Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  11. It survives as the famous Parador there.

  12. The only king to return to Asturias before Charles V went there involuntarily in 1517 was Pedro the Cruel.

  13. See Luis Suárez, Nobleza y Monarquía, Madrid 2002, 145.

  14. Richard Kagan (ed.), Cuidades del Siglo de Oro: Las vistas españolas de Anton van den Wyngaerde, Madrid 1986, 70.

  15. Christoph Weiditz, Trachtenbuch, 1529, in Deutsches Museum, Nuremberg, and facsimile edition of Dr. Theodore Hampe, Berlin 1928. Weiditz came to Spain in the train of the Polish ambassador Dantiscus. The relation is a happy reminder that there have been times when rich Poles have helped poor Germans.

  16. Otherwise Philippe de Bigarn of Langres in Burgundy, the great master of sculpture in the cathedral of Burgos. Perhaps he was from Burgos. His life was long, his production varied.

  17. Most people would say that the best portrait is the anonymous one given by her to the Cartuja de Miraflores, now in the Palacio Real in Madrid. Other good portraits of Isabel are to be seen in the Real Academia de la Historia, the Museo del Prado, with Fernando and alone, and in the Royal Collection, Windsor, England. There is also, but not from life, the fine sculpture on her tomb in Granada by Domenico Fancelli (c. 1514). See Azcona [1:21], 18–19, for a discussion.

  18. Queen Isabel the mother only died in 1496, already far removed from sanity for many years.

  19. Azcona [1:21], 89, comments that she was “de espléndida belleza pero sin dote.”

  20. See the case for him skillfully made by Luis Suárez, Enrique IV de Castilla, Barcelona 2001.

  21. By this arrangement, Afonso after the wedding would be styled “Prince of Castile and León” and “Prince of Asturias” He could keep those titles even if the two had children. The children would be brought up in Castile, and their household would be Castilians. When Enrique died, the two would reign in Castile. If, afterwards, Isabel died first, Afonso would continue as king of Castile. If the plan was not carried through, Afonso would marry Juana.

  22. See Azcona [1:21], 68ff and 75. He points out that “el hecho incontrovertible es que Juana fue jurada princesa heredera y [en los 1460] que ninguna duda surgió entonces sobre su nacimiento legítimo.” In his life of Isabel, Luis Suárez insists that Isabel herself could have had no doubts about Juana’s illegitimacy: Juana’s mother had lovers and other illegitimate children (the Castillas). Also, and surely more important, Enrique admitted that his marriage to Juana had taken place with a cousin without papal approval, so that, by canon law, “La Beltraneja” was not legitimate. See Luis Suárez [2:20], 235–36. Alfonso de Palencia, the historian who was soon to be Isabel’s secretary, reported rumors, too, that Enrique was not the son of his supposed father.

  23. Gutierre de Cárdenas, nephew of Alonso de Cárdenas, the Grand Master of the Order of Santiago, was for a long time in the household of Archbishop Carrillo; he joined Pacheco, often followed the Infante Alfonso, and then became maestresala of the household of Isabel in 1468, after Toros de Guisando, and went with Palencia to Saragossa in 1469 to bring back to Valladolid the Prince of Aragon, Fernando. At the proclamation in Segovia in 1474, he rode before Isabel with a naked sword, promising punishment to criminals. From 1475 he was second contador del reino (treasurer of the kingdom). He took a lead in the latter stages of the war in Granada; he was repulsed at first at Málaga, but led the Spanish troops into the Alhambra in January 1492. By that time he “always lived in the palace,” was Commander of León, contador mayor (chief treasurer), and rich. He led the delegation to England for the marriage of Catherine of Aragon. He was a negotiator at Tordesillas and was no good. He died c. 1502.

  24. Alfonso de Palencia (1423–92) studied first with Alfonso de Cartagena, Latin secretary and chronicler to the Castilian monarchs in 1456–74. His history of the reign of Enrique IV (Crónica de Enrique cuarto, BAE, vols. 257, 258) is among the most influential works of Spanish history. He attacked Enrique for giving some of his power to favorites, argued that he had brought civil war, and alleged that he had made treaties too favorable to Muslims. He then became secretary to Isabel and, with Gutierre de Cárdenas, went to bring Fernando to Valladolid in 1469. He was a principal source for such historians as Bernáldez, Pulgar, Valera, etc., as for Prescott in his History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabel, 3 vols., 1938.

  25. John Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1520, Oxford 2000, 266.

  26. See María Isabel del Valdivieso, “La Infanta Isabel, Señora de Medina del Campo,” Estudios de Historia Medieval, in Homenaje a Luis Suárez, Valladolid 1991. See also Historia de Medina del Campo y su tierra, ed. Eufemio Lorenzo Sanz, 2 vols., Valladolid 1986.

