Decline Peninsular People

Causes of the Decline of the Peninsular Peoples in the Last Three Centuries
Author(s): ANTERO DE QUENTAL and Richard Correll

Source: Portuguese Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2008), pp. 67-94
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41105286
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Causes of the Decline of the Peninsular
Peoples in the Last Three Centuries

ANTERO DE QUENTAL
Speech given on the evening of 27 May [1871], in the hall of the Lisbon
Casino1
Gentlemen -
The decline of the peoples of the Peninsula in the last three centuries is
one of the most incontestable, most evident facts in our history; one could
even say that that decline, following almost without a break upon a period
of glorious vigour and rich originality, is, to the eyes of the philosopher-
historian, the only evident and incontestable fact in this history. As a
Peninsular man, in a meeting of Peninsular people, it pains me to have
to declare this disheartening truth. But if we do not recognize and
freely confess our past errors, how can we aspire to a sincere and lasting
reform? The sinner humbles himself before his God, in a heartfelt act of
contrition, and only thus is he pardoned. Let us also, before the spirit of
truth, make an act of contrition for the sins of our history, for only thus
will we be able to reform and regenerate.
I realize how delicate this matter is, and I am aware that this places
a greater burden of responsibility on my remarks. In a meeting of
foreigners this would be no more than a historical thesis, stimulating to
the mind, but something cold and indifferent to the personal feelings
of each one. For an audience of Peninsular people, however, this is not
the case. The history of the last three centuries lives on amongst us, even
today, in opinions, beliefs, interests and traditions that reflect it in our
society, making it in a sense contemporary. There is in all of us an inner
voice that speaks up in favour of the past when someone attacks it: reason
may condemn it, but the heart attempts to acquit it. For there is nothing
in man more delicate, more touchy, than his illusions: and it is in our
illusions that reason, by challenging the past, most deeply strikes us.
I cannot appeal to the fraternity of ideas: I know that my words cannot
be accepted by everyone. Fortunately, though, ideas are not the only bond
that links the spirits of men to one another. Independently of them, if not
1 Portuguese text of the speech was taken from website 'O Portal da Historia', org. by Manuel
Amarai, where it featured as 'speech of the month'. Page at <http://www.arqnet.pt/portal/
discursos/maio_julhooi.html> [consulted 11 December 2007]. Minor scanning errors were
corrected.
Portuguese Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 , 2008

© Modern Humanities Research Association
68 ANTERO DE QUENTAL
above them, there exists for all upright, sincere and loyal thinkers, even in
the midst of the greatest divergence of opinions, a moral fraternity based
on mutual tolerance and mutual respect, which unites all spirits in the
same communion - love of and disinterested seeking for the truth. What
would become of men if there were not, above the impulses of passion
and the follies of intellect, that serene realm of harmony through good
faith and mutual tolerance - a space where the most hostile thoughts
could meet up, loyally stretching out a hand and saying to one another
with a humane and peaceful sympathy: you are an honest soul! It is to this
moral communion that I appeal. And I appeal to it confidently, because,
feeling myself guided by that sense of respect and universal generosity, I
cannot believe that there is anyone here who would doubt my good faith,
and refuse to follow me on that path of loyalty and tolerance.
As I already said, a few days ago, in inaugurating and explaining the
thinking behind these Conferences, we do not seek to impose our ideas,
but simply to set them out; we do not ask the endorsement of the people
who hear us, we ask only for discussion. That discussion, far from alarming
us, is what we desire, because even if it were to result in the condemnation
of our ideas, we would - provided that condemnation were just and
intelligent - be content, having contributed, if only indirectly, to the
publicizing of some truths. Proof of the sincerity of this desire are those
places and those tables provided especially for journalists, where they can
take down our words, thus allowing them to challenge us freely and easily.
Gentlemen -
The Peninsula, during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, offers us a picture of defeat and insignificance, all the more
notable for contrasting distressingly with the splendour, the importance
and the originality of the role that we played in the first period of the
Renaissance, during the whole of the Middle Ages, and even in the
final centuries of Antiquity. Already in the Roman period there had
appeared the essential features of the Peninsular race: a spirit of local
independence, and an originality of inventive talent. Nowhere else was it
so hard for Roman rule to establish itself, nor did its establishment ever
become complete. That independent personality shows itself clearly in
its literature, where the Spaniards Lucan, Seneca and Martial introduced
into Latin a style and a quality that were entirely Peninsular, and especially
characteristic. They were the precursors of a lively originality that would
appear in the following periods. In the Middle Ages the Peninsula, free of
foreign influences, shone in the fullness of its talent, through its natural
qualities. The political instinct for decentralization and federalism was
manifested in the multiplicity of sovereign kingdoms and counties into
which the Peninsula was divided, as an assertion and a triumph of local
CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE PENINSULAR PEOPLES 69
interests and energies against an oppressive and artificial uniformity.

