ll with
the obligation of liberality, and who gives so much, it is necessary
that he should possess much; for nothing is so suitable for a prince as
possessions and riches for his gifts and liberalities, as Tully says, as
well as to acquire glory. For it is certain, as we read in Sallust that
"in a vast empire there is great glory[15]"; and in how much it is
greater, in so much it treats of great things. Hence the glory of a king
consists in his possessing many vassals, and the abatement of his glory
is caused by the diminution of the number of his subjects.

[Note 15: Proem of Catiline.]

Of this glory, most Christian king, God Almighty gives you so large a
share in this life that all the enemies of the holy catholic church of
Christ our Lord tremble at your exalted name; whence you most justly
deserve to be named the strength of the church. As the treasure which
God granted that your ancestors should spend, with such holy
magnanimity, on worthy and holy deeds, in the extirpation of heretics,
in driving the accursed Saracens out of Spain, in building churches,
hospitals and monasteries, and in an infinite number of other works of
charity and justice, with the zeal of zealous fathers of their country,
not only entitled them to the most holy title of catholics, but the most
merciful and almighty God, whom they served with all their hearts, saw
fit to commence repayment with temporal goods, in the present age. It is
certain that "He who grants celestial rewards does not take away
temporal blessings[16]," so that they earned more than the mercies they
received. This was the grant to them of the evangelical office, choosing
them from among all the kings of this world as the evangelizers of his
divine word in the most remote and unknown lands of those blind and
barbarous gentiles. We now call those lands the Indies of Castille,
because through the ministry of that kingdom they will be put in the way
of salvation, God himself being the true pilot. He made clear and easy
the dark and fearful Atlantic sea which had been an awful portent to the
most ancient Argives, Athenians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and what is
more to the proud Hercules, who, having come to Cadiz from the east, and
seen the wide Atlantic sea, he thought this was the end of the world and
that there was no more land. So he set up his columns with this
inscription "Ultra Gades nil" or "Beyond Cadiz there is nothing." But as
human knowledge is ignorance in th