  27. Azcona [1:21], 115, emphasizes the Aragonese initiative. The bull that was presented by Mgr. Veneris purported to say that Pius II had issued a similar bull in 1464.

  28. See Ernest Belenguer, La Corona de Aragón en la monarquía hispánica, Barcelona 2001, chs. 2–3.

  29. “La hermandad de las marismas.”

  30. Since, in the early stages, Aragon played less of a part in the Spanish Empire in the Indies than Castile, the kingdom is not considered in detail here.

  31. See Juan Manuel Carretero Zamora, Cortes, monarquía ciudades: Las cortes de Castilla a comienzos de la época moderna, 1476–1515, Madrid 1988.

  32. Palencia [1:19], 287–96, vividly describes the journey.

  33. Juana, her daughter, told an English diplomat in May 1505, after Isabel’s death, that it was not only in her that that passion reigned, but it did so, too, in her mother (cit. Azcona [1:21], 25). “Notorio es que no fue otra cosa que los celos y no sólo se halla en mí esta pasión, más la Reyna, mi señora … fue asímisma celosa.…”

  34. “Suplico a vuestra señoría que más a menudo vengan las cartas que, por mi vida, muy tardías vienen” (Vicente Rodríguez Valencia, Isabel la Católica en la Opinión de Españoles y Extranjeros, 3 vols., Valladolid 1970, 3, 108).

  35. Alfonso became Archbishop of Saragossa and himself had illegitimate descendants. Juana married Bernardino Fernández de Velasco, Constable of Castile.

  36. Probably in 1500 the whole population of the peninsula was a little over 6 million, of which Portugal constituted a million. See Azcona [1:21], 323.

  37. This is insisted upon by Azcona [1:21], 115.

  38. Pulgar [1:24], 36: “É habia una gracia singular, que cualquier que con él fablase, luego le amaba é le deseaba servir.”

  39. Manuel Giménez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, vol. 1, Seville 1953.

  40. Fernando as “un mujeriego sin freno” is discussed in Manuel Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca: La Cautiva de Tordesillas, Madrid 2000, 57ff.

  41. Other pictures are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Poitiers, and in the British Royal Collection (unknown painter) at Windsor. See also the Virgen de la Merced of Diego de la Cruz and his workshop, with his family and Cardinal González de Mendoza, in the Real Monasterio de las Huelgas, Burgos.

  42. Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen, Oxford 1992, 76.

  43. Alonso de Quintanilla was the official who later floated the idea of a national police, or Hermandad, in 1476, before the Cortes at Madrigal. He organized the Genoese help (the Ribarolo, Pinelli) for the conquest of the Canaries in the 1480s. The Duke of Medinaceli, in his letter to Cardinal Mendoza of 1493, says Quintanilla had added his support to the idea of Columbus’s voyage. Columbus would often go to Quintanilla’s house to dine, thanks to Cardinal Mendoza. (Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, BAE, 2nd ed., Madrid 1992, 1, 22.)

  44. Andrés de Cabrera, mayordomo of Enrique IV’s, c. 1472, was alcaide of Segovia and also leader of Segovia’s conversos. He was named Marquis of Moya and then married Beatriz de Bobadilla, Isabel’s camarera. Suárez [1:20] speaks of him as “el de las gestiones decisivas” (162). He was continually used by Isabel and by 1492 was rich.

  45. Mendoza’s cardinalate was probably arranged by Rodrigo Borgia as a quid pro quo for his change of politics. B
orgia was in Spain from June 18, 1472, to September 12, 1473, entering and leaving by Valencia, of which city he had been bishop since 1458. See Miguel Batllori, La familia de los Borjas, Madrid 1999, 92.

  46. Palencia [1:19], 156–57: “la señora Princesa dançó allí e el señor Rey cantó delante de ella e estovieron en su gajasa do gran parte de la noche.…”

  47. In Castile, monarchs are not crowned as in France and England.

  48. Palencia [1:19], 154.

  49. Bishop Mendoza would become Chancellor of the Secret Seal, Chacón chief accountant, Cárdenas his deputy, while Rodrigo de Ulloa, who had worked with King Enrique, would be third in command. Gabriel Sánchez, an Aragonese and a converso, would take charge of the royal household’s finances.

  50. Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols. (hereafter Las Casas), Mexico 1986, 1, 156: “Su gran virtud, prudencia, fidelidad a los reyes y generosidad de linaje y de ánimo.”

  51. Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 3rd ed., London 1855, 1, 320.

