History is represented by the _Historia de los Reyes católicos_ of Andrés Bernáldez (d. 1513), parish priest of Los Palacios, near Seville, who relates with spirit and simplicity the triumphs of the reign, waxing enthusiastic over the exploits of his friend Columbus. A more ambitious historian is HERNANDO DEL PULGAR (1436-?1492), whose _Claros Varones de Castilla_ is a brilliant gallery of portraits, drawn by an observer who took Pérez de Guzmán for his master. Pulgar's _Crónica de los Reyes católicos_ is mere official historiography, the work of a flattering partisan, the slave of flagrant prejudice; yet even here the charm of manner is seductive, though the perdurable value of the annals is naught. As a portrait-painter, as an intelligent analyst of character, as a wielder of Castilian prose, Pulgar ranks only second to his immediate model. He is to be distinguished from another Hernando del Pulgar (1451-1531), who celebrated the exploits of the great captain, Gonzalo de Córdoba, at the request of Carlos V. In this case, as in so many others, the old is better. One great name, that of Christopher Columbus or CRISTÓBAL COLÓN (1440-1506) is inseparable from those of the Catholic kings, who astounded their enemies by their ingratitude to the man who gave them a New World. Mystic and adventurer, Columbus wrote letters which are marked by sound practical sense, albeit couched in the apocalyptic phrases of one who holds himself for a seer and prophet. Incorrect, uncouth, and rugged as is his syntax, he rises on occasion to heights of eloquence astonishing in a foreigner. But it is perhaps imprudent to classify such a man as Columbus by his place of birth. An exception in most things, he was probably the truest Spaniard in all the Spains; and by virtue of his transcendent genius, visible in word as in action, he is filed upon the bede-roll of the Spanish glories. CHAPTER VII THE AGE OF CARLOS QUINTO 1516-1556