Council of Castile

“ This aristocratic form of government did not please the kings, since it tended to create a force which would be hostile to them and led to social strife in the municipalities, wherefore matters were adjusted at the close of the fourteenth century by the entry of the popular element into the council. Just as in Castile, the nobles and churchmen were forced to grant privileges to their towns almost equal to those enjoyed by the royal municipalities, in order to retain the people. ”

“ The enthusiasm was general, and Ferdinand himself burned with the desire to achieve some great deed.
Unfortunately Toro, flanked by fortresses in the power of the Portuguese, and protected on the rear by the Douro, whence provisions could be passed into the town, proved altogether too strong for the besiegers. A stormy council-of-war was held in the Castilian camp, it being decided that the only wise course would be to retreat. This rumour spread, gradually taking the shape that the nobles were forcing the King for their own ends to give up the siege ”

“ Ferdinand and Isabel did not set themselves openly to humble the latter class, as Henry IV. had attempted in his new creations; but the fact that the government was daily growing more specialized made it necessary that trained and expert officials should take the place of amateurs, however high their personal qualifications. Thus, 142in the Cortes of Toledo, the composition of the Royal Council, before mainly aristocratic, was officially settled as one bishop, three “caballeros,” or knights, and eight or nine lawyers. ”

“ But, though such a dissolution had no terrors for the Catalonian or the Fleming, for the Lombard or the Calabrian, for the Mexican or the Peruvian, the thought of it was torture and madness to the Castilian. Castile enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and languages. Castile sent out governors to Brussels, Milan, Naples, Mexico, Lima. To Castile came the annual galleons laden with the treasures of America. In Castile was ostentatiously displayed and lavishly spent great fortunes made in remote provinces by oppression and corruption. In Castile were the King and his Court. ”

“ Castile's proud monarch to the nuptial bed
In happier days her royal daughter led:
To him the furious queen for vengeance cries,
Implores to vindicate his lawful prize,
The Lusian sceptre, his by spousal right:
The proud Castilian arms and dares the fight.
To join his standard as it waves along,
The warlike troops from various regions throng:
Those who possess the lands by Rodrick given,
What time the Moor from Turia's banks was driven;
That race who joyful smile at war's alarms,
And scorn each danger that attends on arms ”

“ The rivalries between Castile and Aragon were of old standing, and no sharper contrast is to be found in Europe than that which existed between the primitive and poverty-stricken population of the Asturias, the proud Castilian noble, and the busy trader of Barcelona, the democratic capital of Catalonia. Nor was there more unity within the separate kingdoms themselves. The social divisions were deepest in Castile. There the nobles enjoyed numerous exclusive privileges, notably that of freedom from taxation. ”

“ And in spite of all that we, her counsellors, could do to impose some check upon her speech—for the Castilian had the name of being as proud a prince as there was on the earth—she refused to soften her words, and insisted that the envoy should bear them to his master.
“And further, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said she, “I would have you bid Castile, our cousin, assemble all his hosts and bring them hither, and they shall not lack for a welcome. ”

“ Around it, on each anniversary of his death, a detachment of Granadan Moors, with lighted tapers in their hands, once stood motionless and in silence. To-day, three times in every year, the body of Castile’s most famous sovereign is exposed to public view adorned with all the pomp of royalty,—with the crown, the sceptre, the robes; mass is said, and a regiment of soldiers salute the mouldering remains of one of the most eminent and successful commanders of his time. ”

“ We have seen already that one of the forces in Spain ever acting against united effort for the expulsion of the Moors was the independence of the nobility. Castile itself derived its name from the number of its castles, mainly belonging to independent nobles, rich and warlike, possessed of vast estates, not subject to taxation or imprisonment—in fact little kings, some of them at the outset almost as powerful as their sovereigns themselves. ”

“ Irritation and hostility became chronic, with the result that they were denied some of the slender alleviations vouchsafed to Castile, on the ground that the character of the population and the neighborhood of the heretics of France rendered it necessary that the Holy Office should be fortified with greater privileges than in the rest of Spain. ”

“ The Castilian ecclesiastics were often lax in their morals. The higher prelates were possessed of great riches and authority. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the people in Castile had more power, compared with the power of the sovereign, than in any other European country. ”

“ The concentration in royal hands of so many powers which were formerly exercised by the lords and towns made necessary the development of a numerous and varied officialdom to assist the monarch. As the basis of the new bureaucracy in Castile the Catholic Kings had at hand the Consejo Real, which with some changes was admirably adapted to the purpose. The first step was to rid it of the great nobles. In 1480 the untitled letrados became a majority in this body. The counts, dukes, and marquises were still allowed to attend, but were deprived of the right to vote. ”

“ The grievances in Castile were partly economic, the servicio (a tax) and the removal of money from the realm, and partly national as against a strange king and his foreign officers. Not only the regent, Adrian of Utrecht, but many important officials were northerners, and when Charles left Spain to be crowned emperor, [Sidenote: 1520] the national pride could no longer bear the humiliation of playing a subordinate part. The revolt of the Castilian Communes began with the gentry and spread from them to the lower classes. ”

“ France, Holland, Germany, convulsed and desolated by civil wars and religious dissensions; the Ottoman power rolled away on the waters of Lepanto; Portugal falling in Africa, to be then united to Castile; the Spanish sword agitating the whole world with the spirit of heroism, of religion, of ambition, and of avarice;—when was there ever a time more full of astonishing events, or more suited to sublime the fancy? Yet the Castilian muses, deaf and indifferent to this universal agitation, could scarcely inspire their favourites with aught but moralities, rural images, gallantry, and love. ”

