With increasing numbers, enormous revenues, and political influence, which not infrequently controlled the decrees of kings and councils, the Church, in the Peninsula as elsewhere, had long since discarded its primitive simplicity of faith and worship. The manners of its prelates were more arrogant than those of the greatest sovereigns. The most fertile lands of every province were apportioned among its servants. Its edifices occupied the most commanding and picturesque locations. From the contributions of wealthy proselytes, from the spoils of vanquished infidels, from the scruples of the pious, and from the apprehensions of the dying, immense sums were annually deposited in its treasury. The heads of the religious houses, by royal charter or papal usurpation, possessed and exercised without interference the privilege of life and death over their vassals. Some of them yielded in precedence and prerogative to the king alone. The power and opulence enjoyed by these establishments are little understood at the present day. The convent of Las Huelgas, founded by Alfonso VIII., near Burgos, is but one example of many which might be adduced. Its buildings exhibited the highest degree of architectural magnificence of which the age was capable. Three hundred towns and villages acknowledged the authority of the abbess, who was a princess palatine. The rental of its estates amounted to a fabulous sum, which often, in times of public disorder, far exceeded the revenues of the crown. The fortunes bestowed by its inmates, all of whom were required to be of noble birth, formed no inconsiderable proportion of its great and constantly increasing wealth. In its chapel were the mausoleums of kings and princes exquisitely carved in marble and alabaster. Before its altar had been knighted many personages, among them Edward I. of England. The reverence with which this convent was regarded corresponded with the luxury which invested its surroundings, and the authority of the haughty dignitary who presided over its destinies and governed her retainers and dependents with autocratic sway. Such was one of the innumerable ecclesiastical foundations which covered the Peninsula, soliciting the gifts of the pious, tempting the sacrifice of the superstitious, and awakening the awe and veneration of the ignorant and credulous multitude.
The relations between the religious, political, and military orders were then more intimate in Spain than in any other country in the world. Bishops went forth to battle in complete steel, followed by trains of armed vassals, and it was found in the hour of trial that the prowess of these belligerent soldiers of the Church was not inferior to that of their ruder companions, inured by the experience of a lifetime to the hardships and perils of war. In the short and infrequent intervals of peace, the aspiring ecclesiastic indulged his restless spirit in the dangerous and exciting diversion of political intrigue. Not an assassination was planned, not a conspiracy was projected, but the crosier and the crucifix were found side by side with the sword and the poniard. With such associations, it is not strange that the vices of the camps and the unrelenting ferocity which distinguished the mercenary crusader should have found a lodgement in the quiet abodes of religious seclusion. The choice of the female captives was reserved for the episcopal voluptuary. The subterranean vaults of the monastery were provided with the most improved instruments of torture. The richest spoils were appropriated for the benefit of the cathedral and the abbey. The wealth of the latter was incredible. The combined revenues of the Archiepiscopal See of Toledo, in the fourteenth century, were two hundred and sixty thousand ducats, or four and a half million dollars; those of the three great military orders were a hundred and forty-five thousand ducats, or upwards of two million. The state of morals prevalent among the clergy was disclosed by an edict of Alfonso X., by which he granted to the priesthood, devoted by their vows and by the canons of the Church to a condition of poverty and celibacy, the privilege of bequeathing their wealth to the offspring of their concubines. In the reign of Henry III., a mistress of the King was appointed the superior of a convent for the avowed purpose of reforming its inmates! The immorality of the religious teachers, whose behavior, so at variance with their professions, scarcely excited comment, insensibly reacted upon the people. The licentiousness of the Castilian, from the king to the beggar, was proverbial. The illegitimate offspring of the monarch often took precedence of the legal heirs to the throne. The nobles imitated with eagerness the example of royalty, and the life of the lower orders was incredibly profligate. Political honor and private integrity were practically extinct. The obligations of loyalty, the performance of contracts, the solemn engagements which united in mutual dependence the lord and the vassal, were habitually violated. The commission of crime, often instigated by the authorities appointed to punish it, went on unchecked. The highways swarmed with outlaws. The fields lay waste and whole districts were depopulated, for the industrious peasantry were unwilling to labor when their oppressors reaped the harvest. The turbulent aristocracy, when not engaged in prosecuting hereditary feuds, without concealment or apology plundered the domains and appropriated the revenues of the crown. The king was frequently compelled to pawn the insignia of his office in order to obtain the necessaries of life. The priesthood and the nobles engrossed the wealth of the realm. Debasement of the coinage, that fruitful source of so many evils, was frequently resorted to. In many parts of the country agriculture was practically abandoned; trade was paralyzed, and the pestilence, the companion of filth, neglect, and starvation, swept populous communities entirely away. The expenses of