in a situation
very different from that of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in truth, a
part of the empire of Charles the Fifth; and the Court of Rome was, on
many important occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the
distant princes of the North, a strong selfish motive for attacking the
Papacy. In fact, the very measures which provoked the Sovereign of
England to renounce all connection with Rome were dictated by the
Sovereign of Spain. The feeling of the Spanish people concurred with the
interest of the Spanish government. The attachment of the Castilian to
the faith of his ancestors was peculiarly strong and ardent. With that
faith were inseparably bound up the institutions, the independence, and
the glory of his country. Between the day when the last Gothic King was
vanquished on the banks of the Xeres, and the day when Ferdinand and
Isabella entered Granada in triumph, near eight hundred years had
elapsed; and during those years the Spanish nation had been engaged in a
desperate struggle against misbelievers. The Crusades had been merely an
episode in the history of other nations. The existence of Spain had
been one long Crusade. After fighting Mussulmans in the Old World, she
began to fight heathens in the New. It was under the authority of a
papal bull that her children steered into unknown seas. It was under the
standard of the cross that they marched fearlessly into the heart of
great kingdoms. It was with the cry of "St. James for Spain" that they
charged armies which outnumbered them a hundredfold. And men said that
the Saint had heard the call, and had himself, in arms, on a gray
war-horse, led the onset before which the worshippers of false gods had
given way. After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was
sufficiently vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized.
Avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold
mines were sought with equal ardor. In the very year in which the
Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke,
the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of
the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism which, in
the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and
oppression, was in the public mind of Spain associated with liberty,
victory, dominion, wealth, and glory.

It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak of
Protestantism in on