Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/362

218 ADMINISTRATION OF CASTILE. PART maintained by any private individual, necessarily '• exposed to the influence of personal interests and affections. By this harmonious distribution, the honors, which had before been held up to the highest bidder, or made the subject of a furious canvass, became the incentive and sure recompense of desert. ^^ In the following reign, the grand-masterships of these fraternities were annexed in perpetuity to the crown of Castile by a bull of Pope Adrian the Sixth ; while their subordinate dignities, having survived the object of their original creation, the subjugation of the Moors, degenerated into the empty decorations, the stars and garters, of an order of nobility. '^^ r.i.rrntiona JY. Vindication of ecclesiastical rights belong 01 the church. to"*^^ "^'"*'b ing to the crown from papal usurpation. In the earlier stages of the Castilian monarchy, the sove- reigns appear to have held a supremacy in spiritual, very similar to that exercised by them in temporal matters. It was comparatively late that the nation submitted its neck to the papal yoke, so closely riveted at a subsequent period ; and even the Romish ritual was not admitted into its churches till long after it had been adopted in the rest of Europe.'** But, when the code of the Partidas was 49 Caro cle Torres, Ordenes Mi- existing in the present century in luures, fol. 84. — Kiol lias piven a Spain, in Laborde, Itin^raire De- full account of the constitution of scriptif de TEspagne, (2d edition, thiscouncil,Informe,apud Seinana- Paris, 1827-30,) torn. v. pp. 102 fio Erudite, tom.iii. pp. 164 et seq. -117. 4^ The reader will find a view 44 Most readers are acquainted of the condition and general re- with the curious story, related by sources of the military orders as Robertson, of the ordeal to which