صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[graphic][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][subsumed]

1. Segovia: the Alcazar and cathedral. 2. Cordova. 3. Burgos: tomb of Don Juan II. and Isabella of Portugal (Miraflores). 4. Toledo: the cathedral. 5. Valladolid: doorway of Church of St. Paul. 6. Cadiz: general view. 7. Murcia. 8. Saragossa: the cathedral. 9. Granada: the Court of the Lions, Alhambra.

wards to the kingdom of Leon in right of his wife. Although Castile and Leon were on more than one occasion divided again, their interests tended to unity, as their traditions were the same, both having sprung from the Asturian advance; and in 1230 both realms finally fell by inheritance to Fernando III. (St. Fernando), and were not again separated. Under Alfonso vi. of Castile and Leon (1072-1109) a great forward Christian movement was made. The Moslem caliphate of Cordova had fallen (1031), and had been succeeded by twelve petty kingdoms, each jealous of the others, and appealing in turn for aid to the strongest power in the peninsula, Castile and Leon. In 1085 Alfonso VI. took possession of Toledo, and made it the Christian capital, the Moorish king of Toledo being maintained in the kingdom of Valencia as a vassal of the Christian. The great Castilian free-lance, Ruy Diaz de Bivar (El Cid), who fought now on one side and now on the other, seized Valencia for himself, and held it against all comers until his death (1099). In the meantime a wave of Moslem fanaticism had swept over N. Africa, and a great host of the puritans of Islam (the Almoravides) swarmed into Spain. At the battle of Valaca (near Badajoz), in 1086, Alfonso VI. met with a complete defeat, which for a time stayed the Christian advance, and allowed the Almoravides to subdue the weak, effeminate Arab kings. Everything that was beautiful and artistic was sternly destroyed by the Moslem puritans, and Islamic Spain became a province of the theocratic empire of Morocco.

a

With the establishment of the Christian capital at Toledo great change was worked. By the influence of the French archbishop of Toledo, Bernard, and of the French queen of Castile and Leon (Constance of Burgundy), the Roman missal was adopted instead of the Gothic ritual, and thus a great step was made toward the submission to the Roman pontiff of the Castilian church, with its national sacerdotal traditions. But more farreaching still was the policy of Alfonso VI. in inducing the Moorish inhabitants of the conquered kingdom to remain peacefully under his tolerant rule. He encouraged marriage between the races, and his policy was powerful in introducing into the Christian kingdoms a large admixture of Moorish blood, culture, and taste. This was aided by the fanaticism of the Almoravides, which caused a great exodus from the Moslem territories of the Mozarabes and Christians of mixed

blood, who were welcomed by Alfonso VI., and established in northern and central Spain. It was the Latin dialect that these people brought with them (10851100) which finally superseded the Galician and Provençal forms of Latin, and from which developed the modern Castilian. Meanwhile the towns successfully withstood all attempts upon their rights, and finally, by means of a confederacy, were able not only to become the leading power in the state, but to oust the nobles entirely from the government. The new political influence was first felt in the reign of Urraca of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VI., who was at war with her husband, Alfonso the Battler of Aragon. Discontented with the light behavior of the queen, a confederation of towns proclaimed her infant son by her first husband, Raymond of Burgundy, king of Galicia, under the title of Alfonso VII. This led Alfonso VII. (the emperor) generally to side with the towns as against the nobles when he succeeded his mother as ruler of Leon and Castile (1126). When in 1134 Alfonso the Battler of Aragon was killed in battle, leaving no issue, his crown passed to his brother Ramiro the Monk, who three years afterward abdicated in favor of his infant daughter Petronilla. As, however, a military elective monarchy such as Aragon could not be ruled by a woman, Petronilla was married to Ramon Berengar, count of Barcelona, sovereign of Catalonia, and thenceforward Aragon and Catalonia were united under one crown, though each state retained its autonomy and separate institutions. The same period saw the rise (1094) of Portugal as a separate state, first as a tributary county to Castile, granted by Alfonso vi. to Henry of Burgundy, his son-in-law, and later (1140-3) as a separate kingdom.

