The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

HOLBEIN, QUEEN CATHERINE OF ARAGON

The spirit of Isabella in the matter of the rights of her subjects will perhaps be best appreciated from the famous expression which she used on hearing that Columbus had offered some of the Indians whom he brought home with him to some of the Spanish nobility as gifts. The Queen indignantly demanded when she heard of it, "Who gave permission to Columbus to parcel out my vassals to anyone?" Having learned that some of the Indians were being held as slaves in Spain she issued a decree that they should be returned to their native country at the expense of the person in whose possession they were found.

Prescott has drawn a striking contrast between the character of Isabella and of Elizabeth. The two names are in origin the same and there are many details of their careers that tempt to the making of a comparison. Because Elizabeth is really a product of Columbus' Century, seventeen years of age before the century closed, Prescott's comparison is a document of special value for us here, for it tells the [{294}] story of two great women of the time, though the work of one of them was accomplished after the close of our period. He says (p. 188, Vol. III):

"Both succeeded in establishing themselves on the throne after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory to which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name, unrivalled in the subsequent annals of their country.
"But with these few circumstances of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes, and her conduct in public and private life was characterized by candour and integrity. Both may be said to have shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others,--was ready at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty; and, far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart sought every means to mitigate the authorized severities of the law, even towards the guilty. . . .
"To estimate this (contrast) aright, we must contemplate the results of their respective reigns. Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at hand, and availed herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric of national grandeur. Isabella created these materials. She saw the faculties of her people locked up in a death-like lethargy, and she breathed [{295}] into them the breath of life for those great and heroic enterprises which terminated in such glorious consequences to the monarchy. It is when viewed from the depressed position of her early days, that the achievements of her reign seem scarcely less than miraculous."

Prescott has declared that her heart was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horror. She is said to have been the first to introduce the benevolent institution of camp hospitals and her lively solicitude to spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies is often told. Her establishment of the Inquisition and the exile of the Jews are often set over against this, but Prescott did not hesitate to say, "It will be difficult to condemn her indeed without condemning her age; for these acts are not only excused, but extolled by her contemporaries as constituting her constant claims to renown and to the gratitude of her country." Spaniards of much more modern time have not scrupled to pronounce the Inquisition "the great evidence of her prudence and piety; whose uncommon utility not only Spain but all Christendom freely acknowledged." Undoubtedly it saved Spain from some of the troubles which devastated Germany during the Hundred Years' War after the Reformation, when religious divisions so embittered the struggle and made it impossible for national affairs to prosper or for men to be brought to any common understanding with regard to anything for the good of the commonwealth. The difference between the position of Spain and of Germany in this regard is highly instructive.

There are so many distinguished women of this period in Italy that a choice indeed is embarrassing. Probably, however, the general consensus of opinion would be that the typical great intellectual woman of this time is Vittoria Colonna, the daughter of the great Roman family of that name, who became the wife of the Marquis of Pescara. The Colonnas were at this time in exile at Naples, where her father was the Grand Constable. Her mother was Agnesina de Montefeltro of the Ducal house of Urbino and she was brought up after the age of ten by her prospective sister-in-law, the Duchess [{296}] Costanza, in the Island of Ischia. She was intimately related, then, to many of the important noble families of Italy and her career may be taken as a type of the possibilities of education and intellectual influence in her class at this time. Her husband became distinguished as a military leader and finally at scarcely more than thirty years of age was made the General of the Imperial forces when the Pope and the Emperor Charles V made an alliance and drove the French from Milan in 1528. He had been the commander of the Imperial Army at the battle of Pavia in 1525, after which Francis I, badly beaten and taken prisoner, sent his mother the famous despatch from his captive cell in the Certosa near Pavia, "All is lost save honor."

Francis was too important a prisoner to be left to the fortunes of war in Italy, so Charles V had him transferred by ship to Madrid. Emissaries of the French, who tried to win the Marquis of Pescara from his allegiance to the Emperor, represented this action to him as something of an insult or at least a lack of trust. They offered him the throne of Naples if he should abandon the Emperor and come over to the French. The Marquis had been wounded and was just recovering when these offers were made. He wrote to his wife, Vittoria, with whom he was on terms of the most charming affection, telling her of the offer and asking her advice. With a crown dangling before her and the added temptation, the subtlest there could be for a woman, of going back as Queen where she had been only a lady-in-waiting at Court, Vittoria wrote the famous letter which has deservedly so often been quoted:

"Consider well what you are doing, mindful of the fame and estimation which you have always enjoyed; and in truth, for my part, I care not to be the wife of a king, but rather to be joined to a faithful and loyal man; for it is not riches, titles, and kingdoms which can give true glory, infinite praise, and perpetual renown to noble spirits desirous of eternal fame; but faith, sincerity, and other virtues of the soul; and with these man may rise higher than the highest kings, not only in war, but in peace."

TITIAN, PRESENTATION OF VIRGIN