* *

A word as to heresy (the Reformation) and the Inquisition. The latter
was not directed against the former, for it would have been impossible
for the people to accept the reformed faith in the fifteenth century.
For the Spaniard the charm of the Christian religion was that it placed
him on an equal footing with all men; hence, it flattered his love of
personal liberty and his self-consciousness or pride. The charm of
Catholicism was that it enabled him to adore a local deity in the shape
of a martyred saint; thus, it flattered his vanity as a clansman, and
his spirit of individualism.

It was not so much the God of Christianity he worshipped as Our Lady of
the Pillar, Our Lady of Sorrows, of the Camino, etc., and he obeyed less
readily the archbishop than the custodian priest of his particular
saint, of whom he declared "that he could humiliate all other saints."

Consequently Protestantism, which tended to kill this local worship by
upholding that of a collective deity, could never have taken a serious
hold of the country, and it is doubtful if it ever will.

On the other hand--as previously remarked--the Spanish Inquisition
helped to centralize the Church's power and obliged the people to accept
its decisions as final. The effect of Torquemada's policy is still to be
felt in Spain--could it be otherwise?

* * * * *

Had successive events in this stage of Spain's history followed a normal
course, and had the education of the people been fostered by the state
instead of being cursed by the Church, it is more than probable that the
map of Europe would have been different to-day from what it is. For the
Spanish people would have learnt to think as patriots, as a nation; they
would have developed their country's rich soil and thickly populated
the vast _vegas_; they would have taken the offensive against foreign
nations, and would have chased and battled the Moor beyond the Straits
of Gibraltar.

It was not to be, however. An abnormal event was to take place--and did
take place--which repeated in fair Iberia the retrograde movement
initiated by the Arab invasion 750 years earlier.

A foreigner was again the cause of this new phenomenon, a harebrained
Genoese navigator whom the world calls a genius because he was
successful, but who was an evil genius for the new-born Spanish nation,
one who was to load his adopted country with unparalleled fame and glory
before causi