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CHAPTER VIII
OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE SPANISH INTELLECT FROM THE FIFTH TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the preceding chapters, I have endeavoured to establish four leading propositions, which, according to my view, are to be deemed the basis of the history of civilization. They are: 1st, That the progress of mankind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of those laws is diffused. 2nd, That before such investigation can begin, a spirit of scepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the investigation, is afterwards aided by it. 3rd, That the discoveries thus made, increase the influence of intellectual truths, and diminish, relatively not absolutely, the influence of moral truths; moral truths being more stationary than intellectual truths, and receiving fewer additions. 4th, That the great enemy of this movement, and therefore the great enemy of civilization, is the protective spirit; by which I mean the notion that society cannot prosper, unless the affairs of life are watched over and protected at nearly every turn by the state and the church; the state teaching men what they are to do, and the church teaching them what they are to believe. Such are the propositions which I hold to be the most essential for a right understanding of history, and which I have defended in the only two ways any proposition can be defended; namely, inductively and deductively. The inductive defence comprises a collection of historical and scientific facts, which suggest and authorize the conclusions drawn from them; while the deductive defence consists of a verification of those conclusions, by showing how they explain the history of different countries and their various fortunes. To the former, or inductive method of defence, I am at present unable to add anything new; but the deductive defence I hope to strengthen considerably, and by the aid of the following chapters, confirm not only the four cardinal propositions just stated, but also several minor propositions, which, though strictly speaking flowing from them, will require separate verification. According to the plan already sketched, the remaining part of the introduction will contain an examination of the history of Spain, of Scotland, of Germany, and of the United States of America, with the object of elucidating principles on which the history of England supplies inadequate information. And as Spain is the country where what I conceive to be the fundamental conditions of national improvement have been most flagrantly violated, so also shall we find that it is the country where the penalty paid for the violation has been most heavy, and where, therefore, it is most instructive to ascertain how the prevalence of certain opinions causes the decay of the people among whom they predominate.

We have seen that the old tropical civilizations were accompanied by remarkable features which I have termed Aspects of Nature, and which, by inflaming the imagination, encouraged superstition, and prevented men from daring to analyze such threatening physical phenomena; in other words, prevented the creation of the physical sciences. Now, it is an interesting fact that, in these respects, no European country is so analogous to the tropics as Spain. No other part of Europe is so clearly designated by nature as the seat and refuge of superstition. Recurring to what has been already proved,¹¹⁶⁴ it will be remembered that among the most important physical causes of superstition are famines, epidemics, earthquakes, and that general unhealthiness of climate, which, by shortening the average duration of life, increases the frequency and earnestness with which supernatural aid is invoked. These peculiarities, taken together, are more prominent in Spain than anywhere else in Europe; it will therefore be useful to give such a summary of them as will exhibit the mischievous effects they have produced in shaping the national character.

If we except the northern extremity of Spain, we may say that the two principal characteristics of the climate are heat and dryness, both of which are favoured by the extreme difficulty which nature has interposed in regard to irrigation. For, the rivers which intersect the land, run mostly in beds too deep to be made available for watering the soil, which consequently is, and always has been, remarkably arid.¹¹⁶⁵ Owing to this, and to the infrequency of rain, there is no European country as richly endowed in other respects, where droughts and therefore famines have been so frequent and serious.¹¹⁶⁶ At the same time the vicissitudes of climate, particularly in the central parts, make Spain habitually unhealthy; and this general tendency being strengthened in the middle ages by the constant occurrence of famine, caused the ravages of pestilence to be unusually fatal.¹¹⁶⁷ When we moreover add that in the Peninsula, including Portugal, earthquakes have been extremely disastrous,¹¹⁶⁸ and have excited all those superstitious feelings which they naturally provoke, we may form some idea of the insecurity of life, and of the ease with which an artful and ambitious priesthood could turn such insecurity into an engine for the advancement of their own power.¹¹⁶⁹

