The fame of the Inquisition in the Spanish peninsula has been so great that it has almost wholly eclipsed its fame anywhere else in Europe, and its history has been in every way peculiar. It acquired an altogether unique position there; enjoyed an extraordinary prestige and unexampled success. It earned an undying notoriety. It became, as nowhere else in Europe, a national institution, closely identified with the monarchy, but also popular, a possession of which the people were proud. It was a terror to the foreigner; it made the name of Spaniard feared all over the world. It had played a great part in welding the Peninsula together, in driving out alien elements, producing national homogeneity. It played, then, a large part in Spanish history, and obtained a very marked influence on the national mind and character. But the Inquisition which is so famous or infamous in Spain was the creation of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was a quite distinctive institution, much more monarchical than papal, and it was not directly the offspring of the tribunals that had existed in the Peninsula in the Middle Ages. The most remarkable fact concerning the Spanish Inquisition is that this country in which the Inquisition most abundantly flourished, the country which won for itself easy pre-eminence for its close fidelity to the Church, its zealous and implacable intolerance of any sort of dissent, was originally equally pre-eminent for its tolerance. The ardour of persecution in Spain was not due to something ingrained in the national character; it was to a very large extent the offspring of the methods pursued by the Holy Office; and the deep implanting of the Holy Office was due to deliberate policy on the part of the Spanish monarchy from the days of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella.[348] In the Middle Ages the civilization of Spain was very largely Saracen. From such sources south of the Pyrenees came that distinctive culture of Languedoc, out of which heresy had so luxuriantly sprung. From a non-Christian people came the philosophy, the mediæval, astronomical, botanical knowledge, the art and fancy and the industrial skill and trading enterprise of the country. Moreover Jew and Christian met and did business together. So long as such intermingling of different races, religions, civilizations continued the soil was not favourable to the success of such an institution as the Holy Office. Heterogeneity is productive of tolerance. The Inquisition’s day could only come with the determination to drive out the other elements and to make the Peninsula European in race, Christian in religion and ideas. The success of that policy had to wait for the union of the two crowns of Aragon and Castile. Prior to that, the Inquisition obtained success in Aragon only, being unknown in Castile and Leon, while in Portugal, though there were inquisitors in the country from 1576 onwards, they appear to have been singularly inactive.