[26] La Clède, Hist. de Portugal, tom. iv. pp. 53-58.—Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 4, sec. 27, 28.
[27] Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, Doc. Diplom., no. 75.—Faria y Sousa, Europa Portuguesa, tom. ii. p. 463.—Herrera, Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 2, cap. 8, 10.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. pp. 606, 607.—La Clède, Hist. de Portugal, tom. iv. pp. 60-62.—Zurita, Anales, tom. v. fol. 31.
[28] The contested territory was the Molucca Islands, which each party claimed for itself, by virtue of the treaty of Tordesillas. After more than one congress, in which all the cosmographical science of the day was put in requisition, the affair was terminated à l'amiable by the Spanish government's relinquishing its pretensions, in consideration of 350,000 ducats, paid by the court of Lisbon. See La Clède, Hist. De Portugal, tom. iv. pp. 309, 401, 402, 480.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. pp. 607, 875.—Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía, tom. ii. pp. 205, 206.
CHAPTER XIX.
CASTILIAN LITERATURE.—CULTIVATION OF THE COURT.—CLASSICAL LEARNING.— SCIENCE.
Early Education of Ferdinand.—Of Isabella.—Her Library.—Early Promise of Prince John.—Scholarship of the Nobles.—Accomplished Women.— Classical Learning.—Universities.—Printing Introduced.—Encouraged by the Queen.—Actual Progress of Science.
We have now arrived at the period, when the history of Spain becomes incorporated with that of the other states of Europe. Before embarking on the wide sea of European politics, however, and bidding adieu, for a season, to the shores of Spain, it will be necessary, in order to complete the view of the internal administration of Ferdinand and Isabella, to show its operation on the intellectual culture of the nation. This, as it constitutes, when taken in its broadest sense, a principal end of all government, should never be altogether divorced from any history. It is particularly deserving of note in the present reign, which stimulated the active development of the national energies in every department of science, and which forms a leading epoch in the ornamental literature of the country. The present and the following chapter will embrace the mental progress of the kingdom, not merely down to the period at which we have arrived, but through the whole of Isabella's reign, in order to exhibit as far as possible its entire results, at a single glance, to the eye of the reader.
We have beheld, in a preceding chapter, the auspicious literary promise afforded by the reign of Isabella's father, John the Second, of Castile. Under the anarchical sway of his son, Henry the Fourth, the court, as we have seen, was abandoned to unbounded license, and the whole nation sunk into a mental torpor, from which it was roused only by the tumults of civil war. In this deplorable state of things, the few blossoms of literature, which had begun to open under the benign influence of the preceding reign, were speedily trampled under foot, and every vestige of civilization seemed in a fair way to be effaced from the land.
The first years of Ferdinand and Isabella's government were too much clouded by civil dissensions, to afford a much more cheering prospect. Ferdinand's early education, moreover, had been greatly neglected. Before the age of ten, he was called to take part in the Catalan wars. His boyhood was spent among soldiers, in camps instead of schools, and the wisdom which he so eminently displayed in later life, was drawn far more from his own resources, than from books. [1]
Isabella was reared under more favorable auspices; at least more favorable to mental culture. She was allowed to pass her youth in retirement, and indeed oblivion, as far as the world was concerned, under her mother's care, at Arevalo. In this modest seclusion, free from the engrossing vanities and vexations of court life, she had full leisure to indulge the habits of study and reflection to which her temper naturally disposed her. She was acquainted with several modern languages, and both wrote and discoursed in her own with great precision and elegance. No great expense or solicitude, however, appears to have been lavished on her education. She was uninstructed in the Latin, which in that day was of greater importance than at present; since it was not only the common medium of communication between learned men, and the language in which the most familiar treatises were often composed, but was frequently used by well- educated foreigners at court, and especially employed in diplomatic intercourse and negotiation. [2]