incessant warfare imposed new burdens upon a suffering and despairing people. In a single year, in Aragon, the sums expended for the ransom of prisoners amounted to four hundred thousand florins. Amidst this thorough demoralization of society, from which no class and comparatively few individuals were exempt, in the army alone was preserved the faint semblance of honor and virtue. The Castilian soldier, ever brave and generous, despite the superstition which often tarnished his character, while bowing with reverence before the altar, reserved his secret homage for the God of War. When not exercised against the infidel, now restricted to a corner of the Peninsula, his weapons were turned against his neighbor. His imagination was dazzled by the story of his ancestors; his courage was animated by the hope that he might equal or even surpass their almost superhuman exploits. A military career was the surest avenue to the enjoyment of fame, to the acquirement of wealth, to the applause of the multitude, to the smiles of beauty, to all those advantages regarded by mankind as most desirable in this life, and for which every superstitious age has with singular inconsistency been willing to barter the prospect of future happiness and eternal glory in the life to come. The pompous splendor of medieval array appealed strongly to every sentiment which could impress or influence the mind of the courtly noble or the unlettered peasant. Silks and cloth of gold; glittering armor curiously inlaid with precious metals; sparkling gems; gorgeously caparisoned horses; tabards embroidered with royal devices and suggestive mottoes; jewelled weapons whose weight and dimensions indicated that corporeal strength and manual dexterity were the most useful qualities of a soldier who prided himself quite as much upon his courtesy as his valor,—these were the attractions which with irresistible force impelled members of every rank of society to the most fascinating and lucrative of all professions,—the trade of arms.
Until the reign of Alfonso X. the pursuit of letters, abandoned to the monks, had been practised solely in the cloister. The more or less intimate relations maintained at different periods between the courts of Castile and Granada, the great universities and colleges of the Moorish kingdom, the precious literary remains which had survived the ruin of the Western Khalifate, the traditions of a civilization more elegant and polished than the world had heretofore known, made no perceptible impression upon those savage warriors who had borne in triumph the standard of the Cross from the defiles of the Asturias to the banks of the Guadalquivir. The mosques of the conquered Moslems had been deformed by incongruous additions and blackened with the smoke of incense. The exquisite labors of the Arab and Byzantine artists were plastered over with lime. Scientific instruments, almost universally viewed with mingled dread and suspicion as infernal apparatus for the prosecution of magic and the invocation of demons, were broken to pieces. Every copy of the Koran that could be found was destroyed. Such works in the Arabic tongue as came into the hands of the ecclesiastics were at once committed to the flames as of diabolical import. The beautiful palaces and villas of the Moorish princes were suffered to fall into decay. When, in after years, it was desired to partially restore their delicate ornamentation, no one could be found who understood the process,—it had been entirely lost. The lovely plantations of Andalusia, traversed by a thousand rivulets, enriched with bountiful harvests, fragrant with the blossoms of rare exotics, provided with every plant subservient to the comfort or the gratification of man, were turned into a vast and dreary solitude.
No qualities or tastes of the infidel were considered by the knight worthy of emulation save his polygamous habits and his courage and dexterity in battle,—a courage and dexterity which, alas! were insufficient to arrest, and scarcely able to retard, the stubborn and relentless march of Spanish conquest.
The social, political, and religious conditions of the Castilian monarchy sketched in the preceding pages become most important when the causes of the prolongation of the Moorish domination in Spain are considered. The kingdom of Granada, like that of Castile, was rent by internal dissensions. Surrounded by powerful and hostile states, it maintained its existence chiefly through the incessant quarrels of its neighbors. In its court and capital treason and crime were rampant. Emir after emir, whose titles were derived from the murder of their kinsmen, succeeded one another on the throne. A great and tumultuous population, which had fled before the invincible squadrons of the conqueror, crowded its provinces. The mixed character of the latter and the seditious elements of which it was composed rendered it ever ready for revolt. The numerous offspring of the royal harem was also an endless and menacing source of danger and discord. Under such circumstances, threatened with certain destruction, with the banners of Castile often in sight of the towers of the Alhambra, its midnight sky illumined with the light of burning villages, its frontiers contracting with almost every Christian foray, the Moorish kingdom maintained, from the death of Ferdinand III. to the accession of the Catholic sovereigns, a period of two hundred and twenty-two years, a turbulent and precarious existence. The monotony of that long and dreary period was unbroken by any great event, and diversified only by predatory inroads, by occasional sieges of fortified towns,—some of which, Algeziras, Tarifa, Gibraltar, were lost forever to the Moslem empire,—and by those calamities incident to the decadence of a nation whose’ parts had lost their cohesive power, and whose resources were exhausted in treasonable enterprises and civil war rather than employed in counteracting and repelling the efforts of the common enemy.
