SALON DE LOS REYES CATÓLICOS, ARANJUEZ
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION 73
There was no law to speak of in all these years except the twin despotism of the Church and the king. If there had been dissidence between them it might have been better for the people. But up to late years there has never been a quarrel between the clergy and the crown. Their interests were so identified that the dual tyranny was stronger than even a single one could have been. The crown always lending to the Church when necessary the arm of flesh, and the Church giving to the despotism of the sceptre the sanction of spiritual authority, an absolute power was established over body and soul.
The spirit of individual independence inseparable from Gothic blood being thus forced out of its natural channels of freedom of thought and municipal liberty, it remained in the cavaliers of the army of Spain in the same barbarous form which it had held in the Northern forests,--a physical self-esteem and a readiness to fight on the slightest provocation. This did not interfere with the designs of the Church and was rather a useful engine against its enemies. The absolute power of the crown kept the spirit of feudal arrogance in check while the pressure of a com-
74 CASTILIAN DAYS
mon danger existed. The close cohesion which was so necessary in camp and Church prevented the tendency to disintegration, while the right of life and death was freely exercised by the great lords on their distant estates without interference. The predominating power of the crown was too great and too absolute to result in the establishment of any fixed principle of obedience to law. The union of crozier and sceptre had been, if anything, too successful. The king was so far above the nobility that there was no virtue in obeying him. His commission was divine, and he was no more confined by human laws than the stars and the comets. The obedience they owed and paid him was not respect to law. It partook of the character of religious worship, and left untouched and untamed in their savage hearts the instinct of resistance to all earthly claims of authority.
Such was the condition of the public spirit of Spain at the beginning of that wonderful series of reigns from Ferdinand and Isabella to their great-grandson Philip II., which in less than a century raised Spain to the summit of greatness and built up a realm on which the sun never set. All the events of these prodigious reigns contributed to