History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 1 | Page 7

of
the Prerogative.
For several hundred years after the great Saracen invasion in the
beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of

small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in
deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited by races, the most
dissimilar in their origin, religion, and government, the least important
of which has exerted a sensible influence on the character and
institutions of its present inhabitants. At the close of the fifteenth
century, these various races were blended into one great nation, under
one common rule. Its territorial limits were widely extended by
discovery and conquest. Its domestic institutions, and even its literature,
were moulded into the form, which, to a considerable extent, they have
maintained to the present day. It is the object of the present narrative to
exhibit the period in which these momentous results were effected,--the
reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the number of states, into which
the country had been divided, was reduced to four; Castile, Aragon,
Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada. The last, comprised
within nearly the same limits as the modern province of that name, was
all that remained to the Moslems of their once vast possessions in the
Peninsula. Its concentrated population gave it a degree of strength
altogether disproportioned to the extent of its territory; and the profuse
magnificence of its court, which rivalled that of the ancient caliphs, was
supported by the labors of a sober, industrious people, under whom
agriculture and several of the mechanic arts had reached a degree of
excellence, probably unequalled in any other part of Europe during the
Middle Ages.
The little kingdom of Navarre, embosomed within the Pyrenees, had
often attracted the avarice of neighboring and more powerful states. But,
since their selfish schemes operated as a mutual check upon each other,
Navarre still continued to maintain her independence, when all the
smaller states in the Peninsula had been absorbed in the gradually
increasing dominion of Castile and Aragon.
This latter kingdom comprehended the province of that name, together
with Catalonia and Valencia. Under its auspicious climate and free
political institutions, its inhabitants displayed an uncommon share of
intellectual and moral energy. Its long line of coast opened the way to
an extensive and flourishing commerce; and its enterprising navy
indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home, by the
important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and the

Balearic Isles.
The remaining provinces of Leon, Biscay, the Asturias, Galicia, Old
and New Castile, Estremadura, Murcia, and Andalusia, fell to the
crown of Castile, which, thus extending its sway over an unbroken line
of country from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, seemed by the
magnitude, of its territory, as well as by its antiquity, (for it was there
that the old Gothic monarchy may be said to have first revived after the
great Saracen invasion,) to be entitled to a pre-eminence over the other
states of the Peninsula. This claim, indeed, appears to have been
recognized at an early period of her history. Aragon did homage to
Castile for her territory on the western bank of the Ebro, until the
twelfth century, as did Navarre, Portugal, and, at a later period, the
Moorish kingdom of Granada. [1] And, when at length the various
states of Spain were consolidated into one monarchy, the capital of
Castile became the capital of the new empire, and her language the
language of the court and of literature.
It will facilitate our inquiry into the circumstances which immediately
led to these results, if we briefly glance at the prominent features in the
early history and constitution of the two principal Christian states,
Castile and Aragon, previous to the fifteenth century. [2]
The Visigoths who overran the Peninsula, in the fifth century, brought
with them the same liberal principles of government which
distinguished their Teutonic brethren. Their crown was declared
elective by a formal legislative act. [3] Laws were enacted in the great
national councils, composed of prelates and nobility, and not
unfrequently ratified in an assembly of the people. Their code of
jurisprudence, although abounding in frivolous detail, contained many
admirable provisions for the security of justice; and, in the degree of
civil liberty which it accorded to the Roman inhabitants of the country,
far transcended those of most of the other barbarians of the north. [4] In
short, their simple polity exhibited the germ of some of those
institutions, which, with other nations, and under happier auspices,
have formed the basis of a well-regulated constitutional liberty. [5]
But, while in other countries the principles of a free government were
slowly and gradually unfolded, their development was much
accelerated in Spain by an event, which, at the time,