Mohammed I., as soon as he learned of the death of King Ferdinand, hastened to manifest his respect for his former lord by despatching a hundred Moorish nobles to Seville, where, clad in the deepest mourning and bearing lighted tapers, they followed the body of the monarch to the grave. Through policy or esteem, the alliance between the courts of Granada and Castile was renewed; the Emir, in token of dependence, did homage to Alfonso as his suzerain; and this condition of vassalage, more nominal than real, and rather indicative of friendship than subjection, served materially to protract the term of life of the Moslem kingdom, in the course of natural events inevitably destined to destruction. Summoned by the King of Castile to attend him in his expeditions against the Moors of Eastern Andalusia, Mohammed, bound by the obligations he had assumed, was compelled to draw his sword upon his fellow-sectaries in the interest and for the exclusive benefit of the hereditary enemies of his religion and his race. Arcos, Medina-Sidonia, Xerez, Lebrija, Niebla, and many places of inferior note fell into the hands of the Christians. With bitter mortification the Saracens beheld the subjugation of strongholds whose defences had been constructed by the soldiers of the greatest khalif’s, aware that their aid had contributed in no small degree to victories which must in the end affect the integrity of their own dominion.
The unfortunate results of this alliance did not fail to produce upon the sagacious and penetrating mind of Mohammed-al-Ahmar a deep and abiding impression. Foreseeing the certain recurrence of hostilities with the Christians, he employed every resource at his command to strengthen the defences of his kingdom and to place his army in readiness for aggressive operations. The flying squadrons of cavalry, which had always been the strongest arm of the Moorish service, were reorganized and placed under the command of skilful and experienced captains. Great quantities of provisions and munitions of war were collected and stored in magazines in every part of the country. New castles and watch-towers were erected on the frontiers. Secret emissaries were despatched to foment treason and disorder in those cities which had recently been added by conquest to the Castilian territory, and whose population, largely Moorish, cherished an implacable aversion to their new masters. The fortresses of the South, and especially Gibraltar, were strengthened and their garrisons increased. Negotiations were entered into with the Emir of Morocco, who was induced to abandon his sectarian prejudices and his personal resentment to further a meritorious and pious enterprise,—resistance against the menacing encroachments of the Christian power. When all was ready, an embassy from the towns of Medina-Sidonia, Murcia, Xerez, and Arcos solicited the aid of Mohammed, promising as a reward for his interference the annexation of their provinces to the kingdom of Granada. With secret assurances of support, which indeed had already awakened the hope of success, the tributary Moslems of the South, from Valencia to the borders of Portugal, rose simultaneously in rebellion. The Christians, ignorant or heedless of impending danger, were ruthlessly slaughtered. The soldiery fared no better than the unarmed citizens, only obtaining a somewhat longer respite by the exertion of their superior valor and skill. The garrison of Xerez, commanded by Count Gomez, after a defence memorable even in those days of knightly heroism, perished to the last man. The women and children of the massacred Castilians passed into the harems of the infidel; many were sent to Granada, some were sold in Africa. The city of Murcia was taken by a detachment of cavalry, secretly despatched by Mohammed. A conspiracy, which had for its object the liberation of Seville and Cordova from the Christian yoke, was discovered and frustrated by the merest accident; and the attempt to recover the great mosque of Abd-al-Rahman,—in the eyes of Mohammedans one of the most sacred edifices in the world, and still, despite its degradation to a temple of idolatrous worship, an object of the deepest reverence to millions of the votaries of Islam,—though unsuccessful, failed to remove from the minds of the fanatic believer the conviction that the shrine, enriched and embellished by the munificence and devotion of the khalifs, was destined at some future time to be restored to the possession of its original owners and its endless aisles once more to resound with the truths committed by the Spirit of Almighty Wisdom to the inspired interpretation of the Prophet of God.
