History of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. By William H. Prescott. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. 411, 509, and 496. Boston. Fifth edition, 1839.

THE

No

HE history of no country, perhaps, is invested with greater interest than that of Spain. Her annals are varied in incident, rich in moral, and full of instruction for the philosopher and Christian. country of Europe has preserved the spirit of medieval chivalry so pure, or for so long a time. This spirit is impressed on all her institutions, and is yet visible in the high character and lofty bearing of her people. The type of her national character is still, to a great extent, that of the ancient knights of St. Iago of Calatrava and of Alcantara; the only difference is, that it has been softened down to suit the more pacific tendencies of the present age. Her whole history is replete with strange vicissitudes and startling occurrences.

No country, perhaps, has exercised a more powerful influence on civilization in Europe, or done more to extend its boundaries into regions remote and before unknown. But for the liberal enterprise and enlightened policy of her sovereigns, the ardor of Columbus might have cooled, and America remained undiscovered for centuries. With the names of Alfonso the Wise,

VOL. II.-No. 8.

of Sancho the Great, and of Ferdinand and Isabella, among her princes and legislators; with those of Don Rodrigo Diaz del Bivar, the renowned Campion or Cid, and of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the "great captain," among her generals; and with those of Calderon, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, Herrara and Garcilass among her literati, not to mention many others, she has little to fear from comparison with any other nation. The calendar is crowded with the names of her saints; St. Dominic, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Teresa, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and hosts of others are her patrons in heaven.

The interest in Spanish history and institutions is greatly increased by the present distracted condition of that unhappy country. The storm which is now sweeping over Spain, threatens to destroy almost every monument of her former greatness, and to carry away every vestige of the middle age. Though not so violent as that which desolated France fifty years ago, yet it is similar to this in many other respects. It was an evil day for Spain when her soil became the theatre of a sanguinary struggle between the hosts of France and England. All her present evils date from that ill-fated period. The Peninsular war sowed upon her soil the seeds of French infidelity and of English Protestantism, and

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these seeds are now producing their bitter fruits. And it is remarkable, that the late startling proceedings in Spain have been accordingly distinguished by the fierce fanaticism of the French revolution, tempered with the cold, calculating policy of the reformation in England under Henry VIII. We trace the policy of England in the invasion of Church property, and in the destruction of the monasteries; and that of France in the massacre of the monks at Barcelona and elsewhere.

What will be the final result of this great struggle, the future alone can reveal. Whether the ardent faith of the Spaniard will come out of the fiery ordeal warmer and brighter than ever, or whether that faith will grow cold or be obscured in the furnace we are not at present prepared to say. One thing is certain. The climate of Spain is too warm for Protestantism; on her soil, the Protestant sects would be exotics which could have but a sickly growth at best, and which would soon wither and die. The only climate at all congenial with Protestantism is the cold, calculating north; it is too dreary, too devoid of feeling and soul, to suit the ardent temperament of the south.* The Spaniards are too thoroughly Catholic, ever to be tainted, at least to any great extent, by the errors of the last three centuries. The late appeal of the sovereign pontiff in behalf of suffering Spain, has met with such a response, in the bosoms of millions all over the world, as bespeaks Catholic unity, and tells of the depths of that sympathy, which flows from Catholic charity! Only the Catholic Church can present the spectacle of the whole world thus forgetting every sectional and political difference, and, at the voice of one old man, kneeling before one common altar, and in divine unison of faith and feeling, praying for one great object! That prayer will be

* See a late work by Mr. J. Balmes, published at Madrid in 1840, a large extract from which appears in the January number of this Magazine. The writer of this article not long since conversed with a very intelligent Spaniard, the son of a distinguished Spanish nobleman, who amply confirmed this statement; and added that the vast majority of the Spanish nobility and grandees were not only thoroughly Catholic, but were also distinguished for their piety.

heard, and Spain will be preserved to the Church!

