cause. Originality was discouraged, the
people to some degree unfitted for the free debate that is at the
bottom of self-government, the hope of tolerance blighted, and the path
opened that led to religious wars.

[1] Matthew xiii, 28-30.

{425}

CHAPTER IX

THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE

SECTION 1. SPAIN

[Sidenote: Reformation, Renaissance and Exploration]

If, through the prism of history, we analyse the white light of
sixteenth-century civilization into its component parts, three colors
particularly emerge: the azure "light of the Gospel" as the Reformers
fondly called it in Germany, the golden beam of the Renaissance in
Italy, and the blood-red flame of exploration and conquest irradiating
the Iberian peninsula. Which of the three contributed most to modern
culture it is hard to decide. Each of the movements started
separately, gradually spreading until it came into contact, and thus
into competition and final blending with the other movements. It was
the middle lands, France, England and the Netherlands that, feeling the
impulses from all sides, evolved the sanest and strongest synthesis.
While Germany almost committed suicide with the sword of the spirit,
while Italy sank into a voluptuous torpor of decadent art, while Spain
reeled under the load of unearned Western wealth, France, England
and Holland, taking a little from each of their neighbors, and not
too much from any, became strong, well-balanced, brilliant states.
But if eventually Germany, Italy and Spain all suffered from
over-specialization, for the moment the stimulus of new ideas and new
possibilities gave to each a sort of leadership in its own sphere.
While Germany and Italy were busy winning the realms of the spirit and
of the mind, Spain very nearly conquered the empire of the land and of
the sea.

{426} [Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1479-1516 and Isabella, 1474-1504]

The foundation of her national greatness, like that of the greatness of
so many other powers, was laid in the union of the various states into
which she was at one time divided. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castile was followed by a series of measures that put
Spain into the leading position in Europe, expelled the alien racial
and religious elements of her population, and secured to her a vast
colonial empire. The conquest of Granada from the Moors, the
acquisition of Cerdagne and Roussillon from the French, and the
an