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.
The national qualities of superstition and pride made the whole cavalier
class a wieldy and effective weapon in the hands of the monarch, and the
use he made of them reacted upon these very traits, intensifying and
affirming them.
So terrible was this absolute command of the spiritual and physical
forces of the kingdom possessed by the monarchs of that day, that when
the Reformation flashed out, a beacon in the northern sky of political
and religious freedom to the world, its light could not penetrate into
Spain.
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