PENINSULAR SERIES OF AMERICA HISPANIC NOTES AND MONOGRAPHS THE MILITARY ORDERS IN SPAIN The Pax of Ucles A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE MILITARY ORDERS IN SPAIN BY GEORGIANA GODDARD KING, M.A. Professor of the History of Art, Bryn Mawr College Member of the Hispanic Society of America PUBLISHED BY THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA New York 1921 Copyright, 1921, by THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA TO A GREAT AND GENEROUS LOVER OF SPAIN 49S97 MILITARY ORDERS vii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ^ Dedication v V ^ Analytical Table of Contents ... vii ^ Illustrations . ix ^ Introduction 1 ^ Knightly Origins • • • 2 H Earlier Orders 4 HCalatrava 8 Foundation 9 Privileges and Dignities .... 12 Zorita de los Canes ...... 16 Alcaiiiz 20 f[ Gains 21 Cordovan Civilization 22 Battle of Alarcos 24 Epical Fragment 26 H Battle of las Navas 30 Foreign Contingent 31 It Goes Home 36 The Fight 39 HISPANIC NOTES viii M ILITARY ORDERS ^ Argote de Molina 44 ^ The Toledan Annalist 47 War, Famine and Horror .... 54 If Calatrava Acquires 57 ^ The House of Padilla 61 ^ After King Peter 67 Portrait of a Master 68 D. Enrique de A^illena 69 If The Time of John II 74 If Death of the Keeper 77 If King Henry and the Rebels .... 80 If The Fifteenth-Century Ideal ... 83 ^ D. Pedro Giron 85 Fuenteovejuna 90 D. Rodrigo 91 Romance 92 !f Garci Lopez de Padilla 96 If The Castle of Calatrava 98 Annequin de Egas 99 If Alcantara.' 101 If The Convent 103 The Bridge . . 107 If Wars in the West 108 Gonzalo Nunez . 113 If In King Peter's Day 120 If The Battle of Aljubarrota .... 126 HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN ^ Romantic Figures 131 D. Juan de Sotomayor 133 ^ D. Gomez de Caceres 144 Queen Isabel Ends All 154 ^ Lesser Orders; Monte Gaudio . . . 155 Trujillo 159 !1 S. George of x\lfama 160 The Hospice 163 ^ Montesa 164 Great Figures 169 ^ Santiago . . _^. 172 ![ Friends of God 177 IfUcles 182 *[ Early History 186 ^ St. James as Psychopompos ... 189 Apparitions 190 ^1 Dissensions 194 5f A Guzman Interposed 196 ^ Battle of Salada 199 ^ The Master D. Fadrique 203 Romance 208 ^[ Tapestry Figures 213 ^ Peribanez 214 English and Spanish Plays . . . 216 ^ The Infants of Aragon 217 Character of D. Enrique . . . .222 AND MONOGRAPHS IX X MILITARY ORDERS ^ D. Alvaro de Luna 223 Character 224 Life ... . . 227 Death 235 ^ Poetry . . 236 1[ D. Beltran de la Cueva 244 H D. Juan Pacheco 247 ^ Contemporaries Not Impartial . . 255 Character of Enrique IV ... . 257 H D. Gomez Manrique 258 ^ Apologia pro RB. CC 262 Colonial Policies 264 The Orders Afterwards 265 In America 2(57 Tempering the Spirit 270 U Envoy 272 Bibliographical Note 273 HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN ILLUSTRATIONS THE PAX OF UCLES. . . Frouttsptece Published by the Exposition of 1904 at Saragossa. EACING PAGE the castle of calatrava ... 24 calatrava: mountain rock . . 100 This and the foregoing were taken on the expedition of Miss E. H. Lowber for the Society in 1919-20. THE BRIDGE OF ALCAnTARA . . . 108 A Spanish photograph in the files of the Society. GRECO : A KNIGHT PRESENTED BY S. JULIAN 142 This is probably a knight of Alcan- tara, wrongly restored as Julian Romero; from Cossio, El Greco. THE HOSPITAL OF S. MARCOS . . 186 From a photograph by Arthur Byne in the files of the Society. D. AlVARO DE LUNA 236 From a photograph by Moreno of the retable in Toledo, by kindness of the Institute de Valencia de D. Juan. AND MONOGRAPHS XI xii MILITARY ORDERS HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 1 A Brief Account of the Military Orders in Spain The intention of this little book is to supply for persons of taste and cultivation, who may be travelling in Spain or reading Spanish books, a brief account of the foun- dation and fall of the three great Orders: Calatrava, Alcantara and Santiago. Mon- tesa is included, chiefly for the sake of symmetry, though the history and the figures that move through it belong exclu- sively to the east coast. The others, how- ever, are so essentially Castilian, and so many of the great names in Spanish story stand on the roll of Masters, that a word about them cannot come amiss. In passing through the courts of Seville the tourist hears a vague murmur of the cruel death of the Master D. Fadrique: in approaching Granada the Romance rings in his ears: Ah, God, what a good knight was the Master of Calatrava! Intro- duction Old tradition AND M ONOGRAPHS 2 MILITARY ORDERS Los Caballeros dela Cruz A mutual chivalry Ucles and Calatrava lie far from the travelled roads even of those who go in motors, but the Bridge of Alcantara and S. Mark's Hospital at Leon are depicted in every colour-book: and the red cross of Calatrava and the white mantle of Santiago figure in the portraits of every town gallery and great house. The passer- by knows a vague sense of something impal- pable but not quite perished; he is faintly aware as of a faded glory, and of the dust of crumbling honour worn with age but still clean. What is it that they mean? the imagination insists and will not be appeased: what is this fragrance of dead leaves, this light of suns long set, that lin- gers still in the hush of the ambient air? To explain that, is the present intention: to relate, and a little to interpret. 1 Some have said that the Arabs organized, very early, a kind of wild chivalry, and had certain knights called rabitos, or fron- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN tiersmen, who were bound together by mutual vows and a common austerity of hfe, and who kept the outposts of Islam with sleepless ward. This may be. It is hard to say where first the use obtained. In the interchange of perpetual warfare between noble enemies customs and usage must have grown much alike, in Syria or Egypt, in Sicily or Spain, and the florid Berbers and the dark Iberians have imi- tated each other as well as emulated. There were almogavares in the Pyrenees and assassins in the Lebanon. Wherever the intermittent but endless war went on, it moulded men's observance and tempered their spirits, by a like process, to a like ideal. Through long lifetimes, through gen- erations and centuries, the conflict contin- ued and resumed, necessary to man's life as food and fire, refining in its emotion, its issues, its sanctions, as the love of lovers and the bitterness of martyrs. Over- population, we are told, and the want of raw materials, produce the convulsions of history — a high birth-rate and the law of diminishing returns. The outcome is not AND MONOGRAPHS "A terrible and splendid trust" . . And conquest is dragged captive through the deep" MILITARY ORDERS always alike, however: the same pressure may have flung forth the Huns and the Normans, but the consequences in Europe were different: and where one age has been involved in a World War, on another had burst the glory of the Crusades. Brotherhood in vows was familiar to the age; equality of opportimity awaited the self-dedicated, in the cloister or in the front of battle; the tie of danger not only shared but sought together, the thirst of self- devotion slaked at a common cup, the ecstasy of immolation for God's glory and the world's ransom — all these were ordi- nary experience from the tenth century to the thirteenth, and that not in Europe only, but on the northern shore of Africa and in the western lands of Asia and among the islands of the midland sea. I As there were many pilgrimages, so there were many crusades — Ferdinand the Saint spoke well when he replied in this HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 5 sense to S. Louis of France, who was his mother's sister's son. In Spain there was always a crusade. It is possible and even likely that the model of the Templars, and of the Knights of S. John and of the Holy Sepulchre, gave rise immediately to the great Spanish Orders, but these three, of Calatrava, of Alcantara, and of S. James of the Sword, are only the strongest, the surviving, among many that sprang up. In the eastern parts, particularly, the Pales- tinian orders were established early: D. Alfonso el Batallador, dying without heirs in 1134, left the kingdom of Aragon to "the Holy Houses and Soldiery of the Sepulchre of the Hospital, and of the Temple of Jerusalem." True, the Cortes repudiated his will and elected D. Ramiro el Rey Monje, but already in his lifetime he had given over to the Templars his palace at Sanguesa, and by 1146 the same order was established at Puente la Reyna. The Templars did nobly in Spain. Their earliest house was at Monzon where the wreck of their castle still crumbles above the hill-climbing town. When they were "To live, and act, and serve the future hour." Earlier orders: of the Temple AND MONOGRAPHS 6 M ILITARY ORDERS of the Hospital of the Palms ruined, by the determination and power of the King of France and a French Pope his creature, their wealth in Spain was saved in part and assigned for the founda- tion of other Orders. The Order of S. John of Jerusalem has a like story and one almost contemporary. The King D. Peter the Cathohc of Aragon loved the Order well, and was buried at Sijena in the Convent of Comendadores de S. Juan de Jerusalen, where he had been armed a knight. Cervera was another double monastery of the Hospital ruled by the Comendadora: in 1806 the good Vil- lanueva could still trace the ruins of a circular church there. But all the while there were other orders springing up under the shadow of these: perhaps the earliest that of the Jreyles or Knightly Brethren of the Palms who assisted Alfonso el Batallador in 1110, their master being called D. Garcia Sanchez. The learned and loyal historian, Pedro Abarca, would see in these the Order of Santiago, present in the world and doing God's service sixty- five years before any Bull endorses them: HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 7 it can hardly be so. Already, in his turn, Briz Martinez had said that Aragonese knights before going to war went up to S. Juan de la Pena and called themselves Knights of S. John, and that they were installed in Monreal, the brown hill that rears above the river Aragon, between Tiermas and Pampeluna. Briz Martinez was abbot of S. Juan de la Pena and knew the archives there; he is likely to have known the truth. At the conquest of Daroca there was a Milicia called after S. Saviour: at Teruel was one called after the Redeemer, * joined to the Temple in 1296. At a meeting of prelates in Gerona, called by Ramiro IV and presided over by the Cardinal-legate Guido^ on the 27th of November, 1143, the King created a new order of soldiery to fight against the Moors in imitation of that of the Temple, and subject to the Master of that. The short-lived Order of Monte Gaudio* passed from the west to the east and back again. But all these Ara- gonese orders — and more are known, and others, doubtless, there were, now unknown of the Rocls *V. p. 158 *V. p. 15.S AND MONOGRAPHS 8 MILITARY ORDERS *V. p. 56 *V. p. 159 The Order of Calatrava —either died out or were gathered in by the Temple or the Hospital. Only that of Calatrava was too deeply rooted and too well sustained. Turning from the Medi- terranean to the Atlantic shore, the same process appears. So, far in the west, the Order of Evora* was organized in 1147; and that of Alcantara was anticipated and then being established was supported in its turn: and a donation of Alfonso IX gave five towns in 1 195 to the Order of Trujillo. * Calatrava was a frontier-post, a castle in the south. The Templars had thrown it up, as too hard to hold; the King had proffered it to any taker; two white monks of Fitero had accepted: a cowled Cister- cian, Frey Raimundo Sierra, ecclesiastic to the marrow, and Frey Diego Velazquez, an old soldier who had looked to end his days inside a cloister, dozing in the sun, drowsing under the psalms. 1 The foundation of the Order of Calatrava was on this wise : HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 9 Alfonso VI took Toledo in 1072. El que gano Toledo: that is how the chronicles name the amazing old king of the many monasteries, the many wives, the many conquests. But though he recovered Toledo, Calatrava la Vieja was for seventy- two years more in the power of the Haga- renes. In 1 147 Alfonso VII took but could not keep"^ Cordova, so he returned to Toledo and thence besieged Calatrava and stormed it. He gave the chief mosque to the Chapter and Archbishop of Toledo, who put in ten clerks (what with priests, deacons and other clergy) and he gave the stronghold to the Master and Knights Brethren of the Temple, who for eight years kept it at a great expenditure of goods and men. Then when the Emperor was dead and the realm was divided and the Moors were raising an immense army, even over-sea, the Master resigned it to Sancho the Desired in Toledo. The King offered it to anyone that dared the adventure. No one appeared. The abbot of Fitero, D. Raimundo, was at the court with one of his Cistercian monks, a knight A forlorn adventure AND MONOGRAPHS J 10 Stars caught in my branches / make day of the dark MILITARY ORDER vS who had been reared at the court of Alfonso the Emperor: the king told him the situation and he volunteered, the abbot assenting. It must have seemed a short cut to martyrdom. The donation was signed in Almazan: the gift being made to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Congregation of Citeaux and the abbot Raimundo and -his /tT^^^^- The date is Era 1196: the boundaries begin at Las Navas de Tolosa and end in the Sierra de Orgaz, including a region about twenty- eight leagues long and as many wide, com- prising a good bit of the Sierra Morena. In after years, when the other Orders were in existence, and Santiago was estab- lished at Ucles, and Calatrava claimed the obedience of Alcantara, the spheres of influence were not easy to defme, but, roughly speaking, the domain of Calatrava reached from the Mountains of Toledo to the Sierra Nevada and included, with La Mancha, the upper waters of the Guadiana and the Guadalquivir. Though a Castilian foundation, its power looked eastward, on the whole: the first two HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Masters were Navarrese and the third was of Aragon, It is curious, but certainly true, that while Calatrava had more power Santiago had more glory: the lesser orders were rang- ed under the former but the greatest and most romantic figures belong in the latter. Something of this may be due to the differ- ence in the original organization : Santiago was a brotherhood of gentlemen ; Calatrava started as another monkish association, with a Rule and a Habit. Dress, food and behaviour were strictly prescribed and monastic celibacy enforced for those that fought as well as those that prayed. The abbot, seeing that the boundaries of the city of Calatrava were great and the land fertile and little peopled, set out to look for a folk: he went back to Fitero and fetched thence monks, leaving the old and the sick behind, and fetched also sheep and cattle and other movable wealth, and twenty thousand men to people and defend it all: Archbishop Roderick says that he talked with men who had seen them. In addition, the Archbishop D. 11 Calatrava's power, Santiago's glory How a place was peopled AND MONOGRAPHS 12 MILITARY ORDERS Citeaux gets it after 29 years A few facts John of Toledo had ordered pubhc preach- ing and given great pardons to all that went to defend Calatrava by their persons, or gave arms or horse wherewith to buy what was needed to defend the place. They had there, then, the three things necessary: tenantry, soldiery and clerkfi, The incorporation with the Congregation of Citeaux was effected only in 1187: that it was ever done is surprising, but you would never guess from the Histories that King or Archbishop had occasion or impulse for opposition. Yet Abbot Rayrnond, when he came back from Barcelona, governed the Order with no superior spiritual or temporal but the Roman Pontiff and the Chapter- General of Citeaux. Thereafter, the power was divided between the I^Iaster and the Prior of the Convent of Calatrava; long after the Orders were brought into subjec- tion by the Catholic Kings they could claim and did use the following tokens and symbols of this high place : The Prior is cura general of all persons of the Order: uses Mitre and Pastoral HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 13 Staff, and other pontifical insignia and can give, like a Bishop, solemn Benedic- tion after Mass, Vespers or Matins: he can confer minor orders on the conven- tuals, and consecrate ornaments and vases for the use of the church, and can reconcile them if they are polluted or violated. The Master has all the spiritual and temporal power possible without orders, the Prior having the rest. He receives professions and gives the habit, adminis- ters or assigns the benefices and does all that in other orders the abbots do: and for three hundred and twenty-three years the Order was governed by Mas- ters, from the sixth year after its insti- tution to 1487. Five other dignities there were in addition, and these are the officers that filled them : 1. Comendador Mayor, who held the chief place after the Master and ruled the richest and most powerful encomi- enda — ^Commandery is the English word in the case of the Templars. 2. Clavero or Keeper of the Keys: through many a hard battle the Clavero of Calatrava carried the wrath of God. The Dignities AND MONOGRAPHS 14 MILITARY ORDERS The Habit 3. The Prior, and 4. The Sacrist, .whose business was that of the treasurer in cathedrals: the office drew its income from the city of La Calzada. 5. The Ohrcro who probably was responsible for the fortifications and munitions as well as the sustenance of the Order: it was a heavy stewardship. A list of the Commanderies of the Order shows about a hundred and forty places. The Bull of Alexander III was given at Siena in 1 167 in the time of the first Master, D. Frey Garcia, a Navarrese. Food and dress were to be as Abbot Raymond ordained: linen might not be worn except as underclothing, but leather garments and furred cloaks were permitted, and the monastic habit was altered to suit riding and fighting, though it included a hooded scapular until in 1397 Benedict XIII disallowed it. A white cloak was worn, with a red cross cut in lilies. The Rule required them to sleep dressed and girt, Uke frontier soldiers, and allowed "no HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 15 superfluity or curiosity in any of the dress" that they wore. It required them, hke other ReHgious, to keep silence in the Oratory, the Refectory, the Dormitory and the Kitchen, but the diet was modified and their fasting was like that of the converse or lay brother among Cistercians. The prescription of silence at table seems to have been especially stringent: except for the cheerlessness of this, it looks to be a good rule of life. There were always, besides the knights, priests in orders, and lesser clerics, for the Offices, the sacraments, and the sick. The Master, though under vows, was, of course, a layman, and after the first Master was elected, or the second, the original monks of Fitero so resented obedience to a secular, that they were finally removed to S. Pedro de Gumiel. I know nothing of similar trouble thereafter. The Master was elected by the Order in chapter assembled: kings often tried to dictate the choice and some- times succeeded. The first master was D. Frey Garcia, a The Rule The first Navarrese, as said: in his time the Papal Master AND MONOGRAPHS 16 Lope de Vega Zorita delos Canes MILITARY ORDERS Bull was obtained and apparently the Cistercian authority acknowledged. He was an important figure in a troubled time, when Alfonso VIII was still a baby and the feuds of Castro and Lara were laying the land waste. A shadowy and ghostly image in the rule of successive Masters, he is barely discernible as late as 1178: at any rate he fought the Moors many times. D. Frey Fernando Escaza was his suc- cessor, and assisted at the siege of Zorita. Now the tale of the Siege of Zorita is a tract, and admirably edifying when Rades y Andrada relates it, who knows well how to adorn a moral. When Lope de Vega in his turn gives an act or two to the great castle, wherein the seneschal is noble- hearted, the traitor ingeniously false, and the barber deftly villainous, he supplies better reading than The Troublesome Raigne of King John. But the whole story is too rich to be put off into a paragraph here, and the ruined castle and church, whereon Torres Campos y B albas has published most excellent matter, are too splendid to be overlooked, and Zorita de los Canes HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 17 must be left apart for a more convenient season. Five years later the King gave Zorita to the Order to defend it from the Moors, that were too close by far. Cuenca indeed was seemingly founded by the Moors, for Romans and Visigoths name it not, and like" Burgos it begins existence within the Reconquest. The beautiful cathedral bears marks of English invention and handiwork, in conception and adornment, and enshrines the memory of the loveliest of English queens in Castile, Dofia Leonor. All the tierra de Cuenca is dotted with commanderies of the Orders, from Ocafia to Cafiete and from Requena to Albarracin. Though the story of Albarracin is as good as that of Zorita, and prettier, it is less momentous for the Order. And the exploits of D. Frey Fer- nando are not yet all told. From Calatrava he raided the Moors by the Port of Muradal, that opens on the richest of the Andalusian plain, and took the Castle of Ferral: then as the knights were moving, with booty and prisoners, he let one prisoner loose to report his Cuenca Albarracin AND MONOGRAPHS 18 MILITARY ORDERS A war by raiding advance at tJbeda. But the IMoors did not come to look for him. Later, however, those of Ubeda and Baeza gathered a great force, and besieged Ferral for ten days. He, being forewarned, had sent to Toledo for help, and to all the cities of his Order, and thrown himself into the threatened castle in time. There was a battle finally, about where that of Las Navas was later to be fought, and there many died on both sides. Returning to Calatrava victorious, he divided the spoil and gave the greater part to the Toledans in recompense for their good help, and the city had great rejoicing and the archbishop ordered thanksgiving in the cathedral and a pro- cession. A set battle was a serious matter, and much of the warfare consisted rather in skilful raids enhanced by brilliant skir- mishes: Argote de Mohna copies out with quiet complacency the story of this Mas- ter's return from his latest exploit in which he captured many Moors who were going about the country, and came home driving — he and his freyles — plenty of fine cattle before them, and so entered into Cala- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 19 trava rich and much honoured. Then, being very old, he resigned the A^Tastership, though he seems to have used the title to the close of his life. When that was, no one knows. His successor was less thrifty but in the end no less successful: D. Martin Perez de Siones of Tarazona. The town lies in Aragon. This may have accounted for some of his difficulties, but it brought advantage to the Order. Early in his ad- ministration there was a sort of mutiny: the Master was raiding Moreria, both northward and southward, when the Moors captured the castle of Almodovar; he pursued them as soon as he could, captured more than two hundred, and killed every one. The knights were indignant, for these prisoners might have been sold and thus have paid the expenses of the war, or they might have been exchanged for Christian captives. Furthermore, the loot was not divided to their hking, and they wrote up to D. Diego Garcia, still living at Calatrava, who suggested that they should depose the present Master. His with profit for all AND MONOGRAPHS 20 The Master holds out and adds bene- factions MILITARY ORDERS motives were probably no more than spleen, and the irritability that comes with old age. One by one the knights got leave from Almodovar, on various pretexts, and corrling up to Calatrava held an election, but the clerks took no part and sent word to the Master, and the trouble died away. To clear his character it should be added that the Moors when they took Almodovar had massacred seventy Christians and the retaliation was meant for a lesson, doubt- less. Shortly afterwards he founded a hospital and Alfonso of Castile dowered it well; he went on a raid with the King of Aragon; he was present at the taking of Cuenca and won for the Order some important houses and other property. These later were exchanged for others with the Order of Santiago. In recognition of their great services the King of Aragon gave to Calatrava the city _pf_ Alcaiiiz. with the consent of the grandees; but apparently the inhabitants were not well content. At any rate, four years later it was bestowed again, this time on D. Martin Ruiz who called himself Master, with HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 21 obligation to observe the king's pacts and truces with the Moors. Alcaniz remained the High Commandery of Calatrava, in Aragon. Sometimes it recognized the mother convent, sometimes it set up for an independent order. What remains of architecture in the beautiful unvisited little town is mainl}^ of the rich late Gothic and delicate Italianate styles that obtained likewise in the seats of the Order in the south, at Daimiel and Alma- gro. It fell to be an appanage of princes; but Bourbons, having no pride or part in the great inheritance to which they came, forgot it. It lies still forgotten among the hills. 