Córdova till 1238, and Granada till 1492.