"The royal procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had been consecrated as a cathedral. Here the sovereigns offered up prayers and thanksgivings and the choir of the royal chapel chanted a triumphant anthem, in which they were joined by the courtiers and cavaliers. Nothing could exceed the thankfulness to God of the pious King Ferdinand for having enabled him to eradicate from Spain the empire and name of that accursed heathen race, and for the elevation of the Cross in that city where the impious doctrines of Mohamed had so long been cherished."[20]
Bells were rung and masses celebrated in gratitude throughout the Christian world. As far away as Saint Paul's in London town, a special Te Deum was chanted by order of the good King Henry the Seventh. Spain had reached the summit of her glory, before which yawned the abyss.
And now in the name of Christ the Inquisition was established and one of its chief offices founded; in His name the Jews were driven out, Christian oaths and{245} covenants broken, and the peaceful Moorish inhabitants hounded from their hearths. Under Philip III, in 1609, their last descendants were banished from the realm.
No scene of chivalry during the middle ages displayed a more brilliant and bloody pageant than the battlefield of Granada. It was the culmination of the work of Spain's greatest rulers,—the great crisis in her history.
Here gallants held it little thing for ladies' sake to die,
Or for the Prophet's honour, or pride of Soldenry.
For here did Valour flourish and deeds of warlike might
Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight.[21]
Gazing over this famous plain, the Vega, that "Pearl of Price," with its courtyards now desolate, its gardens parched and well-nigh calcined by the sun, one recalls Voltaire's words: "Great wrongs are always recent wounds!" and long years have passed since the iron heel of Austria set its first impress on the soil.
James Howell, the English traveler and busybody in the capital at the time Prince Charles went surreptitiously wooing, writes home in 1623, after visiting Granada: "Since the expulsion of the Moors, it is also grown thinner, and not so full of corn; for those Moors would grub up wheat out of the very tops of the craggy hills, yet they used another grain for their bread, so that the Spaniard had nought else to do but go with his ass to the market and buy the corn of the Moors."
Only once more does Granada's name emerge from the oblivion of ages,—when the Iron Duke occupied{246} the city during the Peninsular War. He covered with a kindly hand some of her barrenness, planting English elms beneath her fortress.
II
In the heart of a crumbling mass of chalky, chrome-colored walls and vermilion roofs, rises the dome of the Cathedral. Here, as in Seville, the ground once sanctified to Moslem prayer was cleansed by the Catholics from the pollution of the Moor, and the Christian edifice was reared on the foundations of the Mohammedan mosque. As already noted, one of the first religious acts of the conquerors was the consecration, in January, 1492, of the ancient mosque, which thereafter was used for Christian worship under the direction of the wise and tolerant Talavera, as first Bishop of Granada. The new building was not begun until the year 1523, an exceedingly late date in cathedral-building,—a time when the great art was slowly dying down, and, in northern countries, flickering in its last flamboyancy.