DEATH AND CHARACTER OF FERDINAND
[1516 A.D.]
On the evening of the 22nd of January, 1516, he executed the instrument; and a few hours later, between one and two of the morning of the 23rd, Ferdinand breathed his last. The scene of this event was a small house belonging to the friars of Guadalupe. “In so wretched a tenement,” exclaims Martyr[l] in his usual moralising vein, “did this lord of so many lands close his eyes upon the world.”
Ferdinand was nearly sixty-four years old, of which forty-one had elapsed since he first swayed the sceptre of Castile, and thirty-seven since he held that of Aragon. A long reign; long enough, indeed, to see most of those whom he had honoured and trusted of his subjects gathered to the dust, and a succession of contemporary monarchs come and disappear like shadows. Since Ferdinand had ascended the throne, he had seen no less than four kings of England, as many of France, and also of Naples, three of Portugal, two German emperors, and half-a-dozen popes. As to his own subjects, scarcely one of all those familiar to the reader in the course of Spanish history now survived, except, indeed, the Nestor of his time, the octogenarian Cardinal Ximenes.
He died deeply lamented by his native subjects, who entertained a partiality natural towards their own hereditary sovereign. The event was regarded with very different feelings by the Castilian nobles, who calculated their gains on the transfer of the reins from such old and steady hands into those of a young and inexperienced master. The commons, however, who had felt the good effect of this curb on the nobility in their own personal security, held his memory in reverence as that of a national benefactor.
By his dying injunctions all unnecessary ostentation was interdicted at his funeral. His body was laid by the side of Isabella’s in the monastery of the Alhambra; and the year following, when the royal chapel of the metropolitan church was completed, they were both transported thither. A magnificent mausoleum of white marble was erected over them by their grandson, Charles V.
Of King Ferdinand’s personal appearance Marineo,[m] a contemporary who knew him well, says: “He was of the middle size. His complexion was fresh; his eyes bright and animated; his nose and mouth small and finely formed, and his teeth white; his forehead lofty and serene; with flowing hair of a bright chestnut colour. His manners were courteous, and his countenance was seldom clouded by anything like spleen or melancholy. He was grave in speech and action, and had a marvellous dignity of presence. His whole demeanour, in fine, was truly that of a great king.” He was esteemed one of the most perfect horsemen of his court.
He was naturally of an equable temper, and inclined to moderation in all things. The only amusement for which he cared much was hunting, especially falconry. He was indefatigable in application to business. He had no relish for the pleasures of the table, and, like Isabella, was temperate even to abstemiousness in his diet. He was frugal in his domestic and personal expenditure; partly, no doubt, from a willingness to rebuke the opposite spirit of wastefulness and ostentation in his nobles. He lost no good opportunity of doing this. No one has accused him of attempting to enrich his exchequer by the venal sale of offices, like Louis XII; or by griping extortion, like another royal contemporary, Henry VII. He amassed no treasure, and, indeed, died so poor that he left scarcely enough in his coffers to defray the charges of his funeral.
Ferdinand was devout; at least he was scrupulous in regard to the exterior of religion. He was punctual in attendance on mass, careful to observe all the ordinances and ceremonies of his church, and left many tokens of his piety, after the fashion of the time, in sumptuous edifices and endowments for religious purposes. Although not a superstitious man for the age, he is certainly obnoxious to the reproach of bigotry; for he spared no effort to fasten the odious yoke of the Inquisition on Aragon; and subsequently, though happily with less success, on Naples.