Christian Spain, at the time of the death of the pious warrior-king San Fernando, was roughly divided into an eastern and a western half, into the kingdom of Castile (and Leon) and that of Aragon. The fusion of these two halves by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel, two hundred years later, marks the date of the birth of Spain as a nation. It is true, nevertheless, that the people had little or no voice in the arrangement of matters. They were indifferent to what their crowned rulers were doing, and ignorant of the growing power, wealth, and learning of the prelates. All they asked for was individual liberty and permission to pray to the God of their choice. Neither had as yet the spirit of patriotism burned in their breasts, and they were utterly insensible to any and all politics which concerned the peninsula as a unity. But the Church-state had successfully evolutionized, and Catholic kings sat on the only available throne. The last Moor had been driven from the peninsula, the Jews had been expelled from the Catholic kingdom, and the Inquisition--now that the Church could no longer direct its energy against the infidel--strengthened the Pope's hold on the land and increased the importance and magnificence of the prelates themselves. * * * * * A word as to heresy (the Reformation) and the Inquisition. The latter was not directed against the former, for it would have been impossible for the people to accept the reformed faith in the fifteenth century. For the Spaniard the charm of the Christian religion was that it placed him on an equal footing with all men; hence, it flattered his love of personal liberty and his self-consciousness or pride. The charm of Catholicism was that it enabled him to adore a local deity in the shape of a martyred saint; thus, it flattered his vanity as a clansman, and his spirit of individualism. It was not so much the God of Christianity he worshipped as Our Lady of the Pillar, Our Lady of Sorrows, of the Camino, etc., and he obeyed less readily the archbishop than the custodian priest of his particular saint, of whom he declared "that he could humiliate all other saints." Consequently Protestantism, which tended to kill this local worship by upholding that of a collective deity, could never have taken a serious hold of the country, and it is doubtful if it ever will. On the other hand--as previously remarked--the Spanish Inquisition helped to centralize the Church's power and obliged the people to accept its decisions as final. The effect of Torquemada's policy is still to be felt in Spain--could it be otherwise? * * * * *