Poets and Troubadours
In literature the influence of Italy had to wait, while medieval Spain and France influenced each other. The troubadours of Provence probably took their poetic forms and imagery from Spanish Muslims and Christians. Even so, John I of Aragon sent an ambassador to Charles VI of France (1388) asking that some troubadours come from Toulouse to Barcelona and form their society there under the name "Gay Science"; this was done. Poetry contests in the Provençal manner were held at Barcelona and Tortosa, and composing and reciting verse became a strong passion among the literate minority of Aragon and Castile. Wandering singers performed love songs, war songs and religious songs to the plain notes of their instruments.
In the next generation John II of Castile supported poems written in imitation of the Italian poets. Italian modes, meters and themes reached the Iberian peninsula through Naples and Sicily, where Spaniards ruled, and through the University of Bologna, where young Spaniards like the Borgias studied; Dante and Petrarch found spirited rivals in the Castilian language. Spanish poets' lyrics were gathered period by period in cancioneros, collections of poems chivalric in feeling and Petrarchan in form and style. The Marquis of Santillana, statesman, scholar, poet and patron of poets, took the sonnet from Italian verse into Spanish literature and at about the same time wrote a history of literature for Spain.
Juan de Mena, with complete sincerity, wrote an epic poem, the Labyrinth, in imitation of Dante, which did for the establishment of Castilian as a literary language what Dante's Divine Comedy did for Tuscan. Meanwhile Don Juan Manuel anticipated Boccaccio in writing dramatic tales; Shakespeare is said to have taken the incredible story of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew from one of these.
Amadis of Gaul
The novel remained a favorite of every kind of reader. Amadis of Gaul was translated into Spanish about 1500 by Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo, who assured his readers that he had made many improvements on the Portuguese original; since that work is lost, we cannot refute him. Amadis is the illegitimate son of an imaginary British princess; his mother, fearing scandal, sets him adrift on the water; a Scottish knight takes him from the water and in time Amadis becomes a page to the queen of Scotland. Lisuarte, king of England, while struggling against a usurping rebel in his own realm, sends his ten-year-old daughter Oriana to the Scottish court. The queen of Scotland assigns twelve-year-old Amadis to serve her: "This is a child who will serve you." Oriana replies that she is glad of it. And the child kept this word in his heart and wisely strove to keep it, never forgetting it and never tiring of serving Oriana in all his life.
So their love lasted as long as they lived. Amadis, who had no idea that Oriana loved him, and how much, thought it bold, given her greatness and beauty, to tell her his inmost thoughts, and dared not say a word. Oriana too, though she loved him in her heart, held that she must not speak to him more than to others; but her eyes took comfort in showing her heart what she could love most in the world. It may be a comfort to say that their love, after hardships before marriage in the story as many as those after marriage in real life, ends in triumph. The long tale has many moments of tenderness, love and nobility; and Cervantes, who had sworn to destroy all romances of this kind, spared this one as the best of them.
The Beginnings of Drama
The romance became the source and origin of drama, which was gradually emerging from the mystery plays, moralities, popular farces and court masques. The earliest date in the history of Spanish drama is 1492, when Juan del Encina's dialogues were put on the stage. Fernando de Rojas, a convert, took another step toward drama by writing La Celestina (1499). That play was written wholly in dialogue and divided into twenty-two scenes (the book's count), and was too long to be staged, but the vivid portrayal of characters and the gripping dialogue opened the way for the classic comedies of Spain.
Learning Under Ximenes
The Church both promoted and hindered learning. While the Inquisition was inspecting thoughts, high-ranking clergy worked hard for learning and education. Italians such as Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who came to Spain in 1487, brought news of the humanist movement, and Spaniards who had studied in Italy returned home with the humane enthusiasm they had caught there. At the queen's request Peter Martyr founded a school at her court to teach the classical languages and literature, as Alcuin had done at Charlemagne's court seven hundred years before. Princess Juana studied Latin so diligently that she went mad. Peter himself wrote the first history of the discoveries in America, De Orbe Novo (from 1504); the last two words of the title, together with Vespucci's earlier (1502) use of the phrase for America, gave rise to "the New World."