1 The next Master, being a Leonese of a great name, D. Nufio Perez de Quinones, was able to make advantageous adjust- ments with the Order of Santiago. Some of these have been named, and Ocana was among the cities exchanged. He made likewise a pact of brotherhood {herman- Alcaniz AND MONOGRAPHS 22 MILITARY ORDERS dad) and confederation with tlie Master of Santiago for mutual support. Old vestments of Cordovan workman- ship A chasuble of cramoisy taffetas, with its dalmatics, and with some panizos of gold and silver, of very ancient workmanship — these things were long preserved at the Convent of Calatrava. It was believed that they were made from the dress of a Moorish prisoner whom D. Frey Nufio captured in a raid and ultimately put to ransom. He had proved to be the brother of the Queen of Cordova : and for her sake the King, his kinsman, gave fifty Chris- tians in exchange, of whom four were knights of Calatrava. In the perishing silken stuff so reverently preserved, in the fading broideries and the blackening silver and the tarnishing gold, lives the symbol of the exquisite civilization of the south, already passing. She was very beautiful, that woman, and very well beloved, as Itimad had been loved before her by the King who planted all the Sierra de Cordova with almond trees to make a snow for his love to pleasure her eyes. Mutamid was dead in exile long since, and pilgrims had HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 23 kissed the dust from his tomb in Aghmat; the Berbers had sacked the cities and from Alorocco Almoravides had ruled; the Almohades now reigned throughout Anda- lusia. Though ravished by the African, still Cordova was fair beyond comparison, musical with poets and fountains, fragrant with hea\^ flowers and pale women, rich in all the arts of life, and the subtilties of the doctors: Averroes was there. The memory of it, doubtless, was still fresh for these four red-crossed veterans on their return, sitting silent, in white, at the long table among their sunburnt mates, while under the heavy arched vault of brooding Romanesque stone-work the lec- tor's voice rolled on in Latin as intelli- gible to them as their yet-hardly-altered Romance speech, and the strange shrill Arabic of the court-poets was hardly out of their ears — for instance, that couplet ; They passed with ceremony and with song. With clouds about their feet they passed along. The Cordovan civilization The convent life AND MONOGRAPHS 24 Defence of Chris- tianity The rising tide MILITARY ORDERS It was this same Master who concluded the affiUation to Citeaux, going to the Chapter-General in Burgundy, in 1187, and reporting what the knights of the Order were doing in defence of the Catholic faith, which meant, in truth, at the moment, European civilization. Gregory VIII was to confirm everything in due time. The Moors were gathering a great army and he strengthened Calatrava and forti- fied other places. He had probably fore- seen this and gone to Burgundy to urge the need of help, which Spain needed then as sorely as in Count Raymond's and Count Henry's days. The dark tide of invasion coming in across Calpe and Tarifa was mounting fast, the waves were coming nearer with every spring, and they washed back not so far. The great third wave broke in the battle of Alarcos. It was a great defeat. The Masters of Santiago and Calatrava were there, but the Castilian nobles would not fight, for Alfonso their king had said that his knights of Estremadura were good enough to meet HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN the Moors with. Characteristically, they preferred to die, and spent their lives to avenge themselves on the King. The Master of Santiago, a Gallegan, died there too: and the King came out of the fight with nothing but the bridle in his hand, says the historian of the Arabs. He wanted rather to die than go back to Toledo shamed, but his people pulled him out and forced him away. The Christians made a stand at a pass between La Zarzuela and Darazutan; they all were killed or taken. Those that fled got into the castle of Guadalherza — where the hospice was — with the Master escorting and defending the King; others got to Calatrava; others, among them the Counts of Haro and of Lara, shut themselves up in the castle of Alarcos, where the Moors laid siege and took it by storm. Some books, however, say that Lope de Haro fled, with the King's flag, to the castle of Alarcos, leaving his lord in the battle, and afterwards surren- dered the castle to the Moors: and there are uglier stories yet of his breaking a solemn pledge and escaping after the sur- AND MONOGRAPHS 25 Proof by dying Was Lope de Haro a traitor? 26 Calatrava was lost The Battle of Alarcos MILITARY ORDERS render with his sons-in-law, leaving Fernan Ruiz de Castro to take all the consequences. At any rate the Moors took Calatrava also, and killed all the freyles there, and many other Christians. So the histories tell it, and, as Cervantes once said, the story is so old it must be true. It is a good story, both the tragedy and the sorry part. But the Primera Coronica General, the first complete history of Spain, which is the book of el Rey Sahio, does better. It incorporates some frag- ments of elder poetry, like carved capitals and corbels built into a house wall. This is epical: it is one of the canlilenes that French scholars used to postulate, though I think myself it is the remnant, and not the germ, of a great poetry. Then Mazemut in his triremes set sail from the African cove, And his folk were beyond the telling, so great was the throng thereof. And like the sands of the seashore, as they crossed by the Straits of the South, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 27 And reached the city of Seville, and brought to Cordova drouth. For he set his face to Alarcos, his wrath on Toledo bent, The plains of Tolosa were barren behind him, the ways that he went He widened with track of horseshoes, the mountain gorges between, And the streams ran dry — where the folk of his following passed — that were green. The fame of their coming hurried more swift than the flight of a bird, Scattered abroad through the country till every least village had heard. The light-footed news waked fury; yet the sound of the message was joy, The foeman's coming was welcomed as love by the heart of a boy. What man knows God's intention, or the way of the Most High? Nor any son of Adam His counsel may espy. When the hosts were joined in battle, and Christians had lost the day. The noble King Alfonso his own men forced away The fragment of a lost epic AND MONOGRAPHS 28 MILITARY ORDERS Reconstruc- tion And only the noble wisdom of his own folk in that hour Saved him from death or capture in midst of the battle's stour. And after the day was ended, and the battle lost and done The Moors took certain castles, and they held them, all that they won. Now this was Alarcos battle; in July they came to strive, In the year of Our Lord Incarnate eleven and ninety-five. So the Moors came up and besieged Toledo and withdrew; and in the south, where all the work of half a century was to be done again, the Master fell to it. There was a little house at Ciruelos, where Abbot Raymond had ended his days and found burial: what was left of the Order he settled there, "and he gave the habit to many knights that, by God's providence, asked for it," as great hearts are alwa3'^s prompt for the hopeless enterprise. Politicians are prompt, too, and those of Aragon snatched this moment to elect a Master at Alcafiiz, D. Garci Lopez de HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Moventa, hoping to get control of the whole machinery while shattered. Alcaniz, notwithstanding, remained, as said above, no more than encomienda mayor, the Mas- ter going up, in a lull about 1207, and adjusting matters. But there was little rest. The Master D. Nuno being past fighting now, he sent out the knights under D. Martin Martinez, and they took Salva- tierra in the Campo de Calatrava and trans- lated the convent thither; and four years later elected D. Martin with the title, Master of Salvatierra. Then the Moors besieged that castle for three months, and took it, and pulled it down, and the con- vent passed to Zorita, and again many candidates received the habit. It is likely that nearly any one will be received at such a time, if so that he be able-bodied, but applicants know that if it is a short road to nobility it is also a short cut to heaven, and at the cross-roads they stand, well- content. I AND MONOGRAPHS 29 Ambition in Aragon A sure chance for Paradise 30 The storm- tide of the 13th century In Toledo MILITARY ORDERS There are times at the autumnal equinox, if a strong wind is blowing, that the tide never goes down at all, but as the hours pass and high -water comes around again, it rises still, mounts inland, and climbing threatens to overwhelm the shore. The Archbishop of Toledo, D. Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada, went to Rome, and into France, preaching a crusade, urgently asking help, warning the princes of Europe of what would happen if Spain were over- whelmed. The princes of Europe were occupied, but they permitted what we should call "a drive" and "propaganda." Of volunteers there was no lack : the chance offered adventure, loot, and salvation, all at once. By February of 1212 Toledo was filling up with foreigners, chiefly French and Italian. The Four Gauls sent swarms of men — gentlemen and enthusiasts, ruf- fians and criminals, all classes and all kinds more or less in contact, all marked with the cross, visibly, on the shoulder. Queen Leonor drew from her father's continental domain, and the Archbishop of Bordeaux came in person: so also a myste- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 31 rious D. Tybalt de Blazon, of Poitou, with his retainers, ''who was a noble man and a liberal, a Spaniard born of Castilian lineage." He was a loyal gentleman, as will appear. Arnault of Narbonne brought thither his pack of war-dogs, still reeking with blood from Beziers and Carca- sonne; and he never left the scent, and he Uved to be abbot of Citeaux, as D. Roderick recalls. The Lombard communes sent their quota and the Ghibelline cities, and Rome: Ytalia, to the Spanish chroni- cler, means either Lombardia or Roma — all these came "como en romeria," to save their souls: all these are classed together, by the early historians, as outlanders. The throngs described by D. Roderick as "from beyond the Ports of Aspe," I take to be a great wave from the first epoch of the Albigensian persecution, part soldiery of the black-and-tan order, part refugees. On the octave of Pentecost arrived King Peter of Aragon, coming by forced marches from Cuenca, anxiously expected and received with processions and with thanksgiving. Among the great lords of A mustering of many- folk AND MONOGRAPHS 32 ^So the book: more likely Tarazona A great leader MILITARY ORDERS Aragon who accompanied him were the Archbishop of Tarragona, * and his brother- elect of Barcelona; Cardonas and Cerveras from Catalonia, others of the old rock with such names as D. Aznal Pardo. They were accommodated on the other shore of the Tagus, in the King's own domain there. Portuguese were there as well, though their King excused himself; D. Sancho of Navarre likewise had refused to participate but he could not endure, in the end, to stay away from where civilization was at stake and Spain was the issue, and he arrived in the south at a fortunate moment. King Alfonso had a hard winter. He had long been preparing in every way imaginable: he had asked his nobles to sacrifice the ornaments of their dress and turn the value into arms and equipment, according as each one lacked. In Toledo, as the foreigners came in, he saw to quar- tering them where they could be under- stood, and could not quarrel: he did not disdain to go about himself, nor shrink from sending the higher clergy to talk with them HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 33 in their own languages and cheer them and content them, now with tact and again with gifts. The "morale " of the mustering at Toledo was superb, and it was the King's doing. He kept his temper, and his wits, well in hand, and went about like Holin- shed's King Harry, and he gave whatever was needed, and he gave more, for "the history says that among his gifts were many noble horses of lineage, and stuffs of many sorts that gave delight with their lovely semblance." There was a fixed allowance for each knight, and for each foot-soldier, and, as one likes to remember, something also for women, and young lads, and those not fit to fight; and for them, later, a ration of food, and baggage wagons, and draught-animals and beasts of burden. The Castilians were coming in now with the warm weather, great lords and private gentlemen and a contingent from each of the three communities of Castile: Segovia, A Vila and Medina. The bishops were strictly Castilian: they represented Osma, Sigiienza, Palencia and Avila. All the orders had mustered: Ruiz Diaz, Master of Morale The Spanish array AND MONOGRAPHS ► 34 MILITARY ORDERS for the battle of Armaged- don Calatrava, with his Religious — brethren, good knights and God's friends, and hardy; the Templars under their Master Gomez Ruiz, the Hospital with the Prior Gutier Alvilles, and with the Knights of Santiago the Master D. Pedro Arias. That these had sworn never to quit their religion, betrays how often and how easily men might end their lives in Moreria as wealthy renegades. Diego Lopez de Haro had gathered and organized the hosts of the northern shore: Biscay ans, Asturians and even Gallegans he had under his command, and he seems to have ranked with the Kings. To Spaniards it was a solemn season, and they walked warily, needing to placate God; the lesson of Alarcos being yet present in mind. ''From the great cities and the castles on every side, came gentle- men well arrayed at all points, with horse and arms in plenty, with harness and meat abundant for each man's self and his mount, which they shared each with his fellow, being used and disciplined to the custom of arms and the nobility of HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN hoi semanship. And humbly all came for the great hazard of the faith and the law of Christ, constantly mindful and con- strained by the greatness of what should be." So the chronicle. 'And about midsummer in this year set forward from Toledo to go down to battle, the host of the Lord God. In front went those from across the mountains, and Diego Lopez de Hare was appointed them for a leader." This was a measure of simple precaution on the King's part: he dared not leave them out of sight. They took Malagon and killed all the Moors there, and apparently they wasted the land, for already the army was in straits, with a cruel shortage of food. The divers divi- sions moved by divers roads; Calatrava was appointed for a rendezvous. The Moors, it will be remembered, held that castle and had fortified it further. They had sown calthrops over the approaches and in the fords of the Guadiana; neverthe- less, by God's help it was taken. The story is a good one as the Coronica General rehearses it, with the sense of God's mighty AND MONOGRAPHS 35 Cachorros del leon The taking of Calatrava 36 The return of the outlanders MILITARY ORDERS hand, and His stretched-out arm, still shadowing and exalting the style. The Arab King was so stricken by the loss of the castle that for wrath he could not eat or drink. Of the spoil King Alfonso kept nothing. He divided it between the Aragonese and the outlanders, and what with quarrels, and the fatness of the present loot, the outlanders at this point went home again. It is shameful, but it befell. Amaut of Narbonne and his ruffians of the south stayed there, scenting carrion beyond the Pass of Muradal; and D. Tybalt de Blazon and his own retainers stayed because he was a gentleman and a Spaniard. In all, out of the great host that had assembled at Toledo, and been fed there and dowered with gifts, and had pickings along the south-bound road, and had the loot of Calatrava, there remained but seven hundred and thirty knights of gentle blood, and such footmen as cared to abide or were feudatories of Spaniards. So the foreigners move off the scene, and the Spaniards are left to save Europe HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN if they can — for the truth is that D. Alfonso VIII did at Las Navas in 1212 what D. John of Austria did at Lepanto in 15^1: he lifted the terror that lay upon men's spirits. It was three centuries and a half before the great wave gathered again. In another four centuries and a half thereafter, or something less, men were to shiver and shrink before the same terror, and the Asiatic multitudes to be in men's minds a mighty affright; and the Powers to-day are assembling machinery, and for arms they manufactiu^e poisons. But our story lies with the Spanish host who moved to this battle as to an atonement. As they reached Alarcos, Sancho of Navarre arrived, for "when came the day of battle and the danger, he could not withhold from God's service his hardihood nor his heart." The three Kings took counsel together in name of the Trinity: the case looked desperate and daily men were deserting to the Moors. The castle of El Farral was in the Moors' hands now, who planned to trap the army in the narrow pass and destroy it leisurely where rocks AND MONOGRAPHS 37 \ * Moors, Turks, and Japanese The Battle of Las Navas '6L.-^..._ ?v. fjo 38 MILITARY ORDERS The tent The shepherd overhung and a stream filled up the gorge : but the Count of Haro with a vanguard took the ascent of the pass and the host followed him and took the castle. Thence looking into the valley of Las Navas they could see the red tent of the Moorish leader; it was — as they were to see later — of cramoisy velvet, embroidered richly with gold and sown with precious stones of inestimable value. And to them there God sent a shepherd who knew the hills, and he showed them a way. So they left the castle and the Moors came back, rather surprised: indeed one hoary general observed in the midst of their barbaric rejoicings that the array of the Christian host looked more like order of battle than like retreat. But the scarlet tent blazed in the sun and the sound of kettle-drums and nakirs came up to the Christians among the hills. All Saturday they lay there, and Sunday, with only one skirmish when the Moors arrived to investigate, and found out, and withdrew. The army confessed and com- municated and was ready and rather HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN anxious to die, for it would have been a good death, and heaven, for once in a man's life, would have been sure. The King of Navarre knighted his nephew there, that day; and the Count of Roussillon, his son. Shortly after midnight the call was blown and the word was spread: "Arise all in God's name and arm for the battle of the Lord." The bagpipes screamed among the rocks and the olifaunts brayed as for the Day of Doom, and the Spanish host was drawn out. They lifted up their hands to heaven. They lifted up their hearts to martyrdom. The Count of Haro led the van: the King of Aragon and the four Orders constituted one wing and Ruy Diaz de los Cameros with his brother Alvar Diaz, and other noblemen with them, the other wing, and the King of Navarre led these; and in the rear-guard were placed King Alfonso of Castile, and the Archbishop Don Roderick, the other bishops, and Spanish nobles, many of whose names are Gallegan or Asturian. And in each of these divisions were posted the commons of the noble cities, Segovia, AND MONOGRAPHS 39 "A heaven taken by storm where none are left but the slain" 40 The roll-call of honour A rampart of live flesh M ILITARY ORDERS Avila and Medina. Argote de Molina, writing in the sixteenth century, calls the roll of the army, made up from the tradi- tions of the noble houses that fought there. All the history of Spain is in that roll-call of the sons of the great dead, and the ensamples of the good knights to come. The Moorish host was a huge and horri- ble mass of many nations, sheer flesh and bone to dull steel's edge and encvunber horses' passage. Their centre was upon a little eminence within an enclosure made of living bodies, linked leg to leg, and there the bravest fighting-men were stationed and the King among them. He was wrapped in the old black cloak of the Berber conqueror, his ancestor, and sword and Koran were with him in either hand. No wonder the slaughter was unlimited: row by row the turbans went down and men lay chained as they fell. The living rampart was impossible to scale: the men of Haro wavered and fell back. Then said the King aloud, to D. Rodrigo: "Archbishop, you and I will die here." And the young cleric answered: ''Lord, trust God and HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 41 we will do better than die." On the flag beating over their head was broidered the image of Mary, God's Mother, the Virgin, "Our Mother," as Spaniards yet call her in Zamora. The King tried to advance, but his nobles put him back. Then the King said again, and he never changed colour, nor did his voice alter: ''You and I will die here, for in such a place death is good"; and the Archbishop answered again — "If God please, victory is yours and not death; but if otherwise seem good to God, we are ready to die with you and for you." Then the banner moved for- ward and the Moors broke. The Arch- bishop said: "Lord, remember God's mercy that he has done you this day," and again he said, "Lord, forget not your good knights and your noble folk by whose aid you have attained so great a glory;" and then he began to sing the Te Deum, and the bishops took it up and the other clerks there, and sang it through to the end. The Moorish King Almiramomelin fled on a great red horse: and when those of Baeza saw him at their gate and asked him Virgen que el sol mas pura Te Deum AND MONOGRAPHS 42 MILITARY ORDERS Discipline The spoil what to do he said, "I have no counsel for myself nor for you," and changed horses and went on to Jaen. But on the field of Las Navas the work was finishing. Not unmindful of Calatrava, the Kings had ordered straitly that none should stop for looting, and the knights were busy still. D. Roderick notes with surprise that, though the dead were tall men and stout, no blood was seen upon the field. The wretched masses overthrown must have suffocated in heaps, been crushed and trampled, been clubbed and battered, and doubtless also been picked up as part of the spoil. The chronicler piles it up hastily: "There was much gold taken, much silver and many precious stuffs of silk, and many jewels and much money, and many vases and cups ; and all this was taken by the foot-soldiers and by some knights of Aragon: for those who had zeal for the faith and love for Our Lord, and loved the Law and knew what shame is, stayed strictly at their proper business, to them victory was wealth and honour and glory: and withal they laboured till night- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN f all . " The scarlet pavilion was taken home , however, into the north by King Peter of Aragon for a token, like that tent of Francis I, still preserved in the Armoury at Madrid: and the chains thereof were set about the shield of Navarre, and the banner from above it hangs still in the Convent of Las Huelgas de Burgos. When night fell, the host sat down within the tents — 'Hired