  52. See also Mendoza’s tomb in Toledo Cathedral, which his will specified should be “transparent and open, sculptured on both sides.” It was probably by Sansovino. There is a portrait of the cardinal, in red with a red hat, in the Virgen de la Merced and with the family of the Catholic Kings in Las Huelgas, Burgos. Another portrait of him, bald, is in the Retablo del Cardenal in San Ginés, Guadalajara, apparently by Juan Rodríguez de Segovia, “el maestro de los Luna.” He founded the Colegio de Santa Cruz, the first Renaissance building in Spain, in Valladolid. Here letrados would be trained for the royal service. They were to have limpieza, that is, be free from accusations of Jewish blood. The cardinal appears on the tympanum.

  53. Suárez [1:20], 115.

  54. Liss [2:42], 122–23.

  55. Isabel’s books included Landulfo de Saxonia’s Life of Christ, el Jardín de las nobles doncellas, by Fray Martín de Córdoba, the Soliloquies of Fray Pedro de Guadalajara, and Fray García Ximénez de Cisneros’s Exercitorio de la vida espiritual, as well as numerous (early) chivalric romances.

  56. Juan del Encina worked for the Duke of Alba, and we should imagine how one of his musical plays was performed in the castle of the Duke at Alba de Tormes on Christmas Eve 1492. Encina was a master of both music and poetry.

  57. Thus she told her confessor, Talavera: “No reprehendo las dádivas y las mercedes.… No el gasto de las ropas y nuevas vestiduras, aunque no carezca de culpa en lo que en ello ovo de demasiado.” (See Rodríguez Valencia [2:34], 3, 5 for a discussion.) The German traveler Munzer saw her always dressed in black, “Viaje por España,” in J. García Mercadal, Viajes de Extranjeros por España y Portugal, Madrid 1952, 404. Antoine de Lalaing made a similar point in 1501: “No hablo de los vestidos del rey y de la reina, porque no llevan más que paños de lana.”

  58. Martyr [1:2], letter 150.

  59. For example, Sir Peter Russell, cit. Edwards [2:25], 1.

  60. An excellent account of this war is given by Edwards [2:25], 23ff.

  61. For another prophecy, see ch. 37.

  62. As Fernando showed, for example, in his benign settlement of the social problems of Cataluña (he secured the end of the chronic political crisis between peasants and landlords).

  63. Luciano Serrano y Piñeda, Correspondencia de los Reyes Católicos con el Gran Capitán durante las campañas de Italia, in Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, vols. 20–29, 1909–13, dated July 10, 1505.

  64. “De semblante entre grave y risueño,” Munzer in García Mercadal [2:57], 406. Of biographies of Fernando, the most recent is that of Ernest Belenguer, Fernando el Católico, Barcelona 1999.

  65. Martyr [1:2], 50.

  Chapter 3

  1. Alexander the Great arriving at Gordium found a yoke to which a knot had been tied so badly that no one could undo it. He who did so was assured of world conquest. Alexander cut the knot with his sword, saying “Tanto Monta,” which in Spanish of the fifteenth century came to mean “It’s the same thing (da lo mismo).” In other words, Fernando was invited to assert his rights by taking the direct route. See P. Aguado Bleye, “ ‘Tanto Monta’: la Empresa de Fernando el Católico,” Revista de Santa Cruz, 8, Valladolid 1949.

  2. For example, Bernáldez talked of Castile being full of “mucha soberbia, é de mucha herejía, é de mucha blasfemía é avarica, é rapina, é de muchas guerra é bandos, é parcialidades, é de muchos ladrones é salteadores, é rufianes é matadores, é tahures, é tableros públicos.…” (Andrés Bernáldez, Historia del Reinado de los Reyes Católicos, 2 vols., Seville 1869, 25.)

  3. Azcona [1:21], 214–15, who points out that the social standing of the Council was humble, being often composed of clever men on the make.

  4. The development of the corregidor, appointed by the Crown in all large cities, meant that in Castile the danger of municipalities seeking independence in an Italian style was much reduced (the corregidor had existed since the fourteenth century, but was only in general use from the 1480s).

  5. A nephew, Jorge Manrique, was a far more famous poet. In 1494 there were fifty-four cities of Spain that had a corregidor.

  6. Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, tr. Sidney Alexander, New York 1969.

  7. Klein’s figure (Julius Klein, The Mesta, Cambridge 1920, 27). Klein estimated 2.6 million in 1477 and 1512. The royal income came from “servicio y montazgo” of the flocks, whose travels along the “cañadas reales,” eighty-five yards wide, were absolutely guaranteed.

