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witness of the beneficial changes in the government. Opus Epistolarum, (Amstelodami, 1670,) ep. 31.

      [18] Prieto y Sotelo, Historia del Derecho Real de España, (Madrid, 1738,) lib. 3, cap. 16–21.—Marina has made an elaborate commentary on Alfonso's celebrated code, in his Ensayo Histórico-Crítico sobre la Antigua Legislacion de Castilla, (Madrid, 1808,) pp. 269 et seq. The English reader will find a more succinct analysis in Dr. Dunham's History of Spain and Portugal, (London, 1832,) in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, vol. iv. pp. 121- 150.—The latter has given a more exact, and, at the same time, extended view of the early Castilian legislation, probably, than is to be found, in the same compass, in any of the Peninsular writers.

      [19] Marina (in his Ensayo Histórico-Crítico, p. 388) quotes a popular satire of the fifteenth century, directed, with considerable humor, against these abuses, which lead the writer in the last stanza to envy even the summary style of Mahometan justice.

      "En tierra de Moros un solo alcalde

       Libra lo cevil e lo criminal,

       E todo el dia se esta de valde

       For la justicia andar muy igual:

       Alli non es Azo, nin es Decretal,

       Nin es Roberto, nin la Clementina,

       Salvo discrecion e buena doctrina,

       La qual muestra a todos vevir communal." p. 389.

      [20] Mendez enumerates no less than five editions of this code, by 1500; a sufficient evidence of its authority, and general reception throughout Castile. Typographia Española, pp. 203, 261, 270.

      [21] Ordenanças Reales, Prólogo.—Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 9.—Marina, Ensayo Histórico-Crítico, pp. 390 et seq.—Mendez, Typographia Española, p. 261.—The authors of the three last-mentioned works abundantly disprove Asso y Manuel's insinuation, that Montalavo's code was the fruit of his private study, without any commission for it, and that it gradually usurped an authority which it had not in its origin. (Discurso Preliminar al Ord. de Alcalá.) The injustice of the last remark, indeed, is apparent from the positive declaration of Bernaldez. "Los Reyes mandaron tener en todas las ciudades, villas é lugares el libro de Montalvo, é por él determinar todas las cosas de justícia para cortar los pléitos." Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 42.

      [22] Ordenanças Reales, lib. 7, tit. 2, ley 13.

      [23] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 44.—Sempere notices this feature of the royal policy. Hist. des Cortès, chap. 24.

      [24] Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 80.

      [25] See the emphatic language, on this and other grievances, of the Castilian commons, in their memorial to the sovereigns, Apendice, No. 10, of Clemencin's valuable compilation. The commons had pressed the measure, as one of the last necessity to the crown, as early as the cortes of Madrigal, in 1476. The reader will find the whole petition extracted by Marina, Teoría, tom. ii. cap. 5.

      [26] Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, cap. 51.—Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 5.—Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part. 2, cap. 95.—Ordenanças Reales, lib. 6, tit. 4, ley 26;—incorporated also into the Recopilacion of Philip II., lib. 5, tit. 10, cap. 17. See also leyes 3 and 15.

      [27] Admiral Enriquez, for instance, resigned 240,000 maravedies of his annual income;—the Duke of Alva, 575,000;—the Duke of Medina Sidonia, 180,000.—The loyal family of the Mendozas were also great losers, but none forfeited so much as the overgrown favorite of Henry IV., Beltran de la Cueva, duke of Albuquerque, who had uniformly supported the royal cause, and whose retrenchment amounted to 1,400,000 maravedies of yearly rent. See the scale of reduction given at length by Señor Clemencin, in Mem. de la Acad., tom. vi. loc. cit.

      [28] "No monarch," said the high-minded queen, "should consent to alienate his demesnes; since the loss of revenue necessarily deprives him of the best means of rewarding the attachment of his friends, and of making himself feared by his enemies." Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part. 1, cap. 4.

      [29] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, ubi supra.—Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. loc. cit.