Notwithstanding the secret and hostile machinations of Mohammed, already more than suspected by King Alfonso, the crafty Moor still maintained in his intercourse with the latter the appearance of alliance and friendship. But his temporizing conduct, when requested to assist in the subjugation of the rebels, soon resolved suspicion into certainty; the seriousness of the danger became manifest, and Alfonso, finally convinced of the dissimulation of his vassal, prepared to defend not only the ancient heritage of his fathers, but the recently acquired possessions of the crown.
A formidable band of Africans, sent by the Emir of Morocco, crossed the strait and joined the Moslem army, and a bloody but indecisive battle, in which the advantage remained with the Moslems, was fought near Alcalá-la-Real. The country on the borders of both kingdoms was constantly ravaged by bands of marauders. The Moors of the revolted provinces, secure in the defences of the fortified towns, defied the irregular and ill-concerted efforts to dislodge them, and the rancor of religious hatred, intensified by centuries of enmity, which intervals of truce and mutual professions of service had not sufficed to even palliate, broke forth with redoubled fury in every hamlet and city of Southern Andalusia. In the presence of an exhausted treasury, a dissatisfied and disloyal nobility, and an active foe who commanded at once the resources of his own kingdom and those of his allies in Africa, Alfonso began to realize how desperate was his situation. But while the territory acquired by the valor of Ferdinand III. seemed about to be wrenched from the feeble grasp of his son, the proverbial inconstancy of the Arab character, consistent in nothing save the gratification of private revenge, solved forever, at a critical moment, the problem of Moslem domination or servitude. The African allies, to whom the credit of the victory of Alcalá-la-Real was justly due, had in consequence been treated with distinguished consideration by the grateful Mohammed. But in the eyes of the Andalusian Moors the Africans were heretics, and the peculiar bias of narrow minds which regards a hostile sectary as infinitely more detestable than a foe in arms, aided by national and provincial jealousy, subverted a great and well-planned revolution. Forgetful of their services, a cry of indignant protest was raised by the bigoted Andalusian populace against the favors bestowed upon the African auxiliaries; the faquis, the ecclesiastical demagogues of the time, fanned the flame of religious animosity, and the spirit of theological discord, ever so prominent in the Moorish annals of the Peninsula, once more preferred the triumph of misdirected zeal to the welfare of country or the preservation of empire. The walis of Guadix, Malaga, and Comares, voicing the sentiments of the communities they governed, and perhaps influenced by aspirations to ultimate independence, offered to render homage to the King of Castile, with the understanding that he was to protect them from the consequences of rebellion. Alfonso received with joy the news of this unexpected accession of strength, and he embraced with eagerness the proffered alliance. The forces of the walis at once descended with irresistible fury upon the Vega, and the revolted cities, abandoned by the Emir, whose capital was menaced by the active squadrons of Malaga, were in a few months compelled to solicit the mercy of the conqueror. The larger portion of the Moorish inhabitants fled to Granada to add to the constantly growing resources and population of that kingdom, still destined for many generations to represent the culture, the science, the intelligence, and the politeness of Western Europe.
In the mean time, Jaime of Aragon, solicited by Alfonso, had occupied the city and territory of Murcia. His well-known probity, combined with his military reputation, induced the Moors to receive him rather as a mediator than an enemy. His wise and humane policy reconciled the vassals to their suzerain; and Alfonso, with a bad faith conspicuous in an age of broken treaties and repudiated obligations, agreed not only to desert his allies, the walis, but to assist in their subjugation, if Mohammed would forever renounce all sovereignty over the province of Murcia. Upon these conditions a truce was agreed to, which, however, was immediately violated by Alfonso, who, besides refusing his aid, ordered Mohammed to acknowledge the independence of the cities of Guadix, Comares, and Malaga, whose geographical position and impregnable fortifications caused them to be regarded as the keys of the kingdom. The resumption of negotiations produced more enduring and satisfactory results, and the walls, to whose timely defection the Castilian king owed the restoration of the most valuable part of his recently acquired dominions, were abandoned to the vengeance of the exasperated Emir, who purchased of the Christians temporary immunity from further hostilities by an annual tribute of two hundred and fifty thousand maravedis of gold.