Another feature of this singular country is the prevalence of a pastoral life, mainly caused by the difficulty of establishing regular habits of agricultural industry. In most parts of Spain, the climate renders it impossible for the labourer to work the whole of the day;¹¹⁷⁰ and this forced interruption encourages among the people an irregularity and instability of purpose, which makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd, rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture.¹¹⁷¹ And during the long and arduous war which they waged against their Mohammedan invaders, they were subject to such incessant surprises and forays on the part of the enemy, as to make it advisable that their means of subsistence should be easily removed; hence they preferred the produce of their flocks to that of their lands, and were shepherds instead of agriculturists, simply because by that means they would suffer less in case of an unfavourable issue. Even after the capture of Toledo, late in the eleventh century, the inhabitants of the frontier in Estramadura, La Mancha, and New Castile, were almost entirely herdsmen, and their cattle were pastured not in private meadows but in the open fields.¹¹⁷² All this increased the uncertainty of life, and strengthened that love of adventure, and that spirit of romance, which, at a later period, gave a tone to the popular literature. Under such circumstances, everything grew precarious, restless, and unsettled; thought and inquiry were impossible; doubt was unknown; and the way was prepared for those superstitious habits, and for that deep-rooted and tenacious belief, which have always formed a principal feature in the history of the Spanish nation.

To what extent these circumstances would, if they stood by themselves, have affected the ultimate destiny of Spain, is a question hardly possible to answer; but there can be no doubt that their effects must always have been important, though, from the paucity of evidence, we are unable to measure them with precision. In regard, however, to the actual result, this point is of little moment, because a long chain of other and still more influential events became interwoven with those just mentioned, and, tending in precisely the same direction, produced a combination which nothing could resist, and from which we may trace with unerring certainty the steps by which the nation subsequently declined. The history of the causes of the degradation of Spain will indeed become too clear to be mistaken, if studied in reference to those general principles which I have enunciated, and which will themselves be confirmed by the light they throw on this instructive though melancholy subject.

After the subversion of the Roman Empire, the first leading fact in the history of Spain is the settlement of the Visigoths, and the establishment of their opinions in the Peninsula. They, as well as the Suevi, who immediately preceded them, were Arians, and Spain during a hundred and fifty years became the rallying point of that famous heresy,¹¹⁷³ to which indeed most of the Gothic tribes then adhered. But, at the end of the fifth century, the Franks, on their conversion from Paganism, adopted the opposite and orthodox creed, and were encouraged by their clergy to make war upon their heretical neighbours. Clovis, who was then king of the Franks, was regarded by the church as the champion of the faith, in whose behalf he attacked the unbelieving Visigoths.¹¹⁷⁴ His successors, moved by the same motives, pursued the same policy;¹¹⁷⁵ and, during nearly a century, there was a war of opinions between France and Spain, by which the Visigothic Empire was seriously endangered, and was more than once on the verge of dissolution. Hence, in Spain, a war for national independence became also a war for national religion,¹¹⁷⁶ and an intimate alliance was formed between the Arian kings and the Arian clergy. The latter class were, in those ages of ignorance, sure to gain by such a compact,¹¹⁷⁷ and they received considerable temporal advantages in return for the prayers which they offered up against the enemy, as also for the miracles which they occasionally performed. Thus early a foundation was laid for the immense influence which the Spanish priesthood have possessed ever since, and which was strengthened by subsequent events. For, late in the sixth century, the Latin clergy converted their Visigothic masters, and the Spanish government, becoming orthodox, naturally conferred upon its teachers an authority equal to that wielded by the Arian hierarchy.¹¹⁷⁸ Indeed, the rulers of Spain, grateful to those who had shown them the error of their ways, were willing rather to increase the power of the church than to diminish it. The clergy took advantage of this disposition; and the result was, that before the middle of the seventh century the spiritual classes possessed more influence in Spain than in any other part of Europe.¹¹⁷⁹ The ecclesiastical synods became not only councils of the church, but also parliaments of the realm.¹¹⁸⁰ At Toledo, which was then the capital of Spain, the power of the clergy was immense, and was so ostentatiously displayed, that in a council they held there in the year 633, we find the king literally prostrating himself on the ground before the bishops;¹¹⁸¹ and half a century later, the ecclesiastical historian mentions that this humiliating practice was repeated by another king, having become, he says, an established custom.¹¹⁸² That this was not a mere meaningless ceremony, is moreover evident from other and analogous facts. Exactly the same tendency is seen in their jurisprudence; since, by the Visigothic code, any layman, whether plaintiff or defendant, might insist on his cause being tried not by the temporal magistrate, but by the bishop of the diocese. Nay, even if both parties to the suit were agreed in preferring the civil tribunal, the bishop still retained the power of revoking the decision, if in his opinion it was incorrect; and it was his especial business to watch over the administration of justice, and to instruct the magistrates how to perform their duty.¹¹⁸³ Another, and more painful proof of the ascendency of the clergy, is that the laws against heretics were harsher in Spain than in any other country; the Jews in particular being persecuted with unrelenting rigour.¹¹⁸⁴ Indeed, the desire of upholding the faith was strong enough to produce a formal declaration that no sovereign should be acknowledged, unless he promised to preserve its purity; the judges of the purity being of course the bishops themselves, to whose suffrage the king owed his throne.¹¹⁸⁵

