Four days later, on the 6th of January, 1492, the Feast of the Epiphany, the Catholic sovereigns made their formal entry into Granada.
CHAPTER VIII
THE INQUISITION
Some allusion has already been made in our introductory chapter to the character of the Castilian Church in mediæval times. Strongly national in its resentment of papal interference, as in its dislike of alien races within the Spanish boundaries, its wealth and popularity were a sure index of the large part it must play in any difficult crisis. Amongst churchmen both Henry IV. and the rebels who opposed him had found their councillors and their generals; to the Church Queen Isabel had turned, with a confidence that was not belied, for financial help against the Portuguese; and it was a churchman, sitting in constant deliberation with her and Ferdinand, who gained amongst contemporaries the proud title of “the Third King.”
Pedro Gonsález de Mendoza had been a favourite of fortune from his birth. A member of one of the proudest and wealthiest families in Spain, the settlement of his profession had been almost coincident with his admission to its material benefits; and, from holding a curacy in early boyhood and a rich benefice at twelve years old, he had passed through the lesser offices of the episcopate to succeed Don Alonso Carrillo, on his death in 1482, as Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Castile. Judicious influence had previously obtained him a Cardinal’s hat; but, marked though her favour had been, his reputation was not solely of fortune’s weaving.
Pedro Gonsález was in himself a striking personality. Nature had made him a Castilian noble, and, in adopting one of the few careers considered worthy of his rank, it never occurred to him that the claims of religion should exclude those of his blood and class. A clear-headed practical statesman, whose loyalty proved none the less valuable that it had been inspired by a cautious regard to the interests of himself and his house, he was also a liberal patron of education and philanthropy, and an accomplished soldier and courtier.
“There was never a war in Spain during his time,” we are told, “in which he did not personally take part, or at least have his troops engaged”; nor did he disdain the amours, that with conspiracies and duelling formed the fashionable life of Henry IV.’s Court. When that impressionable monarch succumbed to the charms of the Portuguese lady-in-waiting, Doña Guiomar, the name of Gonsález de Mendoza, then Bishop of Calahorra, was linked with that of the favourite’s cousin; and the chronicles record that two of his sons in later years intermarried, through their father’s influence, with connections of the royal family.
Illegitimacy carried with it little stain amongst a people whose standard of life was as low as their ideals were often high; and the Church, sharing deeply as we have seen in the national life, paid the penalty of this intimacy in a blinding of her own eyes to the distance many of her sons had wandered from their Master’s footsteps. Queen Isabel, whose personal purity was a standing witness to the high code of morality in which she believed, was yet daughter enough of her age to accept Cardinal Mendoza at his popular value. He had been her protector and advisor through many of her difficulties, showing himself subtle and far-seeing in politics, as well as the kindly friend a man of mature years will often prove to young ambitions. Ferdinand and Isabel owed him much, and they paid their debt by a trust and reverence that gained him honour in Spain only second to that accorded to themselves.
Peter Martyr, in a letter to the Cardinal, addresses him as, “You, without whom the King and Queen never take the smallest step, whether engaged actively in war or enjoying peace, and without whose advice they arrive at no important conclusion.” It is the language of eulogy, but it touches truth at bottom; and the strength of Isabel’s affection for her chief councillor may be gauged by her deference to his will, on those occasions that it happened to clash with her own. When, in 1485, she would have carried the royal jurisdiction with her to Alcalá de Henares, superseding temporarily with her prerogative all local justice, as elsewhere on her progress, the Cardinal declined to admit her claims within the boundaries of his diocese of Toledo. To all her expostulations he returned an obstinate refusal, till Isabel, seeing that the matter must end either in an open breach or her own surrender, yielded the point. It was a concession she would have made to few of her subjects.
THE CARDINAL OF SPAIN, DON PEDRO GONSÁLEZ DE MENDOZA
FROM “HISTORIA DE LA VILLA Y CORTE DE MADRID” BY AMADOR DE LOS RIOS