Cardinal Ximenes, whose faith had the hardness and edge of steel, turned to the classical movement and worked hard to advance it. In 1499 he founded the College of San Ildefonso, and in 1508 the University of Alcalá. There, from 1502 (the book's date), nine linguists under his own supervision achieved one of the great triumphs of Renaissance scholarship: the printing of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, the first complete printed edition of the Christian Bible in its original languages. The editors set beside or around the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New the Septuagint, Jerome's Latin Vulgate and a Syriac version of the Pentateuch.
Pope Leo X opened the door of the Vatican library's manuscript treasury to Ximenes's research team, and three baptized Jews put their Hebrew knowledge at their disposal. The work was finished in 1517, but its six volumes were not printed until 1522. Ximenes, who foresaw his own death, urged his scholars: "Do not waste time, so that we may bring to an end the great work we have begun, lest the turn of fortune take your patron from you; or lest I, God forbid, grieve over the loss of those whose service is dearer to me than all the wealth and honors of the world." The last volume of this great work was presented to him with his friends' compliments a few months before his death. Ximenes told them that none of his undertakings as minister had won such fame and credit as their work. He had also drawn up a similar plan for printing the works of Aristotle, with a new Latin translation attached, but the shortness of his long life gave him no time.
Isabella's Sorrows
In this great enterprise Isabella had been outlived by her ardent and energetic minister. For all her severity she was a woman of deep feelings, and she bore sorrows heavier and more consuming than war. In 1496 she lost her mother. Of her ten children, five were stillborn or died in infancy; two others died in early youth. In 1497 her only son, her sole heir and hope, died, and in 1498 her dearest daughter, queen of Portugal, who might have given the country unity, died too. Among these blows she was also tormented by the gradual madness of her daughter Juana, now the clear heir to the throne.
Juana had married Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy and son of Emperor Maximilian I (1496), and borne him two sons who would be future emperors, Charles V and Ferdinand I. Whether from fickleness or because of Juana's unfitness, Philip neglected her and took up with a woman of his court at Brussels. Juana, in anger, ordered the woman's hair cut off, and Philip swore never again to share her bed. When Isabella heard this news she fell ill.
The Death of Isabella
On October 12, 1504 she made her will. She directed that she be buried in the plainest manner, that the money saved be given to the poor, and that she be laid in the Franciscan monastery at the Alhambra, adding: "But if the king, my lord, chooses another place for his eternal rest, my will is that my body be taken to him, so that the nearness of our bodies may be a sign of the union we enjoyed in this world; and perhaps, by God's grace, our souls may share in it in the next."
She died on November 24, 1504, and was buried as she had asked; after Ferdinand's death her bones were moved and laid beside his in the cathedral of Granada. Peter Martyr wrote on her death: "The world has lost its dearest jewel. ... Of her sex in past ages and in the present I know none who deserves to have her name spoken beside this peerless woman." (Margaret, queen of Sweden, was far from Peter's view, and Elizabeth of England had not yet come to the throne, the book remarks.)
In her will Isabella made Ferdinand regent of Castile for Philip, who was busy in the Netherlands, and for Juana, who sank each day deeper into a consoling madness.
Ferdinand Alone
Ferdinand, hoping to prevent Spain's crown from falling to the Habsburgs through Philip's son Charles, hurried at fifty-three to marry Germaine de Foix, seventeen-year-old niece of Louis XII (1505). But the marriage only increased the Castilian nobles' resentment of their Aragonese master, and his only heir died in infancy. Philip, who now claimed the throne of Castile, came to Spain; the nobles welcomed him (1506), and Ferdinand had to be content with the crown of Aragon. Three months later Philip died, and Ferdinand resumed the regency of Castile in the name of his mad daughter.
Juana remained queen in name and lived until 1555, but from 1507 on she never left the royal palace at Tordesillas; she refused to bathe or dress, and spent whole days looking from her window at a graveyard where the body of her faithless husband, whom she still loved, was buried.
As regent Ferdinand ruled more absolutely than when he bore the title of king. Free of Isabella's softening influence, the positive, harsh features of his character came out. He had earlier recovered Roussillon and Cerdagne (1493), and Gonzalo de Córdoba conquered Naples for him in 1503. This broke the treaty that Philip and Louis XII had signed at Lyon dividing the kingdom of Naples between Spain and France. But Ferdinand assured the world that Philip had made such a treaty against his orders; he came to Naples by ship and personally took the throne of the Neapolitan kings (1506). Suspecting that Gonzalo wanted the throne of Naples for himself, on his return to Spain (1507) he took the great captain back with him and relieved him of service, an act most Spaniards considered an unworthy insult.
