In both the Castiles the central plateau has a naturally fertile soil, for after rain a luxuriant vegetation appears; but drought is common, owing to the insufficient volume of the rivers, and the failure of the Spaniards to extend the fine system of irrigation which the Moors originated. Certain districts, indeed, in which a layer of heavy loam underlies the porous and friable surface, are able to retain the moisture which elsewhere is absorbed. Such land is found in Palencia, and in the Mesa de Ocaña, where it yields abundant crops; and many of the northern mountains are well wooded. But vast tracts of land are useless except as pasture for sheep, and even the sheep are driven by the severe winters to migrate yearly into Estremadura (q.v.). The normal Castilian landscape is an arid and sterile steppe, with scarcely a tree or spring of water; and many even of the villages afford no relief to the eye, for they are built of sunburnt unbaked bricks, which share the dusty brownish-grey tint of the soil. Especially characteristic is the great plain of La Mancha (q.v.).
The transformation of Castile from a small county in the north of what is now Old Castile into an independent monarchy, was one of the decisive events in the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. The successful resistance offered by Asturias to the invaders had been followed by the liberation of Galicia and Leon, when Ferdinand I. of Castile (1035-1065), by his marriage with Sancha, widow of the last king of Leon, was enabled to unite Leon and Castile in a single kingdom, with its capital at Burgos. New territories were annexed on the south, until, after the capture of Toledo in 1085, and the consequent formation of a New Castile, the kingdom comprised the whole of central Spain. Thenceforward its history is inseparable from that of the whole country; and it is therefore described in full, together with the language and literature of Castile, under [Spain] (q.v.).
Castilian, which is the literary language of Spain, and with certain differences, of Spanish America, is spoken in Old and New Castile, Aragon, Estremadura, and the greater part of Leon; in Andalusia it is subject to various modifications of accent and pronunciation. As there is little, if any, difference of racial origin, character and physical type, among the inhabitants of this region, except in Andalusia, and, to a less extent, in Estremadura, the Castilian is justly regarded as the typical Spaniard. Among the Castilian peasantry, where education and foreign influence have never penetrated deeply, the national character can best be studied. Its intense pride, its fatalistic indolence and ignorance, its honesty and its bigotry, tempered by a keen sense of humour, are well-known characteristics. Apart from the peasant class, Castilians have contributed more to the development of Spanish art and literature than the inhabitants of any other region except, perhaps, Andalusia, which claims to be regarded as supreme in architecture and painting. Of the two great Spanish universities, Alcalá de Henares belonged in all respects to Castile, and Salamanca rose to equality with Paris, Oxford or Bologna, under the purely Castilian influence of Alphonso X. (1252-1284).
For a general description of Castile and its inhabitants, antiquities, commerce, &c., see Castillo la Nueva, three illustrated volumes in the series España, by J.M. Quadrado and V. de la Fuente (Barcelona, 1885-1886), and the Guia del antiguo reino de Castilla, by E. Valverde y Alvarez (Madrid, 1886), which deals with the provinces of Burgos, Santander, Logroño, Soria, Ávila and Segovia. For the history, see in addition to the works cited under [Spain] (section History), Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, by C. Rosell (Madrid, 1875-1877, 2 vols.); Coleccion de las cronicas y memorias de los reyes de Castilla (Madrid, 1779-1787, 7 vols.); and Historia de las communidades de Castilla (Madrid, 1897).