but happy," says the chronicler, as though they had but passed the day in woodcraft. They had taken not only camels but other beasts as well, and they supped full: and for firewood for all the army the broken lances and the arrows sufficed so long as they stayed there. The third day they moved. When they took Baeza they burned the mosque and therein those who had taken refuge there; but when they came to tJbeda the citizens offered to pay a high ransom for their lives and city and the Kings would fain have accepted. The clergy would not admit it: they had not borne this war, they said, to leave in the midst of recovered and rechristened land AND MONOGRAPHS 43 and about a chapel in Pampeluna cloister The clergy_ exacts the _ worst 44 MILITARY ORDERS Heathen- dom un- profitable So told D. Rodrigo a canker of heathendom which should spread till at last all the work should be to do again. Heathendom was to be made unprofitable, the city was to be razed and the inhabitants sold into slavery. It is the logic of Torquemada: Arnaut of Narbonne was stubborn and Roderick of Toledo had the Pope's orders and had to support him. So it was done. But the Archbishop was set sternly against looting: and when a great pestilence fell upon the land he saw God's judgement in it: "By luxuria and dishonesty with captive Mooresses," says Andrada bluntly. The plague was terrible: so that one man could not give another water, not a vassal to his lord nor a friend to his friend. Here, in the chronicle, the curtain falls, with, for epilogue, processions in Toledo cathedral. Then every man gets home somehow to his own land. 1 This is official history, written indeed originally by one who was there, a great HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 45 prelate, in God's confidence and the King's. It was augmented in time from the histo- ries of family pride, of feats and honours. The roll of those who took part fills five pages in the huge folio of Argote de Molina : and the Orders are represented in a long line three generations deep, of Masters' sons, and INIasters, and Masters who were to be, arranged by rank and family, Comendador and Alferez, Clavero and treze, and the Masters, and the Comendadares May ores. Other cities showed a banner on the field, besides the three of Segovia, Avila, and Medina: Toledo, ValladoHd, Oknedo and Arevalo, are counted over: and again "into this battle went the Corporations of Madrid, Almazan, Atienza, S. Esteban de Gormaz, Ayllon, Cuenca, Huete and Alarcon. ' ' It was a sort of patent of ancient nobility: it was a certain warrant of old and fair renown. Argote, who is scrupulous according to his lights, depends with most confidence on Rades y Andrada, the histo- rian of the Orders, but he cites also Zorita who composed the .Annals of Aragon, and The Conmiunes participated AND MONOGRAPHS 46 MILITARY ORDERS A friend of Cervantes William of Cabestany Esteban Garibay: and likewise a fine fel- low Per Anton Beuther, the author of a Coronica General de toda Espafia y del Reyno de Valencia. Amongst other matter this last supplies new names of those who came in the transpyrenean host : the Count of Foix, the lord of Montesquieu, and renowned families, Lunas and Rocabertis, lords of Castelnou and Castelroussillon. Also there went that great lover, William of Cabestany. It was perhaps of this vomer ia that he wrote one spring-time, when nightingales were crying by day and by night in the deep of the budding wood : and he said: I will go to make my home In a strange country and far And his bitter envious tongue Shall give thanks I go to war: As a pilgrim I depart And desire will slay me soon — Though of Love's I have been none, Yet I serve you with my heart. The record of Argote de Molina, like the Archbishop's, was composed for great HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 47 folk, as a memorial of honours and of feats. He continues: ''Because the King of Navarre broke the enclosure of chains (about the tent of Miramomelin) he took for arms the chains or in a field gules and in the midst an emerald which was among the spoils; and certain of the chains are still about his tomb in the church of Roncesvalles." Then the author turns to discussing whether or not, before this battle. King Alfonso had used for arms gules a castle or. It seems that such a shield is found on the seal upon donations to S. Domingo de la Calzada, dated 1187 and 1207. Certainly this day was an epoch from which men reckoned. 1 Another record exists, however, of the battle and the years that followed upon it, written by a humble and unknown clerk of Toledo. What the great overlooked he felt, and set down faithfully, and we know that his testimony is true. and Spanish smiths made a reja for fountain- house in the cathedral cloister The Toledan Annalist AND MONOGRAPHS 48 MILITARY ORDERvS Annals The copyist loses count among his C's The Toledan Annals, so-called— the brief record of things long past and then of memorable things in a man's own life- time — were known to Morales and to Berganza, and were published by Florez in the eighteenth century, but few have cared to read the story that they relate. The beginning was where all commences: ''The birth of Jesus Christ the Son of God in Bedlam Judean, Era XXXVIII.." Follow, in order, King Herod's bidding to kill the Innocents, and to behead the Baptist, and then ''Jesus Christ received his Passion, Era LXXI." After three entries more, concerned with the Martyr- dom of SS. Stephen, James, and Peter and Paul, and after the death of S. Martin the Bishop, appears Arthur of Britain: "King Arthur strove with Alodred his nephew at Camelot, Era DLXXX." On the next page "Charlemagne came into Spain"; after two items of strictly Span- ish importance was "The Battle of Ronces- valles when the XII Peers died, Era DCCCCXXV " : incontinent " Charie- magne died, Era DCCCCXLIX." HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 49 Brief are the entries of those things that must not be forgotten : one king's marriage, another's death; how the convent of Ona was founded: how in such a year the Moors took Osma. In 1017 died the Count D. Sancho, he who gave the good laws; in 1019 they killed the Infant D. Garcia in Leon. A plain sort of person, we make out, for all his writing, and his care for great moments and the deaths of heroes, who farmed his own patch of mountain-side and river-bottom. Of the year 1213 he writes that there was freezing weather steadily from October till Febrviary, and there was no rain in March nor thence on through June. "Never was there so bad a year, and we gathered no wheat, no one of us." He had noted the great snow "all over the land" in 1122, and a rain of blood in 1149; the frost in May that killed the vines (1160) and the flood seven years later when the Tagus came up as far as S. Isidro in Toledo; and how the river was frozen from bank to bank in 1 1 9 1 . Glancing down The bloody wedding Frost and flood AND MONOGRAPHS 50 Death and invasion The wrath of God MILITARY ORDERS the column of too-brief entries, and noting how many the deaths of great leaders and how many and how daring the Moorish raids from the south, about the middle of the twelfth century, one sees precisely how the Orders were called into being by the deadly peril of all reconquered Spain, and how they were the challenge of the human soul to Doom: *'So nigh is grandeur to our dust." As the twelfth century begins the very sun is darkened, "on the last day of Feb- ruary from tierce even to none," and the great earthquake over-sea shakes men's hearts, and the Tagus floods recur every winter or so (four times in a single decade) and bring down the bridge. The great raid of the King of Morocco, two years after the rout of Alarcos, that reached past Maqueda to Toledo and Madrid and Alcala, and extended by Orella and Ucles to Huete and Cuenca and Alarcon, is sig- nalled as "the wrath of God," and the cloud grows blacker as the years go on. After Salvatierra was lost, the King D. Alfonso sent the Archbishop D. Rodrigo HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 51 to France and Germany and to the Apos- tolic in Rome. The other historians have told this and we have read it, but there are here, besides, details which international etiquette did not permit formal history to record, scraps of hearsay and glimpses into the popular mind. So we continue with the poor clerk of Toledo, who died in 1219. ''The Apostolic gave so freely to all the world that all were loosed from their sins, and this pardon was because the King of Morocco said that he would do battle with whosoever adored the Cross in all the world. So the men from across the ports of the Pyrenees assembled and came to Toledo in Whitsun week and they turned Toledo upside down, and killed many of the Jews,' and the knights of Toledo armed and defended the Jews." These Crusaders against Albigensians who brought their habits with them, were not pleasant guests; no wonder the reflexion of the anxious wait- ing lies even on the page of the Coronica General. "And after a se'nnight King Alfonso and the King of Aragon entered Toledo and a great folk out of all Spain It may have been Avignon French guests try to have a pogrom on the way down AND MONOGRAPHS 52 and to sack Toledo on the way- back M ILITARY ORDERS helped them, and out of everywhere over- mountains, and they cut all the King's park, and all that of Alcardel, and they did much evil in Toledo, and they lay there long. Afterwards the Kings moved with the hosts and they took Malagon by the sword, and they had a long fight at Calatrava, until at last it yielded. . . ." So the story goes on as we know it already, with little novel except that the four days before the great battle were all occupied with repelling attacks, and that the opening hours of the engagement were as desperate as, indeed, the dialogue already quoted implies. Both wings had closed in vain against the entrenched Paymins, and been broken: lastly the King of Castile moved with his rear-guard and it pleased God to rout the Moors. Anon: "The Christian Kings went on to take tJbeda, and they took many cativos y cativas, more than LX thousand And in the doing of all this those from across the mountains had no share, for they went back from Calatrava and tried to take Toledo by treachery. But the HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 53 men of Toledo shut the gates and reviled them, and called them disloyal, and trait- ors, and excommunicate. And the Kings, having staked and won for Christendom, went home." But there is no discharge in this war. In September of that year three Moorish Laus Deo Kings attacked all that had just been won. and the Castilian forces were mustered and put them to rout and had rich loot. By the next February the King was out again. In the following year, 1213, two thousand Christians were lost, in the loss of a single stronghold. Here falls the cold winter and bad harvest already cited. So the King of Castile and the King of Leon made peace and made a pact to march against the Moors each on his own frontier, and the King of Leon borrowed a commander, took Alcantara, tried for Caceres but failed, and went home again. The King of Castile, who was besieging Baeza, asked him to execute a diversion in the south, but no. In the autumn, however, Alfonso had taken a town, and had killed many Moors and many Mooresses, and had driven off AND MONOGRAPHS 54 M ILITARY ORDERS War famine and horror much cattle: but in January he lay three weeks before Baeza and could not take it. "And horses died there, and mules, and she-mules and asses, and the folk ate them, and thereafter the folk died of hunger. At that time a measure of grain cost sixty sols. And the host came up to Toledo and the famine was in the kingdom till summer, and most of the folk died, and they ate the beasts and the dogs and the cats and what children they could steal. This was in Toledo, and wheat went up to . . . ." Curiously enough he never set down the figure, leaving it, presumably, to be veri- fied — a trustworthy chronicler. I know few pages which can so convey the sense of living through those wars. The same tale is told now by travellers in southeastern Europe, or in the fringes of Austria, or by the coasts of Syria and the uplands of Armenia. In the battle of Las Navas the Master of Calatrava was wounded in the arm, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 55 so that he never fought again : and on the battle-field he assembled his knights and resigned his office and saw a new Master elected regularly: then he went back to Calatrava and lived there holily for nine years more. The Convent was despoiled and exhausted with expenses, but the Archbishop D. Roderick with his men stayed there for six months in case of attack and he paid all his men's expenses and those of the secular knights with him, and for several years there are records of rich gifts made by the King and by knights who were harboured there on the return from forays. God did not forget the freyles of Calatrava: one Lent about this time there was no fish to be had, and they were about to sit down to meat, and risk their souls to keep up their strength when pack-mules arrived: the vassals of D. Alfonso and knights of Toledo having sent fish and vegetables and other Lenten victuals. The ensuing_years are spent in recon- struction and adjustment. When, in 1213, the Master D. Rodrigo Garces ceded to the The Convent of Calatrava acquires — 1, the Order of Avis AND MONOGRAPHS 56 MILITARY ORDERS •'Whose word of might. . . . . . winged thee with wings of flame?" Master of the Order of Avis certain prop- erties that the Convent held in Evora, Avis in return acknowledged subjection to Calatrava. The Portuguese order had been founded as early as 1147, called then after Evora, the castle of Avis being given to it only in 1181. By this time Portugal was so far dissevered from Spain that an order needed independence: Calatrava likewise had staked and won in the battle, and being now rich and strong, was deter- mined for power. Throughout the thir- teenth century all that they asserted they secured: in 1238 the Master D. Martin Ruiz was received as visitor at Evora, conjointly with the Cistercian abbot of Sotos Albos : in that year it was admitted that his representative must be present at an election. The arms of Avis were the cross of Calatrava with a difference: two little birds below, where Calatrava had borne fetters till growing pride left them oft'. The Portuguese remained thus sub- ject to Calatrava until the Master D. John, the bastard of a King of Portugal, con- quered in the battle of Aljubarrota. Nor 'HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 57 was Avis yet left unmolested. The whole matter, claims and recriminations alike, was ventilated in the Council of B^e, 1431-43. That princely warrior whom the chroniclers call Master Davis, and that stricken field that Froissart calls Jubaroth,* belong in the annals of the west. Within a few years the Master Martin Fernandez gave to D. Nufio Fernandez, the Master of S. Julian of Pereyro, the city of Alcantara which D. Alfonso of Leon had gained a few years before and given to Calatrava whence to fight against the Moors of Estremadura. The condition was that the Master of Pereyro with his freyles, knights and clerks, present and future, should be visited, corrected and reformed by the Master of Calatrava and his successors forever. Rades y Andrada copies the document: the order, which was constituted more like Santiago, is not obliged to receive a monk for Prior unless it likes, but shall elect a Prior from Pereyro or Calatrava or any daughter house of Calatrava: the Master of Pereyro is to be called for the election of future Masters *V. p. 126 Alcantara as an L- offshoot AND MONOGRAPHS / 58 MILITARY ORDERS Of him the Com- poslellana tells 3. the Order of Monte Gaudio V.p. 155 of Calatrava, nor can any goods of the order be alienated without consent: given in Ciudad Rodrigo 1218. The ninth Master, D. Frey Gonzalo Yanez, was a Gallegan, the son of Joan Arias de Noboa, and he had married a daughter of Count Fernan Perez de Traba — which means that he could call up all the west. The convent of S. Felices being founded for nuns, near Amaya, the Master had the nomination of the abbess, and neither party could receive a nun without the other's consent. The convent in a later age claimed the sepulchres of the Infant D. Philip and Dona Leonor de Castro, and their son: but this is impossi- ble; their tombs stand yet in the Tem- plar's church of Villasirga and their bodies yet rest within the carven tombs. In 1221 King Ferdinand III gave to the Master the Castle of Monfrac of the Order and Knights of Monfrac called also Mon- te Gaudio, which had fallen into much diminution: a bull of Alexander III, given in 1180, names many castles thereto apper- taining both in the Holy Land and in HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Spain and elsewhere. They held a castle of S. Angelo de Ursaria in Apulia, which, in 1228, Gregory IX gave to the diocese of Troja. In short, what with property and what with power, and with plenty of com- mon sense in swapping horses, Calatrava did well by herself. A close alliance or hermandad was knit up between Santiago and Calatrava, .with two principal intentions : the Orders should each observe what truce with the Moors the other might make; and in stress of need the knights of either would obey a leader of the other. The practical wisdom of this is apparent. They fought neck to neck. At the taking of Cordova the Masters of Calatrava and Santiago were early on the scene. Complaint being made to S. Ferdi- nand of the Comendador of Zurita, Frey Fernan Perez, that he evilly entreated both townsfolk and peasants, the King wrote him a sharp letter, "in very bad Latin" but quite unmistakable: he would be ejected from his bailiwick if he had not better treatment for the mezquinos, the AND MONOGRAPHS 59 Truces mutually binding ^^ Commands mutually recognized 60 A great coiporation The Order of Montesa V. p. 164 MILITARY ORDERS meanest folk. At the taking of Seville they did well. When Sancho IV captured Tarifa and was about to pull it down, the Master of Calatrava undertook to garrison it, as Captain General, for a fixed sum: afterwards Fernan Perez de Guzman took it over, on like terms. The great corpora- tion, now that the pressure of danger was lifted, began to do business like other cor- porations. This appears further from what follows. In the time of Garci Lopez de Padilla the Order of Montesa was affiliated. When the Order of the Temple was destroyed — and to the deathless glory of Spain, her pre- lates refused to participate in that outrage — then there was scrambling for the pieces. Neither Kings nor lords secular, in Spain, secured as much as elsewhere. King Jaime of Aragon asked John XXII to give the goods of the Templars in the Kingdom of Valencia to institute a Military Order. The Convent of S. George was founded in the city of Montesa in 1318 and was visited jointly by the Master of Calatrava and the Abbot of SS. Creus. In this year a pact HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN was made with Santiago and Alcantara for mutual defence if the King or his guardians threatened any of their privileges. I The House of Padilla were gentlefolk always, of ancient Castilian lineage. They gave three Masters to Calatrava and one elect — the Clavero whose tragic end Juan de Mena has deplored. They did glori- ously in battles, they married with great families, they held high office. When King Peter fixed his love upon the gentle Maria de Padilla, he was not derogating, nor was she wronged. He was not then married, nor was she, and their children would have reigned, had it not been for the children of Leonor de Guzman. When the Master of the time of Alfonso XI was very old the Orders were, in an ugly battle, sorely outnumbered, and finally he retreated. This so enraged some of the knights that, without ceasing to retreat, they deposed him and elected one of them- AND MONOGRAPHS 61 The House of Padilla 62 MILITARY ORDERS . . . Los ejemplos de las que van y tornen. . . selves. A series of schisms and intrusions followed, very like what was happening in the Papacy. D. Juan Nunez de Prado was Captain General of King Peter's in the whole diocese of Jaen, harrying the Moors of Granada, but he rebuked the King for leaving Blanche of Bourbon and living with Dona Maria, and quarrelled with him, and in consequence withdrew to Calatrava, and then fled to Aragon. Dona Maria bore herself well in her hard place, and cherished no personal griefs, but he remembered the outrages he had done on her kinsman, the Master, and he put no trust in King Peter of Aragon. With a safe-conduct he came back and was reconciled, but not long after in Almagro they took him at table. The town did not rise nor did the knights protest. The King called for a chapter in Almagro; there he was tried and deposed and D. Diego Garcia de Padilla elected in his stead; he was removed to a castle of the Order and after a few days beheaded. ^Almagro was the court of the blasters of Calatrava, and they had their magisterial palaces there: but where wealth and ease HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 63 had flourished with independence to the close of the fifteenth century, small rem- nant is left of the gracious fourteenth - century Gothic of the days of these Padillas. Doubtless it bore the same strange and lovely exotic flower as the convent palace at Tordesillas and the Alcazar at Seville, from the same cross-fertilization of Arab and Iberian art. The town, founded after Las Navas, lies in the wide plain, below the hills where Calatrava guards the pass, without a brook, without a snowy crest to enliven the unchanging aspect of things. Plenty of plateresque house-fronts register the truth, that when the Order was ruined the members of it were not. Before that time another Garci Lopez de Padilla had been Master, and, dying in 1487, been buried in the choir of the great Cistercian church at Calatrava; after that time D. Gutierre de Padilla was to be Comendador Mayor and endow a hospital so richly that a convent was founded with the surplus, about 1519, and to set a device above it of a heart in a vulture's claws, with the legend. Gay colours, and the heart as you see. It Almagro AND MONOGRAPHS 64 A goodly bearing and a talon in the heart Character of the Master D. Garcia de Padilla MILITARY ORDERS might have been Maria de Padilla's device, or her lover's the ill-starred, passionate king. From this point history wants wary walking, for those who wrote it, from Pero Lopez de Ayala down to Rades y Andrada and Caro de Torres, could never forget that the reigning house descended from the murderer of D. Peter, and lest that ghost should rise, fling stones upon the huge cairn over him. The King and all his men must still be blackened that the Bastard's long rebellion and culminant treachery may still appear God's judgement. The former Master D. Frey Garcia Lopez de Padilla — twice deposed and twice restored and resigning quietly in the end, keeping only Aragon and Zorita — was the uncle of the Masters of Calatrava and San- tiago and Dofia Maria their sister. D. Diego Garcia de Padilla, though elected by the king's influence, retained his freedom of action: at the outset he had joined with the Master D. Fadrique and Count Henry of Trastamara and the Count of Albu- querque against the Queen Mother, but HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 65 he was wounded before Toro; on the King's entry, in the terrible hour of his wrath, he protected the Queen, and the King struck him down and many of his party were killed there. He gave the habit in Andalusia with some indifference to family. In the wars of Granada, returning carelessly from a raid, the Master was taken prisoner by a Moorish knight, who presented him to el Rey Bermejo with a great shouting and festivity. The Red King received him royally and very hon- ourably, and conferred with him on politi- cal issues, proposing finally that he should bring about an understanding with the King D. Peter, and to that end set him free without ransom, after a few days, and with him other knights of the Order. This is how the Red King came to Seville : you know the tragical history, how King Peter judged and sentenced him for a black heart, but because a King cannot die by a common hand did the sentence him- self. It is one of the strangest stories, most hardly comprehensible, of all that haunt the chambers of the Alcazar: and Always on the wrong side Death of the Red King AND MONOGRAPHS 66 MILITARY ORDERS ". . . Hear the little cry the Master's honour ailed, for he had brought about the visit, and he withdrew to his Maestrazgo. He was a troubled spirit, as it would seem — very tender of his honour, very keen that his knightliness should protect the right, and bewildered often, enlisted on the losing side, prompt for the lost cause. So he went on, befriending the King's brethren when they were threatened and his mother when she was defeated, and then the Red King; then Count Henry in Toledo. King Peter felt the wound and wrote with a personal passion, that yet glows in the ash, his reproach that his daughters' and heiress's uncle should give obedience to a tyrant, that he should do this whom he had trusted before all the noblee of his kingdom. The Master doubted what to do and stayed out of the battle of Najera (where Pero Lopez de Ayala was taken fighting for D. Enrique) : it was singularly unfortunate. He went to the King in the end, but it was too late, and in Andalusia he was taken and put in prison, where he died. Too careful of his HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 67 honour, he yet suUied it; loyal, he wounded and was wounded in the affections; he moves in a mist, and fights like one in a dream. 