LITMIR.BIZ

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left to the Chapters and to the Convents. It denied the Pope's general claim to the reservation of benefices, and greatly limited its use in special cases. It did away with the Pope's right to act as Ordinary, and insisted that no ecclesiastical cases should be appealed to Rome without first having exhausted the lower courts of jurisdiction. It abolished the Annates, with some exceptions in favour of the present Pope. It also made some attempts to provide the churches with an educated ministry. All these declarations simply carried out the proposals of the Council of Basel; but they had an important influence on the position of the French clergy towards the king. The Pragmatic Sanction, though issued by an assembly of the French clergy, was nevertheless a royal ordinance, and thereby gave the king indefinite rights over the Church within France. The right to elect bishops and abbots was placed in the hands of Chapters and Convents, but the king and nobles were expressly permitted to bring forward and recommend candidates, and this might easily be extended to enforcing the election of those recommended. Indefinite rights of patronage on the part of the king and of the nobles over benefices in France could not fail to be the result, and the French Church could scarcely avoid assuming the appearance of a national Church controlled by the king as the head of the State. The abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction was always a bait which the French king could dangle before the eyes of the Pope, and the promise to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction was always a bribe to secure the support of the clergy and the Parlements of France.

      In 1516, Francis i. and Leo x. agreed on a Concordat, the practical effect of which was that the king received the right to nominate to almost all the higher vacant benefices in France, while the Popes received the Annates. The results were not beneficial to the Church. It left the clergy a prey to papal exactions, and it compelled them to seek for promotion through subserviency to the king and the court; but it had the effect of ranging the monarch on the side of the Papacy when the Reformation came.

      It can scarcely be said that France was a compact nation. The nobility were separated from the middle and lower classes by the fact that all younger sons retained the status and privileges of nobles. In ancient times they had paid no share of the taxes raised for war, on the ground that they rendered personal service, and the privilege of being free from taxation was retained long after the services of a feudal militia had disappeared. The nobility in France became a caste, numerous, poor in many instances, and too proud to belittle themselves by entering any of the professions or engaging in commerce.

      Louis xi. had done his best to encourage trade, and had introduced the silkworm industry into France. But as the whole weight of taxation fell upon the rural districts, the middle classes took refuge in the towns, and the peasantry, between the dues they had to pay to their lords and the taxation for the king, were in an oppressed condition. Their grievances were set forth in the petition they addressed, in the delusive hope of amelioration, to the States-General which assembled on the accession of Charles viii. “During the past thirty-four years,” they say, “troops have been ever passing through France and living on the poor people. When the poor man has managed, by the sale of the coat on his back, and after hard toil, to pay his taille, and hopes he may live out the year on the little he has left, then come fresh troops to his cottage, eating him up. In Normandy, multitudes have died of hunger. From want of cattle, men and women have to yoke themselves to the carts; and others, fearing that if seen in the daytime they will be seized for not having paid their taille, are compelled to work at night. The king should have pity on his poor people, and relieve them from the said tailles and charges.” This was in 1483, before the Italian wars had further increased the burdens which the poorest class of the community had to pay.

      The New Learning had begun to filter into France at a comparatively early date. In 1458 an Italian of Greek descent had been appointed to teach Greek by the University of Paris. But that University had been for long the centre of mediæval scholastic study, and it was not until the Italian campaigns of Charles viii., who was in Italy when the Renaissance was at its height, that France may be said to have welcomed the Humanist movement. A Greek Press was established in Paris in 1507, a group of French Humanists entered upon the study of the authors of classical antiquity, and the new learning gradually displaced the old scholastic disciplines. French Humanists were perhaps the earliest to make a special study of Roman Law, and to win distinction as eminent jurists. Francis, like Henry viii. of England, was welcomed on his accession as a Humanist king. Such was the condition of France in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

§ 5. Spain.

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      Spain had for centuries been under Mohammedan domination. The Moslems had overrun almost the whole country, and throughout its most fertile provinces the Christian peasantry lived under masters of an alien faith. At the beginning of the tenth century the only independent Christian principalities were small states lying along the southern shore of the Bay of Biscay and the south-western slopes of the Pyrenees. The Gothic and Vandal chiefs slowly recovered the northern districts, while the Moors retained the more fertile provinces of the south. The political conditions of the country at the close of the fifteenth century inevitably reflected this gradual reconquest, which had brought the Christian principalities into existence. In 1474, when Isabella (she had been married in 1469 to Ferdinand, the heir to Aragon) succeeded her brother Henry iv. in the sovereignty of Castile, Spain was divided into five separate principalities: Castile, with Leon, containing 62 per cent.; Aragon, with Valentia and Catalonia, containing 15 per cent.; Portugal, containing 20 per cent.; Navarre, containing 1 per cent.; and Granada, the only remaining Moslem State, containing 2 per cent. of the entire surface of the country.

      Castile had grown by almost continuous conquest of lands from the Moslems, and these additions were acquired in many ways. If they had been made in what may be termed a national war, the lands seized became the property of the king, and could be retained by him or granted to his lords spiritual and temporal under varying conditions. In some cases these grants made the possessors almost independent princes. On the other hand, lands might be wrested from the aliens by private adventurers, and in such cases they remained in possession of the conquerors, who formed municipalities which had the right of choosing and of changing their overlords, and really formed independent communities. Then there were, as was natural in a period of continuous warfare, waste lands. These became the property of those who settled on them. Lastly, there were the dangerous frontier lands, which it was the policy of king or great lord who owned them to people with settlers, who could only be induced to undertake the perilous occupation provided they received charters (fueros), which guaranteed their practical independence. In such a condition of things the central authority could not be strong. It was further weakened by the fact that the great feudatories claimed to have both civil administration and military rule over their lands, and assumed an almost regal state. Military religious orders abounded, and were possessed of great wealth. Their Grand Masters, in virtue of their office, were independent military commanders, and had great gifts, in the shape of rich commandries, to bestow on their followers. Their power overshadowed that of the sovereign. The great ecclesiastics, powerful feudal lords in virtue of their lands, claimed the rights of civil administration and military rule like their lay compeers, and, being personally protected by the indefinable sanctity of the priestly character, were even more turbulent. Almost universal anarchy had prevailed during the reigns of the two weak kings who preceded Isabella on the throne of Castile, and the crown lands, the support and special protection of the sovereign, had been alienated by lavish gifts to the great nobles. This was the situation which faced the young queen when she came into her inheritance. It was aggravated by a rebellion on behalf of Juanna, the illegitimate daughter of Henry iv. The rebellion was successfully crushed. The queen and her consort, who was not yet in possession of the throne of Aragon, then tried to give the land security. The previous anarchy had produced its usual results. The country was infested with bands of brigands, and life was not safe outside the walls of the towns. Isabella instituted, or rather revived, the Holy Brotherhood (Hermandad), a force of cavalry raised by the whole country (each group of one hundred houses was bound to provide one horseman). It was an army of mounted police. It had its own judges, who tried criminals on the scene of their crimes, and those convicted were punished by the troops according to the sentences pronounced. Its avowed objects were to put down all crimes

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