Among her moral qualities, the most conspicuous, perhaps, was her magnanimity. She betrayed nothing little or selfish, in thought or action. Her schemes were vast, and executed in the same noble spirit in which they were conceived. She never employed doubtful agents or sinister measures, but the most direct and open policy. [31.] She scorned to avail herself of advantages offered by the perfidy of others. [32] Where she had once given her confidence, she gave her hearty and steady support; and she was scrupulous to redeem any pledge she had made to those who ventured in her cause, however unpopular. She sustained Ximenes in all his obnoxious but salutary reforms. She seconded Columbus in the prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gonsalvo de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt by both, as the last of their good fortune. [33] Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harboring any petty distrust, or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and even sometimes advances, to those who had personally injured her. [34]
But the principle, which gave a peculiar coloring to every feature of Isabella's mind, was piety. It shone forth from the very depths of her soul with a heavenly radiance, which illuminated her whole character. Fortunately, her earliest years had been passed in the rugged school of adversity, under the eye of a mother who implanted in her serious mind such strong principles of religion as nothing in after life had power to shake. At an early age, in the flower of youth and beauty, she was introduced to her brother's court; but its blandishments, so dazzling to a young imagination, had no power over hers; for she was surrounded by a moral atmosphere of purity,
"Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt." [35]
Such was the decorum of her manners, that, though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and calumnious court.
She gave a liberal portion of her time to private devotions, as well as to the public exercises of religion. [36] She expended large sums in useful charities, especially in the erection of hospitals and churches, and the more doubtful endowments of monasteries. [37] Her piety was strikingly exhibited in that unfeigned humility, which, although the very essence of our faith, is so rarely found; and most rarely in those whose great powers and exalted stations seem to raise them above the level of ordinary mortals. A remarkable illustration of this is afforded in the queen's correspondence with Talavera, in which her meek and docile spirit is strikingly contrasted with the puritanical intolerance of her confessor. [38] Yet Talavera, as we have seen, was sincere, and benevolent at heart. Unfortunately, the royal conscience was at times committed to very different keeping; and that humility which, as we have repeatedly had occasion to notice, made her defer so reverentially to her ghostly advisers, led, under the fanatic Torquemada, the confessor of her early youth, to those deep blemishes on her administration, the establishment of the Inquisition, and the exile of the Jews.
But, though blemishes of the deepest dye on her administration, they are certainly not to be regarded as such on her moral character. It will be difficult to condemn her, indeed, without condemning the age; for these very acts are not only excused, but extolled by her contemporaries, as constituting her strongest claims to renown, and to the gratitude of her country. [39] They proceeded from the principle, openly avowed by the court of Rome, that zeal for the purity of the faith could atone for every crime. This immoral maxim, flowing from the head of the church, was echoed in a thousand different forms by the subordinate clergy, and greedily received by a superstitious people. [40] It was not to be expected, that a solitary woman, filled with natural diffidence of her own capacity on such subjects, should array herself against those venerated counsellors, whom she had been taught from her cradle to look to as the guides and guardians of her conscience.
However mischievous the operations of the Inquisition may have been in Spain, its establishment, in point of principle, was not worse than many other measures, which have passed with far less censure, though in a much more advanced and civilized age. [41] Where, indeed, during the sixteenth, and the greater part of the seventeenth century, was the principle of persecution abandoned by the dominant party, whether Catholic or Protestant? And where that of toleration asserted, except by the weaker? It is true, to borrow Isabella's own expression, in her letter to Talavera, the prevalence of a bad custom cannot constitute its apology. But it should serve much to mitigate our condemnation of the queen, that she fell into no greater error, in the imperfect light in which she lived, than was common to the greatest minds in a later and far riper period. [42]
Isabella's actions, indeed, were habitually based on principle. Whatever errors of judgment be imputed to her, she most anxiously sought in all situations to discern and discharge her duty. Faithful in the dispensation of justice, no bribe was large enough to ward off the execution of the law. [43] No motive, not even conjugal affection, could induce her to make an unsuitable appointment to public office. [44] No reverence for the ministers of religion could lead her to wink at their misconduct; [45] nor could the deference she entertained for the head of the church, allow her to tolerate his encroachments on the rights of her crown. [46] She seemed to consider herself especially bound to preserve entire the peculiar claims and privileges of Castile, after its union under the same sovereign with Aragon. [47] And although, "while her own will was law," says Peter Martyr, "she governed in such a manner that it might appear the joint action of both Ferdinand and herself," yet she was careful never to surrender into his hands one of those prerogatives which belonged to her as queen proprietor of the kingdom. [48]
Isabella's measures were characterized by that practical good sense, without which the most brilliant parts may work more to the woe than to the weal of mankind. Though engaged all her life in reforms, she had none of the failings so common in reformers. Her plans, though vast, were never visionary. The best proof of this is, that she lived to see most of them realized.
She was quick to discern objects of real utility. She saw the importance of the new discovery of printing, and liberally patronized it from the first moment it appeared. [49] She had none of the exclusive, local prejudices, too common with her countrymen. She drew talent from the most remote quarters to her dominions, by munificent rewards. She imported foreign artisans for her manufactures; foreign engineers and officers for the discipline of her army; and foreign scholars to imbue her martial subjects with more cultivated tastes. She consulted the useful in all her subordinate regulations; in her sumptuary laws, for instance, directed against the fashionable extravagances of dress, and the ruinous ostentation, so much affected by the Castilians in their weddings and funerals. [50] Lastly, she showed the same perspicacity in the selection of her agents; well knowing that the best measures become bad in incompetent hands.