While Her Most Catholic Majesty was issuing edicts of this kind relating to the material affairs of life, it must not be supposed that she was in any way neglecting the humanities, for the truth is quite the contrary. Never before had such encouragement been given to learning by a Spanish sovereign, and never before had there been so little jealousy of foreigners in the matter of scholarship. Isabella was the leader in this broad movement, and from all parts of Europe she summoned distinguished men in science and literature, who were installed at her court in positions of honor or were given chairs in the universities. The final expulsion of the Moors had brought about an era of peace and quiet which was much needed, as Spain had been rent by so much warfare and domestic strife, and for so many years, that the more solid attainments in literature had been much neglected, and the Spanish nobles were covered with but a polite veneer of worldly information and knowledge which too often cracked and showed the rough beneath. Isabella endeavored to change this state of affairs, and by her own studies, and by her manifest interest in the work of the schools, she soon succeeded in placing learning in a position of high esteem, even among the nobles, who did not need it for their advancement in the world. Paul Jove wrote: "No Spaniard was accounted noble who was indifferent to learning;" and so great was the queen's influence, that more than one scion of a noble house was glad to enter upon a scholarly career and hold a university appointment. It may well be imagined that in all this new intellectual movement which was stimulated by Isabella, it was the sober side of literature and of scholarship which was encouraged, as a light and vain thing such as lyric poetry would have been as much out of place in the court of the firm defender of the Catholic faith as the traditional bull in the traditional china shop. Isabella, under priestly influences, favored and furthered the revival of interest in the study of Greek and Latin, and it is in this realm of classical study that the scholars of the time were celebrated.