Volume II Part 33 (1/2)
When composed, however, by contemporaries, or those who lived near the time, they may very naturally record many true details, too insignificant in their consequences to attract the notice of history. The ballad translated with so much elaborate simplicity by Percy, is chiefly taken up, as the English reader may remember, with the exploits of a Sevillian hero named Saavedra. No such personage is noticed, as far as I am aware, by the Spanish chroniclers. The name of Saavedra, however, appears to have been a familiar one in Seville, and occurs two or three times in the muster-roll of n.o.bles and cavaliers of that city, who joined King Ferdinand's army in the preceding year, 1500. Zuniga, Annales de Sevilla, eodem anno.
[26] Mendoza notices these splenetic effusions (Guerra de Granada, p. 13); and Bleda (Coronica, p. 636) cites the following couplet from one of them.
”Decid, conde de Urena, Don Alonso donde queda.”
[27] The Venetian amba.s.sador, Navagiero, saw the count of Urena at Ossuna, in 1526. He was enjoying a green old age, or, as the minister expresses it, ”molto vecchio e gentil corteggiano per.” ”Diseases,” said the veteran good-humoredly, ”sometimes visit me, but seldom tarry long; for my body is like a crazy old inn, where travellers find such poor fare, that they merely touch and go.” Viaggio, fol. 17.
[28] Guerra de Granada, p. 301.--Compare the similar painting of Tacitus, in the scene where Germanicus pays the last sad offices to the remains of Varus and his legions. ”Dein semiruto vallo, humili fossa, accisae jam reliquiae consedisse intelligebantur: medio campi albentia ossa, ut fugerant, ut rest.i.terant, disjecta vel aggerata; adjacebant fragmina telorum, equorumque artus, simul truncis arborum antefixa ora.”(Annales, lib. 1, sect. 61.) Mendoza falls nothing short of this celebrated description of the Roman historian;
”Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se judice victum.”
[29] Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, pp. 300-302.
The Moorish insurrection of 1570 was attended with at least one good result, in calling forth this historic masterpiece, the work of the accomplished Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, accomplished alike as a statesman, warrior, and historian. His ”Guerra de Granada,” confined as it is to a barren fragment of Moorish history, displays such liberal sentiments, (too liberal, indeed, to permit its publication till long after its author's death,) profound reflection, and cla.s.sic elegance of style, as well ent.i.tled him to the appellation of the Spanish Sall.u.s.t.
[30] Pragmaticas del Reyno, fol. 6.
[31] Pragmaticas del Reyno, fol. 7.
[32] Bleda anxiously claims the credit of the act of expulsion for Fray Thomas de Torquemada, of inquisitorial memory. (Coronica, p. 640.) That eminent personage had, indeed, been dead some years; but this edict was so obviously suggested by that against the Jews, that it may be considered as the result of his principles, if not directly taught by him. Thus it is, ”the evil that men do lives after them.”
[33] The Castilian writers, especially the dramatic, have not been insensible to the poetical situations afforded by the distresses of the banished Moriscoes. Their sympathy for the exiles, however, is whimsically enough contrasted by an orthodox anxiety to justify the conduct of their own government. The reader may recollect a pertinent example in the story of Sancho's Moorish friend, Ricote. Don Quixote, part. 2, cap. 54.
[34] The _spirit of toleration_ professed by the Moors, indeed, was made a princ.i.p.al argument against them in the archbishop of Valencia's memorial to Philip III. The Mahometans would seem the better Christians of the two. See Geddes, Miscellaneous Tracts, (London, 1702-6,) vol. i. p.
94.
[35] Heeren seems willing to countenance the learned Pluquet in regarding Islamism, in its ancient form, as one of the modifications of Christianity; placing the princ.i.p.al difference between that and Socinianism, for example, in the mere rites of circ.u.mcision and baptism.
(Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades, traduit par Villers, (Paris, 1808,) p. 175, not.) ”The Mussulmans,” says Sir William Jones, ”are a sort of heterodox Christians, if Locke reasons justly, because they firmly believe the immaculate conception, divine character, and miracles of the Messiah; heterodox in denying vehemently his character of Son, and his equality, as G.o.d, with the Father, of whose unity and attributes they entertain and express the most awful ideas.” See his Dissertation on the G.o.ds of Greece, Italy, and India; Works, (London, 1799,) vol. i. p. 279.
[36] See the bishop of Orihuela's treatise, ”De Bello Sacro,” etc., cited by the industrious Clemencin. (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Il.u.s.t.
15.) The Moors and Jews, of course, stood no chance in this code; the reverend father expresses an opinion, with which Bleda heartily coincides, that the government would be perfectly justified in taking away the life of every Moor in the kingdom, for their shameless infidelity. Ubi supra;-- and Bleda, Coronica, p. 995.
[37] The articles of the treaty are detailed at length by Marmol, Rebelion de Moriscos, lib. 1, cap. 19.
[38] Idem, ubi supra.
[39] See the arguments of Ximenes, or of his enthusiastic biographer Flechier, for it is not always easy to discriminate between them. Hist. de Ximenes, pp. 108, 109.
[40] The duke of Medina Sidonia proposed to Ferdinand and Isabella to be avenged on the Moors, in some way not explained, after their disembarkation in Africa, on the ground that, the term of the royal safe- conduct having elapsed, they might lawfully be treated as enemies. To this proposal, which would have done honor to a college of Jesuits in the sixteenth century, the sovereigns made a reply too creditable not to be transcribed. ”El Rei e la Reina. Fernando de Zafra, nuestro secretario.
Vimos vuestra letra, en que nos fecistes saber lo que el duque de Medinasidonia tenia pensado que se podia facer contra los Moros de Villaluenga despues de desembarcados allende. Decide que le agradecemos y tenemos en servicio el buen deseo que tiene de nos servir: _pero porque nuestra, palabra y seguro real asi se debe guardar a los infieles como a los Oristianos_, y faciendose lo que el dice pareceria cautela y engano armado sobre nuestro seguro para no le guardar, que en ninguna, manera se haga eso, ni otra cosa de que pueda parecer que se quebranta nuestro seguro. De Granada veinte y nueve de mayo de quinientos y un anos.--Yo el Rei.--Yo la Reina--Por mandado del Rei e del Reina, Miguel Perez Almazan.”
Would that the suggestions of Isabella's own heart, instead of the clergy, had always been the guide of her conduct in these matters! Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Il.u.s.t. 15, from the original in the archives of the family of Medina Sidonia.
[41] A memorial of the archbishop of Valencia to Philip III. affords an example of this moral obliquity, that may make one laugh, or weep, according to the temper of his philosophy. In this precious doc.u.ment he says, ”Your Majesty may, without any scruple of conscience, make slaves of all the Moriscoes, and may put them into your own galleys or mines, or sell them to strangers. And as to their children, they may be all sold at good rates here in Spain; which will be so far from being a punishment, that it will be a mercy to them; since by that means they will all become Christians; which they would never have been, had they continued with their parents. By the holy execution of which piece of justice, _a great sum of money will flow into your Majesty's treasury_.” (Geddes, Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i. p. 71.) ”Il n'est point d'hostilite excellente comme la Chrestienne,” says old Montaigne; ”nostre zele faict merveilles, quand il va secondant nostre pente vers la haine, la cruante, l'ambition, l'avarice, la detraction, la rebellion. Nostre religion est faicte pour extirper les vices; elle les couvre, les nourrit, les incite.”
Essais, liv. 2, chap. 12.
CHAPTER VIII.