To battle for the Cross, to gain renown in fights against the
Infidels--as the Moors were then called,--to "obtain martyrdom"
among the followers of Mohammed--these were reckoned by the
Christians of crusading days as the highest honor that life could
bring or death bestow. It is no wonder, therefore, that in a
family, the father of which had been himself a fighter of
Infidels, and the mother a reader and dreamer of all the romantic
stories that such conflicts create, the children also should be
full of that spirit of hatred toward a conquered foe that came
from so bitter and long-continuing a warfare.
Don Alphonso's religion had little in it of cheerfulness and
love. It was of the stern and pitiless kind that called for
sacrifice and penance, and all those uncomfortable and
unnecessary forms by which too many good people, even in this
more enlightened day, think to ease their troubled consciences,
or to satisfy the fancied demands of the Good Father, who really
requires none of these foolish and most unpleasant
self-punishments.
But such a belief was the rule in Don Alphonso's day, and when it
could lay so strong a hold upon grown men and women, it would, of
course, be likely to work in peculiar ways with thoughtful and
conscientious children, who, understanding little of the real
meaning of sacrifice and penance, felt it their duty to do
something as proof of their belief.
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