The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
World history
The Moors and the Moriscoes no less occupied the attention of the
Inquisition at that time; and all that has been said on the subject of
the Jews may be applied to them with some modifications. They were
also an abhorred race--a race which had been contended with for eight
centuries. When they retained their religion, the Moors inspired hatred;
when they abjured it, mistrust; the popes interested themselves in their
favor also in a peculiar manner. We ought to remark a bull issued in
1530, which is expressed in language quite evangelical: it is there said
that the ignorance of these nations is one of the principal causes of
their faults and errors; the first thing to be done to render their
conversion solid and sincere was, according to the recommendation
contained in this bull, to endeavor to enlighten their minds with sound
doctrine.
It will be said that the Pope granted to Charles V the bull which
released him from the oath taken in the Cortes of Saragossa in the year
1519, an oath by which he had engaged not to make any change with respect
to the Moors; whereby, it is said, the Emperor was enabled to complete
their expulsion. But we must observe that the Pope for a long time
resisted that concession; and that if he at length complied with the
wishes of the Emperor, it was only because he thought that the expulsion
of the Moors was indispensable to secure the tranquillity of the kingdom.
Whether this was true or not, the Emperor, and not the Pope, was the
better judge; the latter, placed at a great distance, could not know the
real state of things in detail. Moreover, it was not the Spanish monarch
alone who thought so; it is related that Francis I, when a prisoner at
Madrid, one day conversing with Charles V, told him that tranquillity
would never be established in Spain if the Moors and Moriscoes were not
expelled.
MURDER OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER
A.D. 1483
JAMES GAIRDNER
The brief reign of Richard III, 1483-1485, left for historians one
subject of dispute which even to our own day has not been finally
determined--his alleged murder of his nephews, King Edward V and Richard,
Duke of York, sons of Edward IV. These princes at the supposed time of
their death were about thirteen and nine years of age respectively.
Before his usurpation Richard III, last of the Plantagenet line, was
known as the Duke of Gloucester. He served in the Wars of the Roses, and
on the death of Edward IV, April, 1483, he seized the young Edward V and
caused himself to be proclaimed protector. He then caused his parliament
to set the two princes aside as illegitimate, and they were imprisoned
in the Tower of London. On June 26, 1483, Richard assumed the crown, and
soon after the death of the princes was publicly announced.
In Gairdner's discussion we have the results of the best historical
inquiries concerning this most important question of Richard's career.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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