“ For this intent the Roman pontiffs gave them authority, and order was given that the princes should help them with their favor and arm. These judges were called 'inquisitors,' because of the office which they exercised of hunting out and making inquest, a custom now very general in Italy, France, Germany, and also in the kingdom of Aragon. Castile, henceforth, would not suffer any nation to go beyond her in the desire which she always had to punish such enormous and wicked excesses. ”

“ Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional rights of their subjects. They well knew, that the spirit of liberty was too high among them to endure it. When the queen of Alfonso the Fourth urged her husband, by quoting the example of her brother the king of Castile, to punish certain refractory citizens of Valencia, he prudently replied, "My people are free, and not so submissive as the Castilians. They respect me as their prince, and I hold them for good vassals and comrades." ”

“ The civil wars that devastated Castile had taught the people that their most dangerous enemies were not their kings but the turbulent aristocracy; and they often looked to the former as allies against a common foe. In the same way the more patriotic of the nobles and ecclesiastics saw in the building up of the royal power the only hope of carrying the crusade against the Moors to a successful conclusion, or of establishing peace at 21home. At this critical moment in the history of Castile, national progress depended on royal dominance ”

“ The hermandad of Castile had never been countenanced by legislative sanction; it was chiefly resorted to as a measure of police, and was directed more frequently against the disorders of the nobility, than of the sovereign; it was organized with difficulty, and, compared with the union of Aragon, was cumbrous and languid in its operations. While these privileges continued in force, the nation was delivered over to the most frightful anarchy. The least offensive movement on the part of the monarch, the slightest encroachment on personal right or privilege, was the signal for a general revolt. ”

“ Hurrying across the country to embark and claim the imperial crown of Germany, vacant by the death of his grandfather Maximilian, eager for the large sums of money he needed for his purpose, which Spain of all his realms alone could provide, the sovereign was trampling upon the dearly prized charters of his people. The great rising of the Castilian commoners was finally crushed, thanks to class dissensions and the diplomacy of the sovereign. Thenceforward the revenues of Castile were at the mercy of the Emperor, whose needs for his world-wide responsibilities were insatiable ”

“ The creation and growth of judicial and administrative institutions in Catalonia were parallel with those of Castile. The eleventh century saw audiencias, municipalities, and above all, a powerful nobility, but this province was independent of Castile during a period of four centuries. ”

“ SOME of the oldest and most truly national cities of Spain are situated in the two Castiles—silent cities peopled by silent men, in the midst of a mountainous, silent country. It is no light thing to bear the stamp of Castile. The men, reserved, well bred, loyal, and proud, carry their Castilian origin in their faces, their habits, and their cast of mind; and the cities are Castilian in their strength and their uncompromising severity. One sees it in the Toledo of New Castile, and finds it in the Burgos of the older province. ”

“ The nobles imperiously demanded the convocation of the cortes of Castile, the only legitimate assembly which could authorise the innovations, and as an additional argument they urged the necessity of exchanging the customary pledges between the monarch and the people, by the confirmation of the material privilege on one side, and the oath of allegiance on the other. ”

“ As a local custom or bye-law of the cities of Castile and Leon and their dependencies, it was very frequently established, or rather declared, by the charters granted by their founders.
"Three thousand sueldos, according to the Fuero Viejo, were paid for dishonouring the palace of the king, or spoiling his castle; and five hundred sueldos was the price of the head of the merino, or the composition for scandalizing him; and every man who wished to save himself from the payment of these mulcts, was to defend himself by the oath of twelve men, for such was the usage of Castile in the old time. ”

“ By a process which was going on elsewhere in Europe the frontier settled into a new political organism. As the Marca Hispanica on the east became the county of Barcelona, so the chiefs of Bardulia became the counts of Castile, then the count of Castile, the rival of the king at Leon, and in time the king of Castile, and head of Christian Spain. ”

“ Many of the nobles in Segovia, though mainly those of Aragonese birth, had professed their annoyance that Ferdinand’s position should be in any way subordinated to that of his wife. They declared that the Salic law, excluding women from the royal succession, should hold good in Castile as well as in France; and that, the Castilian House of Trastamara having died out in the male line with Henry IV., the crown should pass directly to the Aragonese branch, in the person of King John and his son, the King of Sicily. ”

“ In the second quarter of the eleventh century the kingdom of Pampeluna or Navarre had, by the energy of a single man, the Sviatopluk or Stephen Dushan of his little realm, risen to the first place among the Christian powers of Spain. Castile and Aragon do not appear with kingly rank till both had passed under the momentary rule of a neighbour which in after times seemed so small beside either of them. And the name of Castile, whether as county, kingdom, or empire, marks a comparatively late stage of Christian advance. ”

“ FROM Burgos to Valladolid the monotonous Castile plain continued, unbroken by any hill and hardly a tree. Yet evening on the level steppes has a charm of its own. Like sunset at sea, nature has a free sweep of canvas on which to paint her pageant; details eliminated, the essential remains. One carries away many such memories from the silent plateau, till little by little the affection of the grave Castilian for his home is understood. ”

“ The County of Castile, a dependency of the Asturian crown, grown powerful through the signal abilities and eminent services of its present ruler, Ferdinand Gonzalez, a personage famous in mediæval history and fable, aspired to the name and privileges of an independent kingdom. Its governor was a vassal [589] whose fief was hereditary, but who held his office at the pleasure of the monarch, and, so far as the scanty annals of the age afford information, no province of the Peninsula was more inclined to turbulence and sedition. ”