antheism in reading the Spanish mystics; they show no tendency to
obliterate the dividing lines of personality, or to deify sinful
humanity. The cause of this peculiarity is to be sought partly in the
strong individualism of the Spanish character, and partly in external
circumstances.[285] Free thought in Spain was so sternly repressed,
that those tendencies of mystical religion which are antagonistic to
Catholic discipline were never allowed to display themselves. The
Spanish mystics remained orthodox Romanists, subservient to their
"directors" and "superiors," and indefatigable in making recruits for
the cloister. Even so, they did not escape the attention of the
Inquisition; and though two among them, St. Teresa and St. Juan of the
Cross, were awarded the badge of sanctity, the fate of Molinos showed
how Rome had come to dread even the most submissive mystics.

The early part of the sixteenth century was a period of high culture
in Spain. The universities of Salamanca and Alcala were famous
throughout Europe; the former is said (doubtless with great
exaggeration) to have contained at one time fourteen thousand
students. But the Inquisition, which had been founded to suppress Jews
and Mahometans, was roused to a more baneful activity by the
appearance of Protestantism in Spain. Before the end of the sixteenth
century, the Spanish people, who up to that time had been second to
none in love of liberty and many-sided energy, had been changed into
sombre fanatics, sunk in ignorance and superstition, and retaining
hardly a trace of their former buoyancy and healthy independence.[286]
The first _Index Expurgatorius_ was published in 1546; the burning of
Protestants began in 1559. Till then, Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and
Ruysbroek had circulated freely in Spain. But the Inquisition
condemned them all, except Ruysbroek. The same rigour was extended to
the Arabian philosophers, and so their speculations influenced Spanish
theology much less than might have been expected from the long sojourn
of the Moors in the Peninsula. Averroism was known in Spain chiefly
through the medium of the _Fons Vitae_ of Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron).
Dionysius and the scholastic mystics of the Middle Ages were, of
course, allowed to be read. But besides these, the works of Plato and
Plotinus were accessible in Latin translations, and were highly valued
by some of the Spanish mystics. This statement may surprise those who
have identified Spanish Mysticism w