Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish CapitalLynch, Hannah
History
Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish Capital
Lynch, Hannah
Toledo (Spain) -- Description and travel; Toledo (Spain) -- History
seigneur_, he was in every way in contrast with his austere successor,
Cisneros. He was not unfamiliar with illicit love and its complications,
and acknowledged two sons, Iñigo de Mendoza, and Diego, Count of Melito.
His gifts to various cities in the shape of palaces, churches, colleges,
jewels and rich church ornaments, were incredible, while Toledo
possesses his most beautiful Hospital of Santa Cruz. He left all his
wealth to this hospital, appointing Queen Isabel his executor. He it was
who waved the royal standard from the highest tower of the Alhambra
after the taking of Granada, and, better still, counselled Isabel to
lend a friendly and helpful hearing to Columbus. His library was the
most magnificent of mediæval Spain. Philip II. was in treaty to purchase
this rare collection for the Escorial, and a correspondence exists
between his secretary and the vicar of Toledo, Maese Alvar Gomez. It
afterwards fell into the hands of Cardinal Loaysa, and was valued at
twenty thousand ducats. Mendoza employed a staff of writers in copying
and transcribing rare MSS., the chief of whom was a Greek, Calosynas, a
pupil of Darmarius.
We approach the last hours of Toledan history. The great queen's death
revealed the worthlessness of her husband, and the unfortunate Juana
became the victim of the vilest conspiracy between the three men to whom
she should have been most sacred. First her father, not willing to step
down from the throne of Castille to make way for his daughter, decided
to proclaim her mad. Then her husband, won over by promises of Fernando,
consented to accept the situation, but was cut off suddenly, after the
agreement, poisoned it is said, by Fernando's orders. Then the heartless
young prince, her son, resolved to carry on the infamous persecution, in
order to reign in her stead, and kept the poor woman nearly fifty years
in a dark comfortless chamber, ill-treated by her keepers, the Marquis
and Marchioness of Denia, with no communication with the outer world.
The story of Juana _la Loca_, to whose perfect sanity Cisneros and her
confessor, Juan de Avila, testify, is one of the saddest of history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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