[50] Gonzalo de Oviedob lavishes many encomiums on Cabrera, for his “generous qualities, his singular prudence in government, and his solicitude for his vassals, whom he inspired with the deepest attachment.” The best panegyric on his character is the unshaken confidence which his royal mistress reposed in him to the day of her death.

[51] See the strong language, also, of Peter Martyr,d another contemporary witness of the beneficial changes in the government.

[52] [It is difficult to reduce these sums to modern values, for the maravedi has been coined in gold, silver, and the copper alloy or vellon, and its value has fluctuated bewilderingly from a farthing or quarter of a cent upwards. Assuming that at this time it was equal to about ½d or 1 cent, Enriquez lost £480 or $2,400; Alva £1,150 or $5,750; Albuquerque £2,800 or $14,000 annually. It is customary to multiply such sums by 7 to get the modern purchasing equivalent.]

[53] As a counterpart to the above scene, twelve Christian renegades, found in the city, were transfixed with canes, acañavereados, a barbarous punishment derived from the Moors, which was inflicted by horsemen at full gallop, who discharged pointed reeds at the criminal until he expired under repeated wounds. A number of relapsed Jews were at the same time condemned to the flames. “These,” says Father Abarca,i “were the fêtes and illuminations most grateful to the Catholic piety of our sovereigns!”

[54] About two leagues west of Granada.

[55] [Marianam placed the number at nearly 800,000; Graetzn at 300,000; Burkef at 200,000; Prescottg as above at 160,000. The smallest of the estimates is sufficiently great to overwhelm the powers of imagination.]

[56] The Portuguese government caused all children of fourteen years of age, or under, to be taken from their parents and retained in the country, as fit subjects for a Christian education. The distress occasioned by this cruel provision may be well imagined. Many of the unhappy parents murdered their children to defeat the ordinance; and many laid violent hands on themselves.

[57] He consumed by fire all the Arabic controversial books he could find, which amounted to five thousand volumes, according to the lowest estimate; Condéo puts it at eighty thousand, which is commonly accepted.

[58] Prescott adds: “The spirit of toleration exhibited by the Moors, indeed, was made a principal argument against them in the archbishop of Valencia’s memorial to Philip III. The Mohammedans would seem the better Christians of the two.”

[59] [There are, however, not wanting documents to show that at times the great captain was goaded by Ferdinand’s jealous mistreatment into a serious consideration of deserting to the enemy, or declaring himself king in Italy.]

[60] [In 1492 Ferdinand had been almost killed by an insane assassin. Isabella had nursed him with the utmost devotion.]

[61] [Dr. Alfonso Diaz de Montalvo. “He first gave to light the principal Spanish codes, and introduced a spirit of criticism into the national jurisprudence.”—Prescott.g]

[62] [The alcavala or alcabala was a tax of one-tenth on all sales. Thus bread was thrice taxed, as wheat, then as flour, and finally as bread.]

[63] Even Milton, in his essay on The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, the most splendid argument, perhaps, the world had then witnessed in behalf of intellectual liberty, would exclude popery from the benefits of toleration, as a religion which the public good required at all events to be extirpated. Such were the crude views of the rights of conscience entertained, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, by one of those gifted minds whose extraordinary elevation enabled it to catch and reflect back the coming light of knowledge, long before it had fallen on the rest of mankind.

[64] [Burkef says, “Ferdinand had at least four illegitimate children by different ladies. Juana, who was offered with a double marriage portion, in 1489, to the king of Scots. Juan, archbishop of Saragossa, and two other daughters, both princesses. Raymond de Cardona (the unworthy successor of Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy) was also commonly supposed to be a son of Ferdinand. But the king’s faults were certainly not those of a voluptuary.” Prescottg quotes Marineor on “the queen’s discreet and most amiable conduct in these delicate matters.”]

[65] She gave evidence of this in the commutation of the sentence she obtained for the wretch who stabbed her husband, and whom her ferocious nobles would have put to death without the opportunity of confession and absolution, that “his soul might perish with his body!” (See her letter to Talavera.) She showed this merciful temper, so rare in that rough age, by dispensing altogether with the preliminary barbarities sometimes prescribed by the law in capital executions.