Mr. Prescott has selected for the subject of his work the most interesting and brilliant period of Spanish history. The age of Ferdinand and Isabella is to Spain, what that of Louis XIV was subsequently to France; and what, immediately after, the pontificate of Leo X was to Italy and to the world. It was the era in which she laid broad and deep the foundations of that solid glory, which made her for more than two centuries the first country in Europe. It was the age which witnessed the glories of Ponce de Leon, and of Gonsalvo de Cordova, in the field; of Cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, in the cabinet; and of Christopher Columbus on the broader field of the world, discovering a new continent. Mr. Prescott could scarcely have chosen a loftier theme. And he has brought to the execution of his task a great amount of learning, as well as much industry and care in the arrangement of his copious materials. His work manifests a degree of research into Spanish history highly creditable to the author; the more so, as in its preparation he had to encounter for a time the almost insuperable obstacle of almost total blindness.* Such works may be often met with in Italy or Germany, and occasionally in France or England, but they are extremely rare in our light and frivolous age, and yet more so in our republic, where the utilitarian system of estimating everything in dollars and cents, has perhaps taken deeper root than any where else in the world. The United States may well be proud of two such historians as Prescott and Bancroft. It is not our purpose to furnish a lengthy review of Mr. Prescott's history. It is be fore the American community and may speak for itself. In our opinion the style is more natural, and better adapted to historical narrative than the more florid manner of Bancroft, who seems to have caught no little of the Bulwerian and transcendental infection of the age. What is, however, most pleasing in the history of Ferdinand and Isabella, is the array of learned references,

*See his Preface.

by which each statement is sustained. Not only is every original document and work cited, but the very edition and page are carefully marked, so as to facilitate, in a high degree, the researches of the scholar who might feel disposed to verify the quotations. The statements of the author may be relied on, wherever he confines himself to facts, unless when he views them through the improper medium of undue prejudice, or is misled, as to the facts themselves, by prejudiced authority. Then he either greatly miscolors, or wholly perverts the facts. We will endeavor to show that he has committed both these faults in the seventh chapter of his first volume, pp. 230-269, where he gives a detailed history of the "modern Inquisition" in Spain; and our remarks on his history will be confined to this chapter. That he was greatly under the influence of anticatholic prejudice, we infer from the whole tenor of the chapter, which is in fact as virulent a libel upon Catholicity as we have ever chanced to read. To prove that the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition was in accordance with the principles of the Catholic Church, he repeats the stale calumny that a Catholic principle is embodied in the odious proposition, "the end justifies the means."

He turns out of his way

to attack the Catholic doctrine of confession, which he designatest an "artful institution" of the priests, to gain influence with the people; and to show how Isabella's repugnance to the establishment of the inquisition was overcome, he relates a very simple, if not absurd anecdote of what passed between her and her confessor, Talavera.‡ In opposition to all history he still asserts that St. Dominic was the founder of the ancient Inquisition, or at least maintains that if he was not, in point of fact, he ought to have been. He tells, in a satirical tone, of the divine eloquence and wonderful miracles by which St. Vincent Ferrer, in the fourteenth century, converted to Christianity thirty-five thousand Spanish Jews. The

* Vol. i, p. 245. + Ibid. p. 246.

+ Ibid.

This is the purport of his reasoning (p. 232, note). See La Cordaire's late work "Apology for the order of St. Dominic," in which this charge is ably refuted by undeniable evidence.

Vol. i, p. 240.

sufferings of this unfortunate people enlist his deepest sympathy; the Moors of Grenada have also his warmest feelings; these two people seem to have exhausted his stock of humanity, and he has no sympathy to throw away upon the Catholic Christians of Spain! Nor is he alone in this respect. It is the fault of most Protestant historians. Their sympathies run strongly in favor of Jew, Turk, or dissenter of every shade of opinion, while for the Catholic, they reserve the vials of their wrath! Is it, that there is a kindred spirit among errorists of every hue, a certain relationship which makes them have a tender feeling for one another? It would seem so. The chief severity of this remark consists in its truth; and we have only to open Protestant historians passim, to become persuaded of it. Mr. Prescott furnishes abundant evidence of this spirit throughout his work.

