Nor was the Moslem the only factor in this medieval development. In no other country in Europe was the Jew, as we have seen, more largely represented, and more powerful, for the first fifteen centuries of our era, than in Spain, whether under Christian or Moslem masters. But the direct and simple monotheism of the Hebrew and the Arab, while it had so great a direct influence upon Spanish Christianity, provoked as part of the natural antagonism to the methods of the rival and the enemy, the counter development of an excessive Hagiolatry, Mariolatry, and Sacerdotalism.
It would be strange enough if the religious fervor which doomed to death and torment so many tens of thousands of Semites in Spain should be itself of Semitic suggestion. It is hardly less strange that the Greek Renaissance, which revolutionized the Christian world, and whose anti-Semitic influence to the present day is nowhere more marked than in every department of religious thought, should by the irony of fate have been forestalled by a writer, at once Spanish and Semitic; and when, by the sixteenth century, the rest of modern Europe had been led by the teaching of Averroes to accept the philosophy of Aristotle, Spain, the earliest home of Hellenism, new born in Europe, had already turned again to a religious Philistinism or Phariseeism of the hardest and most uncompromising type, Semitic in its thoroughness, Greek only in its elaborate accessories, and Spanish in its uncompromising rigor.
Thus it was that the Arab and the Jew, parents, in some sense, of the religious spirit of Ximenez and of Torquemada, became themselves the objects of persecution more bitter than is to be found in the annals of any other European nation. The rigors of the Spanish Inquisition, and the policy that inspired and justified it, are not to be fully explained by the rapacity of Ferdinand, the bigotry of Isabella, the ambition of Ximenez, or the cruelty of Torquemada. They were in a manner the rebellion or outbreak of the old Semitic spirit against the Semite, the ignorant jealousy of the wayward disciple against the master whose teaching has been but imperfectly and unintelligently assimilated—perverted, distorted, and depraved by the human or devilish element which is to be found in all religions, and which seems ever striving to destroy the better, and to develop the worser part of the spiritual nature of man.
We now enter upon a period of European history which is but feebly characterized by the term interesting, and which has been too accurately chronicled and too severely investigated to be called romantic; when a well-founded jealousy, or fear of the growing power of France, alone supplies the key to the ever-changing foreign policy of the sovereigns of Spain. Genuine State papers of the fifteenth century are by no means numerous. In such of them, however, as are still extant, we find the fear expressed over and over again that the kings of France would render themselves “masters of the world,” would “establish a universal empire,” or “subject the whole of Christendom to their dictation.” The best means to avert such a danger appeared to contemporary statesmen to be the foundation of another European State as a counterpoise. Ferdinand the Catholic, ambitious, diplomatic, and capable, was the first prince who undertook the enterprise.
Within less than three years after the Inquisition had been established at Seville, Louis XI. of France, the old rival and colleague of John II. of Aragon, had died in Paris, August 30, 1483. He was succeeded by his son Charles VIII., a young prince whose ignorance was only equaled by his vanity, and was if possible exceeded by his presumption. With such an antagonist, Ferdinand of Aragon was well fitted to deal, with advantage to himself and to Spain. To win over the Duchess of Bourbon, who had virtually succeeded to the government of France on the death of Louis XI., and to marry his eldest daughter Isabella to the young King Charles VIII., were accordingly the first objects of his negotiations. But in spite of all the flattery lavished on the duchess, Ferdinand did not succeed in obtaining the crown for the Infanta. A more richly dowered bride was destined for the King of France, to whom the acquisition of the province of Brittany was of far greater importance than the doubtful friendship of Spain; and after much public and private negotiation, the Spanish embassador was reluctantly withdrawn from Paris in the summer of 1487 (29th of July).
Disappointed in his dealing with the court of France, the ever-watchful and persistent Ferdinand turned his eyes to England; and in the last days of the year 1487 an embassador from the Spanish sovereigns, Roderigo de Puebla, doctor of canon and civil law, arrived at the court of London. Henry VII., who greatly desired to establish a closer alliance with Spain, succeeded in flattering the new envoy, and rendering him almost from the first subservient to his personal interests. Yet the King of England and the Spanish embassador together were no match for Ferdinand of Aragon. The negotiations between the sovereigns were prolonged for two years, and in the end Henry was worsted at every point. He had signed a treaty of offensive alliance with Spain against France, with which power he wisely desired to maintain friendly relations, and he had been prevailed upon to send some English troops into Brittany to co-operate with a Spanish contingent which never arrived, in the expulsion of the French from that country. He had concluded further treaties of friendship and alliance with the King of the Romans, who was actually encouraging Perkin Warbeck to assert his claim to the crown of England, and with the Archduke Philip, whom he personally and independently hated. And he had been forced to content himself with the promise of a very modest dowry with the Spanish princess who was affianced to his son Arthur, Prince of Wales.
Relatively too, as well as positively, he had been falsely borne in hand. Maximilian, who had been no less ready than Henry with his promises to Ferdinand, did not send a single soldier into Brittany, but endeavored to overreach Henry, Charles, and Ferdinand by a hasty marriage—by proxy—with the young duchess, without the consent or knowledge of either England or Spain. Yet this diplomatic victory over the very astute Englishman did not satisfy Ferdinand and Isabella, who, fearful lest they should “become the victims of their honesty” if they permitted Maximilian to surpass them in political perfidy, immediately renewed secret negotiations with France, and declared themselves ready to abandon the king, the duchess, and the emperor. Charles, they promised, should obtain what he wished, without risking the life of a single soldier, if only he would marry a Spanish Infanta. And they offered him, not Isabella, their eldest born, but their second daughter, Joanna.
Charles, however, had other views, and finding no cohesion or certainty in Ferdinand’s league against him, strengthened his cause and his kingdom by marrying the Duchess Anne of Brittany himself, and uniting her hereditary dominions forever to the crown of France, a fair stroke of policy for a foolish sovereign in the midst of crafty and unscrupulous adversaries. (December 13, 1491.)
Ferdinand replied by calling on Henry VII. to fulfill his engagements and invade France. Henry accordingly, on the 1st of October, 1492, landed an army at Calais, and marched on Boulogne; while Ferdinand, without striking a blow either for Spain or for England, took advantage of the English expedition to extort from the fears and folly of Charles VIII. the favorable conditions of peace and alliance that were embodied in the celebrated Convention which was signed at Barcelona on the 19th of January, 1493. By this instrument it was provided that each of the high contracting parties should mutually aid each other against all enemies, the Vicar of Christ alone excepted, that the Spanish sovereigns should not enter into an alliance with any other power, to the prejudice of the interests of France, and finally, that the coveted provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne, whose recovery had long been one of the chief objects of Ferdinand’s ambition, should be immediately handed over to Spain.
The services of England being no longer needed by the peninsular sovereigns, Ferdinand abruptly broke off all further negotiations with Henry VII.; the signatures of Ferdinand and Isabella to the treaty which had already been ratified were disposed of by the simple but effective expedient of cutting them out of the parchment with a pair of scissors; and the contract of marriage between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Infanta Catharine—having served its immediate diplomatic purpose—was removed, for the time being,[7] from the sphere of practical politics.