Such were the circumstances which, in and before the seventh century, secured to the Spanish Church an influence unequalled in any other part of Europe.¹¹⁸⁶ Early in the eighth century, an event occurred which apparently broke up and dispersed the hierarchy, but which in reality was extremely favourable to them. In 711 the Mohammedans sailed from Africa, landed in the south of Spain, and in the space of three years conquered the whole country, except the almost inaccessible regions of the north-west. The Spaniards, secure in their native mountains,¹¹⁸⁷ soon recovered heart, rallied their forces, and began in their turn to assail the invaders. A desperate struggle ensued, which lasted nearly eight centuries, and in which, a second time in the history of Spain, a war for independence was also a war for religion; the contest between Arabian Infidels and Spanish Christians, succeeding that formerly carried on between the Trinitarians of France and the Arians of Spain. Slowly, and with infinite difficulty, the Christians fought their way. By the middle of the ninth century, they reached the line of the Douro.¹¹⁸⁸ Before the close of the eleventh century, they conquered as far as the Tagus, and Toledo, their ancient capital, fell into their hands in 1085.¹¹⁸⁹ Even then much remained to be done. In the south, the struggle assumed its deadliest form, and there it was prolonged with such obstinacy, that it was not until the capture of Malaga in 1487, and of Granada in 1492, that the Christian empire was re-established, and the old Spanish monarchy finally restored.¹¹⁹⁰

The effect of all this on the Spanish character was most remarkable. During eight successive centuries, the whole country was engaged in a religious crusade; and those holy wars which other nations occasionally waged, were, in Spain, prolonged and continued for more than twenty generations.¹¹⁹¹ The object being not only to regain a territory, but also to re-establish a creed, it naturally happened that the expounders of that creed assumed a prominent and important position. In the camp, and in the council-chamber, the voice of ecclesiastics was heard and obeyed; for as the war aimed at the propagation of Christianity, it seemed right that her ministers should play a conspicuous part in a matter which particularly concerned them.¹¹⁹² The danger to which the country was exposed being moreover very imminent, those superstitious feelings were excited which danger is apt to provoke, and to which, as I have elsewhere shown,¹¹⁹³ the tropical civilizations owed some of their leading peculiarities. Scarcely were the Spanish Christians driven from their homes and forced to take refuge in the north, when this great principle began to operate. In their mountainous retreat, they preserved a chest filled with relics of the saints, the possession of which they valued as their greatest security.¹¹⁹⁴ This was to them a national standard, round which they rallied, and by the aid of which they gained miraculous victories over their infidel opponents. Looking upon themselves as soldiers of the cross, their minds became habituated to supernatural considerations to an extent which we can now hardly believe, and which distinguished them in this respect from every other European nation.¹¹⁹⁵ Their young men saw visions, and their old men dreamed dreams.¹¹⁹⁶ Strange sights were vouchsafed to them from heaven; on the eve of a battle mysterious portents appeared; and it was observed that whenever the Mohammedans violated the tomb of a Christian saint, thunder and lightning were sent to rebuke the misbelievers, and, if need be, to punish their audacious invasion.¹¹⁹⁷

Under circumstances like these, the clergy could not fail to extend their influence; or, we may rather say, the course of events extended it for them. The Spanish Christians, pent up for a considerable time in the mountains of Asturias, and deprived of their former resources, quickly degenerated, and soon lost the scanty civilization to which they had attained. Stripped of all their wealth, and confined to what was comparatively a barren region, they relapsed into barbarism, and remained, for at least a century, without arts, or commerce, or literature.¹¹⁹⁸ As their ignorance increased, so also did their superstition; while this last, in its turn, strengthened the authority of their priests. The order of affairs, therefore, was very natural. The Mohammedan invasion made the Christians poor; poverty caused ignorance; ignorance caused credulity; and credulity, depriving men both of the power and of the desire to investigate for themselves, encouraged a reverential spirit, and confirmed those submissive habits, and that blind obedience to the Church, which form the leading and most unfortunate peculiarity of Spanish history.

