Let Spain do as much. Let there be laws against the wearing of gold braid: against display of luxuriance and ease. Let there be laws against the idleness of doubt, against the vice of willful search of truth. (Rome has the truth!) Let there be laws against any wavering whatsoever from the pure unity of Spain. And what element offends against this white simplicity, let it be cut away—though the land bleed.
Above all let there be no peace. Isabel’s art reaches its ironic climax. Spain’s hunger for unity was the hunger for peace. Disunion and multiplicity had made perpetual war. Now unity was achieved, the Spanish rhythm—which was war—went on. The new ideal nourished the old mode. Spain is the apostle of Christ. Spain has become a state to establish Christ on earth. Let Spain not rest. Christ brings not peace, but a sword.
. . . . . .
The vision, a theodicy: the form, the Church of Rome: the dynamic means, a State. In the impossible marriage of these three elements lies the tragedy of Spain.
For seven centuries Christians have fought Moslems. Their motive was conquest of power. But their pretext became the Cross. The opposing Crescent determined this. The Cross grew, because of the faith of the Moor. Very early the Christians found it well in their raids against the Mussulman, to enlist the Presence of the Church. The priest became an auxiliary soldier: he brought the poetry and spirit of a religious slogan to enhance the fleeting motive of the Raid. And now at last the slogan has come true! Saint Ferdinand took Seville because he wanted more land. But Isabel sends ships to the Indies because she wants more Christians. A millennium of brutish restlessness has mothered this religious restlessness of Spain which would embroil the world till all the world be Christian. Ages after the Crusades of France and England, ages after the decadence of the Arab, the troops of Isabel become crusaders.
A modern State with a medieval God. In France and England, the medieval God has already vaporized away. England breaks literally with Rome. France dissolves her bonds into mere gesture. The modern State must have no God but itself. It must create its own pragmatic, its ethic, its metaphysic, finally its religion upon the unitary plan of its own health and progress. France knows this: henceforth the State of France will act unhindered by any ideal external to its future. And England knows this. Two mighty States move forward with a unity of program and of control born of the need of the State.
But in Spain, the State is not cause and effect, not ideal and goal, not master and dispenser. In Spain, the State shall be the tool of a Vision hostile to the State’s essential nature.
The State must be materialistic, possessive, selfish. Spain’s ideal is visionary, creative, altruistic. The State must steal and hold. Spain’s ideal spends. The State murders to enhance itself. Spain’s ideal murders to enhance Christ. The State is anti-individual. Spain’s ideal makes and controls by law the yearning of each soul.
Isabel is an artist: she has the logic and the integrity of the artist. But in the form of her work live elements that disrupt and that belie each other. She makes of Spain a modern State: she sends this monster, lustful, treacherous and dull, upon a Christian errand....