CHAPTER XXVI

Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon still remained, but she had sapped the foundation on which they rested by the establishment of the Holy Office. Charles V. was sufficiently powerful to disregard such humble instrumentalities in carrying out any purpose he deemed to be of advantage to his states. He was not a bigot by education, and we have to look to disappointed ambition as the cause of the virulence with which he persecuted the least indication of heresy. He had been thwarted in his ambitious schemes; this he attributed to the Reformation, which he himself had fostered at its beginning, in order to sow discord among the princes of Germany. He had hoped that upon their mutual jealousy he might establish despotic authority; but the treason of Maurice of Saxony had subverted his darling scheme at the moment of its apparent success, and in disgust he retired from public life to spend the remainder of his days in recruiting his health and cursing the heretics.