From this it appears, that there were three ways in which the Mohammedan invasion strengthened the devotional feelings of the Spanish people. The first way was by promoting a long and obstinate religious war; the second was by the presence of constant and imminent dangers; and the third way was by the poverty, and therefore the ignorance, which it produced among the Christians.

These events being preceded by the great Arian war, and being accompanied and perpetually reinforced by those physical phenomena which I have indicated as tending in the same direction, worked with such combined and accumulative energy, that in Spain the theological element became not so much a component of the national character, but rather the character itself. The ablest and most ambitious of the Spanish kings were compelled to follow in the general wake; and, despots though they were, they succumbed to that pressure of opinions which they believed they were controlling. The war with Granada, late in the fifteenth century, was theological far more than temporal; and Isabella, who made the greatest sacrifices in order to conduct it, and who in capacity as well as in honesty was superior to Ferdinand, had for her object not so much the acquisition of territory as the propagation of the Christian faith.¹¹⁹⁹ Indeed, any doubts which could be entertained respecting the purpose of the contest must have been dissipated by subsequent events. For, scarcely was the war brought to a close, when Ferdinand and Isabella issued a decree expelling from the country every Jew who refused to deny his faith; so that the soil of Spain might be no longer polluted by the presence of unbelievers.¹²⁰⁰ To make them Christians, or, failing in that, to exterminate them, was the business of the Inquisition, which was established in the same reign, and which before the end of the fifteenth century was in full operation.¹²⁰¹ During the sixteenth century, the throne was occupied by two princes of eminent ability, who pursued a similar course. Charles V., who succeeded Ferdinand in 1516, governed Spain for forty years, and the general character of his administration was the same as that of his predecessors. In regard to his foreign policy, his three principal wars were against France, against the German princes, and against Turkey. Of these, the first was secular; but the two last were essentially religious. In the German war, he defended the church against innovation; and at the battle of Muhlberg, he so completely humbled the Protestant princes, as to retard for some time the progress of the Reformation.¹²⁰² In his other great war, he, as the champion of Christianity against Mohammedanism, consummated what his grandfather Ferdinand had begun. Charles defeated and dislodged the Mohammedans in the east, just as Ferdinand had done in the west; the repulse of the Turks before Vienna being to the sixteenth century what the conquest of the Arabs of Granada was to the fifteenth.¹²⁰³ It was, therefore, with reason that Charles, at the close of his career, could boast that he had always preferred his creed to his country, and that the first object of his ambition had been to maintain the interests of Christianity.¹²⁰⁴ The zeal with which he struggled for the faith, also appears in his exertions against heresy in the Low Countries. According to contemporary and competent authorities, from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand persons were put to death in the Netherlands during his reign on account of their religious opinions.¹²⁰⁵ Later inquirers have doubted the accuracy of this statement,¹²⁰⁶ which is probably exaggerated; but we know that, between 1520 and 1550, he published a series of laws, to the effect that those who were convicted of heresy should be beheaded, or burned alive, or buried alive. The penalties were thus various, to meet the circumstances of each case. Capital punishment, however, was always to be inflicted on whoever bought an heretical book, or sold it, or even copied it for his own use.¹²⁰⁷ His last advice to his son, well accorded with these measures. Only a few days before his death, he signed a codicil to his will, recommending that no favour should ever be shown to heretics; that they should all be put to death; and that care should be taken to uphold the Inquisition, as the best means of accomplishing so desirable an end.¹²⁰⁸

This barbarous policy is to be ascribed, not to the vices, nor to the temperament of the individual ruler, but to the operation of large general causes, which acted upon the individual, and impelled him to the course he pursued. Charles was by no means a vindictive man; his natural disposition was to mercy rather than to rigour; his sincerity is unquestionable; he performed what he believed to be his duty; and he was so kind a friend, that those who knew him best were precisely those who loved him most.¹²⁰⁹ Little, however, could all that avail in shaping his public conduct. He was obliged to obey the tendencies of the age and country in which he lived. And what those tendencies were, appeared still more clearly after his death, when the throne of Spain was occupied upwards of forty years by a prince who inherited it in the prime of life, and whose reign is particularly interesting as a symptom and a consequence of the disposition of the people over whom he ruled.

