Chapter XXIX: Moorish Art in Southern Europe (3)

The same skepticism as to the influence of the literary and philosophical principles adopted and promulgated by the Mohammedans of Spain prevailed for centuries. After a closer acquaintance with the educational facilities they possessed, the scientific methods they employed, the intimate mercantile relations they established with every state accessible to commerce, the extent of that influence becomes strikingly apparent. Even among the descendants of the conqueror, bound by faith and tradition to eternal hostility, it was, and is still, manifested in a thousand forms. There is to-day in the Spaniard far more of the romantic and artistic temperament of the Saracen, whose blood is a reproach, than of the sullen ferocity of the Goth, whose lineage is the glory of Castilian ancestry. Reminiscences of that domination which seven centuries of warfare were required to overthrow survive in the forms and ornamentation of garments; in the terms, the construction and the pronunciation of language; in the crude imitation of mosaic effects; in the florid sculpture of magnificent cathedrals. In other countries of Southern Europe, their traces, while not so marked or general, are none the less distinguishable; Moorish customs and traditions, eminently congenial to the national disposition of Gaul and Latin, reacted strongly upon the literary and social life of France and Italy. In the latter country the glowing artistic conceptions of the Arab speedily succumbed to the omnipresent examples of classic genius; in France they were somewhat more persistent; in both countries they exercised no unimportant influence in the suppression of barbarism, in the promotion of efforts that tend to the material improvement of society, in the cultivation of politeness, in the revival of letters.