Within each one of these divisions, the Communes and the Forais made
rights still more local, manifesting and securing in countless institutions
the independent and self-governing spirit of the peoples. And this spirit
was not merely independent: it was, to the extent that the period admits
of it, particularly democratic. Amongst all the peoples of Central and
Western Europe, only those of the Peninsula escaped the iron yoke of
feudalism. The grim spectre of the feudal castle did not cast a shadow over
our valleys, or hang threateningly over the banks of our rivers, or sadden
our horizons with its harsh and sinister outline. Certainly there was the
nobility, as a distinct order. But in those heroic centuries of incessant war
the privileges of nobility became so generalized, and so easy to obtain, that
there is no exaggeration in the phrase of the poet who called us Spaniards
a people of nobles. Nobles and common people were joined together in
interests and in feelings, and to them the royal crown was more a brilliant
symbol than a reality of power. If in those unlettered ages the idea of
Justice was vague and ill-defined, the instinct for Justice stirred vigorously
in the conscience, and actions were forceful, like men's natures.
Such men were no more suited to religious despotism than to political
despotism: spiritual oppression was as repugnant to them as civil
subjection. The Peninsular peoples are naturally religious; they are so in
an ardent, exalted and exclusive manner, even, and this is one of their
most pronounced qualities. But they are at the same time inventive and
independent: they worship passionately, but they only worship what they
themselves have created, not what is imposed on them. They make their
religion; they do not accept it ready made. Even today, two-thirds of the
Spanish population are completely unaware of the Christian dogmas,
theology and mysteries, but they faithfully worship the patron saints of
their cities. Why? Because they know them; because they made them. Our
nature is creative and individualistic; it needs to see itself reflected in its
creations. This (along with the lack of cohesion of the Catholic apparatus
in the Middle Ages, still poorly defined and little regulated by die stern
Roman school) sufficiently explains the independence of the Peninsular
churches, and the haughty attitude of the monarchs of the Peninsula
towards the Roman Curia. The Popes already carried some weight; but
the bishops and the courts could still hold their own. To the Italian claims
there was a very clear and very firm no. And this resistance did not come
just from the wishes and the interests of a few; it came from the insuperable
impulse of the popular character. That creative nature was seen in the
appearance of indigenous rituals, in a particular freedom of thought and
interpretation, and in a thousand original points of observance. It was the
Christian ethos, in its living and human form, not formal and mindless;
charity and tolerance took a higher place than dogmatic theology. That
7O ANTERO DE QUENTAL
tolerance for the Moors and Jews, unfortunate but so praiseworthy races,
will always be one of the glories of the Christian ethos in the Peninsula in
the Middle Ages. Charity triumphed over the antipathies and prejudices
of race and creed. For this reason the bosom of the people was fruitful;
out of it came Saints, individuals at once ingenuous and sublime, living
symbols of the popular soul, whose remarkable histories we cannot read,
even today, without being moved.
The expansion of the Peninsular spirit in the Middle Ages is no less
notable in the world of thought. The great intellectual movement of
medieval Europe embraced scholastic philosophy and theology, the
national productions of the epic cycles, and architecture. In none of this
did the Peninsula show itself inferior to the great cultured nations which
had received the heritage of Roman civilization. To Learning we gave
philosophers such as Raimón Lull, to the Church theologians and popes,
one of them, Pope John XXI, a Portuguese. The colleges of Coimbra
and Salamanca were famous throughout Europe: in their classrooms
were to be found distinguished foreigners, attracted by the fame of their
professors. Amongst the leading men of the twelfth century was a Spanish
monarch, Alfonso the Wise, a man of his times, a philosopher, a statesman
and a legislator. Nor can I leave unmentioned the Moors and the Jews,
because they were one of the glories of the Peninsula. The reform of
Scholasticism, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, through the
revival of Aristotelianism, was almost exclusively the work of the Arab and
Jewish colleges in Spain. The names of Averroës (of Cordoba), Ibn Tufayl
(of Seville) and the Jews Maimonides and Avicebron will always counted
amongst the greatest in the history of philosophy in the Middle Ages.
Alongside Philosophy comes Poetry. To set against the epic cycles of the
Round Table, of Charlemagne and the Holy Grail we had the admirable
Romancero and the legends of El Cid, the Princes of Lara and so many
others, which would have become condensed into true epics if the classical
spirit of the Renaissance had not taken Poetry in a different direction.
Even so, a large part, perhaps the greater part, of Spanish Theatre came
from the inexhaustible quarries of the Romancero. To set against the
Provençal troubadours we too had the Peninsular troubadours. Of our
kings and knights, some made verses with equal skill, like Beltáo de Born
or the Count of Tolosa. As for Architecture, it is sufficient to mention
the Monastery of Batalha and Burgos Cathedral, two of the finest gothic
roses to blossom in the heart of the Middle Ages. In all this we kept pace
with Europe, in step with the general advances. In one area, though,
we exceeded her, becoming pioneers: in geographical studies and the
great sea voyages. The discoveries, which so brilliantly crowned the end
of the fifteenth century, were not made by chance. They were preceded
by intellectual labour, as scientific as the age allowed, inaugurated by our
Prince Henry in the famous school of Sagres, from which there emerged
men like the heroic Bartolomeu Dias, and whose influence, directly or
indirectly, produced the likes of Magellan and Columbus. It was a wave,
first swelling here, that grew until it broke upon the shores of the New
World. It showed what the intelligence and the energy of the Peninsula
were capable of. As a result, the eyes of Europe were upon us, and in
Europe our national influence was amongst those that counted most. Spain
and Portugal were relied upon for everything. The Holy Roman Empire
offered the coveted imperial crown to a king of Castile, Alfonso the Wise.
In the fifteenth century, D. Joäo I, an arbitrator in several international
disputes, was generally esteemed as one of the leading monarchs in
Europe, in influence and ability. All this prepared us, with the coming
of the Renaissance, to play a glorious and dominant role. We fulfilled it,
in fact, brilliantly and spectacularly: our mistakes, though, did not allow
that role to be lasting and advantageous. How it was that the regenerating
tendency of the Renaissance, so well prepared, failed amongst us I
shall presently explain with conclusive facts. But that tendency was only
exemplified amongst us by one generation of superior men, the first.
Those following generations that should have consolidated it had become
fanatical, torpid and impotent, and were unable to understand or to apply
that spirit, so lofty and so free: they were ignorant of it, or they fought
against it. There was, though, a first generation that answered the call of
the Renaissance; and while that generation occupied the stage - that is,
until the middle of the sixteenth century - the Peninsula kept abreast
with that extraordinary age of creativity and freedom of thought. The
renewal of learning was welcomed in its new and reformed universities,
in which the great literary treasures of Antiquity were taught, very often
in the very language of the originals. Of the forty-three universities
established in Europe in the sixteenth century, fourteen were founded by
Spanish kings. Neoplatonist philosophy, which everywhere was replacing
the old and exhausted Scholasticism, was adopted by the most eminent
minds. A new style and a new literature emerged with Camöes, with
Gil Vicente, with Sá de Miranda, with Lope de Vega, with Ferreira. We
gave the colleges of Europe wise men like Miguel Servet, precursor to
Harvey, philosophers like Sepúlveda, one of the leading peripatetics of
his time, and the Portuguese Sanches, tutor to Montaigne. The family
of Humanists, truly characteristic of the Renaissance, was represented
amongst us by André de Resende, by Diogo de Teive, by Antonio Agustín,
bishop of Tarragona, by Damiäo de Góis, and by Camöes, whose talent did
not preclude an almost universal erudition. Finally, Peninsular art rose in
a mighty flight, with the so-called Manueline architecture, a production of
surprising originality and grace, and with the brilliant school of Spanish
painting, immortalized by artists such as Murillo, Velazquez and Ribera.
Beyond the homeland, famous warriors showed the world that the valour
