If there had been dissidence
between them it might have been better for the people. But up to late
years there has never been a quarrel between the clergy and the crown.
Their interests were so identified that the dual tyranny was stronger
than even a single one could have been. The crown always lending to the
Church when necessary the arm of flesh, and the Church giving to the
despotism of the sceptre the sanction of spiritual authority, an
absolute power was established over body and soul.
The spirit of individual independence inseparable from Gothic blood
being thus forced out of its natural channels of freedom of thought and
municipal liberty, it remained in the cavaliers of the army of Spain in
the same barbarous form which it had held in the Northern forests, - a
physical self-esteem and a readiness to fight on the slightest
provocation. This did not interfere with the designs of the Church and
was rather a useful engine against its enemies. The absolute power of
the crown kept the spirit of feudal arrogance in check while the
pressure of a common danger existed. The close cohesion which was so
necessary in camp and Church prevented the tendency to disintegration,
while the right of life and death was freely exercised by the great
lords on their distant estates without interference. The predominating
power of the crown was too great and too absolute to result in the
establishment of any fixed principle of obedience to law. The union of
crozier and sceptre had been, if anything, too successful. The king was
so far above the nobility that there was no virtue in obeying him. His
commission was divine, and he was no more confined by human laws than
the stars and the comets. The obedience they owed and paid him was not
respect to law. It partook of the character of religious worship, and
left untouched and untamed in their savage hearts the instinct of
resistance to all earthly claims of authority.
Such was the condition of the public spirit of Spain at the beginning of
that wonderful series of reigns from Ferdinand and Isabella to their
great-grandson Philip II., which in less than a century raised Spain to
the summit of greatness and built up a realm on which the sun never set.
All the events of these prodigious reigns contributed to increase and
intensify the national traits to which we have referred. The discovery
of America flooded Europe with gold, and making the better class of
Spaniards the richest people in the world naturally heightened their
pride and arrogance. The long and eventful religious wars of Charles V.
and Philip II. gave employment and distinction to thousands of families
whose vanity was nursed by the royal favor, and whose ferocious
self-will was fed and pampered by the blood of heretics and the spoil of
rebels.