Meanwhile the Almoravide sect had become infected with the soft luxury of the Spanish Moslems, and their dominion became broken up into a great number of petty independent states, which finally fell before another great invasion of fanatics from the Atlas tribes (the Almohades), who between 1145 and 1149 subdued the whole of Moslem Spain, and made it subject to the mahdi of Morocco. Thenceforward cruel oppression, and even extermination, were the fate of Jews and Mozarabes under Moorish rule; and Christian Spain received great numbers of refugees, who brought with their mixed blood, their Oriental tastes, habits, and culture, a fierce hatred of the Moors who had driven them from their homes.

Spain

The crowns of Leon and Castile were finally united by the marriage of Berengaria, daughter of Alfonso III. (VIII.) of Castile by Eleanor Plantagenet, to Alfonso IX. of Leon (1195). The fruit of this marriage was St. Fernando (Ferdinand) III., who succeeded to the united kingdom in 1230. The Almohade power had been broken by Alfonso VIII. at the great battle of Navas de Tolosa (1212), and during the reign of his grandson, Fernando the Saint. the Christian conquests were pushed down to the Moorish capital, Cordova (1236), and to Seville (1248). Simultaneously with this the great and vigorous king of Aragon, Jaime 1. (the Conqueror), possessed himself of Majorca (1229) and Valencia (1238); and the Moslem territory in Spain was thenceforward confined to the kingdom of Granada as a tributary of Castile. The long reign of the masterful and unscrupulous Jaime 1. was a trial of strength between the royal power and the forces of feudalism. Before this the nobles had called into their national councils representatives of the gentry, clergy, and citizens (1133) ta withstand the encroachments of the crown; but Jaime 1. waged war until the end of his life (1276) against the greater feudal nobles, whose power he checked; and though feudalism on one occasion (1288) again obtained the upper hand by the extortion of the Privilege of Union, its power waned before that of king and parliament, and the institutions of Aragon became representative of all classes. It was at this period that the adaptation of the old Gothic Roman law code to the modern spirit was undertaken both in Aragon (1247) and in Castile: the Castilian Siete Partidas, ordered by St. Fernando and formed by his son Alfonso the Learned, was recognized for centuries as the foundation of revived European jurisprudence. Although drawn up by Alfonso the Learned (1284), it was not the promulgated officially as national law until 1348. the literary ardor of Alfonso the Learned the world owes much. To him is largely due the translation into modern tongues of the Greek classics, and Eastern scientific works which the Spanish Jews and Moslems had rescued from oblivion in Hebrew or Arabic. To Alfonso also is to be credited the final victory of the Castilian tongue as the national speech over Galician, Portuguese, and Catalan (or Provençal). But his vague ambitions, his weakness, and his bookishness encouraged the nobles of Castile to side with his rebellious son Sancho, in the hope of regaining the power

Το

Spain

which was fast drifting from them. Sancho, on his accession (1284), disappointed the nobles, and a civil war ensued, which continued after his death (1295) against his infant successor Fernando IV. and the regent Maria de Molina. It was at this juncture that a great confederacy of self-governing towns banded together for mutual defence and support; and their representatives, meeting for the discussion of common interests, developed rapidly into a national Cortes, from which nobles and priests were eliminated. The struggle between the forces continued through the reigns of Fernando IV. and his son Alfonso XI. (1312-50), the sovereigns and regents usually favoring the towns. The accession of the boy king Pedro (1350) seemed a good opportunity for the nobles to make a final attempt to assert their power. The violent and tyrannical character which gained for Pedro the name of the Cruel aided the nobles; they chose as their puppet Henry of Trastamara, illegitimate son of Alfonso XI. The war which ensued between the half-brothers was complicated by the participation of England on the side of Pedro, and of France and Aragon on that of Henry. With the murder of Pedro the Cruel by his halfbrother Henry (1369), and the accession of the latter, the nobles obtained the upper hand; but though the weak king distributed fiefs liberally among them, he durst not entirely alienate the towns. the chief power in the realm that could protect him against the numerous claimants to the crown, and especially against the Plantagenet English princes, who had married the two daughters of Pedro the Cruel.

