e referred to Rome from the king's
courts, and the pope took upon himself to appoint to benefices and
bishoprics; a usurpation which was countenanced by Alfonso X.
(1252-1284).[1] But this result was not attained without remonstrances
from the Cortes, and finally, under Ferdinand and Isabella, the question
came to an open rupture between the Spanish Court and the reigning pope,
Sixtus IV. Isabella, though so ready to submit herself in matters of
personal religion to the pope and his legates, refused, like her later
namesake of England, to bate one jot of her ecclesiastical rights; and
the pope had to give way, contenting himself with the barren power of
appointing those nominated by the sovereigns of the land. But if the
sovereign was jealous of his rights, no less so were the barons of
theirs, and when in the war of the barons with Henry IV. (1454-1474),
the papal legate threw his influence on to the king's side, and
excommunicated the rebellious barons, they firmly answered that "those
who had advised the pope that he had a right to interfere in the
temporal concerns of Castile had deceived him; and that they, the barons
of the kingdom, had a perfect right to depose their sovereign on
sufficient grounds, and meant to exercise it."[2]

A similarly independent spirit shewed itself in Aragon. In 1213 Pedro
II. died fighting against the papal persecutor of the Albigensians, and
down to the time of Charles V., the princes of Aragon were at open
enmity with the Roman See,[3] and the Aragonese strenuously resisted the
establishment of the Inquisition.[4]

[1] Prescott, "Ferd. and Isab.," p. 15.

[2] Prescott, p. 72. Cp. the charter of Aragon, whereby the
king, if he violated the charter of the realm, might be
deposed, and any other _Pagan_ or Christian substituted.
_Ibid_, p. 23.

[3] Lockhart, Introduction to Spanish ballads, p. 9. (Chandos
Classics.)

[4] Prescott, "Ferd. and Isab.," p. 26, n.

That fatal instrument of religious bigotry, the cause of more unmerited
suffering and more unmixed evil than any other devised by man, whereby
more innocent people passed through the fire than were perhaps ever
sacrificed at the altar of Moloch, was first put into action in
September 1480, during the reign of the pious and noble-minded
Isabella.[1] The festival of Epiphany in the following year was selected
as an appropriate date for the manifestation of the first auto da fe,
when six Jews wer