Descartes Was Opening New Vistas Of
Thought To The World.
But in Spain, while the greatest names of her
literature occur at this time, they aimed at no higher object than to
amuse their betters.
Cervantes wrote Quixote, but he died in a monk's
hood; and Lope de Vega was a familiar of the Inquisition. The sad story
of the mind of Spain in this momentous period may be written in one
word, - everybody believed and nobody inquired.
The country sank fast into famine and anarchy. The madness of the monks
and the folly of the king expelled the Moors in 1609, and the loss of a
million of the best mechanics and farmers of Spain struck the nation
with a torpor like that of death. In 1650 Sir Edward Hyde wrote that
"affairs were in huge disorder." People murdered each other for a loaf
of bread. The marine perished for want of sailors. In the stricken land
nothing flourished but the rabble of monks and the royal authority.
This is the curious fact. The Church and the Crown had brought them to
this misery, yet better than their lives the Spaniards loved the Church
and the Crown. A word against either would have cost any man his life in
those days. The old alliance still hung together firmly. The Church
bullied and dragooned the king in private, but it valued his despotic
power too highly ever to slight it in public. There was something
superhuman about the faith and veneration with which the people, and the
aristocracy as well, regarded the person of the king.
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