of the Peninsular peoples was no lesser than their intellect. If the seeds of
our decline already lay hidden there, no gaze could detect them yet; our
glory, a deserved glory, occasioned only admiration.
From this brilliant society, created by the Peninsular genius freely
extending itself, we slipped almost without a break into a society that
was sombre, inert, poor, unintelligent and virtually unknown. One might
think that between one and the other there lay ten centuries of decline;
but for this total transformation a mere fifty or sixty years sufficed. It
would be impossible to advance any more rapidly along the path to
perdition in such a short time.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Portugal no longer
counted amongst the nations, and when the anomalous, inconsistent and
unnatural monarchy of Filipe II crumbled all around, when the glories
of the past could no longer disguise the ruin of the present edifice, and
the Peninsula was sinking under the weight of many accumulated errors,
then our unavoidable decline became clear and evident on all sides. It
was visible in everything: in politics, in our reputation, in intellectual
production, in economic society and in industry, and, as a result of all
this, in behaviour. The ascendancy that we had exercised in European
affairs disappeared, giving way to insignificance and impotence. New or
obscure nations rose up and seized the influence in the world of which
we had shown ourselves unworthy. The crown of Spain was put up for a
bloody auction amongst the nations, and awarded, after twelve years of
war, to a grandson of Louis XIV. With the foreign dynasty there began
an anti-national policy that debased and discredited the monarchy. And
that foreign king cost Spain the loss of Naples, Sicily, Milan and the
Netherlands! In Portugal it was the influence of the English that, through
underhand treaties, turned us into a sort of British colony. At the same
time our own colonies slipped gradually from our hands: the Moluccas
came to be Dutch; in India, the Dutch, English and French fought over
our spoils; in China and Japan, the prestige of the Portuguese name
disappeared. We Spanish and Portuguese went from century to century,
dwindling in lands and influence, until we became no more than two
shadows, two ghostly nations, amongst the peoples around us! And what a
sad picture our internal administration makes! The municipal autonomy,
the local initiative of the Communes, and the Forais, which gave each local
population a character and a life of its own, were replaced by a uniform
and barren centralization. The Crown then ceased to find a resistance
and an external force that could counterbalance it, and turned itself into
pure absolutism; forgetting its origin and its mission, it naively assumed
that the people were no more than the God-given property of kings. Worst
of all, the people came to believe that too! That spirit of independence
that had inspired the firm 'si no, noi of the Middle Ages, slumbered
and expired in the heart of the people. The people fell silent: with the
abandonment of the Cortes they were denied the right to speak; they were
not consulted, nor did they matter. Those who mattered were the palace
aristocracy, a court nobility, which was ever more separated from the
people by its interests and its feelings, and which was turning itself from a
class into a caste. This aristocracy, like a blockage in the circulation of the
body of society, impeded the natural rise of a new element, an essentially
modern element, the middle class, and thus frustrated all the progress
associated with that rise. Consequently economic life declined as well;
production dropped, agriculture fell back, trade stagnated, one by one
the national industries languished; wealth, a showy and sterile wealth,
became concentrated in a few particular places, while poverty spread to
the rest of the country; the population, decimated by war, emigration
and poverty, dropped staggeringly. Never had a people devoured so many
treasures, while becoming at the same time so poor! In the midst of this
poverty and exhaustion, the national spirit, disheartened and lacking
stimulation, fell inevitably into a state of torpor and indifference. It is
this that shows us most clearly that mortal leap taken by the minds of the
Peninsular peoples in passing from the Renaissance to the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. A generation of philosophers, scholars, and
creative artists gave way to a common tribe of men of uncritical erudition,
of academics, of imitators. We left behind a society of living men, moving
in the open air; we entered a cramped and almost sepulchral enclosure,
in an atmosphere cloudy with the dust of old books, and inhabited by
the ghosts of scholars. Poetry, after the sterile, false exaltation, artificially
provoked by Gongorism, after the affectation of its conceits (which
revealed still further the nullity of its ideas) , fell into a servile and mindless
imitation of Latin poetry, that heavy and monastic classical school which is
the antithesis of all inspiration and all feeling. Poems were composed in
a scholarly fashion, like dissertations. Translation was the ideal. Invention
was considered dangerous and inferior: the more verses translated from
Horace and Ovid a poem contained, the more perfect it was. What
flourished was tragedy, the Pindaric ode, and the mock-heroic poem -
that is, affectation and the degradation of poetry. As for human truths
or the popular and national sentiments, no one concerned themselves
with that. Invention and originality, in that deplorable age, were focussed
entirely on the cynically droll descriptions of the hardships, the intrigues
and the artifices of everyday life. The Spanish Romances picarescos and the
Portuguese Comedias populares that remain are the irrefutable proofs, from
its own pen, of the guilt of that society, whose profound demoralization
plumbed the depths of frank and candid vice. Beyond this pungent
reality, the official and courtly literature ambled through the insipid fields
of the academic discourse, the funeral oration and the panegyric to order
- genres that are artificial, puerile and, above all, soporific. With such a
state of the spirit, what could be expected of Art? It is enough to raise our
eyes to those dismal heaps of stone that are called the Escorial and Mafra
to see that the same lack of feeling and invention that had produced the
heavy and insipid tastes of Classicism also erected the mounds of Jesuit
architecture, compact and coldly correct in their lack of expression. What
a wretched contrast between those mountains of marble, with which they
supposed they achieved greatness simply because they made something
huge, and the delicate, aerial, well-proportioned and, so to speak, spiritual
construction of the monastery of the Jerónimos, of Batalha, or Burgos
cathedral! The gloomy and depraved spirit was reflected, with a reckless
accuracy, in Art, which in the eyes of history will always be an incorruptible
witness for the prosecution against that age of true moral death. That
moral death not only invaded feeling, imagination and taste; it also, and
above all, invaded the mind. In the last two centuries the Peninsula has
not produced a single superior man whom one could place beside the
great creators of the modern world: not even one of the great intellectual
discoveries that are the great labour and the great honour of the modern
spirit originated in the Peninsula. In the course of two hundred years
of productive work cultured Europe has reformed the ancient sciences
and created six or seven new sciences: anatomy, physiology, chemistry,
celestial mechanics, the differential calculus, historical criticism, geology;
there have appeared the likes of Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Leibniz,
Harvey, Buffon, Ducange, Lavoisier and Vico - where is there, amongst
the names of these and the other true heroes of the age of thought, one
Spanish or Portuguese name? What Spanish or Portuguese name is linked
to the discovery of a great scientific law, a theory, or a key fact? Cultured
Europe grew in stature, gained in dignity, and advanced above all through
science; it was above all through the lack of science that we declined, that
we degraded ourselves, that we nullified ourselves. The modern soul had
died within us completely.
The path of ignorance, oppression and poverty leads naturally, and
inevitably, to depravity in morals. And morals did indeed degenerate:
amongst the mighty, with the ostentatious corruption of the court, where
the kings led by example in vice, brutality and adultery - Afonso VI,
Joao V, Filipe V, Carlos IV; and amongst the humble, with hypocritical
corruption, as the poor man's family was sold, out of poverty, for the
vices of the nobility and the powerful. It was the age of mistresses and
bastard offspring. What it meant to be a poor woman then, confronted
with aristocratic gold, can be seen in the scandalous lawsuit for the
annulment of Afonso VTs marriage, and in the memoirs of the Cavaleiro
de Oliveira. Being a rogue was a generally approved occupation, practised
advantageously in the Court itself. Religion ceased to be a living sentiment;