1 Martin Lopez of Cordova was Master of Alcantara; quite regularly the King had him made Master of Calatrava. He had his own adventures when, as Viceroy of Cordova, he failed in his mission and in a Granada campaign was taken prisoner and released again. When the King was dead he stood by his children and tried to save his treasure: King Henry came down with D. Pedro Mufioz Godov of Montiel who called himself Master, and before Carmona the two Masters met. The elder line was doomed: Martin Lopez was taken and beheaded. Godoy_was ultimately trans- lated to the Order of Santiago, and his successor, who was formerly of the habit of S. John, died fighting gallantly at Alju- barrota; ''the great ma*ster of Calatrava," . , of our sad hearts that may not live or die." Peralvdrez de Pereyra. xxn Master AND MONOGRAPHS 68 MILITARY ORDERS Portrait of a Master as Froissart calls him, "and his brother who was that day made knight." The twenty-third Master was a Guzman. ''D. Gonzalo Nunez de Guzman was a great lord in Castile"; so Fernan Perez sets about the portrait in his Generations and Semblances; and develops it thus: "He was ugly of countenance, heavy, short-necked and high-shouldered. But he was a mighty man ; he did right well in arms; he was short in speech but very pleasant and companionable with his friends. For he never knew how to be alone, but was always in company of his own. He was free-handed, not ordinar- ily, but as much as ever you liked, so that you might call him prodigal. And to my mind this extreme of prodigality, though it be a vice, is greater and less bad than that of avarice, for the great gifts of the prodigal are greatly prized and they show a great heart" — in short, Aristotle's virtue of Magnanimity. "This man was very dissolute in respect of women; and so with such virtues and vices he came to great estate and great HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN fame and renown, and had great men for his familiars, and some that did not live with him but had his money every year." It is said by Rades y Andrada that in 1404, when the previous Master died, the King D. Enrique III ordered Calatrava not to elect until he could arrive, and he treated with the most ancient and princi- pal of the Order to elect his cousin, D. Enrique de Villena, although he was a married man. King Henry was a young man — he was to die at seven and twenty — and Dona Maria de Albornoz, the wife, was a fair lady for whom he had a great desire. The plan was that a Papal divorce should be secured on the ground of impotence, with a confirmation of the Mastership: mean- while the lady withdrew into the convent of Poor Clares at Guadalajara, living not, however, as a Religious, but as a guest. The King, one is disposed to infer, had probably his own reasons for keeping her withdrawn from the world till she could be delivered over to him. Sneers have been wasted on the Marquis AND MONOGRAPHS 69 A king's love 70 MILITARY ORDERS A case of conscience Life of D, Enrique de Villena for his acquiescence, but it is hard to see what wiser he could have done. There was no love in the case; his grandfather, the Constable of Castile, had married him at a tender age. His own honour was worth considering and if his wife were to be the King's property, she had better not be his wife: once quit of her, his name remained stainless. Nor was he ill-disposed to women: the cynicism of the arrangement may have amused his philosophic mind. At any rate, after the divorce was obtained, Dona Beatriz was not without attraction; he is said to have been her lover, and what is more, he is said to have been kind to her, and, when the King was dead, to have shared his poverty with her need. He was Master of everything except suc- cess: and perhaps for that he cared less than his critics. He had always the price of a book, and materials of the necroman- cer's art. Worldly goods dropped away from him: the reversion of Villena he was forced to exchange against the countship of Cangas and Tineo, and that, in turn, was commuted to the crown when he was HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 71 elected Master, for the goods of a Master reverted at his death to the Order, and Cangas and Tineo were in the royal patri- mony and could not be alienated. He was elected duly at Toledo. Thereafter, though recalcitrant knights had elected at Cala- trava D. Luys de Guzman, who fled into Aragon when the King set out for the mother house, at Calatrava D. Enrique was re-elected and installed formally. The King gave Belvis to the Convent for ves- tuary of the clerks. When the King died, those of Calatrava fortL^ed and provisioned the place, then, feeling safer, they voted that they were all excommunicate to have elected Villena. The schism dragged on until, in 1414, a Chapter-General of the Cistercian Order in Burgundy pronounced against D. Enrique, and declared his elec- tion and the Papal confirmation equally invalid. Yet twelve knights stood by him for two years more. He did not get on well with the Jreyles comendadores, says Feman Perez de Guz- man in the Chronicle of D. John II, '*por muchos desaguisados y sinrazones. ' ' Doubt- Up then crew the red, red cock and up and crew the grey AND MONOGRAPHS 72 MILITARY ORDERS Character of D. Enrique de Villena Rector of Sala- manca in youth less with the generaUty this was true. He was singularly ill-fitted for either the soldier's life or the ecclesiastic's. A pro- found scholar, who added Arabic and Hebrew to the classical and the current languages, deeply read in history, in philosophy, in astrology and necromancy, he was a poet, and called into being the courtly pageant at Saragossa, and held at Barcelona a consistory of the Gal Saber, when he went away from Calatrava. Very learned in the law, he was, besides, the complete gentleman, and composed a treatise on that ideal. Calatrava probably struck him as both rough and illiterate, and at the same time too worldly and politi- cal for peace. He probably struck Cala- trava as absurd: small, and in later years stout, white-skinned; a gourmet and a connoisseur of women, metaphysical, im- practical, and given to the Black Art. On his little estate of Hiniesta near Cuenca he was to live more happily, and in his old house at Toledo where he could command the books and the learning of the cathedral and hold converse with HISPAN 10 NOTES IN SPAIN scholars many of whom were circumcised. His own library was famous, and the burn- ing thereof is truth of history, whether or not we may trust the racy letter of the Bachelor of Ciudad Real; it is a more wanton and a graver loss than that of Don Quixote (which may indeed have taken a hint therefrom) and in the field of Hebrew and Arabic probably irreparable. He died in 1434. He was a perfect humanist, and in him the growing ideals of the Renais- sance clashed with those of the age just passing; he was modern, secular, and personal. Nor may we forget that Macias o Namo- rado v/as of his household, that trobador that died because he loved so well ; though how or on what occasion none are agreed, yet all admit that surely he died for love. So the Renaissance and the mediaeval types are still seen in juxtaposition: the ripe old humanist with the fatal lover, the author of an early and curious treatise on poetics and diction in general, with the subject of a recent and delightful grammar of the Gallegan speech. D. Enrique had AND MONOGRAPHS 73 Macias o Namorado 4 74 MILITARY ORDERS Great spirits touched to fine issues The court of John II the same affinity as the young king, his cousin, D. Juan II, for men of letters and of parts, and his correspondents and familiars formed a little court comparable to that which D. Alvaro de . Luna graced, and Micer Francisco Imperial, and the Marquis of Santillana. i.-^, . Meanwhile D. Luys served the King well always, not only when under the Infant D. Ferdinand he raided the Vega of Granada, but also in the war with Aragon. Again in 1431 he raided the south, though Granada paid tribute to Castile: a letter of the Moorish King's was long preserved at Calatrava as a memorial of his honour, laid up in the precious casket in which belike it came. He was a good friend of the Master of Santiago, D. Alvaro de Luna, and arranged with him the exchange of certain places between the two orders. 1 In his long rule of nearly forty years becomes apparent the change that the Order was undergoing. This is the fifteenth HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN century, and the reign of John II, whose court was a hothouse of Renaissance literature, exotic, exquisite, full of colour, fragrance, melody. All that Italy and France could give, was there transplanted, and flourished with a new strange bloom. The knights of the Order were caught betwixt heaven and earth, between castle, court and convent. They were not cru- saders, and they wore the cross on their shoulders as a token not of soldierly brotherhood but of lordly lineage. They were not Religious, for they were the sons of great houses, intriguing for command- eries, indifferent to Latin and theology and avid of the Italian literature and the new poetry. In the incessant struggle between the great houses for the control of the King and that of the realm thereby, they knew how to use their power to advantage, and with exercise it grew. Their vows meant no more to them than the thirty-nine articles to an English clergyman, and the vows themselves by now imposed little more than loyalty to Our Lady and the King — the latter part 75 The status of the Order AND MONOGRAPHS Vows both vague and negligible 76 MILITARY ORDERS Bachelors and spin- sters did bring up families being negligible. In the previous century the cowl had been given up and only the cloak and cross distinguished them from other men: D. Luys put through a Bull allowing them to marry, and was the only one at the time to take advantage of it. We can hardly suppose that the rest lived celibate. Of one Master early in the thir- teenth century the historian observes that "he had three sons and a daughter: it is not known whether he was married before he took the habit, or whether they were illegitimate." It hardly mattered, for the merciful Spanish law distinguished rightly between the fruits of adultery and the children born to the unmarried. Nor was the limpieza, now strictly required for admission to the Order, tainted by bastardy, if the quarterings crossed by the bar sinister were but sufficient and regular. The new change which was to come within forty years thereafter will hardly have seemed very great to the knights: there had been schisms and intrusions before, and now that state was to be, so to speak, perma- nent — there was never to be a Master any HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN more. But for the rest, fat commanderies should still be distributed, and precedence and prestige should still count at court, and great wealth and the command of many men should still be within reach. To us the policy, finally triumphant, of Ferdinand and Isabel, seems the ending of a world, but in those days it must have happened as imperceptibly as the turning of a tide. I Forty years is a long time, and the younger generation grows impatient when old men will not die. When D. Frey Luys de Guzman was old and sick, and as his lieutenant D. Ferdinand de Padilla, the Clavero, was administering the Order, a rumour came to Toledo that the Master was dead. The Comendador Mayor D. Juan Ramirez de Guzman then hoped to be elected Master in his stead. The King being of no value politically and the parties playing off against each other, D. Juan AND MONOGRAPHS 77 Little change when the Catholic Kings incor- porated the Mastership His nick- name was came de cabra 78 The Keeper a loyal knight MILITARY ORDERS Ramirez suggested to the Infant D. Enrique of Aragon to give him counte- nance and men enough to seize the castles and towns of the Order; he raised two hundred heavy-armed horse and a hundred jinetes and set out for Calatrava. The Clavero met him with a hundred and eighty of the former and two hundred of the latter, and the fighting was bloody in the Campo de Barajas: Padilla captured the Comen- dador Mayor, his two brothers and his son, with others, and carried them off to Alma- gro and thence to Calatrava. King John sent a letter: the Master was too ill for business and the Keeper appealed to Rome; then the Master died and Fernando de Padilla was elected in his stead, but never confirmed, for the King's consent could not be had — the plan being now to put in a cousin, D. Alfonso, the King of Navarre's natural son — nor could the Keeper get a safe-conduct to come up for investiture. He had released D. Juan Ramirez de Guzman, who swore loyalty to him as Mas- ter but returned within a few days with the Infant D. Enrique and besieged him HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN in the Castle of Calatrava, and there, by accident, upon the walls, he was wounded by one of his own men, and so died. His brothers were able to conceal this long enough to make good terms for the sur- render. Juan de Mena, feeling compelled to praise him and caring little about him, made shift with some fine verses that ring like scabbards on saddle-leather when men ride hard : I saw in the lift, as it passed over flying, The new-released soul of the saintly Lord-Keeper, Discharged from the warrior's body - that deeper In righteousness plunged as he strove unto dying. If faith be accorded to me in my singing Forever in memory will stand as perfected The fame and the name of that Master- elected That I shall send down through the centuries ringing. 79 AND MONOGRAPHS Lines on the Death of the Keeper by Juan de Mena 80 Aragon intrudes again MILITARY ORDERS Elect by the world as a warrior from youth, Elect as the Master by valour unmoved. Elect by all men for his virtue approved, Known for his constancy, known for his truth. . . . I D. Alfonso of Aragon and Navarre was a half-brother of Ferdinand the Catholic. He was not professed until after he was elected — which shows, if anything, a canny mind and a shameless. In the war which followed he backed his father against his uncle of Castile: the latter, conquering, calle'd" a new election, in which D. Juan Ramirez the Comendador Mayor again received some votes but the majority went to'D. Pedro Giron. This meant a schism into three, and two intrusions, any way you counted. Finally the Comendador accepted a pension — paid part by the Mas- ter and part by the King — and retired. D. Alfonso held Aragon for ten years and HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN a half and then decided for matrimony instead, and secured a Papal dispensation on the ground that he had never wanted at he^rt to be professed though verbally he was. Comment here would be no addition, as Juan de Mena says somewhere. D. Pedro Giron had for brother the Marquis of Yillena, D. Juan Pacheco, one of the great lords of Spain, involved in politics to the eyebrows. He was himself an important piece, pushed from one square to another, set down now on one side of the board and now on the opposite, in that long game where liberty was the stake and both sides lost. The Master stood in with the unhappy Prince D. Enrique, and helped him in rebellion against the foolish, old, helpless, poeteering King John and his perpetually changing masters among the great nobles. With him, he galloped through the streets of Valladolid in the little band that after the funeral showed the new King to the town, heralds and trumpeters sounding before and the royal flag beating in the wind while the king- at-arms gave out the cry, from interval to AND MONOGRAPHS 81 The House of the Paohecos D. Enri- que's accession 82 MILITARY ORDERS One of the Divers Feats is D. Enri- que's interval, *' Castile for King Henry!" He was made Camarero Mayor and shared in the expedition against Granada that began so gallantly. You may read it all in the Divers Feats of Mosen Diego de Valera: how first the King would risk his life in a skirmish, an arrow reached him and the nobles blamed him; and then he would not risk his army in an ambush, or what seemed such — and again the nobles blamed him; how finally he made a truce on terms of tribute and supplies of food and fruit and goodwill, and the release of all Christian captives, and still the nobles were ill- content. In the following year another expedition was already launched, when the King had news of conspiracies in Castile and withdrew to go up thither, nor indeed did he ever get back to finish what had been so hardly begun. Even so far back as in April of 1455, at the first setting out, near Cordova, according to the Chronicle of the King's chaplain, Diego Enriquez del Cas- tillo, some of the King's friends knew of a conspiracy to seize the King's person, and they persuaded the King to change his HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN plans, so that it came to nought. If this were so, it cannot have been the fruit- less breaking off of the campaign that threw the Master, afterwards, into the party of the King's brother D. Alfonso. I There is no reason to seek for personal motives in these times, nor yet an ideal shattered; for politics, like religion, con- stituted a separate sphere, and a man's personal honour enjoyed strange exceptions and reservations. The realm was infected with policy and torn by parties and ravaged by such dissen- sion precisely as that of York and Lan- caster, as that of Burgundians and Arma- gnacs, which existed elsewhere in those same days, in those very years, while the relation of Aragon to Castile was even more tor- mented than that of England to France. Yet these are the years when Sir Thomas Mallory wrote the Morte d' Arthur and still in the lifetime of some of these men AND MONOGRAPHS 83 Public and private vir- tue have no common denomina- tor 1469 84 MILITARY ORDERS Sir Bors's elegy Caxton was to print it in black-letter; and to finish it with such good words and touching as rarely were written in any tongue of men's d^ily speech: — There, Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, thou that wert never matched of any earthly Knight's hand; and thou wert the courteousest Knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse; and thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies ; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy foe that ever put spear in rest. Then there was weep- ing and dolour out of measure. There you have, like a Credo, the ideal of that tormented and exquisite fifteenth century, and it is doubtless as true a picture of a man as Kipling's Strickland or Mere- dith's Red worth or James's Strether. For his beliefs are what a man lives and dies HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN by, and at this moment belief and conduct existed in complete and coherent systems indeed, but in more than one, and a man passed with immunity, as I have said, from one into another, as though — if you like — from one dimension into another. I In the figures of the two Girones, father and son, who were both Masters of Cala- trava, reappears, clear and full-coloured, the knightly ideal of that chivalry, artificial but not unreal, which flushed all Spain with sunset-light and which was lovely as are all things that pass. In the war of Granada there was a bril- Uant hazana; the Master met and van- quished a Moorish knight, and sent his head to the Reyna mora. Against the King of Navarre he served D. Enrique well and turned all to advantage; he had con- cessions confirmed to the Order, as he had already had Osma and Cazalla attached to the Maestrazgo in exchange for other towns 85 The ideals of honour and religioi are mutually exclusive AND MONOGRAPHS D. Pedro Giron 86 The tragedy- rehearsed at Avila MILITARY ORDERS less desirable; then when Archidona was taken, the convent of S. Salvador de Pinilla in the diocese of Siguenza submitted to him, and the nuns so long as it survived wore the habit of S. Bernard with the red cross of Calatrava. In the rebellion at Avila the Master was one of the principal actors, when the King was dethroned in effigy and the Infant D. Alfonso received homage in his place. The Marquis of Villena his brother, and his uncle Carrillo, the Archbishop of Toledo, were equally engaged; they were strong men, not to be conquered or subdued. As befell, the King's party were in good point, and the commons rose in indignation, by whom Carrillo was burnt in effigy at Valladolid. It was a moment for mutual advantage, and without much trouble the Archbishop of Seville, Alfonso de Fonseca, himself no friend of the King's, made a peace between them. The King probably consented to receive Pacheco's advice, and the Master agreed to serve the King with all his force, to lend him money, and to marry his sister Dona Isabel. