, Mendoza, Tavera,
and Lorenzana.

From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries Castile was far less bigoted
than other European nations, for, of all the daughters of the Mother
Church, Spain was the most independent. Her kings and her primate were
naturally her champions, ever ready and defiant. King James I even went
so far as to cut out the tongue of a too meddlesome bishop. From early
Gothic days to the time when Ferdinand began to dream of Spain as a
power beyond the Iberian Peninsula, no kingdom in Europe was less
disposed to brook the interference of the Pope. Ferdinand and Isabella
thwarted him in insisting upon their right to appoint their own
candidates for the high offices of the Spanish church, and the Pope was
obliged to give way.

The figure we constantly encounter in the thrilling tilts between Rome
and Spanish prelates is the Archbishop of Toledo. Like Richelieu and
Wolsey, Ximenez and Mendoza towered above their time, and their great
spirits still seem present within their church. Ximenez, better known in
English as Cardinal Cisneros, rose to his high office much against his
will from the obscurity of a humble monk. The peremptory orders of the
Pope were necessary to make him leave his cell and become successively
Archbishop of Toledo, Grand Chancellor of Castile, Inquisitor General,
Cardinal, Confessor to Queen Isabella, Minister of Ferdinand the
Catholic, and Regent of the Kingdom of Charles V. He was "an austere
priest, a profound politician, a powerful intellect, a will of iron, and
an inflexible and unconquerable soul; one of the greatest figures in
modern history; one of the loftiest types of the Spanish character.
Notwithstanding the greatness thrust upon him, he preserved the austere
practices of the simple monk. Under a robe of silk and purple, he wore
the hard shirt and frock of St. Francis. In his apartments, embellished
with costly hangings, he slept on the floor, with only a log of wood for
his pillow. Ferdinand owed to him that he preserved Castile, and Charles
V, that he became King of Spain. He did not boast when, pointing to the
Cordon of St. Francis, he explained, 'It is with this I bridle the pride
of the aristocracy of Castile.'"[10]

History may accuse him of the unpardonable expulsion of the Moriscos,
and the retention of the Inquisition as well as its introduction into
the New World,--but what he did was done from the strength of his
convictions and according to what, in the light