Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/84

lxvi Ixvi INTRODUCTION. iNTROD^ witness, and the reader may fancy himself perusing the adventures of a Launcelot or an Amadis.^^ ■he clergy. The iufluence of the ecclesiastics in Spain may be traced back to the age of the Visigoths, when they controlled the affairs of the state in the great national councils of Toledo. This influence was maintained by the extraordinary position of the nation after the conquest. The holy warfare, in which it was embarked, seemed to require the cooperation of the clergy, to propitiate Heaven in its behalf, to interpret its mysterious omens, and to move all the machinery of miracles, by which the imagination is so powerfully affected in a rude and superstitious age. They even condescended, in imitation of their patron saint, to mingle in the ranks, and, with the crucifix in their hands, to lead the soldiers on to battle. Examples of these mili- tant prelates are to be found in Spain, so late as the sixteenth century. '^'^ But, while the native ecclesiastics obtained such complete ascendency over the popular mind, the Roman See could boast of less influence in Spain than in any other country in Europe. The Gothic liturgy was alone received as canonical until the Influence of llie papal cuuri. "3 See the " Passo Honroso" appended to the Cronica de Alvaro de Luna. "^^ The present narrative will in- troduce the reader to more than one bellitjercnt prelate, who filled the very highest post in the Span- ish, and, I may say, the Christian church, next the papacy. (See Alvaro Gomez, De llebus Gcstis a Francisco XimenioCisnerio, (Com- plnti, 1569,) fol. 110 et seq.) The practice, indeed, was familiar in other countries, as well as Spain, at this late period. In the bloody battle of Eavenna, in 1512, two cardinal legates, one of them the future Leo X., foupht on opposite sides. Paolo Giovio, Vita Leonis X., apud " A'itce Illustrium A'iro- rum," (Basilice, 1578,) lib. 2,