  8. Earl Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650, Cambridge 1934, 157.

  9. Granada would be added after 1492. The towns were Ávila, Burgos, Córdoba, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Jaén, León, Madrid, Murcia, Salamanca, Segovia, Seville, Soria, Toledo, Toro, Valladolid, and Zamora. Zamora claimed to speak for Galicia!

  10. For a summary of the medieval background, see Edwards [2:25], 42.

  11. The best summary is that in chs. 7–8 and 11 of Azcona’s biography [1:21], 87.

  12. Perhaps the numbers had been nearly twice that in 1486–87, at the time of the fall of Málaga. See Ladero Quesada, in La Paz y la guerra en la época del Tratado de Tordesillas, Valladolid 1994, 270.

  13. “La bien cercada, tú que estás en par del río.”

  14. Figures in Ladero Quesada [1:13], 271–72.

  15. David Hume, History of England, 8 vols., Dublin 1775, vol. 3, 278.

  16. See Ladero Quesada [1:13], 266.

  17. For example, once Mendoza offered a dinner to the Curia on the banks of the Tiber, at which—echoes of Petronius—each course was served on different silver, which was afterwards thrown into the river. Unknown to his guests, Tendilla had set nets in the river so that all except one spoon and two forks were retrieved. When the Vatican cut off his supply of firewood, he bought some old houses and had them ransacked for their timber. For a portrait, see a medal dedicated to him of 1486.

  18. For faces of the sixteenth century, see John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait of the Renaissance, New York 1963. For dress, see Carmen Bernís, Trajes y modas en la España de los Reyes Católicos, vol. 1: Las Mujeres, vol. 2: Los Hombres, Madrid 1979.

  19. I have accepted Martyr’s figure ([1:2] 1, 113), but see Ladero Quesada [1:13], 266.

  20. See the fine new biography by José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, El Gran Capitán, Barcelona 2002. The campaign in Andalusia would be for “El Gran Capitán” a rehearsal for that in Italy.

  21. In the tenth century, a huntsman (montero) of Espinosa saved the life of Count Sancho García of Castile. Thereafter, the monteros became the royal bodyguards.

  22. A. de la Torre, Documentos sobre las relaciones internacionales de los Reyes Católicos, 6 vols., Madrid 1949–51.

  23. Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, Los señores de Andalucía, Cadiz 1998, 247–48.

  24. On the subject of medieval Spanish (and Italian) slavery, see Charles Verlinden’s L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. 1, Bruges 1955. See also my own The Sl
ave Trade (London 1977), especially ch. 4. For the status of slaves in Christian Spain, see Las Siete Partidas [1:16], pt. 4, Título 21, “De los siervos” [sic].

  25. Martyr [1:2], 2, 120.

  26. Oviedo [2:43], 1, 52: “Cuanto más que han acá pasado diferentes maneras de gentes; porque, aunque eran los que venían, vasallos de los reyes de España, ¿quién concertá al vizcaíno con el catalán, que son de diferentes provincias y lenguas? Cómo se avernán el andaluz con el valenciano, y el de Perpiñan con el cordobés, y el aragonés con el guipuzcoano, y el gallego con el castellano … y el asturiano e montanés con el navarro?”

  27. Lord Scales is called “Count of Escala,” by Martyr [1:2], 1, 93, from “Britain.”

  28. Ladero Quesada [3:15], 270.

  29. The word derives from the German Hakenbühse, hookgun.

  30. Perhaps a corruption of “bombard.”

  31. Variants included the cerbatana, the falconet, and the ribadoquín.

  32. See Hermann Kellenbenz, Los Fugger en España y Portugal hasta 1560, Junta de Castilla y León, Salamanca 1999, 8. The Spanish contribution to this commerce was coral, cotton, rabbit skins, aromatic fruit, and, above all, saffron.

  33. The first Catalan edition was the work of a German printer, Nicolas Spindeler, summoned to Valencia to publish the book by Juan Rix de Cura. Dedicated to the Infante Fernando of Portugal, it would be published in Castilian in 1511. It was written in Valencian between 1460 and 1466. See Don Quixote, 1, ch. 6.

  34. See Irving Leonard’s Books of the Brave, New York 1949, 115.

  35. Born in Settignano in 1469, Fancelli came to Spain young and remained till his death in Saragossa in 1519.

  36. Francisco Sevillano Colom, “La Cancillería de Fernando el Católico,” V Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón, Saragossa 1956, 215–53.

  37. Juan Gil, Los conversos y la Inquisición Sevillana, 5 vols., Seville 2000–2, 2, 11. Among the converso secretaries of the Catholic Kings were Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, son of the corregidor of Toledo; Andrés de Cabrera; Juan Díaz de Alcocer; Juan de la Parra; and Hernando del Pulgar. We should not forget Fray Hernando de Talavera or Diego de Valera.