Philip II., who succeeded Charles V. in 1555, was indeed eminently a creature of the time, and the ablest of his biographers aptly terms him the most perfect type of the national character.¹²¹⁰ His favourite maxim, which forms the key to his policy, was, ‘That it is better not to reign at all than to reign over heretics.’¹²¹¹ Armed with supreme power, he bent all his energies towards carrying this principle into effect. Directly that he heard that the Protestants were making converts in Spain, he strained every nerve to stifle the heresy;¹²¹² and so admirably was he seconded by the general temper of the people, that he was able without risk to suppress opinions which convulsed every other part of Europe. In Spain, the Reformation, after a short struggle, died completely away, and in about ten years the last vestige of it disappeared.¹²¹³ The Dutch wished to adopt, and in many instances did adopt, the reformed doctrine; therefore Philip waged against them a cruel war, which lasted thirty years, and which he continued till his death, because he was resolved to extirpate the new creed.¹²¹⁴ He ordered that every heretic who refused to recant should be burned. If the heretic did recant, some indulgence was granted; but having once been tainted, he must die. Instead of being burned, he was therefore to be executed.¹²¹⁵ Of the number of those who actually suffered in the Low Countries, we have no precise information;¹²¹⁶ but Alva triumphantly boasted that, in the five or six years of his administration, he had put to death in cold blood more than eighteen thousand, besides a still greater number whom he had slain on the field of battle.¹²¹⁷ This, even during his short tenure of power, would make about forty thousand victims; an estimate probably not far from the truth, since we know, from other sources, that in one year more than eight thousand were either executed or burned.¹²¹⁸ Such measures were the result of instructions issued by Philip, and formed a necessary part of his general scheme.¹²¹⁹ The desire paramount in his mind, and to which he sacrificed all other considerations, was to put down the new creed, and to reinstate the old one. To this, even his immense ambition and his inordinate love of power were subordinate. He aimed at the empire of Europe, because he longed to restore the authority of the Church.¹²²⁰ All his policy, all his negotiations, all his wars, pointed to this one end. Soon after his accession, he concluded an ignominious treaty with the Pope, that it might not be said that he bore arms against the head of the Christian world.¹²²¹ And his last great enterprise, in some respects the most important of all, was to fit out, at an incredible cost, that famous Armada with which he hoped to humble England, and to nip the heresy of Europe in its bud, by depriving the Protestants of their principal support, and of the only asylum where they were sure to find safe and honourable refuge.¹²²²

While Philip, following the course of his predecessors, was wasting the blood and treasure of Spain in order to propagate religious opinions,¹²²³ the people, instead of rebelling against so monstrous a system, acquiesced in it, and cordially sanctioned it. Indeed, they not only sanctioned it, but they almost worshipped the man by whom it was enforced. There probably never lived a prince who, during so long a period, and amid so many vicissitudes of fortune, was adored by his subjects as Philip II. was. In evil report, and in good report, the Spaniards clung to him with unshaken loyalty. Their affection was not lessened, either by his reverses, or by his forbidding deportment, or by his cruelty, or by his grievous exactions. In spite of all, they loved him to the last. Such was his absurd arrogance, that he allowed none, not even the most powerful nobles, to address him, except on their knees, and, in return, he only spoke in half sentences, leaving them to guess the rest, and to fulfil his commands as best they might.¹²²⁴ And ready enough they were to obey his slightest wishes. A contemporary of Philip, struck by the universal homage which he received, says that the Spanish did ‘not merely love, not merely reverence, but absolutely adore him, and deem his commands so sacred, that they could not be violated without offence to God.’¹²²⁵

That a man like Philip II., who never possessed a friend, and whose usual demeanour was of the most repulsive kind, a harsh master, a brutal parent, a bloody and remorseless ruler, – that he should be thus reverenced by a nation among whom he lived, and who had their eyes constantly on his actions; that this should have happened, is surely one of the most surprising, and, at first sight, one of the most inexplicable facts in modern history. Here we have a king who, though afflicted by every quality most calculated to excite terror and disgust, is loved far more than he is feared, and is the idol of a very great people during a very long reign. This is so remarkable as to deserve our serious attention; and in order to clear up the difficulty, it will be necessary to inquire into the causes of that spirit of loyalty which, during several centuries, has distinguished the Spaniards above every other European people.