The Death of Ferdinand
Ferdinand had mastered everything but the passing of time. Slowly the springs of his strength and will dried up. His hours of rest grew longer and fatigue came sooner. He neglected the work of government; he became impatient and restless and felt a morbid suspicion of his most loyal servants. Dropsy and shortness of breath weakened him, and he found it hard to breathe in the city. In July 1516 he hurried south to Andalusia, hoping to pass the winter in its open air. On the way he fell ill, and his companions prepared him to meet death. He named Ximenes regent of Castile, made his own illegitimate son, the archbishop of Saragossa, regent of Aragon, and on July 23, 1516, at sixty-four and in the forty-second year of his reign, he left this world.
It is no wonder that Machiavelli praised him, since he was a king who applied the contents of The Prince more fully than its author wrote them. Ferdinand made religion an instrument of national and military policy, filled his decrees with pious expressions, but never let moral considerations stand in the way of his personal desires and interests. No one can doubt his ability, his skill in overseeing government and choosing ministers and generals, or his unblemished successes in politics and the conduct of war. He was neither greedy nor miserly himself; he had more lust for power than love of luxury, and his greed was for his country, which he wanted to bring to unity and strength. He had no belief in democracy; under his rule local liberties lapsed and vanished. He firmly believed that a nation of so many governments, religions and languages could not be successfully ruled by merely extending old local customs and laws. His and Isabella's triumph was to replace anarchy with royal government, and weakness with power. He prepared the way for Charles V, who kept his royal supremacy despite long absences from the country, and for Philip II, who concentrated all the business of government in one incompetent mind. To reach this aim he was charged with what we today call brutal fanaticism and inhuman tyranny; but in the eyes of his contemporaries it was a brilliant victory for Christianity.
The Last Months of Ximenes
Ximenes, as regent of Castile, maintained the absolute despotism of the crown, perhaps as the only way to prevent a return of feudalism. Though now eighty, he governed with an unbending will and crushed every effort of the feudal lords and municipalities to recover their old powers. When some nobles asked by what right he had taken away their privileges, he did not point to his office but showed them the cannon in the palace courtyard. Yet his desire for power and position was less than his sense of duty, for he repeatedly asked the young king, Charles, to leave Flanders, come to Spain and take the reins of government himself.
When Charles planned to come (September 17, 1517), Ximenes hurried north to meet him. But Charles's Flemish advisers joined with the Castilian nobles and gave the king a bad report of the state of affairs and of the Cardinal's character, so that the king, an unripe seventeen-year-old, wrote Ximenes a letter thanking him for his services, put off a meeting to another time, and told him to go to his diocese of Toledo and take the rest suited to his years. Another letter dismissing the zealous old man from all his political posts reached him too late to deepen the wound of the insult already in his heart: he had died on November 8, 1517, at eighty-one. Though he seemed an incorruptible man, people wondered how he had gathered the great fortune he left, by his will, to the University of Alcalá.
A Balanced Judgment
His death ended in Spain an age full of glory, horror and powerful men. Later events show that the victory of absolute monarchy over the Cortes and local assemblies removed from reach the very means through which Spanish character could express and preserve its independence and fertility; that religious unity was bought at the price of stagnation and repression of authentic Spanish thought about the beginning and end of things; that the expulsion of the Jews and the unconverted Moors undermined Spain's commerce and industry just when the discovery of the New World called for their growth; and that Spain's increasing entanglement in politics and war with France and Italy (and later Germany, Flanders and England), instead of attention to great works to advance its colonies in America, laid an unbearable load on the nation's financial and human strength.
But in saying this we look backward and judge the past from the present. We judge the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella in a language that would have been unintelligible to all the European peoples of their time. In that age all religious communities, except a few Muslims and Anabaptists, were gripped by religious prejudice and enmity; all governments, Catholic France and Italy and Protestant Germany and England, resorted to force to create religious unity; all countries hungered for the gold of the West or East Indies; all, for survival and the extension of their frontiers, or to increase their wealth, took to war or political deceit. For all Christian governments, Christianity was not a law for conduct but a means of government and law. Christ was for the people; kings preferred Machiavelli. The state had civilized the people to some extent, but who could introduce the state to the standards of civilization?