it became a mindless, formal, mechanical practice. What the friars were
like, we all know: the knavish and base morals of this class are still recalled
even today in the Decameron of popular tradition. The worst is that these
tonsured impostors were bloodthirsty too. The Inquisition weighed on
consciences like the vaulting of a gaol. The public spirit sank gradually
under the pressure of the terror, while vice, ever more refined, quietly
took hold of the empty space left behind in their souls by dignity, moral
sense, and the force of individual will, crushed and destroyed by fear.
The Casuists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have left us a
shameful monument to the bestial refinement of all vices, the depravation
of imagination, the private hardships of the family and the ruin of morals
that run through those deplorable societies. This on one hand; because,
on the other, the Casuists also showed us that the degradation had reached
the spirit of the clergy, digging every day into the filth, doggedly turning
over with partiality, almost with love, that stinking heap of abjection. All
those profound horrors were faithfully reflected in literature. What public
morality was in the seventeenth century - political intrigues, nepotism
at Court, the audacious or surreptitious theft of public wealth - can be
seen (with all the clarity of a stern and sarcastic pen) in Padre Antonio
Vieira's Arte de Furiar. As to the documents for the story of the family and
of private morals, we find them in the Carta de Guia de Casados, by D.
Francisco Manuel, in the Portuguese Farsas populares, and in the Spanish
Romances picarescos. The Peninsular spirit had descended, step by step, to
the furthest limits of depravity!
Thus we have been for the last three centuries: without life, wealth,
science, invention, morals. Today, we Spanish and Portuguese are raising
ourselves, with difficulty, from that tomb where our great errors have
buried us; we are raising ourselves, but the remnants of the shroud still
hinder our steps, and by the pallor of our faces the world can easily see
from what dismal and deathly places we have been resuscitated. What
are the causes of that decline, so visible, so universal, and generally so
little explained? Let us examine the phenomena which occurred in the
Peninsula over the course of the sixteenth century, a period of transition
between the Middle Ages and modern times, during which there appeared
the seeds, good and evil, that, by developing into modern societies, gave
each one its true character. If these phenomena are found to be new and
universal, if they should reach all spheres of national life, from religion
to industry, and thus be intimately connected to what is most vital in the
people, I shall be justified in using the argument (in this case, rigorously
logical) post hoc, ergo propter hoc ['after this, therefore because of this'] and
in concluding that it is in these new phenomena that we should look for,
and find, the causes of the decline of the Peninsula.
Now then, there were three principal phenomena, and of three kinds:
one moral, another political, and the last economic. The first is the
transformation of Catholicism, by the Council of Trent. The second is the
establishment of Absolutism, through the destruction of local liberties. The
third is the advance of the distant Conquests. These three phenomena thus
brought together, taking in the three main aspects of social life, thought,
public affairs, and production, clearly show us that a profound and universal
revolution took place, during the sixteenth century, in Peninsular
societies. That revolution was ruinous, quite ruinous. If a counter-proof
were necessary, it would be sufficient to consider a very simple parallel
fact: these three phenomena were the exact opposite of the three
main features seen in other nations which grew, elevated themselves
morally, that made themselves intelligent, rich and powerful, and carried
civilization forward. Those three civilizing features were moral autonomy,
won by the Reformation or by philosophy; the raising of the middle class,
the instrument of progress in modern society, and the governor of kings,
until the day it deposed them; and finally industry, the true basis of
contemporary society, which gave nations a new conception of Justice,
substituting trade for violence, and commerce for the war of conquest.
Now moral autonomy, appealing to enquiry and individual conscience,
is completely the opposite of the Catholicism of the Council of Trent,
for which human reason and free thought are a crime against God; the
middle class, imposing on kings its interests, and very often its values, is the
opposite of Absolutism, based on the aristocracy and governing only for
its benefit; and industry, finally, is the opposite of the spirit of conquest,
hostile to trade and commerce.
So while other nations rose, we sank. They rose on account of the
modern virtues; we sank on account of the old vices, concentrated, taken
to the highest degree of development and application. We sank in our
industry, and our public affairs. And we sank, above all, in our religion.
This was the prime cause of our moral decline. The Catholicism of the
Council of Trent certainly did not inaugurate religious despotism in the
world; but it organized it in a complete, powerful, formidable and, until
then, unknown way. In this respect it may be said that Catholicism, in its
definitive, fixed and intolerant form dates from the sixteenth century. The
tendencies towards this state of affairs, however, reach back much further;
the Reformation, indeed, does not signify anything other than the protest
of Christian sentiment, free and independent, against those authoritarian
and formalistic tendencies. Those tendencies were logical, and up to a
point legitimate, for the Roman interpretation and organization of the
Christian religion; they were not so, though, for the Christian sentiment
in its virginal purity, outside the precarious conditions of its political
and worldly manifestation - in a word, the Christian sentiment in its
natural domain, the religious conscience. It is necessary, in fact, for us to

