ABSTRACT
In Spain Philip’s immediate ancestors put a term to alien rule, and they extended their dominions beyond the oceans. Energies accumulated, for the reconquista from the Moorish infidels were now being spent overseas for the spread of catholic christianity, for the greater glory of the Spanish crown, and for the enrichment of the Spanish nation. For the Middle Ages may have been one-sided and restricted, but in the Netherlands they were not fanatical: fanaticism came only when men began to take religion earnestly instead of taking it as a matter of course. Catholics as well as protestants objected to the Spanish Inquisition. Absolutism, the instrument of centralisation and consolidation, postulated religious conformity, and continued to do so, a century later, in the France of Louis XIV. Religious doctrine had then as much practical importance as have political theories to-day, and liberalism was even rarer than it is with us.