It was scarcely to be expected that, reared as he evidently had been in all the prejudices of Protestantism, Mr. Prescott should have become wholly divested of the early impressions of the nursery, so as to approach the subject of the horrible Spanish Inquisition, with a calm mind and a steady nerve. It was difficult to dispel the "bloody phantoms" of slaughtered victims, which had haunted his early days, and to get rid of the opinions in regard to that tribunal which had been fastened on his mind by the teachings of the press and of the pulpit. But at least, as a faithful historian, he should have exhibited its redeeming as well as its odious features; and to have qualified himself for this task, he should have read both sides, and not have suffered himself to be misled by violently prejudiced writers. That many of those whom he has followed are of this character, we will endeavor to show; and then we will glance rapidly at the principal works written in defence of the Inquisition, which Mr. Prescott seems either not to have seen at all, or not to have read.

The historians of the Spanish Inquisition most in favor with Protestants, are Limborch and Llorente. Mr. Prescott cites them both, and bases most of his statements upon the authority of the latter, who is so great a favorite with him as to merit a special

biographical notice at the close of his chapter on the Inquisition. To ascertain how far they are to be relied on, as historians of the Inquisition, we must see who they were, under what circumstances they wrote their respective histories, and what motives prompted them to the task.

Philip Limborch was a native of Holland, and belonged to the sect of the Remonstrants or mitigated Calvinists. He was a disciple of the famous scholar, Vossius, who with Grotius had suffered so much from the intolerant synod of Dort, which in 1619 had consummated the division of the Dutch Calvinists. He attained to considerable eminence in his sect, in which he became a minister, and subsequently a professor of theology at Amsterdam. He was not, however, very rigid in adhering even to the slight standard of orthodoxy required by his own party; for he became a Unitarian, and was a great friend of the noted Unitarian, John Le Clerk, who lauds his writings to the skies. Had John Calvin been able to arise from his tomb, his recreant disciple might have stood a good chance to be bound to the stake with Servetus, whose tenets he advocated; and had the Gomarist, or rigid Calvinist party in Holland been unchecked in enforcing the exclusive and persecuting canons of Dort, Limborch might have suffered martyrdom, or at least have been a confessor with Grotius and Vossius.* However, he escaped unscathed, but with a deep and abiding sense of the wrongs his party had endured from the Gomarists. He determined to shoot an arrow at them through the Spaniards, whose very name had been execrated in Holland, since the days of Philip II of Spain, and of the duke of Alva. The memory of the fierce and bloody struggle with the Spaniards, in which so many harrowing scenes had occurred on both sides, was still fresh in the minds of the Dutch. To be sure they had, to say the least, been guilty of as much cruelty, as the duke of Alva and his soldiery; but this was forgotten, and the cruelty of the Spaniard was alone remembered, and that Inquisition

*See Brandt's History, copious extracts from which are cited in the Oral Discussion of Hughes and Breckenridge, on the second question.

which he had in vain endeavored to establish in the two countries was viewed with inconceivable horror. The very name caused a cold shudder to seize on every Hollander. Limborch shared deeply in these feelings, and he knew how extensive and how all absorbing they were among his countrymen. He knew that he could not better cater to their taste than by writing a detailed history of this odious tribunal: and he accordingly set about the work and published it in one volume folio, at Amsterdam, in 1692. His anticipations were realized; the work was received with acclamations. The minds of his countrymen were too much excited to enable them to perceive the glaring inaccuracies and gross misstatements of the book; and had he painted the horrors of the Inquisition with tenfold force, their deadly hatred of the tribunal would have caused them to devour the work without one misgiving!

