A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
In Spain, meantime, there was no recovery from the paralysis wrought
by the combined tyranny of Church and Crown, incarnate in the
Inquisition. The monstrous multiplication of her clergy might alone
have sufficed to set up stagnation in her mental life; but, not content
with the turning of a vast multitude [170] of men and women away from
the ordinary work of life, her rulers set themselves to expatriate
as many more on the score of heresy. A century after the expulsion
of the Jews came the turn of the Moors, whose last hold in Spain,
Granada, had been overthrown in 1492. Within a generation they had been
deprived of all exterior practice of their religion; [171] but that
did not suffice, and the Inquisition never left them alone. Harried,
persecuted, compulsorily baptized, deprived of their Arabic books,
they repeatedly revolted, only to be beaten down. At length, in the
opening years of the seventeenth century (1610-1613), under Philip III,
on the score that the great Armada had failed because heretics were
tolerated at home, it was decided to expel the whole race; and now a
million Moriscoes, among the most industrious inhabitants of Spain,
were driven the way of the Jews. It is needless here to recall the
ruinous effect upon the material life of Spain: [172] the aspect
of the matter which specially concerns us is the consummation of
the policy of killing out all intellectual variation. The Moriscoes
may have counted for little in positive culture; but they were one
of the last and most important factors of variation in the country;
and when Spain was thus successively denuded of precisely the most
original and energetic types among the Jewish, the Spanish, and the
Moorish stocks, her mental arrest was complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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