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 87 Reading the historian's indifferent page, one is hardly aware of the event till the leaf is turned, one hardly rouses to wonder what would have been the fate of Spain had this approved knight and CastiUan noble, stubborn and incontrollable, been the consort of Isabel the Catholic. It was agreed: Frey Pedro de Acuna went to Rome for the dispensations that would allow him to marry and to resign the Mastership to his son. It was under way: the little eight-year-old lad was set in the IMaster's chair and the knights kissed his hand and swore fealty: in the palace at Almagro D. Pedro Giron made great and costly preparations, not only in liveries and other things needful, but in stones, brocades, hollands, jewels and other things of great worth, to give to the Infanta whom he had already married conditionally at Penafiel — the dispensation being surely expected. Here is some ground for quaint speculation: when he was married I know not, nor how long he was away from the Princess, but, intending to rejoin her in Madrid, he set out with all his deudos, his Queen Isabel's first marriage AND MONOGRAPHS 88 MILITARY ORDERS The death of the Master own kinsfolk, clients and personal following of Girones, Pachecos, Acufias and Carrillos, "and other principal knights." They lay the first night at Villarrubia, and there the Master fell so sick that within four days he was dead. No doctors could discover what his sickness was, and it was generally thought that some great nobles of the realm, misliking the marriage, had poisoned him. Certainly it is a strange circum- stance, as the old chronicler remarks, that his death was reported throughout -Castile three days before he died. He has been called arrogant and outrageous, certainly he was both stubborn and daring: all that ambition could dream his hand was stretched out to take. If Alonso de Palencia were to be beheved, he died blaspheming God for not granting him forty days more to live; but Alonso de Palencia is not to be believed in the matter of Dona Isabel's adventures. It was his business, and that of Mosen Diego de Valera, to blacken King Henry's character, as the chancellor Ayala had blackened King Peter's, to the end that rebellion and HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN usurpation should appear God's judgement and the unhappy monarch an abhorred monster. Whether or not there was poisoning, and whether, if so, there was connivance in high place, who shall say? At any rate, in the days when she ruled, Isabel the Catholic knew all that concerned her in the kingdom and a good deal more : here again there is space for serious speculation. On the spot, in Villarrubia, his son, D. Rodrigo Tellez Giron, was sworn again, and for the time the Pope put the Order into commission under the Marquis of Villena, who was afterwards elected Master of Santiago and governed both Orders at once. At twelve D. Rodrigo took over the charge ; at seventeen he espoused the cause of Doiia Juana the heiress of King Henry now dead, and captured Giudad Real: but the town, which had never been willing to belong to the Order, appealed to Ferdinand and Isabel; they sent against him the Gount of Gabra and the Master of Santiago, and he wa^ defeated. Another episode of this time throws light AND MONOGRAPHS 89 To load th( scales and make blinc Justice squint 90 Fuente- ovejuna Lope de Vega MILITARY ORDERS — like the revolving beacon on capes and islets — on more than one point. At Fuen- teovejuna the town rose against the Comendador Mayor of the Order, who was there at the time, took the house of the Order and killed all the members, throwing the Comejidador out of the window before he was dead. Those below slashed him into little bits. The Catholic Kings sent commis- sioners who investigated, with torture of women and little boys, but no one would admit who had been the leader in the uprising. To the question: "Who killed the Comendador Mayor?' ' there was always the same answer. "Fuenteovejufia": to the next, *'Who is Fuenteovejuna? " the single answer, "Everybody." Lope de Vega, who strikes deep roots into the soil of Spain, has not forgotten this traditional matter in his play of Fuenteovejuna: which is indeed as full of the pride of history and the consciousness of race as King Edward II or Kitig Richard III. Meanwhile the Clavero, D. Garcia Lopez de Padilla, stood by the Catholic Kings, and many knights with him, and finally HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 91 D. Rodrigo "came in" as the Scots say; and thereafter found his occupation against the Moors. In 1482, when he died before Loja, Padilla was elected — the twenty- ninth master and the last. When a historian remarks bitterly that D. Rodrigo at the time of his election was a baby as well as a bastard, he is something less than just, for in an epoch and a land when kings of Spain by law attained ma- jority at fourteen, and King Peter assumed power at — as I think — eleven years, the Master counted already twelve. He died at twenty-seven: too short a time in all was allowed him for heroic action. He did not live to be a great captain, but, as Menendez y Pelayo says, his barbaric audacity, his striking and comely carriage, and, above all, his early and heroic death, set a glory about his name and marked his figure for the Romances. Like others of his name, the Gothic King and My Cid Ruy Diaz, he enjoys a complete legende which may be pieced together out of the Romances and augmented from the masterpiece of wild fantastical history and enchanting The age of majority in Spain Character of the Master D. Rodrigc AND MONOGRAPHS 92 MILITARY ORDERS "LAy Dios, que buen caballerol" poetry of manners, The Civil Wars of Granada. Here, unfortunately, is not the place for that emprise, but the best of the Romances though perhaps the least historical, that which Timoneda had chosen for the Rosa Espafiola, may perhaps find room. The Master of Calatrava he was a goodly knight And in Granada meadow the Moors he put to flight: He came with but three hundred the ruddy cross that wore And swept it from the mountains clear to Granada's door. Though the Elvira portal hurling his long spear stout: The gates were barred with iron and not a Moor stepped out. Word came to Albayaldos where in his land lay he, He mustered barks and galleys to bear men over-sea: The Young King of Granada came out to greet him fain "You are welcome, Albayaldos, and welcome yet again. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN If so you come for hire I will give you double pay, Or if 'tis for a bridal, here is many a bonny may." ''Thanks, thanks, good King," he an- swered, '*I come not for a fee, Nor come not for a bridal, My wife will do for me. But word came to me yonder where over-sea I slept That yon accursed Master besieged Granada kept." '"Tis sooth," the Moor King answered and paused and sighed a space; ''There's no Moor in the country can meet him face to face, Unless it were Escado, Alhama's seneschal. And when he risked a sally, it cost a heavy toll; Of twenty thousand men he took not one came home again. And him, sore wounded, his good mare fetched back across the plain." "O, foul fall Mohammed!" said these that stood about, AND MONOGRAPHS 93 An old Romance 94 MILITARY ORDERS of the frontier "When a frieze-f rocked friar can shake his lance without!" ''Call up and give me, King, the best of all thy men, Footmen of thy household, and horsemen of Jaen, And I will fetch the Master within Granada's walls." ''Peace, Albayaldos," spake a Moor "such boasting ill befalls. The Master is a youngster and lusty in the fray, If in the field he catch you your beard will shake that day." Then Albayaldos answered with an evil thing: — "A blow would be my answer, were it not for the King." "Your blow would be returned you by three good sons of mine, For in the realm my children still guard three cities fine: In Guadix one is senechal, and one in Baza town. In Lorca one is senechal that city of renown, While I am old in years, and so Alhama is my care: — HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 95 Dog of a Moor, the insult you dearly should repair!" The good King called for silence and nothing more was heard Till Albayaldos asked for leave with his men to keep his word. The good King gave him license and plenty soldiery. And in the Jaen country they lifted all the kye, And with the sheep the shepherds, and lads and maids forby. But when a stream they forded right at the river's edge A shepherd slipped away from them of those they held in pledge. And on the gates of Jaen he hammered hard and cried: — "Where are you, Master? Waken I Call up your men and ride. Your glory all is stolen by Albayaldos on this day." The Master heard him calling where in his halls he lay; ''Peace, shepherd, peace," he answered. "Such word you may not say. Tomorrow I will find again the glory lost to-day. a gallant feat and a great word AND MONOGRAPHS 96 Garci L6pez de Padilla MILITARY ORDERS To arms, my knights and comrades! Up, up, and arm you, each!" And straightway in the field he was, urging them still with speech. At the entering to a valley where first it opened fair, They saw the Moors advancing: the Master called them there. "On them, good knights! Set at them, that none escape the fray, Now grip your horse and fix your lance and strike your prey!" When Albayaldos met them moving in this array The Master's fierce encounter slew man and steed straightway ; The Moors broke up and fled each one a different way. I Garci Lopez de Padilla was a good Mas- ter. In time of peace he abode at the con- vent, and kept his place in the choir, and lived like a good Religious. He would have fetched the body of Abbot Raymund thither but the monks of S. Bernard in HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Toledo would not part with it, so he gave them a rich ark or shrine for the precious bones. In 1487 he died. Then the Kings begged a Bull of Innocent VIII, reserving the provision of Mastership of the Orders as it came vacant, and they governed as administrators. Isabel, as a woman, was probably disqualified from holding the title, and Ferdinand no less, as being married and holding already Santiago and Alcantara. The Comendador Mayor at this time was D. Gutierre de Padilla, of whose hospital in Almagro I have already spoken: in the convent also founded there of nuns called Comendador as de Calatrava the ladies of the Padilla family had a pref- erence, but all members must be noble, hijasdalgo, so likewise their father and mother and grandparents, and clean of all race or admixture of Jews, Moors, or com- moners. At the death of King Ferdinand Cardinal Adrian, administering the kingdom for Charles V, called a Chapter-General in Guadelupe, sending word that it could not elect a Master, for the Pope had given the AND MONOGRAPHS 97 The Catholic Kings ^ take hold Limpieza 98 MILITARY ORDERS The Castle of Calatrava Legitimist ferocity Maestrazgo to Charles V: he came down and argued it with them in person. So because they could not help themselves, the Order elected Charles V, and Leo X confirmed this: and D. Garcia de Padilla was Comendador Mayor. That was not the end of the Order, for it exists still : it was the end of its history^. 1 Says Madrazo: To the end of the eighteenth century the Castle-Convent lasted, as a mother- house, inhabited by clerks of the institu- tion and preserved with love and respect. Now there are only ruins on the steep height; for they moved into Almagro and pulled it down so that they could not be sent back. Some of the tomb- stones are in La Calzada de Calatrava. in the Maldonado house of the sixteenth century. This is the nearest village and grew up under its protection: and there, in 1834, the Carlist troops burned the church tower with a hundred and sixty- three persons who had taken refuge there. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 99 The Castle crowns a height and guards a gateway of the hills; like great dogs, chin on paw, the Convent and a smaller castle opposite, keep watch above the road. The curtain walls yet stand, the flanking towers, and many chambers therein; the church is not yet roofless. With wide nave and aisles of four bays, deep round apse, the chevet of eight parts and the parallel side- apses deep too, rib- vaulted with brick, sustained on massive columns, the archi- tecture is characteristic Cistercian. The capitals are all plain, the big red stone columns are like the western door and the great rose above; but some bits of the marble facing to doors and windows, of fifteenth-century work, lie about, and a little Mudejar arcading in horseshoe cusp- ing clings within the apses and outside the northern one. The stains are left where once stood frescoed saints, and the sparkle of their halos in strayed sun-rays has not all died. In a sort of chantry, at the eastern end, the Master D. Pedro Giron had prepared his tomb, and all the lovely chapel was designed and wrought for him The church A new date for Anne- quin de Egas AND MONOGRAPHS 100 not in Llaguno or Cean Ber- mudez Thunder- cloven pin- nacles of the mountain MILITARY ORDERS by Annequin de Egas, the master of Toledo Cathedral : the will he signed in 1467 refers to Maestre Haniquin. Many towers still stand secure, and the springing vault-ribs cling to the walls of them; and innumer- able long barrel -vaulted chambers, quite dark, that were store-rooms, are still sound. A neat bowling-green of turf, edged with great shrubs, covers the roof of the church, looking as if planted symmetrically. Except in the church, there is much bad building, of broken stones of all sizes and shapes, with some courses of bricks in places, and in places a timber introduced, as the castle was built at Mycenae perhaps three millen- niums before. The situation, indeed, is not unlike, except that the mountains here are not so close. From the top of towers three lines of wall are plain, and the castle, cover- ing the hill-top, counted many stories. It is built into the crest, the thunder-cloven pinnacles of the mountain are bonded into the fabric, and live rock serves for wall and buttress and angle-stone. The rock and turf drop steeply away on one hand to the road far below, and on the other almost as HISPANIC NOTES Calatrava; mountain rock and Cistercian building IN SPAIN 101 steeply to arable land almost as far; a green-mantled tank still holds faithfully its treasure of hoarded water. If once there were wells they are dry now, and blocked up and long forgotten; but a cistern on arches {aljihe is the Spanish name), needs only filling, perhaps, to serve again. The sky leans close above dark stone and thunder-smitten rock; a wind blows through the pass by night and day, and always there is the scent of crushed thyme and mint. 1 The Moors worried Salamanca towards the close of the twelfth century, and two knightly brothers collected some other knights and vowed perpetual war against the Moors . They were D . Suero Fernandez and D. Gomez his brother, grandsons of D. Rodrigo Gomez, Count of Salamanca, and related to the royal house of Aragon. One fancies them young, gallant creatures like the Twins at Chartres or at Leon, with The Order of Alcantara AND MONOGRAPHS 102 White mantle and green cross MILITARY ORDERS their ardent vow sent ringing down eternity — "perpetual war!" A hermit from the mountains southward suggested to them something not unHke a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This, however, was in a pear-orchard, whiter in spring-time than the snows of the mountain behind. They called the brotherhood S. Julian de Pereyre, and, long after they had assumed a cross identical except in colour with that of Calatrava, they left the pear tree set at the heart of it. The Rule of S. Benedict was modified to suit a gentleman's and a military life: the Bull was approved by Alexander III in 1176, only a year later than that of Santiago. It prescribes neither habit nor rule. A privilege of Ferdinand II, dated in the year before, shows them already established among the pear-trees: it was confirmed by Archbishop Peter of Compostella, and the Bishops of Burgos, Leon, Oviedo, Salamanca, Astorga, Za- mora, Ciudad Rodrigo, and the vacant see of Coria. The enumeration defines pretty well the special task of the Order : they were to fight up and down the C amino de Plata, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 103 and over their peculiar domain brooded the great domes of cathedrals and collegiate churches. Estremadura was their charge. Under the third Master, D. Frey Nuno Fernandez, Alcantara was taken and given to Calatrava, to found another Order in the Kingdom of Leon. Just so Santiago already had two centres, one at S. Marcos and the other near to Cuenca: it was an unwieldy machine, and in 1218 the town and the bridge and castle were given to S. Julian in return for a nominal obedience, afterwards thrown off. So the knights called themselves by a new name and put a pair of fetter-bolts under the pear tree. 1 The fourth Master, D. Frey Diego Sanchez, translated the convent to the Castle of Alcantara: now almost all is destroyed but you can see the shape of the church and some tombs of Masters and other knights, and the thirty-eight stone seats in the quire. For two hun- dred and fifty years the Convent of the The domed architecture of the region The convent in the sixteenth century AND MONOGRAPHS 104 MILITARY ORDERS and today A mar- vellous staircase Order was there; the Master's palace stood alongside. Later, the knights lived where they liked, and the clerks lived each in his own house in town and came to quire for Mass and the Hours, till the Catholic Kings were commis- sioners and sent the clerks to S. Benito el Viejo out of town; lastly, they built a big house in town where they still are. In 1572 Rades y Andrada wrote thus. The altar piece of Morales is scattered and lost, to-day. The church now is ransacked and ruinous. The palace has become pri- vate dwellings, humble tenements though still princely, where donkeys are stabled in cells about the great cloister that once were knights' lodgings. A winding stair of stone mounts up through a huge tower, turning on itself without a newel -post, and discharges upon successive platforms where the air and the view may be enjoyed. In the Chapter- room and that above, every boss has been cut away for export trade, and the roof of the church stripped ofif likewise. But this was not the castle comparable to those HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 105 of Ucles and Calatrava. The air of the place is rather stately than strong. The glory of the conquest lasted no longer than an August day: it passed, and the long twilight of the eighteenth century yet broods above each pinnacled buttress, and lingers below each vault and console. The collegiate church was never finished: it keeps three apses, and a double transept, two bays in depth, with windows high up at the west : then a wall was run up across the incompleted nave and a poor brick vault thrown over it, that now has fallen in. The capitals are classical in their motives, and a rich plateresque decoration runs about the south transept; the star- shaped vaults are adorned with a silver- smith's pride, like the consoles of the main apse. The ravaging of the glorious church has been perfectly systematic and per- fectly commercial; retables and altar- fronts have been carefully removed by expert workers, and the very glass of the windows is stacked, in piled panes, for use elsewhere. From the carved organ, corbelled up in the north transept, carvings The church despoiled for dealers AND MONOGRAPHS 106 The town easier to replace MILITARY ORDER vS have been deftly picked away. Nothing was smashed — as at Poblet or RipoU, for instance — but everything which could be dug out by hammer and chisel is gone : the kneeling statues taken from the apse- tombs, the very brasses from the iron balustrade. The wealth of the Order that rebuilt the church in the Spanish Renais- sance and remodelled the palace in the eighteenth century, and peopled the former and its cloister with alabaster and marble effigies, and furnished the latter with cast bronze and beaten iron-work — like the jewels of a fair woman among brigands, was cause of destruction and wTong. The town, except here and there, is not princely: many houses have only one story, or one and a loft. A sweet place it is. white- washed along its narrow ways, stone- paved through its steep streets, but not to be compared with Such Castilian strong- holds as Haro or such Aragonese frontier- towns as Daroca, where every vista ends in another casa solar. It was doubtless planned, apart from the Convent, as easy to destroy and easy to rebuild, which is HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 107 indeed one way of guarding the confines of kingdoms. By steep ways and built-up levels and repeated zig-zag descents, the town ranges down, between long-deserted churches and half-abandoned nunneries, to the gorge of the Tagus, and there the slope is terraced and planted with gardens and olive-orchards, to the shaly edges of the bank. Betwixt the setting sun and the rising moon I came upon the bridge suddenly: it was like a painting by Mantegna. The bridge was plain and austere as the land- scape. On the farther hillside a Moorish watch-tower clung; on the nearer bank a Roman temple stood, a little, solemn bridge-chapel. The dark water brimmed silently below. The tawny hills were soundless, the dim-coloured stone arches stretched between them, forgetting noth- ing. Two little Spanish soldiers, in dark uniforms, kept the bridge-head with their muskets. I crossed to them and gave them a good day, and turned up the road to see the rose-colour of the full moon turn into silver, and as I came back to recross we The Bridge of Alcantara AND MONOGRAPHS 108 MILITARY ORDERS The western land bade each other go with God: and I saw, where the fiery ball of the sun had sunken, only white wreaths of mist. I was aware, for an hour of life, of the passing of time, and the centuries stood still to be measured above the dark irresistible stream. For that hour I seemed to breathe in the heart of the perdurable, and in the world of change, to enter into the changeless. 1 Alcantara, as I have said, belonged to the west, and it was a mere accident of politics, that for a time (and perhaps intermittently even then) it gave obedience to Calatrava. D. Frey Arias Perez was a Gallegan and Alfonso IX was his friend, and gave him houses in Badajoz and else- where: and when the King died, he stood out for the orphan princesses Dulce and Sancha, holding in their name Merida, Badajoz, Coria and Ciudad Rodrigo, with many other towns. As they had, in the end, poor ladies! to accept a compromise, HISPANIC NOTES •c pq IN SPAIN 109 and a pension, and the estate of irreme- diable celibacy which was worse, so he too submitted to King Ferdinand and gained Trujillo, and set knights and clerks of his order there. There was already a Convent 'and Order of Freyles Trujilleses, as noted earlier, but they were another body: they may, however, have merged at this time with that of Alcantara. This Master died in 1234. The iiext Master retook Medellin and secured it for the Order, also Elges which is a village of Coria, and other places. When King Ferdinand came down from Bena- vente to Cordova he passed by Alcantara and ordered the Master to follow, who, within four days, came on with six hundred horse and two thousand of foot. That was a test of efficiency. The King gave them a church in Cordova; then they went with D. Alfonso, King Ferdinand's heir, into Murcia, and took and peopled the town they called Alcantarilla ; they served at the taking of Seville and got town- houses and villages. Finally, after twenty years of such knightly service, this Master v.pp.8.159 The Order under King Ferdinand the Saint and King Alfonso the Sage AND MONOGRAPHS no Civil war in Badajoz MILITARY ORDERS was elected Master of Calatrava and passed away from this place. His successor stood by the King and the Prince D. Sancho, as the chronicle says, and the Infant D. Pedro rose with the towns of Coria, Sala- manca, and Ciudad Rodrigo and fought the Master. This is worth the noting, because later historians have not always seen that D, Sancho the Bold conceived himself and his partisans to be on his father's side, as against rebels in open rebellion. D. Fer- nando Perez who followed him was brother to Suero Paez the Master of Santiago; and being of Portuguese lineage, in 1286 he helped (against the rebellious Infant D. Alonso of Portugal) the King D. Dionis — D. Dinis, as the chronicler says. In Badajoz there was a civil war between the Portuguese and the Bejaranos, and the men of Bejar, having killed a good many Portugiiese, in self -protection proclaimed for D. Alonso de la Cerda; and the Masters and the forces of the Orders from Seville and Cordova were sent thither to besiege the city. It surrendered on promise of life and liberty, but D. Sancho killed every HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 111 one of the lineage and bando of Bejar, and that meant more than four thousand men and women. The region having at the moment no ^IVIoors, the Order continued to fight the Portuguese. The following Master was a Gallegan, and he was succeeded by his nephew whom he had brought up in his own house and that of a cousin (also Master) : a good training for a great office. A number of the castles of their Orders along the frontier had been given to Por- tugal, among them S. Julidn de Pereyre: it was said that the Order of Avis held this in some sort of subjection to Alcantara, but that has been denied. The Bridge of Alcantara was taken by the Prince Dom Joam and the Portuguese soldiery of King Dionis: the young Master came back hot- foot from Valladolid with a royal order for men, and on that collected all he could in Plasencia and sent to Caceres for more For three months a knight called Garci Gutierrez held the bridge from the bridge- tower — such men's names should not be forgotten — then the Master took it by War essential to health How Garci Gutierrez held the bridge AND MONOGRAPHS 112 MILITARY ORDERS The Master Ruy Vazquez storm and killed the knight and those with him: ''Mori el hombre y no su nombre." This Master, bred up for the office, was called D. Ruy Vazquez: his adventures were only beginning. In 1318 a conspiracy broke out against constituted authority, that is against himself, the Comendador Mayor and the Clavero. A charge was laid against them before D. Garcia Lopez de Padilla, the Master of Calatrava, that they evilly-entreated the freyles, knights and clerks of the convent. Padilla, as father and reformer of the Order, came in state, with two Cistercian abbots, him of Valde- yglesias and him of Valparaiso. The three accused fortified themselves in the Convent but others had gone out and taken a city gate, and these admitted the Master of Calatrava: and the case was called. The accused, who represented the entire govern- ment, denied the jurisdiction of Calatrava: if knights were wronged they might appeal to Rome, for Calatrava had lost all