Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/218

PART II.

office.^[1] No reverence for the ministers of religion could lead her to wink at their misconduct;^[2] nor could the deference she entertained for the head of the church, allow her to tolerate his encroachments on the rights of her crown.^[3] She seemed to con- sider herself especially bound to preserve entire the peculiar claims and privileges of Castile, after its union under the same sovereign with Aragon.^[4] And although, " while her own will was law," says Peter Martyr, " she governed in such a manner that it might appear the joint action of both Ferdinand and herself," yet she was careful never to surrender into his hands one of those prerogatives, which belonged to her as queen proprietor of the kingdom.^[5]

Her practical sense Isabella's measures were characterized by that practical good sense, without which the most brilliant parts may work more to the woe, than to the weal of mankind. Though engaged all her life in reforms, she had none of the failings so common in reformers. Her plans, though vast, were never vis

1. The reader may recollect a pertinent illustration of this, on the occasion of Ximenes's appointment to the primacy. See Part II. Chapter 5, of this History.
2. See, among other instances,her exemplary chastisement of the ecclesiastics of Truxillo. Part I. Chapter 12, of this History.
3. Ibid., Part I. Chapter 6, Part II. Chapter 10, ct alibi. Indeed,this independent attitude was shown, as I have more than once had occasion to notice, not merely in shielding the rights of her own crown, but in the boldest remonstrances against the corrupt practices and personal immorality of those who filled the chair of St. Peter at this period.
4. The public acts of this reign afford repeated evidence of the pertinacity, with which Isabella insisted on reserving the benefits of the Moorish conquests and the American discoveries for her own subjects of Castile, by whom and for whom they had been mainly achieved. The same thing is reiterated in the most emphatic manner in her testament.
5. Opus Epist., epist. 31.