idation. Ferdinand of Aragon
married Isabella of Castile, drove out the Moors, and founded the
modern Spanish kingdom. Maximilian married Mary, the daughter of
Charles the Bold, and joined the Netherlands to Austria. United France
found herself face to face with other united States, and the political
system of modern Europe was roughly sketched out. The boundaries of
the various kingdoms were fluctuating. There still remained minor
principalities and powers, chiefly in Italy and Germany, which offered
an easy prey to their ambitious neighbours; for both nations had (p. 031)
sacrificed internal unity to the shadow of universal dominion, Germany
in temporal, and Italy in spiritual, things. Mutual jealousy of each
other's growth at the expense of these States gave rise to the theory
of the balance of power; mutual adjustment of each other's disputes
produced international law; and the necessity of watching each other's
designs begat modern diplomacy.[65]

[Footnote 65: _Cf._ A.O. Meyer, _Die Englische
Diplomatie_, Breslau, 1901.]

Parallel with these developments in the relations between one State
and another marched a no less momentous revolution in the domestic
position of their sovereigns. National expansion abroad was marked by
a corresponding growth in royal authority at home. The process was not
new in England; every step in the path of the tribal chief of Saxon
pirates to the throne of a united England denoted an advance in the
nature of kingly power. Each extension of his sway intensified his
authority, and his power grew in degree as it increased in area. So
with fifteenth-century sovereigns. Local liberties and feudal rights
which had checked a Duke of Brittany or a King of Aragon were
powerless to restrain the King of France or of Spain. The sphere of
royal authority encroached upon all others; all functions and all
powers tended to concentrate in royal hands. The king was the emblem
of national unity, the centre of national aspirations, and the object
of national reverence. The Renaissance gave fresh impetus to the
movement. Men turned not only to the theology, literature, and art of
the early Christian era; they began to study anew its political
organisation and its system of law and jurisprudence. The code of
Justinian was as much a revelation as the original Greek of the (p. 032)
New Testament. Roman imperial law seemed as superior to the barbarities
of common law