rights by failing in obligations, and especially in not summoning the A I aster of Pereyre and Alcantara for the elections of the Master HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 113 of Calatrava. The Convent was taken by storm and many knights were killed. As .the chapter sat, only twenty-two knights were not on their side in the contention; notwithstanding, these twenty-two elected a Maldonado for Master in Ruy Vazquez's stead. He assented under protest and set up for himself in Valencia de Alcantara: then he carried the appeal to Burgundy. This year the three Masters of Cala- trava, Santiago and Alcantara made a hermandad or alliance. He was a great figure still: he went to the wedding of the King's sister, Dofia Leonor, with the King of Aragon: at last he died and was suc- ceeded in due process of election by his brother, who raised the siege of Badajoz. The King for some reason was ill-pleased, and the Master, being warned of that, resigned his office into the hands of the Abbot of Morimundo, the same who had judged for his brother eighteen years before. The King insisted on nominating, and again a small minority was able to act: five knights and three clerks gave the habit to the King's Almoner, D. Gonzalo Nunez Majority did not count against authority AND MONOGRAPHS 114 MILITARY ORDERS The Master Gonzalo Nunez A barra- gana's enmity of Oviedo, and elected him. Fernando Lopez called a chapter in Alcantara and had himself elected, but he died within six months, then his nephew Suero Lopez was elected but resigned his rights to Ruy Perez: this simplified and strengthened the issue. The King, less pleased than ever, called in the Master of Calatrava and the Abbot of Morimundo again for a visita- tion and raised soldiery in Plasencia, Coria, Caceres and Trujillo: Ruy Perez resigned again and Nunez was properly elected in 1337. God's judgement waited for him. Those had been two busy years : the new Master sensibly turned his attention and his knights against the Moors. The Master was dear to King Alfonso XI and held the appointment of Captain General, but he was to lose both his estate and his life, for Dona Leonor de Guzman bore him ill-will. In a very hke case to his own he had opposed the election of her brother D. Alfonso Melendez Guzman as Master of Santiago. She complained to the King that the Master had said much evil of his HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN royal person and many insults against her, and for false witnesses she produced the Master's enemies. The King sent for him. He evaded those charged to capture him, and wrote bitterly to the King: it is not hard to guess what manner of thing he said. He came up by the west-country, from castle to castle of his Order, swearing the Alcayde not to deliver the castle to the King, and fortifying and provisioning as though for war. The King wrote again, urging him to come with a safe-conduct, for whatever he might have done his serv- ices should overbalance it: the Master wrote back that since the King believed false folk and disloyal, who considered their own interests exclusively, he must be excused from coming. Some of the Order, misdoubting the event, besieged Alcantara, castle and bridge. The King thanked them and requested them to elect a new Master, Nufio Chamiso, the Comendador of Santibanez: whereon D. Gonzalo Nuiiez offered to the King of Portugal Valencia de Alcantara. This episode is what my old chronicler AND MONOGRAPHS 115 Truth- speaking to a King 116 MILITARY ORDERS Banners displayed calls a gallardia, a gallant bit. The King had come up to Alcantara hurriedly, and Chamiso had taken the town, but D. Gonzalo Nunez held the castle, and he hung out all the banners he had taken from the Moors, and in the midst thereof one of white damask with the arms of the Order. There with him he had mucha y muy lucida gente, many shining lights of chivalry, Estremefios, Leonese and Asturians, his kinsfolk and friends. Then he waited for D. Pedro of Portugal. But the Prince dallied, expecting news. He never came. The King claimed to enter by right of homage done; and he swore on the Cross and the Gospels to assure him every secu- rity, not to kill him nor imprison, nor deprive of the Mastery, nor let him suffer molestation by royalty or by the Order. The oath seems to cover all contingency. When the Master consulted his relatives, D. Alvar Rodriguez Osorio warned him ominously that it was no new thing for kings to give a safe-conduct to those who had offended them, and later do their will, so he refused again. The King held him in HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 117 talk from a tower, while in the meantime the King's men tried to assault the castle: he received two strong stones on his shield in the defence, and as he turned to go down, others in the back: the Comendador of Herrera, beside him, was shot with an arrow and died. Foul play and force being baffled, King Alfonso tried power. Returning to his lodging, he called nobles and lawyers before him and gave a sentence against the Master as a traitor. The Master called a council and settled down for defence, putting the towers into the charge of his friends, but two of these betrayed him to the King, for they had been servants of the King D. Alfonso. The King's party prepared scaling ladders and the next night came in silence and darkness to the tower, and the first up were eight of the Order. When sufficient had mounted without a sound, they raised the deadly cry of ''Castile, Castile! King Alfonso, and death to trai- tors!" The rest made what terms they could, but the Master held the keep: fire was set there and next day he surrendered. Treachery of friends AND MONOGRAPHS 118 MILITARY ORDERS and a traitor's death Between King and Order The King made him a speech in the best and most approved manner: **You came to my house a man of no estate {homhre de pequena manera, he really said, 'a small sort of man') and I exalted you to high estate and made you a lord over gentle- men." So he went on and quite believed that he had been surprised as well as offended: of Dofia Leonor no word. The Master had time for confession and then was beheaded, this being in 1338, and his accuser, D. Alonso Fernandez Coronel, lord of Aguilar and Motilla, when for other offences he came to die, confessed his false witness and God's justice. The history of these three years pro- vokes reflections a little in the King's vein. The issue was between King and Order, a conflict of powers and a struggle for suprem- acy. One thing that he might have fore- seen the King overlooked when he put in a man from Oviedo: that the west-country was never tamed by Castile till Ferdinand and Isabel wrecked it in the process. He thought to put in his creature, who would come at his whistle, and found like Dofia HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 119 Urraca at Santiago that a great corporate body takes up men into itself and remakes them in its own image. As D. Diego Gelmirez at Compostella from a poor clerk, the servant of the Count and Countess, became the superb Archbishop, Apostolical and Primatial, so the Master who began as intruso, and lived to fight and to lose against a later intruso, was remoulded by the Order to its service utterly. The Master who began as the villain of a one chronicle play, ends as the protagonist of a second part: Chamiso will grow glo- rious likewise in part the third. So long as history related events and presented portraits, a man was good or bad, nor changed his colour before the bitter end. History to-day, since it offers neither events nor figures, only a vague welter of movements and tendencies, inextricable and indistinguishable, has bettered nothing here: but those who turn the dusty pages of old chronicles in search of life and emotion, of human motive and conscious or unconscious state-craft, may care to observe how a man can begin as a low sort An impersonal force remoulding men History not portraiture only nor only record of tendencies but a drama of men's spirits AND MONOGRAPHS 120 MILITARY ORDERS D. Nuno Chamiso The Black Death of politician and end in the full glory of upholding a splendid and a foredoomed cause. D. Nuno Chamiso fought in the Battle of Salada, though the Poem says no more than that Alcantara and Calatrava fought well: and he was in the siege of Algeciras. Later, carrying provisions to besieged Christians on the other side of the river, and fording it safely as he went, he was caught by the tide on the return, and drowned. At the siege as they lay, the knights elected the Keeper, D. Per Alfonso Pantoja: he was wounded there, and anon he died. His death is hardly noticed in the terrible mortality before that scorching city, to which the Black Death came earliest, in ships from the east perhaps. - 1 His successor was a Guzman, a cousin of Dona Leonor. At the death of D. Alfonso he stayed with her in ]\Iedina Sidonia. She gathered her friends there. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 121 gave out that the King had married her, and that her sons were legitimate, and said what she Hked of the young King D. Peter. When her relatives pointed out that the King D. Alfonso when he knew her was already married, she said quite improper things that the Queen and D. Peter heard: they threatened the cabal and the gentry scattered. Then the King sent, summon- ing the cabal to appear either at the Cortes in Seville or at the siege of Gibraltar. To this the Master replied that while he had no intention of changing the king- dom, nor had ever had, nor of doing any- thing in disservice of the King, yet, as his life was in danger, and because he was blameless, he purposed defending himself in the towns and lands of the Order. The King sequestered the rents and first-fruits, and ordered the knights to obey the Master of Calatrava, and Guzman came back to obedience. He promised to serve no other King or Infant, and put all the castles except Alcantara in the hands of knights whom the King designated, and thereafter served King Peter loyally and faithfully A Guzman succeeds AND MONOGRAPHS 122 MILITARY R D E R vS Two months a Master and was Captain General at Moron in battle against the Moors. News of his death came to King Peter before Toro. The tale that follows is a fair specimen of many that are told by Pero Lopez de Ayala, as instances of King Peter s cruelty, yet it is hard to see what else any king would have done. He was — as Andrada says — a stubborn doer of his will: he was capable of great trust, and when he punished it was with finality. There under the battlements of Toro he called a chapter and urged the election of D. Diego Gutierrez de Cervellos, who had not the habit of the Order, nor indeed any other, promising to send for an Apostolic Bull. He sent the new Master to Palan- zuela with some knights of the Order and others secular: anon he heard that they were conspiring with the enemy. The King, learning the treachery of one he had so hardily sustained, wrote him to leave the siege to his cousin the Comendador Mayor: when he came he was arrested and taken to the Alcazar of Zamora, and evilly entreated. The charge was transferred to HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 123 Juan Fernandez de Ynestrosa. Cervellos escaped and fled to Aragon, and served the King there, having held the charge for fifty-eight days and never been professed. The King D. Peter called a chapter in Zamora and according to the statutes they elected the Keeper: he served the king well and died in Soria, 1371. The Guzman bastard was pressing D. Pedro hard. Martin Lopez de Cordova was sent on an embassy to the King of England, having sworn that he would not help D. Enrique. He went with the King from Corunna to Bayonne to ask help from the Black Prince and in his absence was ousted by D. Enrique whom Pero Lopez de Ayala is calling King, as Fernan Perez de Guzman calls D. Alonso King in the reign of Enrique IV. D. Pedro Nunez de Godoy intended, by the usurper's help, to be, as he said himself, a great lord with two Masterships. The freyles of Alcantara petitioned the Pope, and the Mastership was put in commission with the Clavero in charge to await the event of history. When knights had fought on both sides Lopez de Cordova and Nunez de Godoy hold each two Maeslrasgos AND MONOGRAPHS 124 Du Guesclin in the assassina- tion The Romance of Montiel MILITARY ORDERS after Najera, there had been two Masters and two Keepers. Godoy was promoted to Calatrava, and Melen Suarez was elected Master. In 1371 King Peter died at Montiel: we all know how Du Guesclin lent a hand in the treachery and the assassination, and how a Gallegan spoke a canny word: "I make no kings, I break no kings, but I help my Lord." One wishes one might hear that quoted in testimony before the Judg- ment-Seat of God, and know if it were allowed or ruled out. There are fragments extant of a Romance of the Death of the King D. Peter, and though the popular imagination has a predisposition towards bastards it is moving: And Henry's men They sing, they slash and cry "Hail, Henry, hail!" And Peter's men Clamour, stoop and wail Above their dead King. One Gallegan may be set against another : if an Andrada lent a hand to D. Enrique, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN it was Fernan Ruiz de Castro on whose tomb was written, in 1374: Here lies all the loyalty of Spain. None was better loved than King Peter, and in the midst of treason he commanded the perfect loyalty. Alcantara was faithful and preferred anything to D. Enrique: when the King of Portugal took up the title of the princess Dofia Beatriz, the daughter of King Sancho the Bold, the Master stood with him, and the cities of Ledesma, Zamora, Ciudad Rodrigo, Coria, and most of Galicia. He was defeated by the Clavero, and fled to Portugal. His successor, elected in absence by compulsion of the King, was D. Ruy Diaz de la Vega, chamberlain and intimate of D. Enrique, and brother of Dona Yfiez Diaz de la Vega, by whom the King had certain daughters — King Henry having in fact a fairly wide connection in this regard. One daughter, indeed, Doiia Ysabel, was privately married to D. Gonzalo Nunez de Guzman before he took the habit of Alcantara; King Henry discovered and AND MONOGRAPHS 125 Gallegan loyalty Enrique de Trastamara given to women 126 His portrait may be found on p. 68 The Battle of Aljubarrota MILITARY ORDERS was wroth, and imprisoned him. King John I thereafter made him Master, and the lady, with her sister, took the Francis- can habit in S. Clare of Toledo. Always there was war with Portugal. In the battle of Aljubarrota, when the Master of Cala- trava was killed, he was promoted to his place. Here is material of romance, a life- time-full: but less stirring than the story, a half -century before, of D. Gonzalo Nunez of Oviedo. I The "marvellous battle that was at Juberoth," should be told by none but Froissart. The war had been kept up for the benefit of French mercenaries, and the Spanish chivalry was ill content : "They would say that King could make no war but by the Frenchmen, and in like wise no more could his father" — in which they said truth, for King Peter had pacified Castile, more than once, and the allies of King Henry had ravaged it again. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 127 They were Companions Adventurers and had nothing to lose. And on the other side the Master of Avis was a King's bastard who had made himself King in Portugal. His forces, with their English contingent, drew out from Lisbon: 'And without the town a quarter of a league or there about, there was a great abbey of monks, whither they of Juberoth and of other villages were wont to come and hear mass, and the church standeth a little out of the way in a moat environed about with great trees, hedges and bushes: it was a strong place with a little help." They cut down the trees and laid them so as to encumber cavalry, and stationed their archers and cross-bowmen within the blockade; and when the Spaniards drew out to view the field the advisers of the King would have him wait for the morrow, Sir Diego Gomez Manrique, Sir Diego Pier Sarmiento, Pier Gonzalez of Mendoza and the Great Master of Calatrava: but again the French urged on. So the King said at last, "I will in the name of God and S. James that our enemies be fought withal," and for the English allies in the Spanish peninsula The preparation AND MONOGRAPHS 128 MILITARY ORDERS The first fight honour of God and S. George he made a hundred and forty-two knights there in the field. "There might have been seen among these new knights great nobleness, and they maintained themselves so nobly that it was a pleasure to behold them, for it was a fair battle." These, as named over, appear mostly Frenchmen, often Pyre- nean, and the Spaniards were sullen, as they had been two centuries before at Alarcos, and they agreed softly among themselves to leave the vaward to the French. ''The same Saturday was a fair day, the sun was turned towards evensong." Then the French advanced, and the English and Portuguese defeated them and took many : "So of these some were put to their finance incontinent: and some would abide their adventure: for they imagined that the King of Spain, with his great army, would shortly come and deliver them." And the news came to him. "Then the Spaniards began to ride a better pace, close together, in good order, and by that time the sun was near down." And when the Portu- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN guese saw them approaching ''then incon- tinent they ordained a piteous deed, for every man was commanded, on pain of death, to slay their prisoners, without mercy, noble, gentle, rich nor other, none except." As the massacre ended the Spanish host charged. Here Froissart pauses to give his opinion of the Spaniard as soldier, speaking as a half -English Frenchman, who in all the intricate policies of his age had always met him as a stranger and an enemy. True it is at their first setting on they are fierce and courageous and of great courage and high-minded, if they have advantage. They fight well a-horseback, but as soon as they have cast two or three darts and given a stroke with their sword, and see that their enemies be not discomfited therewith, then they fear and turn their horses and fly away to save themselves that best may. And at this battle of Juberoth they used the same play [indeed it is very Arab, and it is what the frontier wars had taught them] ; AND MONOGRAPHS 129 Prisoners The Spaniard as soldier 130 M ILITARY ORDERS as the English view him Far more than at Ndjera, says Froissart for they found their enemies hard and strong and as fresh in the battle as though they had done nothing all of the day before, whereof they had marvel, and also that they heard no tiding of the vaward and knew not where they were become. There the Spaniards that even- ing were in the hard fortune of battle and perilous for them; for as many as entered into their strength [the Portu- guese entrenchment] were by valiantness of feats of arms all slain. And every man named above, and many more, were all slain; for indeed the Span- ish chivalry, trained against the IMoors, was inapt to meet the bull-dog English methods where masses and endurance were the measure of success. "When the King of Castile understood and saw how his men were thus discomfited and that Sir Raynold Limousin was dead who was his marshal, and saw how all his noble chivalry were lost, as well of his own realm as of France and elsewhere, such as were come thither to serve him with their good wills, were lost, he was then sore HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 131 displeased and wist not what counsel to take." At last "the king of Castile believed counsel and then changed his horse and mounted on a fresh charger, strong and light, whereon no man had ridden before of all day. Then the king strake the steed with his spurs and turned his back towards his enemies and took the way towards San- tarem." And the King of Portugal re- fused to follow up the slaughter. So there was a new Master of Calatrava. 1 But the CJavero of Avis, a Portuguese, Martinez de la Barbida, had not fol- lowed the Master of Avis, and the King made him Master of Alcantara. He is a figure out of the Romances and the long legends, a younger brother of the Infants of Lara. In the Moorish war he made a raid and took much booty, but a hermit betrayed him to the Moorish King and he was caught behind and before, and died with many knights of the Order and others Romance AND MONOGRAPHS 132 MILITARY ORDERS ;Al i, en Granada la rica! secular. Some say, however, that he was captured, and taken to Granada, and there he had, by a Mooress, a son, who grew up in Granada and afterwards was Soldan of Babylon. He was buried in the church at Alcantara, and praised by his epitaph as one who never, for any cause, lodged fear in his heart. Aqiii jaza quele que por neuma cousa nunca owe pavor en sen coraqon. The next Master was a child of eight, the Infant D. Sancho, the son of the Infant D. Fernando the King's guardian. The prince talked politics to the Bishop of Palencia, offering to put the income of the Master into the Granada wars till he should come of age, and the Bishop replied trans- lating it with pious phrases — it is good comedy — and the bargain was made. The little prince was a postulant in the Convent of Alcantara: but he died at seventeen. Queen Catharine, the King's other guard- ian, would have given the office then to the King's tutor, D. Gomez Carrillo of Cuenca, but D. Juan de Sotomayor was elected HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 133 canonically and kept it. In the trouble, throughout this reign, with the Infants of Aragon, he stood by the Infant D. Enrique who was the Master of Santiago. His story makes a racketing novel of the sort that youth relishes, with history enough to keep it sweet, and action enough to keep it plausible. A strong wind of adventure blows down the Chronicle of John II, and in the western confines of the kingdom, among Benaventes and Zunigas, the forces of the great houses flood and subside dike streams in spate. The average European reader will hardly recognize their names, most of them, and the story must be told more briefly here than either Fernan Perez de Guzman merits or the action that he presents. The Infant of Aragon, D. Enrique, was in armed rebellion, and the King seques- tered not only his goods in Castile which were great but those of the Mayorazgo of Santiago, which he held in usufruct. D. Alvaro de Luna, the Constable of Castile, went down to Estremadura to check his ravages there, the Masters of The novel of D. John of Soto- mayor by Fernan Perez de Guzman The prologue AND MONOGRAPHS 134 The first chapter I Ay, Castillo de Mon- tanches! MILITARY ORDERS Calatrava and Alcantara being bidden to lend their aid, and the King of Portugal and his son D. Eduarte being requested not to harbour the cattle he was lifting and the rest of his loot. D. Alvaro's siege of Trujillo, in this emprise, is a good story but not to the present purpose : the Alcayde was a loyal servitor and the Constable, who was a great gentleman, knew how to honour him. The King himself arrived in time to take Montanches, and save the scruples of the Warden there. The Master of Alcantara meanwhile did nothing: D. Alvaro had taken command in his own marches, and moreover D. Enrique was his own friend: thirdly, the Orders, even where no precise hermandad or pact existed, were disposed to friendly action mutually, and knew how to use judicious inaction, or what the unions in Spain today call a passive strike, or even sabotage. The King gave a letter, a castle, and some money. The Master took action for a little while and slackened again. So the King issued letters of sequestration against him, and warned all men not to follow him or to HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 135 pay their dues to the Maeslruzgo, fear- ing his support of D. Enrique, and mis- trusting that he might make over to him certain strongholds. At the same time he sent the Bishop of Cuenca to mediate as being his kinsman and friend: and with him a certain Doctor Franco: ''and the King's intention notwithstanding was that the Master should not tarry in that region, for by reason of his suddenness none might be secure of him." Indeed, the whole of the west seemed to be up for the Infants of Aragon, and the Bishop learned from a devoted servant of the Master's that the Infants lay for him on the road home, and departed very ill-content, and the Master, being as aforesaid sudden, sent after