, and the sensation it
excited throughout Europe, altogether the most remarkable on the records
of the Inquisition.[457] Our sympathy for the archbishop's sufferings
may be reasonably mitigated by the reflection, that he did but receive
the measure which he had meted out to others.

While the persecution of Carranza was going on, the fires lighted for
the Protestants continued to burn with fury in all parts of the country,
until at length they gradually slackened and died away, from mere want
of fuel to feed them. The year 1570 may be regarded as the period of the
last _auto da fe_ in which the Lutherans played a conspicuous part. The
subsequent celebrations were devoted chiefly to relapsed Jews and
Mahometans; and if a Protestant heretic was sometimes added to this
list, it was "but as the gleaning of grapes after the vintage is
done."[458]

Never was there a persecution which did its work more thoroughly. The
blood of the martyr is commonly said to be the seed of the church. But
the storm of persecution fell as heavily on the Spanish Protestants as
it did on the Albigenses in the thirteenth century; blighting every
living thing, so that no germ remained for future harvests. Spain might
now boast that the stain of heresy no longer defiled the hem of her
garment. But at what a price was this purchased! Not merely by the
sacrifice of the lives and fortunes of a few thousands of the existing
generation but by the disastrous consequences entailed for ever on the
country. Folded under the dark wing of the Inquisition, Spain was shut
out from the light which in the sixteenth century broke over the rest of
Europe, stimulating the nations to greater enterprise in every
department of knowledge. The genius of the people was rebuked, and their
spirit quenched, under the malignant influence of an eye that never
slumbered, of an unseen arm ever raised to strike. How could there be
freedom of thought, where there was no freedom of utterance? Or freedom
of utterance, where it was as dangerous to say too little as too much?
Freedom cannot go along with fear. Every way the mind of the Spaniard
was in fetters.

His moral sense was miserably perverted. Men were judged, not by their
practice, but by their professions. Creed became a substitute for
conduct. Difference of faith made a wider gulf of separation than
difference of race, language, or even interest. Spain no longer formed
one of the great brotherhood of Christian nations. An