clearly establish a rigorous distinction between Christianity and Catholicism,
without which we shall understand nothing of the historical evolution
of the Christian religion. If there is no Christianity outside the bosom
of the church (as the theologians assert, but as reason, impartiality and
judgement neither are able nor wish to accept), then we shall have to
refuse the name of Christians to the Lutherans, and all the sects that
have emerged from the Protestant movement, in which, nevertheless,
the evangelical spirit quite clearly lives on. Furthermore, we shall have
to deny the name of Christians to the apostles and the evangelists, since
at that time Catholicism was so far in the future that the word Catholic
had not even been invented! But in reality Christianity existed, and
can exist, outside Catholicism. Christianity is an ethos; Catholicism is
above all an institution. One lives on faith and inspiration, the other on
dogma and discipline. All of religious history, up to the middle of the
sixteenth century, is no more than the transformation of the Christian
sentiment into the Catholic institution. The Middle Ages were the period of
transition: the one still exists and the other now appears. They balance
one another. Unification was present, made itself felt, but was still not
enough to smother local life and autonomy. For this reason it was also
the period of the national Churches. During the Middles Ages those
of the Peninsula, like all the others, had their freedoms and initiative,
national councils, their own discipline, and their own way of feeling
and practising their religion. From this came two great results, yielding
beneficial consequences. Dogma, instead of being imposed, was accepted,
and in a certain sense created; since, when morality is based on dogma,
there can only be a good morality when it is derived from a dogma that
is accepted, and to a certain extent created, and never imposed. This was
the first consequence, of incalculable impact. The feeling of duty, instead
of being contradicted by religion, rested upon it. Hence the strength of
character, the elevation in morality. Secondly, those national Churches,
just because they were independent, had no need to oppress. They were
tolerant. In the shadow of them - very much in the shadow, it is true, but
in any case tolerated - lived Jews and Moors, intelligent and industrious
races, to whom the Peninsula's industry and thought owe so much, and
whose expulsion has almost the proportions of a national calamity. This
was the second consequence, of no lesser importance than the first. If the
Peninsula was not then so Catholic as it was later, when it burned Jews
and received from the Father General of the Jesuits the watchword of its
public life, it was certainly more Christian, that is, more charitable and
moral, as these facts prove.
The sixteenth century, then, so rich in new developments, was torn
apart, and with it there appeared in the world the Reformation, joined by
almost all the people of the Germanic race. For the Latin peoples, who
remained allied to Rome, this situation created an immediate imperative
which was at the same time a great problem. It became necessary to
respond to the attacks of the Protestants, to show the world that the
religious spirit had not died in the bosom of the Latin races, and that
beneath the Roman corruption there was soul and will. A unanimous cry of
reform arose from the midst of the representatives of orthodoxy, opposing
themselves to the challenge that had been made to the Catholic world,
with the same word, by Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Melanchthon and
Calvin. Kings, commoners and priests all cried out for reform. But herein
lay the problem: what sort of reform? The opinion of the bishops, and
of the Catholic populations in general, declared for a liberal reform, in
harmony with the spirit of the age, many even wanting a reconciliation
with the Protestants: this was the Episcopal opinion, representative of the
national Churches. In Rome, though, the solution that was presented to
the problem had quite a different character. Hatred and anger filled the
hearts of the heirs to the apostles. They recoiled in horror at the idea
of conciliation, or the smallest concession. They thought it necessary
to reinforce orthodoxy, concentrating all their forces, disciplining and
centralizing; to harden the Church, to make it unshakeable. This was
the absolutist opinion, representative of the Papacy. This opinion (one
might say, this party) triumphed, and this triumph was a true calamity
for the Catholic nations. It was not this that they wanted, and that their
bishops sought and argued for, struggling helplessly for sixteen years
against the overwhelming majority held by the minions of Rome. They
were asking for a true reform, sincere and liberal, in harmony with the
requirements of the time. Their programme was formulated in three great
foundational chapters. No. i - Independence of the Bishops, autonomy
of the national Churches, inauguration of a religious parliamentarianism
through the frequent convocation of the Councils, those Estates General
of Christianity, superior to the Pope, and supreme arbiters of the spiritual
world. No. 2 - Marriage for priests, that is, the progressive secularization
of the clergy, a return to the laws of humanity for a class pledged for over
a thousand years to harsh asceticism, then perhaps necessary, but by the
sixteenth century already absurd, dangerous and demoralizing. No. 3 -
Restrictions on the holding of multiple ecclesiastical benefices, an odious
abuse tending to introduce into the Church a veritable feudalism, with all
its power and immoderation. From these reforms would naturally emerge
a gradual humanization of religion, a growing freedom of conscience,
and the capacity for Christianity to transform itself day by day, to progress,
to be equal always to the human spirit, the immense and principal result
which the Reformation brought to the peoples that adhered to it. The
grave prelates who were then fighting for the reforms I have just laid out
certainly did not wish for or even foresee these consequences; Luther
himself did not foresee them. But even so these were the consequences.
Bartolomeu dos Mártires and the bishops of Cadiz and Astorga were not,
to be sure, revolutionaries: they represented at the Council of Trent the
last defence and protest of the Churches of the Peninsula against the
invading Ultramontanism; but their work really was, in its consequences,
revolutionary, and by labouring for it they belonged to the movement and
the spirit of the great and emancipatory sixteenth century. If they had
achieved that reform, we Spanish and Portuguese might perhaps have
escaped decline. Who today can deny that it is to a large extent to the
Reformation that the reformed peoples owe the moral advances that have
placed them naturally in the lead of civilization? A significant contrast
that the world shows us today! The most intelligent, the most moral,
the most peaceful and the most industrious nations are precisely those
that joined the religious revolution of the sixteenth century: Germany,
Holland, England, the United States, and Switzerland. The most decayed
are precisely the most Catholic! With the Reformation we would today,
perhaps, be on a par with those nations: we would be free, prosperous,
intelligent, moral... but Rome would have fallen!
But Rome did not wish to fall. So for a long time it resisted, it evaded as
long as it could the pleas of the nations, which demanded the convocation
of the reforming council. Not able to resist any longer, it gave in. But how
did it do so? How did Rome, by then dominated by the Jesuits, give in?
This was Italy, gentlemen, the country of Machiavelli! I do not say that
Rome deliberately and consciously used a Machiavellian strategy; I cannot
judge its intentions. I say merely that it seems so, and that in the eyes of
history Rome's strategy in all the business of the Council of Trent seems to
have a marked character of cunning and calculation... hardly evangelical
attributes! Rome, unable to resist any longer the idea of a council exploited
the idea for its own purposes. Out of an instrument of peace and progress
it made a weapon of war and domination; it appropriated the great drive
for reform and made it work to the advantage of Ultramontanism. How?
Very simply: 1 - by giving only papal legates the right to propose reforms;
2 - by replacing the old method of voting by nations with voting by heads,
which gave Rome with its Italian bishops and cardinals, its minions, a solid
majority, always determined to crush, to smother, the votes of the other
nations. Sufficient to say that France, Spain, Portugal and the Catholic
lands of Germany never had more than sixty votes between them, while
the Italians numbered 180 or more! In these circumstances the council
ceased to be all-inclusive, it was simply Italian; and not Italian, even, just
Roman! From the first day it could be seen that the cause of reform was
lost. Summoned to make that reform, the council only acted against it, to
mislead and annul it.
8o ANTERO DE QUENTAL
With the machine thus assembled and armed, let us see it at work. To
subjugate man on earth it was necessary first to condemn him in Heaven:
to this end the council started, in the fifth session, by establishing as
dogma original sin, with all its consequences: the hereditary damnation
of humanity, and the incapacity of man to save himself through his
own merit, but only through the action and grace of Jesus Christ. Many
theologians and a few individual synods had already taken up this topic,
but no ecumenical council had yet defined it. A truly liberal council would
have left this matter shadowy and undefined; it would not have restrained
human liberty and dignity with that shackle. The Council of Trent made
this definition the prologue to its labours. It suited it, right at the start,
to condemn human Reason without appeal, and lay this foundation to its
edifice. Which it did. From then until now it has been established dogma
in the Catholic world that man is a body without a soul, that individual
will is an invention of the devil, and that we need only the Pope in Rome
and the confessor at the bedside to guide us. Perinde ac cadaver ['just like
a corpse'],2 say the statutes of the Society of Jesus.
At the thirteenth session they confirmed and fixed the dogma of the
Eucharist, already defined, though vaguely, at the fourth Lateran council,
and anathema threatened anyone who did not believe in the Real Presence
of Christ in the bread and wine after the consecration. It was another step
(and a decisive one) in bringing Christianity on to the path of idolatry, to
making the divine absurd. Few dogmas have contributed as much as this
materialism of the Real Presence to coarsen the modern peoples, to revive
in them pagan instincts, to mislead their natural reason. It seems that this
was what the council wanted!
In the fourteenth session they dealt in detail with the Confession.
Confession already existed in the Church, but was comparatively free and
voluntary. That freedom had already been much restricted at the fourth
Lateran council. But at the fourteenth session at Trent the Christian
conscience was decisively imprisoned. Without Confession there is no
remission of sins! The soul is incapable of communicating with God,
except through the intermediary of the priest! It was made obligatory for
the faithful to confess at certain times, and they were exhorted to confess
as often as they could. Here was founded the power, both fearful and
mysterious, of the confessional. There appeared a distinctive character:
the spiritual director. From then on there is always within the family -
immobile at the bedside, invisible but always present - a figure in black
who separates husband and wife, a hidden will that rules the house, an
intruder who has more authority than the master. Is there anyone here,
Spanish or Portuguese, who is unaware of the deplorable state of the
2 In their supreme oath Jesuits swore to have no more opinion, will or mental reservation to
their superiors than a corpse.
CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE PENINSULAR PEOPLES 8l
family, with its hidden head, hostile as a rule to the apparent head? Who
is unaware of the disorders, the scandals, the distress brought into the
family home by way of the confessional? The council did not wish this,
certainly; but it did everything that was necessary for it to happen.
Concerning discipline and the relations between Church and State the
same spirit of absolutism, of centralization and the invasion of all rights
predominates. At the fifth session the regular orders became independent
of the bishops, and almost exclusively dependent on Rome. What a
weapon this was in the hands of the papacy, already in itself no more than
a weapon in the hands of the Jesuits! With the thirteenth session only the
Pope, through his commissioners, could judge the bishops and priests. It
was impunity for the clergy! At the fourth session restrictions were placed
on the reading of the Bible by lay people, restrictions that amounted to
a real prohibition. What was this, then, other than a suspicion of human
Reason, condemned to think and to read through the thoughts and the
eyes of a half-dozen of the elect? In the seventh, ninth, eighteenth and
twenty-fourth session arrangements were made tending to subjugate
governments, to impose on the peoples policing by Rome, implacably
extinguishing everywhere the last vestiges of the national Churches.
Finally, the authority of the Pope over the Councils triumphed at the
twenty-third and twenty-fifth sessions, by the lips of the Jesuit Laynez,
inspiration and soul of the council - if when speaking of a Jesuit one can,
even metaphorically, use the word soul... This labour of high politics was
topped with the preparation of a Catechism. This Catechism, imposed in
all places and in all manners on young and simple spirits, served to nip
liberty in the bud, to swallow up new-born generations, to twist and torture
them, to press them into the narrow moulds of a dry, formal, scholastic
and subtly unintelligible doctrine. Whether that fearful outcome was
achieved or not is shown by some few moribund nations, sickly with the
worst of sicknesses, moral atrophy!
Yes, gentlemen! What could that fearful machine of repression that was
Catholicism after the Council of Trent offer to the people? Intolerance,
brutalization, and then death! I shall take three examples. The first is
the Thirty Years' War, the most cruel, the mostly coldly bloodthirsty, the
most systematically destructive of all those seen in modern times, which
nearly annihilated Germany. That war, provoked by the Catholic side, and
conducted by it with a hellish perseverance, clearly showed the world what
depths of hatred words of peace and religion can conceal. The priests did
not merely direct it, they witnessed its execution. Each general took with
him a Jesuit director, and those generals were called Tilly and Piccolomini,
the most hardened of executioners. Germany and Europe were saved by
the indomitable firmness of a heart as great as it was pure, serene in
the face of those fanatical hordes - the true and perhaps only hero of
that accursed war, the true saint of the dark period, was a Protestant,
Gustavus Adolphus. As for the Pope, he applauded the slaughter! My
second example is Italy. The anxiety of the papacy at the creation of a
strong state in Italy, which would be a barrier to an ambition growing
day by day, made it the greatest enemy of Italian unity. It was the papacy
that sowed discord between the cities and the Italian princes, whenever
they attempted to join forces. It was the papacy that invited foreigners
to cross the Alps in a crusade against the national forces, each time it
seemed that they were trying to get organized. The papacy', says Edgar
Quine t, 'has been a holy thorn in the flesh of Italy, preventing it from
healing.' Even today, though that desired unity has been consummated,
was it not in the face of the curses and wrath of the clergy and of Rome?
The only thought that today occupies that papacy is to undo that national
undertaking, to call down upon it the hatred of the world, and the
foreigner's sword, if it can, to assassinate the resuscitated Italy. These
facts are known by everyone. What perhaps is not known is the role that
Catholicism played in the assassination of Poland. The intolerance of
the Jesuits and Ultramontanes', says Emile de Laveleye, 'was the primary
cause of the dismembering and the fall of Poland.' This heroic but
poorly organized - or rather, poorly unified - nation, was a sort of
federation of small nationalities, with different customs and religions.
Wedged between powerful and ambitious monarchies of the time, like
Austria, Russia and Turkey, Poland could only survive through political
liberty, and above all through toleration against the common enemy by
the autonomous groups that comprised it. It was to that tolerance, in fact,
that it owed the strength and importance it had in the history of Europe
up to the seventeenth century. For a long time Catholics, schismatic
Greeks, Protestants and Socinians lived as brothers in a society that was
truly Christian because it was truly tolerant. One day, though, the Jesuits,
right there in the heart of Rome, fixed their eyes upon Poland as a fine
piece of prey - that nation was indeed a scandal to the good fathers.
They plotted so well that by 1570 they had been able to enter Poland:
King Stephen Báthory, with reprehensible imprudence, granted them the
University of Vilnius. Masters of education, and soon of the consciences of
the Catholic nobility, the Jesuits became a power in the land, and religious
persecution began. In 1648, John Casimir, who before becoming king
had been a cardinal and a Jesuit, tried to make the Ruthenian peasants,
followers of the Greek schism, convert to Catholicism. They rose up,
joined forces with the Cossacks, who also followed the Greek rites, and
started a formidable war, which resulted in the separation of the Cossacks
and Ruthenians from the Polish federation; they yielded to Russia, in
whose hands they became a terrible weapon always aimed at the heart of
Poland. This nation never had such bloodthirsty enemies as the Cossacks!
Without them Poland, weakened between formidable neighbours, had to