him a message agreeing to everything and stating his requirements by the Clovero of the Order. So ends a chapter. What he seems to have wanted was a free hand in his own parts: leave to stay on Portuguese soil, for instance, even if the King sent out a general summons: and amnesty for the past, and control of his own Maesirazgo, the estates and the privi- Negotiation AND MONOGRAPHS 136 MILITARY ORDERS The second chapter Action leges and rents thereof. So thereafter, as it happened, one Saturday morning in June, the eve of SS. Peter and Paul, his nephew, the Comendador Mayor, arrived to visit him, Frey Gutierre de Sotomayor. He was of the personal following of the rebel princes, and robbed as much as they or more, as the chronicle says, and more- over was consenting in all the harm they did throughout the land and to this end he had come: and he was, apparently, too much for the Master's quieter second thoughts. They had dined together, that June midday; after dinner the Keeper, and the Master's secretary, who had been involved in the compact, were put under arrest, and it was known that the Infants were present in the outskirts of the town. Doctor Franco, when he knew this, gath- ered up his scarlet gown and pulled down his furred cap: he would for once have ridden a hard-trotting hack, only in order to go faster than a pace: he learned that the roads were held, and he might not go. In his lodging he hid his papers as best he might where they could not be found even HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 137 by searching through his Unen and silver and other property there: and came back to "the stronghold of Alcantara which is called the Convent," and faced the Master and asked some awkward questions: not a bad sort, Doctor Franco, in his long gown, with his scholarly pallor gone a little green in the cheeks and about the lips ! Had the Master, perhaps (being notoriously sud- den), changed his mind about the pledge not to admit the Infants to the city? Had he indeed sent for the Infants who were now in the suburb? Truly, yes, replied the Master: more- over, his mind was changed about those pledges and compacts, and he would have the papers back again, please. Then said the Doctor ''Impossible, for I have sent them to the King already. " So the Master, leaving him under strong guard, went down to his lodgings and searched, but in vain; he cared more for the papers than the stuff, but being annoyed and desiring especially not only some pretty extensive pardons for the past, for him and his, that the King had signed, but also some other blank Up and down Alcantara town AND MONOGRAPHS 138 MILITARY ORDERS The third chapter pardons, that would have been useful things to keep— being, as I say, vexed, he flung the things about and took the silver finally, and some gold money that a lad, the legist's body-servant, had, and appar- ently let his men take what they liked, including the beasts, so that nothing was left but what the Doctor had on when he went up the hill. The silver was given to the Infant D. Pedro, and the rest to his men or thd Princes': lastly the lawyer's servants were all arrested. The third chapter is this. That night Doctor Franco talked long with the Comeii- dador Mayor, and warned him that he and his uncle were in the wrong way. and made an impression on him. But on Sunday morning the Master handed over the Con- vent-fortress of Alcantara to the Infant D. Pedro, and handed over the lawyer. Doctor Franco, to the Infant D. Enrique, and with the last, set out from the town, and joined Ruy Lopez Davalos, whose father had been the Constable of Castile. The prisoner was in his charge. As they rode, the legist heard them talking over their plan, which HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN was to put all that Alcantara controlled into the power of the Princes: at best this would have made such a situation for the crown as Enrique IV faced when D. Alfonso and Dona Isabel were at the head of the rebel nobles: at worst, it might have cost the kingdom. The Doctor Hstened: the Master was to go up towards Valencia de Alcantara with all the specie and plate that he could collect: the Prince was to turn toward Albuquerque of which he was Duke, and the Wardens of all the castles were to swear the same fealty to the Princes as to the Master himself. But God has His own ways, and a little thing altered and defeated this dangerous plan. The road which runs up from Alcan- tara to Valencia, and that which turns off for Albuquerque, run all as one for two or three leagues: so the Master and the Infant rode together for these three leagues, or some such : and then the former decided to go with the other and have his escort for the treasure, sending some of his mounted men to Valencia, and some to Mayorago, a castle near by. And they were so angry AND MONOGRAPHS 139 Conspiracy and rebellion which chance defeated 140 MILITARY ORDERS but which ruined the Master with him thereupon, that they would not go where he sent but left him there and scattered, save five or six squires. On the next day the party came to Albuquerque; the Master, not daring to lie in the town, went up to the castle with all his men, and put Doctor Franco in a tower there. The nephew had waited, as planned, for news from Valencia : w^hen he learned where the Master and the treasure had gone. he suspected constraint; so also thought those with him and those left to garrison Alcantara; and a like message cam.e from Valencia: moreover, some such possibility had been foreseen and provided for. So on July 1st, while the Prince D. Pedro was asleep in the hot noon, in the castle of Alcantara, the Comendador Mayor, the secretary, who had been arrested, and others, ten or twelve men in all, came in with swords drawn where the Prince slept and took him. And all the town was glad. In the next chapter the Admiral of Castile, D. Fadrique, and the Warden, D. Pero Manrique his brother, who were at Caceres, being apprised of this, make haste HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 141 to present themselves but are not admitted into the town. The Master was to be moved to the castle of Piedra Buena and the Keeper to come up from Alcantara to make sure he was not under restraint, for the Infant D. Enrique, rather, should be held in pledge for the services done him: however, it appears that the Master was actually held as a hostage. So the match was played out: the King removing from Valladolid to Salamanca to be nearer at hand, with all the coming and going of messengers, and D. Pedro being removed to Valencia de Alcantara, where another uncle of the Comendador Mayor was Warden, and could guard him better. The historian has been hardly just to D. Juan de Sotomayor, who, for all his suddenness, was a good man in a bad place, and powerless more than once. Where the King had summoned him and sent the Bishop of Cuenca, the cleric had been afraid to entef the lands of Alcantara, and the Master had been afraid to leave them. In refusing to go to court, where his enemies held the King's ear, he had shown no more The fourth chapter: de- nouement A marginal correction AND MONOGRAPHS 142 A man foredoomed MILITARY ORDERS than common caution: and he had offered as hostages three nephews, all in the Order. Then those to whose interest it was, had convinced him the King meant death : and again fresh negotiations had failed because he could not trust the King's word. Now the pieces were so arranged upon the board that for him there was only check and mate in successive moves . A chapter of the Order sat in Alcantara, and deposed him for offences against the King, and elected in his stead D. Gutierre his nephew — whereby the King hoped still to keep D. Pedro under lock and ward. The King moved again, down to Ciudad Rodrigo, and being there at Mass in the cathedral, the new Master did homage to him there, between the King's hands, and swore on the Cross and on the holy gospels to serve him well and loyally, and received the banner of the Order: and that day the King had him seated at his table and freed the city of Alcantara from certain taxes. He got the King's pardon for his uncle, furthermore, and allowed him a pension. One remembers rather pitifully this HISPANIC NOTES Greco's Portrait of a Knight presented by Saint Julian IN SPAIN 143 Master D. Juan de Sotomayor, who. though of gentle blood, was the son of a poor squire that had married a farmer's daughter, and was so good a soldier that the Order had elected him gladly, and so poor a politician that being caught in the net of Castilian discontent he could not get free ever. His sudden rushes are like those of any other strong creature and untamed: it would seem that he ended as he had begun, fighting in stormy splen- dours. As for his nephew, the Master D. Gutierre, I know that in the Granada war, long after, he was trapped in a mountain pass where he should have died, but that a soldier, born in those parts, showed to him a secret path and some knights got away: whether he got away safe, and where he died, if so, I have forgotten. The great orb of D. Alvaro de Luna was dropping now in stormy decline, and in the red light of its setting the chroniclers cannot note the lesser stars. 1 Epilogue: A good knight of Alcantara AND MONOGRAPHS 144 A Chronicle Play: Part I. The fall of D. G6mez de Caceres i\ I ILITARY ORDERS A successor of his, D. Gomez de Caceres y vSolis, by an accident and a personal feud arising thence, was drawn into the wars of King Henry the Fourth's time. He had been the King's Major-domo. Again the story is laid in the west-country: he had married his sister to a noble gentleman of Trujillo called D. Francisco de Hinojosa: the wedding was at Caceres. There were sports and feasting and knightly exercises, among these tilting at a tahlado which was placed very high. The CI aver o of Alcantara took a lance, instead of the wand used for the sport, and threw it over the top of this, and mocked the Master and the other knights as weaklings. The bridegroom in especial was piqued. He called for the lance-playing (jucgo dc canas) and challenged the Clavero and by ill-luck just missed striking him twice in the face: the Clavero took a lance and struck him over the head. Then two kins- men, the Master's brothers, tried to kill the Clavero, and indeed one hardly wonders, on this accmnulation of insults: he defended himself until the Master arrived. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 145 Sent off to the Convent of Alcantara, but released after a few days, he gathered his friends and relatives, took two castles, and made war on the Master. King Henry was well content, and promised the Master- ship if he could win it. He took Coria and held it for nine months on its hilly promon- tory, then, by help of the townsfolk, he managed to take Caceres, the Master's own town. The Httle war dragged on. Mosen Diego de Valera will have it that the Master ill-used Caceres, where the Clavero had honourable kinsfolk: the account which the Order kept, as we have heard, was other. Then the young prince D. Alfonso died. The rebellious nobles were checked for an instant, though it cost them little to put his sister in his place. Monroy the Clavero — it is a Salamanca name and of the west-country — hearing that two hundred lances of the Master's were near Guadelupe, went down to fight them: they flung themselves into the town and he besieged them there. After the surrender he took their horses and arms and sent them packing, and the outcome Against the King Don Alfonso or Dona Isabel, all one AND MONOGRAPHS 146 MILITARY ORDERS Alvar G6mez was a traitor of the whole was ruin for the dwellers in the steep, picturesque little town hanging on the mountain's flank. It was Alvar Gomez of Ciudad Real, the King's trusted secretary, and a traitor, who had made the trouble between the King and the Master: "he was of low blood, so that of his lineage behooves no memorial," says Diego Enriquez del Castillo — base-born, base-spirited, is his meaning. He kept the two apart, lest they should understand each other and trust, until the King came down to give Trujillo to the Count of Plasencia. Then they met, and the King forgave all and gave him the cities of Badajoz and Caceres, and at his request and that of the Master of Santiago, gave Coria to his brother D. Gutierre de Caceres, and confirmed his title of Count. He did other favours at the same time, to the Keeper, D. Alonso de Monroy, who had been his loyal servitor unwavering. But the end was foreordained: Monroy raised a rebellion through all the Order, and indeed the Master had a heavy hand. The Commanders came up against him HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN aniied, and if he had not got to cover, and so made good his flight, he could have been taken or slain assuredly: and Alcantara was actually taken. The Master turned to an old ally, D. Alonso Carrillo, the rebel Archbishop of Toledo, and to the Count of Alba de Tormes, D. Fernan Alvarez de Toledo, and raised an army of fifteen hun- dred horse and twenty-five hundred foot: Monroy laid an ambush and took many, and when open battle was joined, defeated the blaster and wounded him severely in the face. The Count of Coria came to his help, pledging Coria to the Count of Alba de Tormes to get reinforcements, and never got his town back: and when the forces moved the Keeper had burned all the bridges and boats upon the Tagus, and held the fords, so that they could not join, and Alcantara was besieged for thirteen months. Thence on — says the chronicler — the Mas- ter of Alcantara was always in decay, without the power to recover, so that he died not as Master of Alcantara, but as Gomez de Caceres, which he was when he came to the King's household, for the AND MONOGRAPHS 147 Brother in arms as in blood 148 The on-looker appreciates the irony ot events Part II, the Rise and MILITARY ORDERS sovereign justice of God is such that he never leaves such ingrates without punish- ment. So, Uke David, the good chaplain comforts himself, in a world where he had seen the wicked flourishing like a green bay tree. We may find some satisfaction ourselves in knowing that Monroy was to reap the advantage and the place for which he had planted and watered; nor could he be cut down. The Mastership was wanted, indeed, elsewhere. The Duchess Leonor Pimentel, of the great house of Benavente, and her husband, D. Alvaro de Zuniga, the Duke of Plasencia. wanted the place for their son and plotted with the lord of Bel vis, D. Fernando de Monroy, who held the Convent; but D. Alonso thq; Clavero by a stratagem seized it, called a chapter, had D. Gomez de Caceres deposed and himself elected. He had been brought up by D. Gutierre de Sotomayor who was his mother's brother, but not from him had he learned rebellion and ingratitude, for the second Sotomayor, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 149 as has appeared, took an odd sort of care of his uncle even when supplanting him. Monroy got himself re-elected when the Master died; not even that could bring peace. One time he besieged three castles at once, and for two years Estremadura was racked by cruel war. The Master of Santiago and the Countess of Medellin favoured the three besieged Wardens, and so great was the evil that there was no safety in field or in town, nor dared the labourers sow, not knowing if they might reap. D. Francisco de Solis, who was holding out in vengeance for his uncle, at the last offered to surrender, the terms being a fixed sum of money and a bastard daughter of the Master's to wife. So the wedding was contracted . Solis allowed only six men, and those unarmed, to come in with Monroy and his daughter, the bride to be: at supper the first course served was two heavy fetters of iron, on silver plat- ters: and hard thereupon D. Fernando came in and took him. He said, ''Is this my son? Is this a gentleman's act?" and Part III. the Decline of D.Alonsc de Monroy Like spurs on the Scotch border AND MONOGRAPHS 150 MILITARY ORDERS His adventures the answer was prompt: "You may be the devil's father but you will not be mine." They put him in prison, fettered and chained: D. Francisco got himself elected, and the question of Monroy's life was dis- cussed at length. The Duchess again asked for the Mastership for her son. The King gave her leave to appeal to the Pope, and the Bulls came. So she held, in her young son's name, the castle and town of Alcan- tara. Meanwhile, in the prison, Monroy had found, after six months, some old catapult-cords, and of these he made a rope. Then, putting shoes on his hands to protect them (it would seem that they should have been alpargatas), from a very high window he slipped down, but with the weight of the chains he wore the rope broke, and he fell heavily. It dislocated a leg, nevertheless he crept on all fours to a lower wall and got over that, dragging his useless leg. The hill beyond was thickly wooded, but he knew he would be searched for there, and he hid in a copse in the plain, but next morning they found him and took him back. He lay in a dungeon ten months HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN more. The end of the story is as romantic and irrational as the rest: when the Catho- hc Kings came to the throne D. Francisco took their part and fought for them against the Portuguese: he was defeated, and wounded, and his horse fell on him. There, as he lay, he asked a foot-soldier to help him: the man had been a servitor of D. Alonso de Monroy, and he killed him as he lay. So D. Alonso got out, and collected some of his own men and some roving ruffians and made war on D. Juan de Zufiiga, and the Duke wrote up for the Duchess who was in Arevalo, to come down and defend her son now. The Dukes of Plasencia were of the party of the King of Portugal and the Excellent Lady Dofia Juana: therefore the Catholic Kings sustained Monroy, and with the help of their letter he got some gentlemen about him, and campaigned against the Portuguese. After various vic- tories the Queen received and thanked him but she said nothing about the Mastership. With his old adaptability he made friends with the Countess of Medellin, who held 151 As interlude, the tragedy o£D. Francisco AND MONOGRAPHS 152 Epilogue: Review of the protagonists 1. Don Juan de Sotomayor MILITARY ORDERS 2. Don Gutierre de Sotomayor Merida — though in truth this belonged to the Order of Santiago. They joined the other party, took plenty of castles, and wasted and ravaged. At last, as is well known, Queen Isabel and the Infanta Beatrice made a peace, and Monroy got his pardon and his own property back but resigned the title. It is tempting to pause here, like King Henry's chaplain, and reviewing the vista of two life-times draw a moral or twain. The readiest one is that the protagonist always wears the dress of a hero, and how often soever the actor may change, the mask and the voice are noble always. D. Juan de Sotomayor had risen from low estate, he had stood by D. Enrique de Aragon, who was Master of Santiago, even in rebellion against the King; and his nephew, D. Gutierre, who had a powerful uncle in the Comendador of Valencia, was a better politician and supplanted him. Nevertheless, D. Gutierre was. in his way, loyal to his predecessor, and he trained one who was to be a good successor. Against D. Gomez de Caceres y Solis, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Master, stood D. Alonso de Monroy, Keeper: from their first appearance they were arrayed against each other, perhaps by old hostiUty of bandos, perhaps by elective antipathy. D. Gomez had been made by King Henry, had left him and was to come back to him, like the Master of Santiago, D. Juan Pacheco. Supplanted he still kept his title, and his striking attitude: the figure of a wronged man moves across the stage in his person. Monroy is the intruder, the sower of sedition, the wronger, up to the last possi- ble moment: then with his brief elation and cruel downfall he becomes the sym- pathetic personage in turn. The one blameless figtire, D. Francisco de Solis, gets the least out of it: a striking gesture, a quick reply, and a tragic taking-off, no more. The thirty-seventh Master, D. Juan de Zuniga. and Pimentel, reckoned his names and his lineage along the old Silver Road. He served with distinction in the conquest of Granada. The Queen Dona Isabel arranged with some principal knights of AND MONOGRAPHS 153 3. Don G6mez de Cdceres 4. Don Alonso de Monroy The deuter- agonist D. Francisco de Solis The last Master 154 MILITARY ORDERS The Queen's policies the city of Plasencia that they should withdraw from the obedience and fealty of the Duke D. Alvaro— the Master's father — and come under the royal crown: these took up arms and drove out the Duke's officers and besieged the fortress, that tower still strong where white pigeons coo and mate in the sunshine now. The Duke discreetly gave it up to the Kings and was called thereafter Duke of Bejar. Next the Kings claimed the Mastership when it should fall vacant, and Innocent VHI and Alexander VI gave Bulls to that effect: within two years thereafter John was invited to resign. He was discreet as his father had been: with three knights and three clerks he retired to a convent that he built in Villanueva de la Serena, and that was the end of the Order. D. Juan became later Archbishop of Seville, and the Pope made him a Cardinal : finally he died when on a visit to Guadelupe and lies among the innimierable unknown dead, great lords and kings and pilgrims, at the sanctuary there. The history of the Order began and HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 155 ended in the west-country, along the Roman road that was called Camino de Plata, and the great feats, the sudden incidents, the play of motives belong all to border and ballad stuff. 1 The Order of Monte Gaudio has been mentioned twice already, and some account must now be indicated of that strange off- shoot from Santiago whereof a slip was planted in Aragon and flourished for a while only to be grafted into the tree of the Temple; and how, from the overthrown stock in the west, a new branch grew up and was cut down at last. One of the original ruffianly founders of the Order of Santiago (thus the tale opens) was a count of Sarria, Rodrigo Alvarez by name, a nephew, cousin and great-grandson of kings. In one of his adventures he had burned the Church of S. Mary at Toral— which I take to be Toral de los Vados on the Way of S. James, A ballad- literature that lacked its blind beggars The Lesser Orders Monte Gaudio AND MONOGRAPHS 156 Count Roderick M ILITARY ORDERS that at this day still lacks a proper house of God. His parents were noble and pious, and were the founders and patrons of the Cistercian abbey of Meira in the diocese of Lugo, whereof the present writer hopes to give a good account next year. In the archives there Yepes had seen a document signed after his father's death, which calls him Count and also Master of the Mllicia of Monte Gaudio. In 1170, however, and for a few years thereafter, he was still only a great lord and a gallant figure, attendant on the King's person in September of that year at Alba de Tormes: then his name appeared among those of the founders of the Order of S. James of the Sword. In September of 1172 the King of Portugal gave over to that new Order the city of Abrantes and castle of Monte Sancto on the express condition that the Comendador Mayor, Count Rodrigo, should hold it and none other. Why he quit the Order it is hard to guess. The original Bull is lost by which he founded a new one of his own, but from the confirmation that has survived, and suc- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 157 ceeding documents, we know that in 1173, at some time between the 7th of July and the 24th of November, before the Cardinal- legate Jacinto, then probably in Zamora, he renounced the habit of S. James, seeking a stricter rule. His own Order was, like that of Calatrava, put under the Cister- cian Rule, and gathered men to it fast, it would appear, and gifts also; Padornelo, of the Pilgrims' Road, was one donation, and another Linar de Rey hard by. There was probably an affiliation to the Abbey of Moreruela, such as Montesa accepted to SS. Creus. Yepes says that the Order of Monte Gaudio owned many villages in Castile, Catalonia and Valencia, being called in the latter kingdoms Mongoja; it had nine Masters, and Ferdinand the Saint incor- porated it with Calatrava. The freyles wore a red mantle and a silver star: some have thought that the Order of Trujillo proceeded therefrom. The nine Masters must have ruled simul- taneously or overlapping at times, and indeed it is a strange thing how suddenly — founds another order and removes thereafter to Aragon AND MONOGRAPHS 158 Property over-sea, cf. pp. 58. 