CASTILHO, ANTONIO FELICIANO DE (1800-1875), Portuguese man of letters, was born at Lisbon. He lost his sight at the age of six, but the devotion of his brother Augusto, aided by a retentive memory, enabled him to go through his school and university course with success; and he acquired an almost complete mastery of the Latin language and literature. His first work of importance, the Cartas de Echo e Narciso (1821), belongs to the pseudo-classical school in which he had been brought up, but his romantic leanings became apparent in the Primavera (1822) and in Amor e Melancholia (1823), two volumes of honeyed and prolix bucolic poetry. In the poetic legends A noite de Castello (1836) and Cuimes do bardo (1838) Castilho appeared as a full-blown Romanticist. These books exhibit the defects and qualities of all his work, in which lack of ideas and of creative imagination and an atmosphere of artificiality are ill compensated for by a certain emotional charm, great purity of diction and melodious versification. Belonging to the didactic and descriptive school, Castilho saw nature as all sweetness, pleasure and beauty, and he lived in a dreamland of his imagination. A fulsome epic on the succession of King John VI. brought him an office of profit at Coimbra. On his return from a stay in Madeira, he founded the Revista Universal Lisbonense, in imitation of Herculano’s Panorama, and his profound knowledge of the Portuguese classics served him well in the introduction and notes to a very useful publication, the Livraria Classica Portugueza (1845-1847, 25 vols.), while two years later he established the “Society of the Friends of Letters and the Arts.” A study on Camoens and treatises on metrification and mnemonics followed from his pen. His praiseworthy zeal for popular instruction led him to take up the study of pedagogy, and in 1850 he brought out his Leitura Repentina, a method of reading which was named after him, and he became government commissary of the schools which were destined to put it into practice. Going to Brazil in 1854, he there wrote his famous “Letter to the Empress.” Though Castilho’s lack of strong individuality and his over-great respect for authority prevented him from achieving original work of real merit, yet his translations of Anacreon, Ovid and Virgil and the Chave do Enigma, explaining the romantic incidents that led to his first marriage with D. Maria de Baena, a niece of the satirical poet Tolentino, and a descendant of Antonio Ferreira, reveal him as a master of form and a purist in language. His versions of Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, made without a knowledge of German and English, scarcely added to his reputation. When the Coimbra question arose in 1865, Garrett was dead and Herculano had ceased to write, leaving Castilho supreme, for the moment, in the realm of letters. But the youthful Anthero de Quental withstood his claim to direct the rising generation and attacked his superannuated leadership, and after a fierce war of pamphlets Castilho was dethroned. The rise of João de Deus reduced him to a secondary position in the Portuguese Parnassus, and when he died ten years later much of his former fame had preceded him to the tomb.
See also “Memorias de Castilho” in the Instituto of Coimbra; Innocencio da Silva in Diccionario bibliographico Portuguez, i. 130 and viii. 132: Latino Coelho’s study in the Revista contemporanea de Portugal e Brazil, vols. i. and ii.; Dr Theophilo Braga, Historia do Romantismo (Lisbon, 1880).
(E. Pr.)
CASTILLEJO, CRISTÓBAL DE (1490-1556), Spanish poet, was born at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1490. In 1518 he left Spain with Ferdinand of Austria, afterwards emperor, whose private secretary he eventually became. While residing at Vienna in 1528-1530 he wrote the Historia de Píramo y Tisbe, and dedicated it to Anna von Schaumberg, with whom he had a platonic love-affair. He seems to have visited Venice, to have been neglected by his patron, to have fallen ill in 1540, and to have passed his last years in poverty. He died on the 12th of June 1556, and was buried at Vienna. Castillejo’s poems are interesting, not merely because of their intrinsic excellence, but also as being the most powerful protest against the metrical innovations imported from Italy by Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. He adheres to the native quintillas or to the coplas de pie quebrado, and only abandons these traditional forms when he indulges in caustic parody of the new school—as in the lines Contra los que dejan los metros castellanos. He excels by virtue of his charming simplicity and his ingenious wit, always keen, sometimes licentious, never brutal. The urbane gaiety of his occasional poems is delightfully spontaneous, and the cynical humour which informs the Diálogo de las condiciones de las mujeres and the Diálogo de la vida de la corte is impregnated with the Renaissance spirit. Castillejo is the Clément Marot of Spain. His plays are lost; the best text of his verses is that printed at Madrid in 1792.