fall, and fall it did. The sharing of the spoils in 1772 did no more than
confirm a long-known fact: the nullity of the Polish nation.
In this way, gentlemen, the Catholicism of the last three centuries has
been, through its principles, its discipline and its politics, the greatest
enemy of the nations, and the true sepulchre of the national peoples.
'The cave of the Sphinx', a poet-philosopher said of it, 'can be recognized
at the entrance by the bones of the devoured peoples.'
And for us, Spanish and Portuguese, how was it that Catholicism
reduced us to nought? Catholicism lay heavily upon us on all sides, with
its full weight. With the Inquisition an invisible terror spread over society:
hypocrisy became an essential national vice; denunciation became a
religious virtue; the expulsion of the Jews and Moors impoverished the
two nations, paralysed commerce and industry, and delivered a mortal
blow to agriculture in all of southern Spain; the persecution of the New
Christians made capital disappear; the Inquisition crossed the seas, and by
making the Indians hostile to us, and hindering the fusion of conquerors
and conquered, it made the establishment of a solid and lasting
colonization impossible; in America it depopulated the Antilles, terrified
the indigenous populations, and made the name of Christ a symbol
of death; finally, religious terror corrupted the national character, and
made two generous nations into hordes of fanatics, and the horror of the
civilized world. With the Jesuits the Christian sentiment disappeared, to
give way to the most deplorable deceits to which the religious conscience
has ever lowered itself. Their methods of teaching, at once brutal and
refined, sterilized intellects, steering them towards rote-learning, with
the aim of killing off inventive thought, and they succeeded in alienating
the Peninsular spirit from the great advance of modern science, which
is essentially free and creative; Jesuit education turned the upper classes
into dull and passive machines and the people into cruel and corrupt
fanatics. The fearful Jesuit morality, explained (and practised) by its
casuists, with its mental restrictions and its subtleties, its equivocations and
its condescensions, seeped in everywhere, like a slow poison; it disrupted
society morally, it broke up the spirit of the family, it corrupted the
conscience with constant swings in the notion of duty, and destroyed the
character by deceiving and weakening it. The ideal of Jesuit education was
a nation of children, mute, obedient and feeble-minded; it achieved this in
the famous Paraguay missions. Paraguay was the Society of Jesus 's Kingdom
of Heaven: perfect order, perfect devotion; only one thing was lacking: the
soul, that is, dignity and will, what distinguishes men from animals. These
were the benefits that we took to the savage races of America, by the
civilizing hands of the Society's priests. So the free talents of the people
decayed and slumbered everywhere, in the arts, in literature, in religion.
The saints of the time do not have the simple, ingenuous character of the
true popular saints; they are fanatical friars, they are cunning Jesuits. As
for the books of sermons and other devotional books, I do not know what
is most shameful about them, their vacuous ideas, their cheap sentiments,
or their ridiculously childish style. As to the arts and literature, the decline
is to be seen clearly in the idiotic stone heaps of Jesuit architecture, in the
conventional poetry of the academies, or in the odes to the divine, and
priestly invocations. As for the popular genius, it died at the hands of the
clergy, as Teófilo Braga has so clearly demonstrated in his recent books
on Portuguese literature, rich in new findings. We know what morals
emerged from this school. I have already mentioned the Arte de Furiar, the
Romances picarescos, the Farsas populares, the Spanish theatre, the writings
of D. Francisco Manuel and of the Cavaleiro de Oliveira. But even without
these documents we would know enough from popular tradition, which
still speaks of the scandals of that aristocratic and clerical society. The
fearful influence of Catholic instruction was no less visible in the political
world. How could spiritual absolutism fail to affect the soul of the civil
power? The example of despotism came from so high up, and the kings
were so religious! They were the Catholic kings par excellence, the most
faithfuR Nothing provided so great a support to the absolutist power, by its
example, its authority, its doctrine and its incitement, as the Catholic spirit
and the Jesuit influence. In those saintly times the real ministers were the
king's confessors, and the choice of confessor was a matter of state. The
passion for ruling, and the criminal pride of one man, were supported
by the divine scripture. Theocracy joined hands with despotism. This
tendency was clearly seen in foreign policy. Instead of safeguarding the
true interests of the people, informed by a national outlook, it betrayed
its mission, becoming the instrument of Roman Catholic policy, that is, of
the interests and ambitions of a foreigner. D. Sebastiâo, a disciple of the
Jesuits, would die on the sands of Africa for the Catholic faith, not for the
Portuguese nation. D. Carlos V and Filipe II brought the world to death
and destruction, for what? For Spanish interests? For the glory of Spain?
No, for the glory and interests of Rome! For over seventy years Spain,
ruled by these two crowned inquisitors, gave the best of her blood, her
wealth and her energies, so that the Pope could once again lay down
the law in England and Germany. That was the national policy of those
famous kings; I call it simply betraying the nations.
This was one, if not the principal cause of the decline of the Peninsular
peoples. Of the harmful influences none was so universal, none put
down such deep roots. It wounded man in his innermost self, at the
most essential points of his moral life, his believing, his feeling - his
bang: it poisoned life in its deepest wellsprings. That transformation of
the Peninsular soul reached such intimate depths that it has escaped
the greatest revolutions; they have passed superficially over this almost
inaccessible region and left it in its centuries-old inertia. Within all of us,
however modern we would like to be, hidden, disguised, but not entirely
dead, there is a bigot, a fanatic or a Jesuit! This shade that rises amongst
us is the enemy, it is the past. It is necessary to bury it once and for all, and
with it the sinister spirit of Tridentine Catholicism.
This first cause affected mainly moral life; the second, Absolutism,
although reflected in the state of mind, affected mainly political and
social life. The history of the transformation of the Peninsular monarchies
is long and, to my little learning, obscure and to some extent unknown:
I could not deal with it here. Suffice it to say that the character of these
monarchies during the Middle Ages contrasts remarkably with what we
find in the sixteenth and subsequent centuries. Formerly the kings were
not absolute: and they were not so because local political life, being
strong and lively, not only did not allow them a wide sphere of action, but
even within that sphere resisted an expansion of authority with obstacles
and constant vigilance. The privileges of the nobility and the clergy, on
the one hand, and the popular institutions, the municipalities and the
communes, on the other, balanced - bar a little swaying - the weight of
the crown. For the gravest questions, for moments of crisis, there were the
Cortes, where all social classes had representatives and the vote. Liberty
was then the normal condition of the Peninsula.
In the sixteenth century this all changed. Absolute power rested upon
the destruction of local power. It reduced the nobility, it is true, but only
for its own advantage - the people gained little from that revolution.
What is certain is that they lost their liberty. Municipal life gradually
weakened; the Spanish communes, after a bloody protest, fell lifeless
at the feet of a king who was not even wholly Spanish. The institutions,
surrounded on all sides, felt a lack of air and of firm ground beneath
them. Who could ever tell of the heedless and unfeeling invasions of
royal power on to the people's terrain, those subterranean struggles, the
successive abdications of the national will into the hands of one man, the
hapless rebellions, the long and cruel history of the disappearance of the
popular charters? It is a story as sad as it is obscure, which no one has told
or ever will. We see the outcome of the drama, but the action escapes us.
But alongside this hidden struggle there was another, more evident one,
whose history will always appear like an avenging ghost to lay charges
against royalty. That struggle was the great war of the communes in the
Spanish cities. Defeated, crushed by force, the Spanish cities found a hero
from whose ardent breast came a protest which will live as long as the
condemnation it provoked. This is what D. Juan de Padilla, leader of the
communeros, wrote to his own city of Toledo, hours before being beheaded:
'Oh, City of Toledo, crown of Spain and light of the world, already free
in the time of the Goths, who lavished your blood to safeguard your
liberty and that of your sister cities - Juan de Padilla, your legitimate
son, assures you that your ancient victories are renewed once again with
the blood of his body.' Padilla's head rolled, and with it fell the ancient
municipal liberty, likewise decapitated. The centralized monarchy, heavy
and uniform, fell on the Peninsula like a tombstone. Breath failed in
millions of men to concentrate itself all in the chest of one exceptional
man, whom chance of birth had made a god. If only that god had been
propitious, good and providential! But absolutist centralization, laying
low the people, corrupted the king at the same time. D. Joäo HI, fanatical
and of evil repute, Filipe II, the devil of the south, inquisitor and executioner
of the nations, Carlos IV, Joäo V, Afonso VI - some debauched, others
unruly, others again ignorant and base - are good examples of absolute
royalty, infatuated to the point of vice and crime by pride in their own
power, possessed by that Caesarist madness by which nature makes despots
pay for their monstrous inequality, placing them as if outside humanity.
To such men as these, without guarantees or examination, nations
blindly entrusted their destinies! Had Filipe II not ruled absolutely, he
would never have been able to launch his absurd project of conquering
England, he would not have entombed in the ocean waters along with his
Invincible Armada thousands of lives and a prodigious sum, utterly lost.
Had D. Sebastiäo not ruled absolutely he would not have gone to Alcacer
Quibir to bury the Portuguese nation, the last hopes of the fatherland.
Other monarchies - the French, for example - subjugated the
people, but also supported their progress. Though aristocratic in its
roots, there was much in the fruit that was popular. The bourgeoisie, to
whom the future was destined, rose up and began to be heard. Our
monarchies, however, had an exclusively aristocratic character, both in
their principles and their practice. Government then was by the nobility
and for the nobility. We all know the consequences. Through mortgages
they entailed the land, creating immense properties. Through this the
class of small landowners was destroyed; with large-scale cultivation then
being impossible and the small-scale gradually disappearing, agriculture
declined; half of the Peninsula was turned into moorland; the population
declined, though without easing the hardships. On the other hand the
aristocratic spirit of the monarchy, naturally opposed to the progress of
the middle class, obstructed the development of the bourgeoisie, the
modern class par excellence, already a civilizing and innovative force in
industry, in science and in commerce. Without it, what could we be in the
great undertakings by which the modern spirit has transformed society,
learning and nature? Only what we really were, thanks to the aristocratic
monarchy: nothing! That monarchy, accustoming the people to servitude
and to the inertia of those who await everything from above, obliterated
their instinctive feeling for liberty, broke their willpower and lulled their
initiative. When later they were granted liberty they did not understand it;
even today they neither understand it nor know how to use it. Revolutions
may call out to them, or draw them in by force, but they go on sleeping
the centuries-old slumber!
Alongside these two harmful influences, the two principal causes
of decline, one moral and the other political, there is a third, chiefly
economic in character: the Conquests. For two centuries the books, the
traditions, and the memories of men have been full of this warrior epic
that the Peninsular peoples, crossing the unknown oceans, left written all
around the world. We have been mesmerized by these stories: to attack
them is almost sacrilege. And yet that brilliant poem in action was one of
the main causes of our decline - it is necessary to say so, even though
it hurts our dearest feelings of patriotic tradition. All the more so since
an economic error is not necessarily a national disgrace. From the heroic
point of view, who can deny it? That sequence of Spanish and Portuguese
conquests was a brilliant, and in some ways sublime, flash of the intrepid
Peninsular soul. The subjective morality of that moment is historically
undeniable; events that could inspire the great soul of Camöes belong
to the domain of poetry, and will always do so. The tragedy is that that
warrior spirit was carried over into modern times; modern nations are
condemned to make science, not poetry. It is not the heroic muse of epic
that rules now; it is political economy, the Calliope of a new world - if
not as beautiful then at least more just and logical than the old one. So it
is in the light of political economy that I condemn the Conquests and the
warrior spirit. We wanted to recreate the heroic times in the modern age.
We deluded ourselves: it was not possible, and we failed. What, in fact, is
the spirit of the modern age? It is the spirit of labour and of industry: riches
and the wealth of nations must be derived from productive activity and
not from sterile war. What emerges from war not only runs out quickly, but
is also dead capital, consumed unproductively. It is necessary that labour,
above all agricultural production, should make it fertile, give it life. This
subject is ruled by an economic law formulated by Adam Smith, one of
the fathers of science, in the following words: 'capital acquired through
commerce and war only becomes real and productive when it is secured in
the cultivation of land and other industries'. Let us look at what England
has done with India, with Australia, and with world trade. It exploits
and it fights, but the wealth acquired is fixed on its own soil through its
powerful industry and its agriculture, perhaps the most flourishing in
the world. Hence for two centuries the prosperity of England has been
the admiration and almost the envy of the nations. By contrast, what use
did we, Spanish and Portuguese, make of the prodigious wealth that we
extorted from foreign peoples? The answer is in our wasted industry, our
ruined commerce, our diminished population, our declining agriculture