For und

Juar

who

cast

54)

of r

ple

of

COL

rei

abc

po

a

of

the next hundred years, er the Trastamara kings

1. (1379-90), Henry III., married Catherine of Laner (1387), Juan 11. (1406and Henry IV.-the 'leagues' obles reduced Spain to comce anarchy outside the walls

the chartered towns. The rt, especially during the long zn of Juan 11., became the de of extravagant chivalry, try, and splendor, which set asting mark upon the habits

all classes. The towns still managed, thanks to their unity (Hermandad), to withstand the op n infringement of their rights, though the gradual introduction by the crown of the nominative system of appointing judicial and

nicipal authorities, and the participation of the nobles in the internal government of their towns, were the first marks of the decadence of the municipal Dower. Matters came to a crisis

345

during the reign of Henry IV. (the Impotent), who succeeded to the throne in 1454. He had sided with the nobles against his father, Juan II.; and his lavish grants when he became king not only aroused the indignation of the towns, but excited the jealousy of the nobles. His successive favorites, Pacheco, Marquis de Villena, and Beltran de la Cueva, headed antagonistic factions; and after a period of complete anarchy the factions succeeded in obtaining the recognition of the king's half-sister Isabel as his heir, and the disinheritance of his doubtfully legitimate daughter (called in derision Beltraneja). Isabel had married secretly, and against her brother's will, Fernando, the only son of Juan 11. of Aragaon and Sicily (which island had fallen to the house of Aragon two hundred years before by descent and conquest).

Spain

sieged and captured in January, 1492; and in the same year the new continent of America was discovered by Columbus, under the auspices of Isabel. The prospective conquest of pagan lands for the Cross still further inflamed Spanish bigotry. If Aragon was to dominate Sicily and Naples, France must be dwarfed; and to attain this object the king devoted his life. By papal warrant he seized for Castile the kingdom of Spanish Navarre (1515), which by marriage had fallen to a French dynasty. He thus succeeded in bringing his late wife's kingdom into enmity with his own enemy, France. He had married his daughter Joanna to Philip, the emperor's son and heir of Flanders, Holland, and Burgundy, and thus checked France on the east and north. His daughter Catherine was married to the heir of England, in the hope of keeping the Tudors in his interest; and his eldest daughter, Isabel, was wedded to the heir of Portugal, in the hope of unifying the peninsula. But on Fernando's death (1516) the united crowns of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, and Spanish Navarre fell to Charles, son of Joanna, better known as the Emperor Charles v. Charles was practically a foreigner in Spain, and when, in 1519, he summoned the representatives of the towns in Cortes unconstitutionally and extorted a money vote from them, the commons revolted. The nobles at first endeavored to make use of the revolt for their own ends, but their power was now broken; and when the commons were defeated at Villalar (April, 1521), the crown was the sole gainer. Thenceforward Spain gradually became an absolute despotism, the power of the towns dwindling, until finally their representatives were summoned merely to swear allegiance to a sovereign and his heir. During the whole of the reign of Charles, Castile reduced to ruin and penury by the emperor's continued demands upon her, while her population was drained of the best men to fight in the wars of Central Europe, and to join in the mad rush to America. Sick at heart, Charles laid down the burdens of government (1556), handing them to his narrow-minded, secretive, conscientious, laborious son Philip. The einpire passed to Charles's brother Ferdinand; but Flanders and Holland remained under the rule of Philip of Spain, and ruin was the result. For centuries England and the possessor of Flanders had made common cause against the alliance of France and Scotland. Philip inherited with Flanders the need

On the death of Henry IV. of Castile (1474) Isabel and Fernando ascended the throne of Castile, and five years afterward the death of Juan II. of Aragon brought the whole peninsula, except Granada and Portugal, under the rule of the same monarchs. The history of modern Spain may be said to commence at this point. The first step of Isabel was to restore law and order in Castile. Appealing first to the towns, she formed by their aid a powerful militia, called the Santa Hermandad, which enabled her to raze the castles of the plundering nobles. She cancelled the lavish grants given by her predecessors, and thus made the nobles dependent upon her good will. She reorganized the judicial and administrative systems; and when by these means she had become strong enough, she and her husband set to work to lessen gradually the elective powers of the municipalities. The first need, for Fernando especially, was to obtain the united strength of all Spain for the furtherance of Aragonese aims of expansion in the Mediterranean. The Castilians were jealous, and had aims of their own toward the conquest of Granada, and perhaps Morocco, and the reabsorption of Portugal. Fernando and Isabel, with their great minister Ximenes, deliberately adopted religious exaltation, the persecution of the minority by the majority, the consolidation of the latter by bigotry, as the link to bind all their peoples together. The Inquisition was formally established in Castile in 1481, and in that year, according to some authorities, two thousand Jews were burned in Andalusia alone for heresy. To aid the religious revival, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, was be

was

« السابقةمتابعة »