Such was Limborch. He evidently wrote his history under such excitement as would naturally lead us to expect little of the impartiality of the historian, and much of the exaggeration of a man writing against a tribunal, odious, in a religious and political point of view, and pandering also to a taste greatly vitiated and highly excited. Accordingly we find in his work few of the intrinsic qualities of a veridical history. He professes to derive his statements from the works of the inquisitors themselves; yet Fra Paolo, the Italian historian of the council of Trent, whose hypocrisy made him conceal the mind and heart of a Protestant under the cowl of a Catholic friar, and Dellon, the famous Protestant author of the too famous "Relation of the Inquisition at Goa," are among his favorite authors for reference! And when he does cite the works of the inquisitors themselves, such as Eymerick, Pegna, &c. he garbles the extracts, quoting only what suits his purpose, very often extracting only the concluding sentence from a lengthy passage, and thereby often making the inquisitors say just the contrary of what they had intended. This wretched cutting up of quotations is unpardonable in a work so extensive; it would have been bad enough in a duodecimo, but in a folio

volume it is utterly inexcusable, and is a strong evidence of bad faith in the writer.

No wonder that Voltaire and the infidels of France received the book with enthusiasm. It was just the kind of work they wanted. Its whole tendency was to throw odium on the Catholic priesthood, whom it represented as gloating over the blood of their victims. But we are a little surprised that the Abbé Marsollier, a cotemporary French Catholic priest, should have presented it, in an abridged form, to the French people in their own language, and that many very estimable French writers should have been misled by its statements. A morbid appetite seems to have seized upon the French people about that time. Writers, male and female, published works on Spain. Madame d'Aunoy wrote a book remarkable for its gross inaccuracy, in regard to the Spanish Inquisition, and for its caustic ridicule of every thing Spanish. The Abbé De Vayrac, who had spent twenty years of his active life in Spain, answered these misrepresentations in his famous work "L'Etat present d'Espagne," published at Amsterdam, in 1719, 4 vols. 12mo. He proved that the statements of Limborch and Madame d'Aunoy, in regard to the Spanish Inquisition, were greatly exaggerated, or positively false. No one was better calculated to write on Spanish affairs, than the Abbé ; but so vitiated was the taste of his day, even in France, that the work caused a great outcry, and the author had to encounter a storm of opposition. In the preface to a second edition of his work, he ably defends himself from charges made against his statements under five different heads, with what effect on his cotemporaries, history does not tell. It is much to be regretted that this work of De Vayrac is not more generally known.

But the most popular history of the Spanish Inquisition among the enemies of this tribunal, is that by Don Juan Antonio Llorente, published at Paris, 1818, in four volumes, 8vo. A brief sketch of this remarkable man's life, will show us what motives elicited the publication of this work. He was born at Calahorra in Spain, A. D. 1756. He studied for the Church, took the degree

of bachelor in theology, with considerable credit, and was ordained priest at an early age. A singular incident occurred at his ordination after the consecration in which he had recited the sacred words of Christ, together with the ordaining bishop, he was seized with a sudden i'ness, which prevented his receiving the holy communion: some viewed the occurrence as ominous. His first work after ordination was a comedy

on matrimony,"* which, however, at the earnest solicitations of a friend, he consented to burn. When subsequently vicar general of the diocess of Calahorra, he composed another comedy, and had it acted on the stage, very little to the edification of the people and of the chapter of that city. So great was his passion for this kind of writing, that, when afterwards wholly engaged in politics, he employed his leisure hours in translating into Spanish many of the unchaste poems of the lascivious Casti! His Nas a troubled and restless spirit. Not content with his retirement at Calahorra, he proceeded to Madrid, where he spent his time intriguing for place. He succeeded, and rose step by step, until he became secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, an office which he held from 1790 to 1792. Having been guilty of a grievous betrayal of the confidence reposed in him by the Inquisitor general, and of several other irregularities of conduct, he was ordered to leave Madrid, and to repair to his native place.

Here he was equally restless and intriguing. Detected by the Spanish government in a secret correspondence with the emissaries of the French republic in 1793, and suspected of other misdemeanors, he was arrested, and sent by the Inquisition, not into a dungeon, but merely into a retired convent of the Recollects at some distance from Calahorra, to compose his restless spirit and to do penance for his sins. Among his writings which were seized, several were found against the Spanish government, against the Holy See, and against the Inquisition. And yet, strange cruelty of the bloody Inquisition! upon his writing letters full of repentance and abject submis

* El matrimonio a desgusto.