and those deserts of the Beiras, of the Alentejo, of Spanish Extremadora
and of the Castiles, where there is not a tree, or a domestic animal or a
human face to be found!
One example, that of Portuguese agriculture before and after the
sixteenth century, will demonstrate, with relevant facts, the pernicious
example of the spirit of conquest in the economic sphere. These facts
are taken from three works whose authority is incontestable: the Memoria
histórica on Portuguese agriculture, by Alexandre de Gusmâo; Camillo
Pallavicini's book La economia agraria del Portogallo; and the Historia da
Agricultura em Portugal, by Sr. Rebelo da Silva. One thing that impresses
anyone studying the first centuries of the Portuguese monarchy is the
essentially agricultural character of that society. The epithets of the
kings, such as o Povoador, o Lavrador, are in themselves highly significant.
In the midst of wars, and despite the imperfections of institutions, the
population grew and prosperity spread. The forestation of the country
advanced, and the moorland receded thanks to labour. The fleets, which
later ruled the seas, came from the woodlands planted by D. Dinis. In the
reign of D. Fernando, Portugal was one of the main exporting countries.
Castile, Galicia, Flanders and Germany were supplied with olive oil almost
exclusively from Portugal: our agricultural prosperity was sufficient to
supply such huge markets. The trade in cereals was considerable. In
the fifteenth century Venetian ships came to Lisbon and the Algarve
ports bringing goods from the East, and taking in exchange cereals, salt
fish and dried fruit, which were then distributed throughout Dalmatia
and the whole of Italy. We also maintained a lively trade with England.
The popular classes advanced thanks to prosperity and work, and the
population increased. In the time of D. Joäo II the population reached
very nearly three million. Suffice it to compare this figure to that of the
population of 1640, which scarcely exceeded one million, to see that a
great decline occurred during that period!
In fact a deplorable revolution had taken place in the sixteenth century
in the economic conditions of Portuguese society, a revolution due, above
all, to the new state of affairs created by the conquests. The landowner and
the farmer abandoned the plough and became soldiers and adventurers:
they crossed the ocean in search of glory and a more illustrious or profitable
position. Seduced by the riches accumulated in the main centres of trade
the rural population poured in, abandoning the fields and swelling the
share of poverty, servility and vice in the big cities. Cultivation gradually
diminished. With this diminution, and with the relative depreciation of
precious metals caused by the inflow from the treasuries of the East and
America, cereals reached fabulous prices. Wheat, which in 1460 cost 10
ras to the alqueire, had risen in 1520 to 20, 30 or 35 réisl Hence the prices
fetched in foreign markets did not even cover the cost of production:
competition from other countries, which could produce more cheaply,
overwhelmed us. We not only ceased to export, but we started importing:
'From the reign of D. Manuel onwards', says Alexandre de Gusmâo, 'we
were sustained by foreigners'. That sustenance could be afforded by the
wealthy, enriched by India and Brazil; the masses, though, were dying of
hunger. The wretchedness of the people was tremendous. Begging at the
gates of the convents and the noble houses became an institution. They
begged in gangs in the streets. In an appallingly expressive image, popular
tradition gives us Camöes, the singer of these glories that impoverished
us, begging to provide for his sad and disheartened old age. It is the very
picture of the nation. The chronicles tell us of great famines, by which
the population visibly shrank. What remedy was sought to this evil? An evil
incomparably worse: slavery! They experimented with the introduction
of servile labour, with slaves from Africa. Happily it did not go beyond an
experiment. It was the transformation of a free and civilized country into
something monstrous, an oligarchy of plantation owners. The barbarity
of the men who had devastated America was transported to the heart
of Europe! With these ingredients, what could be expected of industry?
Only total decline. Nothing was manufactured, nothing was produced:
the gold from the East was enough to pay for the industry of others,
enriching them, spurring them to productive labour, while we became
ever poorer, with our hands full of treasure! We imported everything:
silks, velvet, brocade and pasta from Italy, glass from Germany, cloth from
France, cereals, wool and fabrics from England and Holland. There was
then only one national industry: India! Men went to India to seek a name
and a fortune and returned to enjoy them, and squander them uselessly.
Life was concentrated in the capital. The nobility left the lands and the
estates of their ancestors, where they had lived in a certain communion
with the people, and came to court to shine, to show off... and to beg
nobly! The nobleman became a courtier; the common man, unable to
be a workman any more, became a lackey: the livery was the seal of his
decline. The servants in a noble household made a real commonwealth.
The luxury of the nobility had something Oriental about it. It was hardly
a step from unbridled luxury to vice and corruption. The passion for
gambling spread terribly: they gambled in the taverns, they gambled
in the palaces. Idleness, firing the imagination, led from gallantries to
amorous intrigues, to adventures and adultery, and destroyed the family.
Lisbon was the capital of idle nobles, beggarly plebeians and ruffians.
Far away, outside the country, the consequences of the spirit of conquest
were different, but equally fearful. Slavery (beside all its deplorable moral
consequences) made all barren with servile labour. Only free labour is
productive; only the product of free labour is lasting. Of the colonies
go ANTERO DE QUENTAL
that Europeans founded in the New World, which prospered, and which
stagnated? They prospered in direct proportion to their free labour: the
north of the United States more than the south, the United States more
than Brazil. And what of youthful Australia, whose population doubles
every ten years, which already exports its products to Europe, whose
institutions are today the model and the envy of the civilized peoples,
and which within a century will be one of the greatest nations on earth?
To what does she owe this phenomenal prosperity if not the influx of free
labour, in a land untrodden by the feet of any man who could not call
himself free? Australia has done in less than a hundred years of freedom
what Brazil could not achieve in three centuries of slavery. It was we, and
the effects of our warrior spirit, that condemned Brazil to stagnation, and
that condemned to nullity the whole of the African coast, where other
hands could have easily carved out several empires! That warrior spirit,
with its eyes fixed on the gleam of a false glory, disdained, disparaged
and belittled manual labour - manual labour, which is the strength of
modern societies, and the salvation and glory of those of the future... but
a capricious idealism moved the soul of the warrior, unable to distinguish
between honourable and base motives: in his eyes only the great actions
of a heroic endeavour were becoming; for him, peaceful industry was
only suited to servile hands. The story of D. Joäo de Castro, retiring after
a campaign in Africa to his estate, where he devoted himself to the strange
new agriculture of cutting down fruit trees and planting wild unproductive
trees in their place, gives us a perfect example of the warrior spirit in
its distaste for industry. Portugal, the Portugal of the conquests, is that
haughty warrior, noble and capricious, who deliberately ruined his
properties for the greater glory of his absurd idealism. And since I have
spoken of D. Joäo de Castro, I shall say that few books have so harmed
the Portuguese spirit as the biography of that hero written by Jacinto
Freiré. Freiré - who was a priest, who never went to India, and who was
as profoundly ignorant of politics as he was of political economy - made
of the life and deeds of D. Joäo de Castro not a study in social sciences
but an academic discourse. It is literary and very eloquent, certainly, but
partisan, uncritical, and inspired by a false ideal of old-fashioned glory,
classical glory, in the light of which he continually portrays the actions of
his hero. For two centuries we have all learned about D. Joäo de Castro
from Jacinto Freiré, and we have become used to taking that rhetorical
fantasy for the model of the true national hero. By this we have distorted
our judgement, and the analysis of an important period. We need to know
that the true glory of the modern age is not like that: it is exactly the
opposite. There is only one thing there that we can adopt as exemplary,
and that is the nobility of character of that magnanimous man; but that
nobility should be applied by modern men to other enterprises, and in a
CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE PENINSULAR PEOPLES gì
very different manner. It was just the type of heroism extolled byj. Freiré
that was our ruin!
How was it possible, with blood on our hands and pride in our hearts,
to start to civilize those backward peoples, to join together conquerors
and conquered in interests and feelings, to mingle the races, and so to
establish after the fleeting rule of violence the lasting and just rule of
moral superiority and progress? The conquest of backward nations is, as
a rule, neither just nor unjust - they are justified or condemned by their
results, the use that is later made of an authority established by force. The