      [30] Ordenanças Reales, lib. 2, tit. 1, ley 2; lib. 4, tit. 9, ley 11.— Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part. 2, cap. 96, 101.—Recop. de las Leyes, lib. 8, tit. 8, ley 10 et al.—These affairs were conducted in the true spirit of knight-errantry. Oviedo mentions one, in which two young men of the noble houses of Velasco and Ponce de Leon agreed to fight on horseback, with sharp spears (puntas de diamantes), in doublet and hose, without defensive armor of any kind. The place appointed for the combat was a narrow bridge across the Xarama, three leagues from Madrid. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 23.

      [31] Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vii. pp. 487, 488.

      [32] Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 80.—Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part. 2, cap. 100.

      [33] For example, at the great cortes of Toledo, in 1480, it does not appear that any of the nobility were summoned, except those in immediate attendance on the court, until the measure for the resumption of the grants, which so nearly affected that body, was brought before the legislature.

      [34] Conde gives the following account of these chivalric associations among the Spanish Arabs, which, as far as I know, have hitherto escaped the notice of European historians. "The Moslem fronteros professed great austerity in their lives, which they consecrated to perpetual war, and bound themselves by a solemn vow to defend the frontier against the incursions of the Christians. They were choice cavaliers, possessed of consummate patience, and enduring fatigue, and always prepared to die rather than desert their posts. It appears highly probable that the Moorish fraternities suggested the idea of those military orders so renowned for their valor in Spain and in Palestine, which rendered such essential services to Christendom; for both the institutions were established on similar principles." Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes en España, (Madrid, 1820,) tom. i. p. 619, not.

      [35] See the details, given by Mariana, of the overgrown possessions of the Templars in Castile at the period of their extinction, in the beginning of the fourteenth century. (Hist. de España, lib. 15, cap. 10.) The knights of the Temple and the Hospitallers seem to have acquired still greater power in Aragon, where one of the monarchs was so infatuated as to bequeath them his whole dominions—a bequest which, it may well be believed, was set aside by his high-spirited subjects. Zurita, Anales, lib. 1, cap. 52.

      [36] The apparition of certain preternatural lights in a forest, discovered to a Galician peasant, in the beginning of the ninth century, the spot, in which was deposited a marble sepulchre containing the ashes of St. James. The miracle is reported with sufficient circumstantiality by Florez, (Historia Compostellana, lib. 1, cap. 2, apud España Sagrada, tom. xx.) and Ambrosio de Morales, (Corónica General de España, (Obras, Madrid, 1791–3,) lib. 9, cap. 7,) who establishes, to his own satisfaction, the advent of St. James into Spain. Mariana, with more skepticism than his brethren, doubts the genuineness of the body, as well as the visit of the Apostle, but like a good Jesuit concludes, "It is not expedient to disturb with such disputes the devotion of the people, so firmly settled as it is." (Lib. 7, cap. 10.) The tutelar saint of Spain continued to support his people by taking part with them in battle against the infidel down to a very late period. Caro de Torres mentions two engagements in which he cheered on the squadrons of Cortes and Pizarro, "with his sword flashing lightning in the eyes of the Indians." Ordenes Militares, fol. 5.

      [37] Rades y Andrada, Las Tres Ordenes, fol. 3–15.—Caro de Torres, Ordenes Militares, fol. 2–8.—Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. pp. 116–118.

      [38] Rades y Andrada, Las Tres Ordenes, part. 2, fol. 3–9, 49.—Caro de Torres, Ordenes Militares, fol. 49, 50.—Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. pp. 100–104.

      [39] Rades y Andrada, Las Tres Ordenes, part. 3, fol. 1–6.—The knights of Alcantara wore a white mantle, embroidered with a green cross.

      [40] Rades y Andrada, Las Tres Ordenes, part. 1, fol. 12–15, 43, 54, 61, 64, 66, 67; part. 2, fol. 11, 51; part. 3, fol. 42, 49, 50.—Caro de Torres, Ordenes Militares, passim.—L. Marineo,

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