One of the leading causes was undoubtedly the immense influence possessed by the clergy. For the maxims inculcated by that powerful body have a natural tendency to make the people reverence their princes more than they would otherwise do. And that there is a real and practical connexion between loyalty and superstition, appears from the historical fact that the two feelings have nearly always flourished together and decayed together. Indeed, this is what we should expect on mere speculative grounds, seeing that both feelings are the product of those habits of veneration which make men submissive in their conduct and credulous in their belief.¹²²⁶ Experience, therefore, as well as reason, points to this as a general law of the mind, which, in its operation, may be occasionally disturbed, but which holds good in a large majority of cases. Probably the only instance in which the principle fails is, when a despotic government so misunderstands its own interests as to offend the clergy, and separate itself from them. Whenever this is done, a struggle will arise between loyalty and superstition; the first being upheld by the political classes, the other by the spiritual classes. Such a warfare was exhibited in Scotland; but history does not afford many examples of it, and certainly it never took place in Spain, where, on the contrary, several circumstances occurred to cement the union between the Crown and the Church, and to accustom the people to look up to both with almost equal reverence.

By far the most important of these circumstances was the great Arab invasion, which drove the Christians into a corner of Spain, and reduced them to such extremities, that nothing but the strictest discipline, and the most unhesitating obedience to their leaders, could have enabled them to make head against their enemies. Loyalty to their princes became not merely expedient, but necessary; for if the Spaniards had been disunited, they would, in the face of the fearful odds against which they fought, have had no chance of preserving their national existence. The long war which ensued, being both political and religious, caused an intimate alliance between the political and religious classes, since the kings and the clergy had an equal interest in driving the Mohammedans from Spain. During nearly eight centuries, this compact between Church and State was a necessity forced upon the Spaniards by the peculiarities of their position; and, after the necessity had subsided, it naturally happened that the association of ideas survived the original danger, and that an impression had been made upon the popular mind which it was hardly possible to efface.

Evidence of this impression, and of the unrivalled loyalty it produced, crowds upon us at every turn. In no other country are the old ballads so numerous and so intimately connected with the national history. It has, however, been observed, that their leading characteristic is the zeal with which they inculcate obedience and devotion to princes, and that from this source, even more than from military achievements, they draw their most favourite examples of virtue.¹²²⁷ In literature the first great manifestation of the Spanish mind was the poem of The Cid, written at the end of the twelfth century, in which we find fresh proof of that extraordinary loyalty which circumstances had forced upon the people.¹²²⁸ The ecclesiastical councils display a similar tendency; for, notwithstanding a few exceptions, no other church has been equally eager in upholding the rights of kings.¹²²⁹ In civil legislation, we see the same principle at work; it being asserted, on high authority, that in no system of laws is loyalty carried to such extreme height as in the Spanish codes.¹²³⁰ Even their dramatic writers were unwilling to represent an act of rebellion on the stage, lest they should appear to countenance what, in the eyes of every good Spaniard, was one of the most heinous of all offences.¹²³¹ Whatever the king came in contact with, was in some degree hallowed by his touch. No one might mount a horse which he had ridden;¹²³² no one might marry a mistress whom he had deserted.¹²³³ Horse and mistress alike were sacred, and it would have been impious for any subject to meddle with what had been honoured by the Lord's anointed. Nor were such rules confined to the prince actually reigning. On the contrary, they survived him, and, working with a sort of posthumous force, forbade any woman whom he had taken as a wife, to marry, even after he was dead. She had been chosen by the king; such choice had already raised her above the rest of mortals; and the least she could do was to retire to a convent, and spend her life mourning over her irreparable loss. These regulations were enforced by custom rather than by law.¹²³⁴ They were upheld by the popular will, and were the result of the excessive loyalty of the Spanish nation. Of that loyalty their writers often boast, and with good reason, since it was certainly matchless, and nothing seemed able to shake it. To bad kings and to good kings it equally applied. It was in full strength amid the glory of Spain in the sixteenth century; it was conspicuous when the nation was decaying in the seventeenth century; and it survived the shock of civil wars early in the eighteenth.¹²³⁵ Indeed, the feeling had so worked itself into the traditions of the country, as to become not only a national passion, but almost an article of national faith. Clarendon, in his History of that great English Rebellion, the like of which, as he well knew, could never have happened in Spain, makes on this subject a just and pertinent remark. He says that a want of respect for kings is regarded by the Spaniards as a ‘monstrous crime;’ ‘submissive reverence to their princes being a vital part of their religion.’¹²³⁶