Roman conquests are vindicated today by historical thinking because they
created a civilization superior to that in which the conquered peoples lived.
The conquest of India by the English is just, because it is civilizing. The
conquest of India by the Portuguese and of South America by the Spanish
was unjust, because it did not civilize. Even had our arms always been
victorious, India would have eluded us because we systematically alienated
spirits, terrified the people, and through our religious and aristocratic
spirit we dug a chasm between the minority of conquerors and the majority
of the conquered. One of the first benefits that we took to those people was
the Inquisition; the Spanish did the same in America. Indigenous religions
were not only ridiculed and vilified, they were horribly persecuted. The
moral effect of the efforts of missionaries (many of them saintly heroes!)
was entirely cancelled out by the constant threat of religious terror: no
one would be converted by a faith backed up by burning at the stake!
The ferocity of the Spanish in America was unimaginable, unparalleled
in the annals of human bestiality. Two flourishing empires disappeared
in less than sixty years! In less than sixty years ten million people were
destroyed! Ten million! These figures are tragic; they need no comment.
And yet few races have appeared to their conquerors so gentle, simple and
tractable, and so ready to take to their hearts the civilization being imposed
on them by arms! Bartolomeu de Las Casas, bishop of Chiapa and a true
saint, protested in vain against these atrocities: he devoted his missionary
life to the cause of those millions of unfortunates: on two occasions he
visited Europe to put the case solemnly before Carlos V. All in vain! The job
of destruction was fated: it had to be completed, and completed it was.
There is in fact something fateful in the reprehensible acts of the
Peninsular peoples, in their errors of policy, and in the decline that
overtook them: it is the law of historical evolution, which draws out the
consequences, inflexibly and indifferently, of tendencies once introduced
into society. Given the absolutism of Catholicism it was impossible that
there would not follow, by deduction from it, absolute monarchy. Given
absolutism, the aristocratic spirit necessarily followed, with its parade of
privileges and injustices, and the predominance of warlike trends over
productive ones. Political and economic errors flow naturally from here;
and from all this, through the transgression of laws of social life, there also
flows naturally a decline, in all its shapes.
And these false social conditions produced not only the effects I
have mentioned. They produced another, no less fateful for being
invisible and imperceptible. It is the debasement and prostration of the
national spirit, perverted and atrophied by several centuries of the most
pernicious education. The causes, which I have indicated, have for the
most part ceased; but the moral effects persist, and it is to them that
we must attribute the uncertainty, the despondency and the malaise in
our present society. It is to the influence of the Catholic spirit, with its
heavy dogmatism, that we must attribute this universal indifference to
philosophy, science, to modern moral and social development, this sleep-
walking indifference towards the nineteenth-century revolution which
is practically our characteristic national feature amongst the peoples of
Europe. Certainly we do not believe in the Catholic dogmas with the blind
and passionate ardour of our grandfathers, but we continue to close our
eyes to the truths discovered by free thought.
If the Church still bothers us with its demands, the Revolution never-
theless bothers us with its endeavours. We were the intolerant and fanatical
Portuguese of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; we are
now the indifferent Portuguese of the nineteenth century. On the other
hand, while the absolute power of the monarchy has ended, the political
inertia of the people - needing (and perhaps wishing) to be governed
- persists; centralization and militarism persist, negating and making
nonsense of our constitutional liberties. There is no great difference
between the sovereign monarch of then and the men of influence today: for
the people, servitude is always the same. They used to be ruled, today they
are governed: the two terms are almost equivalent. While the old monarchy
has disappeared the old monarchical spirit has remained; it is enough to
prevent us being much better than our grandfathers. Finally, from the
warrior spirit of the conquering nation we have inherited an insuperable
loathing for work, and a deep distaste for industry. The grandchildren of
the conquerors of two worlds may, without dishonour, fritter away their
time and their money in idleness, or solicit the ministries for a position:
what they cannot do, without indignity, is work - a factory, a workshop,
an agricultural or mining business is inappropriate for our nobility. For
this reason the best national industries are in the hands of foreigners,
who get rich by them and laugh at our pretensions. It is against manual
labour, above all, that prejudice is universal: to us it is a symbol of slavery!
Through it, the democratic classes all over the world improve themselves
and nations thrive; we prefer to be a nation of the idle poor rather than a
prosperous democracy of workers. It is the harvest we have reaped from a
centuries-long education of warlike and pompous traditions!
From this education that we have given ourselves over three centuries
come all our present difficulties. The roots of the past break out
everywhere in our soil: they break out in the shape of feelings, habits and
prejudices. We groan under the weight of our historical errors: our history
is our fate.
What is needed then for us to recover our place in civilization, to enter
once again into the society of cultured Europe? It requires a great effort,
a supreme effort, to break resolutely with the past. Let us respect the
memory of our forefathers, let us dutifully remember their acts; but let
us not imitate them. Let us not, in the light of the nineteenth century, be
ghosts that give a new lease of life to the spirit of the sixteenth. Against
this deathly spirit let us frankly set the modern spirit. Against Catholicism
let us set not indifference or a cold denial, but an ardent affirmation
of the new soul, a free conscience, the direct contemplation of the
divine by the human (that is to say, the fusion of the divine and the
human), philosophy, science, and the belief in progress, in the unceasing
renewal of humanity through the inexhaustible resources of its thought,
endlessly inspired. Let us set against the centralized monarchy, uniform
and impotent, a republican federation of all the self-governing bodies,
of all the sovereign wills, broadening and renewing municipal life, and
giving it a radically democratic character, because that is the only basis
and natural instrument for all practical, popular and egalitarian reforms.
Finally, against industrial inertia let us set the initiative of free labour,
an industry of the people, by the people, for the people; not managed
and protected by the state, but spontaneous; not given over to the blind
anarchy of competition, but organized in a fraternal and equitable way -
thus gradually bringing about a transition to the new industrial world of
socialism, to which the future belongs. This is the course of the century,
and it should be ours too. We lag behind as a race because we rejected
the modern spirit; we shall renew ourselves by freely embracing that spirit.
Its name is Revolution. Revolution does not mean war, it means peace. It
does not mean wantonness, but order, true order through true liberty. Far
from seeking insurrection it aims to avoid it, to make it impossible; only its
enemies, by frustrating it, could force it to take up arms. It is in itself the
essence of peace because it is the human essence, par excellence.
Gentlemen, one thousand eight hundred years ago the Roman
world offered us a remarkable spectacle, of an exhausted society that
was collapsing, but which, as it collapsed, was resisting, struggling, and
tyrannizing in order to hold on to its privileges, its prejudices, its vices,
and its rottenness; beside it, in the midst of it, was a new, embryonic
society, rich only in ideas, aspirations and just sentiments, suffering and
enduring, but growing as it endured. The ideal of this new world gradually
established itself upon the old world, converting it and transforming it:
the day came when it succeeded in eliminating it, and humanity gained
another great civilization.
This was called Christianity.
Well then, gentlemen: Christianity was the Revolution of the ancient
world: the Revolution is no more than the Christianity of the modern
world.
Translation by Richard Correll3
3 With thanks to AbdoolKarim Vakil for his careful reading of the text and his comments.

Decline Peninsular People

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Decline Peninsular People

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Causes of the Decline of the Peninsular Peoples in the Last Three Centuries

Author(s): ANTERO DE QUENTAL and Richard Correll

Peoples in the Last Three Centuries

Portuguese Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 , 2008

interests and energies against an oppressive and artificial uniformity.

advantageously in the Court itself. Religion ceased to be a living sentiment;

natural domain, the religious conscience. It is necessary, in fact, for us to

Without them Poland, weakened between formidable neighbours, had to

ruined commerce, our diminished population, our declining agriculture

Translation by Richard Correll3

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