Roman Catholicism in Spain. Anonymous

notions of honour, and other qualities of the mind, impregnated as they were with that poesy and wild romance which are delineated with so much propriety and skill by the immortal Cervantes.

      The motto of the Spanish nobility has always been, “My God, my king, and my lady,”—a very significant one, and one which described in a lively manner the predominating sentiments of the nation and the equal degree of veneration and enthusiasm which those three objects excited in the minds of the people. The Spaniard is always as disposed to brandish the sword in defence of the religion which he professes, as in that of the king whom he serves or of the lady whom he loves. The processions and all the feasts of the church are invariably accompanied by a military show. The four primitive orders of the nation, viz., Santiago, Alcantara, Calatrava, and Montesa, were, in their origin, institutions as religious in their character as the order of the Templars and as that of St. John of Jerusalem. Even in the present day, though they have degenerated, they preserve still much of their primitive character. The knights, it is true, do not observe celibacy, as in ancient times; but they still have churches in which they celebrate sumptuous festivities; they take an oath to defend the Catholic religion and the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and to each of these orders there still pertains a certain number of convents of nuns, who wear the habit and carry the cross of their respective orders. These nuns are called Commendadoras, and none can be admitted into their numbers but ladies who are descended from an ancient nobility, preserved for many generations from any mixture of plebeian blood.

      The celebrated Ignatius de Loyola, founder of the order of the Jesuits, carried this singular amalgamation of piety and of a belligerent spirit to such an extreme as, in our times, cannot but appear ridiculous. On the day on which he was made a knight, it being then the custom that a candidate for such an honour should choose for himself a lady to whose service he might consecrate his arms, and whose image should be constantly before him, his election fell upon the Virgin, as in the same manner did that of Durandarte on Belerma, and that of the celebrated hero of La Mancha on Dulcinea.

      In all wars which have been waged by Spaniards, from the times of Pelayo down to those of Espartero, religion has been one of the motives which have impelled them to arms. In the war of succession of 1770, which gave the throne of Castille to the grandson of Louis XIV., the dispute was between two nations equally Roman Catholic—Austria and France. Nevertheless, the circumstance that Great Britain had embraced the cause of the archduke was sufficient for considering the war as a religious one; and those who fought for Philip V. regarded the extirpation of the heretical subjects of the House of Orange as the consolidation of the Bourbon dynasty. In our own times we have seen these same sentiments predominating in the civil war of Don Carlos, whose partisans considered their enemies as impious and as atheists, words which in their dictionary were synonymous with “constitutional and liberal.” Most of the proclamations emanating from the press of Oñate spoke of the dangers which threatened Roman Catholicism, in case the Christine party should triumph.

      Thus far we have spoken of the influence exercised by the national character on the religion of Spaniards. That influence has not been lessened by the circumstance that some of their monarchs have exercised it, and, among others deserving particular mention, the three gigantic models, viz., Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip II. Each one of the distinctive features which we have hitherto noted in the religion of Spaniards is represented in history by one or another of those three sovereigns: Isabella represented the tender, affectionate, and correlative; Charles, the knight of chivalry and the warrior; Philip, the cruel and sanguinary persecutor.

      Isabella united to her eminent qualities, to her profound policy, to her unrivalled valour, to her constancy in the prosecution of her designs, and to the elevation and grandeur of her views, a heart full of tenderness and benevolence, and an ardent disposition to contribute, by all possible means, toward the good of her fellow-creatures. Persuaded that religion was the greatest good which it was possible for man to enjoy, all her anxiety was concentrated in extending that benefit to the greatest number of human beings. It was this which induced her to show herself benevolent and compassionate toward the Moors of Granada after the conquest of that city; it was this, also, which induced her to lavish her gifts upon, and afterwards to take under her protection, such of those Moors as submitted to baptism. All the incidents of her private life, all her letters, many of which are still extant, show that she was actuated by the most ardent spirit of Christian charity.

      History accuses Isabella of having established the Inquisition in Spain. This great blot in her character, the origin of many of the misfortunes and of all the intellectual drawbacks which that nation has experienced, explains, if it cannot justify, itself, by the circumstances in which, at that time, the people of the Peninsula were placed. After the surrender of Granada, there remained in the kingdom a great part of the Mussulman population. The queen fostered the hope of their conversion to Christianity and omitted no means to realise it. But the Moors, with very few exceptions at the beginning, resisted every effort whether by persuasion or by promises; they became but the more firmly addicted to their own faith, and being prohibited the public celebration of its rites, they practised them in secret, with all the zeal and enthusiasm which the rigours of intolerance invariably produce in the persecuted. The clergy, who imagined they saw in the religion of Mahomet the worship of Satan, nay even warriors themselves who had wrought prodigies of valour and shed their blood in order to exterminate that religion, could not regard its prevalence with indifference, nor endure the thought that it should survive the ruin of the capital of the Saracenic empire. Bitter complaints were made to the queen on account of the impunity with which such excesses against her authority were committed. To her indulgence the principal persons of the state attributed the obstinacy of the Moors who persisted in their errors, and the perfidy of the converted who were accused of continuing in them after having submitted to the ordinance of baptism. Religious phrenzy had arrived at its climax; men’s only occupation seemed to be that of building churches, destroying mosques, and ostentatiously displaying the triumphs of the new creed over that which for many centuries had polluted the soil. It was impossible that Isabella could long resist these continuous remonstrances. The institution of the Inquisition was proposed to her as a last resource to maintain the purity of the faith, and that woman, superior to the age in which she lived, and naturally affectionate and charitable, had the unpardonable weakness of ceding to the councils of the implacable Torquemada.

      Among the qualities for which Isabella was remarkable none were more admired by contemporary writers than her humility. In proof of this we have but to follow the line of conduct pursued by her during the whole course of her existence. She humbled herself before the church, whose voice she believed she heard through the lips of her confessor.

      We have referred to the cruel character of Roman Catholicism in Spain: is not the Inquisition a proof of it? Experience shows how easily habit familiarises us with spectacles most revolting to those feelings of pity and compassion which Nature has bestowed upon us. Habit always destroys the essential qualities of our moral constitution, sometimes associating ideas of pleasure and enjoyment with those of blood and destruction; as, for example, it happened in the games of the circus under the Roman emperors; nay, some have even looked upon homicide and torture as religious duties, and a part of the worship due to the Divine Being! Fanaticism naturally engenders that sacrilegious alliance, and man, under its irresistible influence, becomes more frightful in his hatred, more cruel in his hostilities, than the beasts of the forest.

      The Inquisition inaugurated, in Spain, a sanguinary fanaticism which consecrated, as religious virtues, the blackest crimes that man can commit against his fellow-creatures; and although it must be admitted that many thousands of human beings perished in the flames for their religious opinions under the reign of Isabella, yet the natural suavity of her mind, influenced as it was by the tender and passionate, repressed, to a considerable degree, those intolerant impulses with which Torquemada was wont to impose upon the good sense of Spaniards. Isabella was liberal, even in the sense which that word conveys according to the language of modern politics. [22] She, doubtless, consented to the formation of the bloody tribunal; and hence the annals of even her reign are stained with some of those hecatombs which were more frequent in a subsequent era, and banished from the Spanish peninsula those mental energies which, at that time, were enabling human reason to recover her rights, and Spain once more to occupy that eminent position