Page 331 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Du€rer, Adoration of the Magi. By the end of the fifteenth century, northern artists had begun to study in Italy and to adopt many of the techniques used by Italian painters. As is evident in this painting, which was the central panel for an altarpiece done for Frederick the Wise in 1504, Albrecht D€urer masterfully incorporated the laws of perspective and the ideals of proportion into his works. At the same time, he did not abandon the preoccupation with detail typical of northern artists. D€urer portrayed himself in the center as the wise man with long hair.
enabled him to leave England with a stable and pros- perous government and an enhanced status for the monarchy itself.
S P A I N Spain, too, experienced the growth of a strong national monarchy by the end of the fifteenth century. During the Middle Ages, several independent Christian kingdoms had emerged in the course of the long recon- quest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims. Ara- gon and Castile were the strongest Spanish kingdoms; in the west was the independent monarchy of Portugal; in the north, the small kingdom of Navarre; and in the south, the Muslim kingdom of Granada.
A major step toward the unification of Spain was taken with the marriage of Isabella of Castile (1474–1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1479–1516) in 1469. This was a dynastic union of two rulers, not a political union. Both kingdoms maintained their own parliaments—each known as the Cortes (KOR-tez)— courts, laws, coinage, speech, customs, and political organs. Nevertheless, the two rulers worked to strengthen royal control of government, especially in Castile. The royal council, which was supposed to supervise local administration and oversee the imple- mentation of government policies, was stripped of aris- tocrats and filled primarily with middle-class lawyers.
Trained in the principles of Roman law, these officials operated on the belief that the monarchy embodied the power of the state.
Seeking to replace the undisciplined feudal levies they had inherited with a more professional royal army, Ferdinand and Isabella reorganized the military forces of Spain. The development of a strong infantry force as the heart of the new Spanish army made it the best in Europe by the sixteenth century, and Spain emerged as an important power in European affairs.
Because of its vast power and wealth, Ferdinand and Isabella also recognized the importance of controlling the Catholic Church. They secured from the pope the right to select the most important church officials in Spain, virtually guaranteeing the foundation of a Span- ish Catholic Church in which the clergy became an instrument for the extension of royal power. The mon- archs also used their authority over the church to insti- tute reform.
Ferdinand and Isabella pursued a policy of strict reli- gious uniformity. Of course, this served a political pur- pose as well: to create unity and further bolster royal power. Spain possessed two large religious minorities, Jews and Muslims; both had generally been tolerated in medieval Spain. Increased persecution in the fourteenth century, however, led the majority of Spanish Jews to
The European State in the Renaissance 293
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Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence//Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY