[2] Alvaro Gomez says of him, "Nam praeter clarissimum tum natalium, tum fortunae, tum dignitatis splendorem, quae in ilio ornamenta summa erant, incredibilem animi sublimitatem cum pari morum facilitate, elegantiâque conjunxerat; ut merito locum in republicâ summo proximum ad supremum usque diem tenuerit." (De Rebus Gestis, fol. 9.) Martyr, noticing the cardinal's death, bestows the following brief but comprehensive panegyric on him. "Periit Gonsalus Mendotiae, domûs splendor et lucida fax; periit quem universa colebat Hispania, quem exteri etiam principes venerabantur, quem ordo cardineus collegam sibi esse gloriabatur." Opus Epist., epist. 158.
[3] Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, pp. 263-273, 381-410.
[4] "Gran varon, y muy experimentado y prudente en negocios," says Oviedo of the cardinal, "pero a vueltas de las negociaciones desta vida, tuvo trés hijos varones," etc. Then follows a full notice of this graceless progeny. Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.
[5] Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, lib. 2, cap. 66.
The doctor Pedro Salazar de Mendoza's biography of his illustrious relative is a very fair specimen of the Spanish style of book-making in ancient times. One event seems to suggest another with about as much cohesion as the rhymes of "The House that Jack built." There is scarcely a place or personage of note, that the grand cardinal was brought in contact with in the course of his life, whose history is not made the theme of profuse dissertation. Nearly fifty chapters are taken up, for example, with the distinguished men, who graduated at the college of Santa Cruz.
[6] "Non hoc," says Tacitus with truth, "praecipuum amicorum munus est, prosequi defunctum ignavo questu; sed quae voluerit meminisse, quae mandaverit exsequi." Annales, lib. 2, sect. 71.
[7] Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 143.—Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1494.—Salazar de Mendoza, Crón. del Gran Cardenal, lib. 2, cap. 45.
A foundling hospital does not seem to have come amiss in Spain, where, according to Salazar, the wretched parents frequently destroyed their offspring by casting them into wells and pits, or exposing them in desert places to die of famine. "The more compassionate," he observes, "laid them at the doors of churches, where they were too often worried to death by dogs and other animals." The grand cardinal's nephew, who founded a similar institution, is said to have furnished an asylum in the course of his life to no less than 13,000 of these little victims! Ibid., cap. 61.
[8] Salazar de Mendoza, Crón, del Gran Cardenal, lib. 2, cap. 46.—Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 8.
The dying cardinal is said to have recommended, among other things, that the queen should repair any wrong done to Joanna Beltraneja, by marrying her with the young prince of the Asturias; which suggestion was so little to Isabella's taste that she broke off the conversation, saying, "the good man wandered and talked nonsense."