186. The founder' death MILITARY ORDERS perhaps when the King married a daughter of the house of Lara, and Castile had the say in Leon — the Aragonese gifts are mul- tipUed and those of Leon ignored. In 1 175 at Saragossa the Count reeeived, among other donations, Fuentes de Alfambra, and thereafter a great number of frontier towns. The Bull of 1180 mentions gifts over-seas as well: Teonasaba was ceded by King Baldwin; el Palmar and the Tower of the Maids, at the city of Ascalon, these both given by Guy of Ascalon; and in Lombardy the Bridge of Amallone with other holdings, given by the Marquis of Monferrat and his wife. Probably about 1187 or 1188 Count Rodrigo died: his body lies in Alfambra. One or two Masters or commissioners ruled uneasily; then, after a little while, the names are changed: Frey Gasco appears and another Italian, Frey Fralmo de Lucca, who, in 1196, was Master. Finally the Order was aggregated to the Temple with all its goods, though certain knights' names are missing among the signatures. The Hospital of the Redeemer at Teruel HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 159 seems to have lent a name, as it was itself a member of the Order in those parts ; and a long time thereafter Fraga was still held by the insubmissive few, and the Templars were put to it to recover what was theirs. Meanwhile the west was again alive. Monfrac or Monfrague, a castle on the Tagus, belonged to D. Froila Ramirez and his wife, Dona Urraca Gonzalez. The King gave it to Santiago in 1171. Taken by the Moors, it was given perhaps on recov- ery to Trujillo, and again in 1197 to the Order of Monfrac and the Master of it. D. Rodrigo Gonzalez. In 1206 and 1210 the Order was making exchanges with other Orders. But by this time the greater Orders of the west were well established , it had no chance in the competition, and in 1221 it was, as already said, incorporated with Calatrava, apparently by a fresh outburst of the same spirit that had led the first Master to move out of Leon sooner than submit to the domination of his next neighbours. The Order of Trujillo had a different temper but a Jike destin}^ Founded in Fraga Monfrac V. Ponz. VII, vii, 13-14 Here ends • Blazquez y Jimenez The Order of Trujillo AND MONOGRAPHS 160 The Order of S. George The source is Federico Pastor y Lluis 172 years of good work MILITARY ORDERS 1191, on the 21st of April, by Alfonso IX, the Master being called D. Gomez, it suffered an interregnum when the city was lost to the Moors. In 1218 it was incor- porated with Alcantara and Calatrava. says the historian, which can only be inter- preted to mean that, in the Scripture phrase, "they of the household divided the spoil." I The Order of S. George of Alfama was founded by Peter I of Aragon, on Septem- ber 24, 1201. The King gave the Wild of Alfama, in the Diocese of Tortosa, to found a castle and Order to hold back the Hagarenes. The first Superior was a Catalan knight, D. Frey Juan de Alme- nara, who is said to have been in deacon's orders, the donation being to him and Martin Vidal, and those who should suc- ceed in the Order. There the knights obeyed the Rule of S. Augustine for a hundred and seventy-two years without pontifical approbation, but they had HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 161 probably the Bishop's. It was such an order as many another of those that sprang up and withered away from Gerona to Trujillo: none grudged them here their Hfe under Augustinian Rule, or their seat in the Coll de Balaguer, and it lived on unmolested. A hospice had been there from almost unknown antiquity. A text of 1567 says: "The sea forever beats on the Mount of Alfama: they built a castle thereon with walls armed, a large patio or cloister, with dorter at the right and church at the left, with five windows that look to tramontana and ponente, and three openings to the east, a sacristy and other offices, like the chapter-room, the refectory, the kitchen and yet more: all made with simple arti- fice as the ruins to-day attest, and the ancient walls." They wore the white habit with red cross. "S. George himself appeared therein in these kingdoms, divers times, favouring the Christians and killing the Moors with his sight and his sword." In 1373 King Peter IV got a Bull from Gregory XI with a Rule, and the King in The Castle Apparitions of S. George AND MONOGRAPHS 162 years of prosperity MILITARY ORDERS "While Jove's planet rises yonder . . . .silent, over Africa!" Barcelona knighted the Master. For twenty-seven years the Order was rich and active and then King Martin, in 1400, in- corporated it with Montesa. The business was done in Avignon, by John XXII, and Montesa gave up the black cross and wore S. George's. The Master D. Berenguer March took possession of what goods there were in Aragon, \^alencia and Catalonia. Mallorca, and Sardinia — a small heritage it was except in honour. Two Priorates lasted on, S. George of Alfama and S. George of Valencia. There had been ten Masters in all, from Juan de Almenara, elected in 1202, to Francisco RipoUes who resigned in 1400 but lived until after 1414 The ruined castle still shelters two or three quaint memories: as that of the May Day in 1608 when the Rector of the parish church of Santiago in Tortosa was jogging along on his mule quietly to visit his uncle the parish priest of Vallfogona de Reus, and the pirates seized him and car- ried him off. There in Algiers he died the next year, the poor Reverend D. Miguel Bons. But in 1650 the Spanish galleys HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 163 demolished the castle by cannon-fire to keep the French from taking it. The Hospice lay (so far as this writer can make out) somewhat up-hill and inland from the present station of Hospi- talet. In 1310 Queen Blanche of Anjou, the second wife of D. Jaime II the Just, being on her way from Barcelona to Valencia to attend the siege of Almeria. was struck by the need of Christian service there. The rocky headlands are both steep and wild, even to this day, and before steam bored the rocks and built up the mountain-flanks, where today the trains fleet and shriek along the land's edge the ways were very lonely. Pilgrims and travellers had cause to bless her name. She died not long after in Barcelona, but she made a provision in her will for the work, and the King carried it on, and the Hospice was finished in lv343 by their son, the Infant D. Pedro of Aragon, count of Ribagorza, for whose sake, and because of his arms over the door into the keep, it was called Hospitalet del Infante. It played a good part in the revolution of The Hospice AND MONOGRAPHS 164 M ILITARY ORDERS The Order of Montesa Kuin of the Templars 1640, like so many other places small in size but noble in spirit, along that indom- itable east coast. 1 Montesa was a younger sister though a richer. It has been said already that when the Order of the Temple was destroyed, and the King of France and the Pope in Avignon laid hand on the wealth of it, the kings in the Peninsula took measures to save what they could. Out of these re- sources D. Dionis of Portugal created the Order of Christ or of Avis, in 1318. The Councils of Tarragona and Sala- manca had declared the Templars inno- cent, but in vain: in the great tenth chap- ter of his Fifteenth Book Mariana tells their fate in Castile. In Aragon the Templars defended themselves stubbornly, offering to submit to a Council of the Pope and the Cardinals, or to disband and go into other orders, but not submitting to be extinguished under the charge of HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN heresy: that also was in vain. Mioravel withstood besiegers for nine months: Monzon held out till 1309. Yangiias has a story of the Castle of Tudela: the seneshal, when he delivered it by inventory, in 1308, to Hutier de Fontaines, reported: "Two men to be arrested : as summoned, here is D. Frey Domingo de Exexa, Comendador of Ribaforada: as for D. Frey Gil de Burueta, deceased, who is buried by the porch where suits were heard, I doubt if your words can be heard there." Philip the Fair and Clement V were both notoriously greedy, says Villanueva, and withstood the combined effort of the Kings of Aragon, Castile and Portugal. The King's secret orders to his emissary were to get the property and try for a new order: he offered for that "his castle of Montesa, very noble, apt and strong, situate in the frontier of the Moors." In 1317 John XXII gave a Bull to institute a new Order of Knighthood in the Castle of Montesa, from knights of Calatrava. The Pope wrote to the Master of Calatrava and the Abbot of SS. Creus and under these the AND MONOGRAPHS 165 The dead will not hear Mariana and Villanueva tell the bitter truth 166 MILITARY ORDERS D. Garcia L6pez de Padilla foundation was made: the new order was to have the privileges, graces, prerogatives and immunities of Calatrava but the Mas- ter and knights were to be distinct, to reside in Valencia, and to wear their crosses with a difference. The Abbot of SS. Creus was to name the first Master from the Order of Calatrava. Supervisors of a sort, partly protective — for they were to see that the Knights of S. John did not molest — were the Bishop of Tortosa, the Abbot of Valdigna and the Casiscol of Gerona. The Master of Calatrava was not enthu- siastic perhaps, certainly not prompt: the King was impatient and the Pope wrote to the Bishop of Valencia that he must be made to come down and proceed. He did not, but he empowered the Comendador of Alcaiiiz. The ceremony was in the Royal Palace at Barcelona, on July 22, 1319, being present the Comendador Mayor D. Frey Gonzalo Gomez, the Abbots of SS. Creus, Benifaza and Valdigna, the Mili- tary Knights of the Order of S. John, S. George and the Merced, and many HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 167 secular knights. Mass was said in the slender Gothic chapel of S. Agueda, under the delicate painted roof, and the habit was given there to D. Guillen de Eril, D. Garceran de Billera, D. Erman de Eroles, all formerly knights of S. John. When the habit had been given they were further professed and finally license given to D. Guillen to admit others. He was an old knight, a mirror of virtues and military experience, norm of all those of his time and inferior to none in nobility. So the King presented eight knights to him for admission, among them two of his own brothers, and made over Montesa, castle and surroundings. He set out to take possession, fell ill, and died at Peiiiscola. There are signs here that the Hospital and Calatrava were played off against each other at the foundation. The old Master was probably chosen as unlikely to live too long. Ten Knights of Calatrava were ready to take charge till another could be elected, but the King, not much disposed towards this, and sending down two monks from SS. Creus, asked leave to appoint The beginning So a memory can smell sweet and blossom in dust Intrigue and policy AND MONOGRAPHS 168 MILITARY ORDERS Calatrava intended to rule the new Master: he was refused. Inci- dentally, the townsfolk of Montesa dis- liked the transfer. The Master of Cala- trava at this time was D. Garci Lopez de Padilla, who enforced the claims of his Order to visit and command in Alcantara, and certainly he intended to maintain as much, and reached out as long an arm, in the east as in the west. Ultimately the whole proceeding of Calatrava was repeated da capo: but the Abbot of SS. Creus got in his appointee, D. Frey Arnaldo de Soler, who took possession on March 21, 1319. The Order, however, claimed in the King- dom of Valencia to be subjected imme- diately to the Cistercian Chapter-General, without any other jurisdiction. On the other hand, no Rule was given in the foun- dation, on the ground that it was not a new Order. It lived under the Rule of S. Benedict, with the three statutes that Citeaux had given to Calatrava, and the Definitions that in 1283 and 1304 the Abbot of Morimundo had formulated: but in 1326 the "Master of Calatrava of Castile" visted Montesa and gave Definitions. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN By the Rule as adapted the knights could eat meat on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; they fasted on Mondays, Wed- nesdays and Fridays from Holy Cross Day to Easter, excepting Candlemas, Christ- mas and Epiphany, All Saints, and any Apostle's day. Julius II commuted this on condition of their giving a meal one day a year to twelve poor persons. Fast-days, they had bread and wine, which is what the Tuscan or the Spanish peasant still eats, and labours in the strength thereof They slept in one dormitory, not in sepa- rate cells. In the early years, their hair was cut and their faces shaven: they wore white cloaks abroad except in stormy weather, and then the covering might be of any honest colour. Unde r Philip II. ir i ^^^^ [thp the Mastership was incorporated in the Crown ot Aragon. ~ Great figures there were, however, in the Order, and among the foremost of them that Luis Despuig long resident in the Kingdom of Naples and high in the esteem of Alfonso the Magnanimous, who 169 The Rule for refectory and dorter AND MONOGRAPHS ending D. Luis Despuig 170 The Order of the Jar M ILITARY ORDERS So, that lieutenant general D. Jayne Juan Falco sent him somewhere on business with the Castellan of the Castle of S. Angelo on December 7, 1441. Again he wrote back a report from home that arrived from Valencia on the first of June, 1452; and in September of 1455 the King bestowed on him the collar of the Jarro, adorned with the device of Our Lady and "30 giaretti e 30 tronchi." Here — and it is the only time — the erudite Italian who thirty years or more ago published quaint extracts from the accounts of the Neapolitan Realm, transcribed correctly the good rough Catalan name. That same Order of the Jar herein referred to (the Jar itself being the Lily-pot of our Lady's Annunciation with its three branching lilies) was a pretty toy, and the goldsmiths in Naples made many a dainty piece with a pendant griffin and enamels and gems thick all about, but it is a decoration rather than a brotherhood, and a courtly rather than a military order. As here appears, a man might wear it and still be the Keeper of Montesa and call himself Frey Luis Despuig. The historians of the Order are not con- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 171 cerned, like Caro de Torres, or like Rades y Andrada when he writes alone, with hazanas, great men and great deeds, adven- tures and personalities, but for the most part with dignities and privileges. For instance : The Master of Montesa is spouse of his church, and when he dies she calls herself a widow: he cannot be excommunicated: he has no superior but the General of the Cistercian Order: he is inferior in order to the priests but superior in jurisdiction: and the Hke. This is partly due to the later date of many of the histories — there is a century's difference or more — partly to the later foundation of the Order. How should these supple levantine courtiers be mindful of the great traditions, or measure the great standards, as when Spain and all Europe were at stake? The difference is curious notwithstanding: it is a measure of the isolation, and the integrity, of Castile. 1 whom Philip II called "the most learned man in my realm." Dignities Levantine not Castilian AND MONOGRAPHS 172 The Order of Santiago The two at heart unlike Alfonso VII. 1126-1157 A very ancient brother- hood MILITARY ORDERS The history of the two great Orders of Calatrava and Santiago is inextricably intertwined, and like twin stars you measure their rising and their setting together. Beginning now with the Order and Knighthood of S. James of the Sword, which was organized under D. Pedro Fernandez of Fuentencalada in 1170. and sanctioned by a Bull of Alexander III in 1175, it appears in all books of history undistinguishable from the other except by name and badge and details of the Rule. Notwithstanding the difference is funda- mental and very profound. The traditions of the Order look back to an earlier date. A confraternity of S. James at Leon claim- ed the recognition of S. Isidore at the camp before Baeza in the time of Alfonso the Emperor, and for this Luke of Tuy vouches. "Instituted in the kingdom of Leon or Galicia about 1170," says Rades y Andrada, "but many years before there was a Brotherhood of Knights of S. James without form of Religion," At the very mention of this confraternity, historians become uneasy: it seems possible that HISPANIC NOTES / IN SPAIN 173 something real and not perhaps to be blushed for as homely or bourgeois lies in the dim backward of time, earlier in the twelfth century. The official account may be examined first. Where the Way of S. James runs through Leon, it crosses the river Esla. From time immemorial there has. been a bridge there, and before the bridge and beside it a ford, and for the up-keep and care of this a hermitage with a chapel. A hospice grew up: a building, that is, was erected where any pilgrim might sleep and the sick stay "till they were well or dead" — as in the Hospital del Rey in a similar situation at Burgos. Money was found, chiefly in the form of rents charged on real estate, to feed the lodgers and the attendants and give a bowl of broth and a piece of bread to any one who passed, hungry and on the tramp. I think a mediaeval institution of this sort might never refuse a dole, when asked, lest it should be found to have refused the Lord. If not an unmixed good (what institution is that?) it had great Under the passing stars, foam of the sky The Hospital of S. Marcos AND MONOGRAPHS 174 MILITARY ORDERS Practical advantages Mutual service a commodity in the market The gulf advantages: men travelling in search of work, or on other secular business, would not be frozen to death or exhausted by starvation, who could scarcely have car- ried the price of their hotel bills at a time when money was scarce and much of the exchange of the world was carried on in other commodities. The brothers knew how to protect their institution and con- serve their resources, getting retvirns in kind, or labour, or other service, or in that care for the humanity that needed it which the Middle Age recognized as a good like any other goods. And indeed there was probably less deliberate graft in any one century in Spain (for instance) from the ninth to the fifteenth inclusive, than in enterprises which governments paid for between 1914 and 1919. Between the last pilgrim's hospice and the first penny night-refuge yawns a gulf of centuries: a black gulf that pride cannot bridge; therein lie the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent and the Industrial Revolution. It rested with those in charge, as I have HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN said, that due return should be made by those who could afford it, and that what was given for use should not be spent on sloth or luxury: and the Master of the Hospice at Leon was a Canon of the Rule of S. Loy. So the old documents state. No one seems to know much about such an order: the name, however, comes from that Bishop of Noyon and minister of the good King Dagobert, S. Eligius, who was also a goldsmith and a blacksmith. Besides making an espousal ring for S. Godeberte, he once shod a demon horse, as Nanno de Banco depicted in a niche at Or San Michele: in short, the enchanted w^hite horse of S. James is somehow in the story or accountable for the association. The Prologue to the Rule of the Order says: That all the Kings of Spain were at war together, that Moors innumerable had passed the sea, and that thirteen knights set the cross on their breast in the likeness of a sword, with the badge of the invocation of the Blessed Apostle S. James, and or- dained that they would fight no Christians nor hurt their goods; and they renounced 175 The Order of S. Loy The official account AND MONOGRAPHS 176 A Scriptural standard \y Helpers and harbourers MILITARY ORDERS and gave up honours and worldly pomp, rich clothes, and long hair; and covenanted to abstain from what Scripture forbade and to keep only what Scripture allowed. Really, this is, already, quite unhke the foundation of Calatrava. The knights, we are told elsewhere, swore to live in obe- dience to a superior, to keep poverty of spirit and conjugal chastity. There is a curious but persistent tradition that the original thirteen were reformed highway- men, who bound themselves by oath to protect and guide travellers along the Way and submitted and allied themselves to the Canons of S. Loy with this intent. The knights must be poor and humble, without personal property, and the com- munity would give to them what they needed in sickness and health, and like- wise to their wives and children. The clerks were to take charge of the education of the children, besides other duties. This is the account of La Fuente, writing in the nine- teenth century with elder historians before him. He mentions casually, elsewhere, that by the original Rule any knight who /' HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 177 hiciese alarde de noblesa, who boasted of nobility, did public penance in the refec- tory. 1 This is a strange story: who are these strange brethren that live together like primitive Christians in community of goods and perfect brotherhood, sharing all, injuring none, aiding the helpless, meek and lowly of heart? From time to time some people have been like that, and have called themselves the friends of God: in Milan in the eleventh century, in France in the twelfth, in south Germany in the fifteenth. There were some in Umbria in the twelfth century, led by a certain Fran- cis: there were some in Galicia in the fourth, adherents of a Bishop Priscillian. They were never much liked by other people, and were extirpated now by sword and now by flame; nor did the authori- ties call them friends of God, but heretics generally, and in special cases (in the eleventh and twelfth centuries) by such Humility essential Friends of God AND MONOGRAPHS 178 Luke of Tuy yields evidence on cross-exam- ination )i begin- nings amidst religious mysticism MILITARY ORDERS names as Patarins, Catharists, and Albi- genses. It is not impossible that the Order of S. James, like some other pacifists, barely escaped extermination by going into the army. There seems, upon examination, a fair amount of evidence. Luke of Tuy when he lived at Leon was a fine hunter-out of Albigenses, and had his hands full: the whole twenty-third volume of Espana Sagrada, which deals with the early history of the diocese, is full of Albigenses: some are shepherds from the hills; some are clerks in orders, of the city; they work miracles of their own. Europe in these centuries was full of this sort of feeling : on a map of France in the twelfth century you could spot such springs bursting up all over the realm. How much of the Priscillian tem- per had lasted or what like manifestations follow^ed I cannot say, for I have not access to the long-out-of-print original Historia de I OS Heterodoxes en Espana, but I know that Rades y Andrada has a vague cer- tainty that the beginnings of the Order of Santiago were somewhere in Galicia. And HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 179 however palpable a forgery may be the charter of the Comendadoras del Santo Spirito in Salamanca, he insists that a document of 1120 shows the Order in Leon, and another record of about the same time preserves the memory of a dispute with the Canons of S. Isidore about precedence in processions. This last we feel credible. The habit in the early days was a red cloak, of cloth or silk, with the cross and a cockle-shell thereon: the banner of the Order bore a red cross like that of Calatrava with five cockleshells for a difference. The thirteen — los trezes — whose function was advisory to the Master, and who came to constitute a sort of Elder Statesmen — wore for the Chapters-General a black cassock and biretta like Canons Regular. Besides these there were two Priors, one at Ucles and one at Leon, that both used the mitre, the crozier, and other episcopal insignia by Papal permission: a Comenda- dor Mayor of Leon and another of Castile. From this it appears that the difficulty which beset the Master of Calatrava, who ruled houses in Castile and Aragon, was In Leon 1120 brotherhood marched in processions The constitution I- AND MONOGRAPHS 180 Called Order of Ucl6s at times ; and of y Cdceres MILITARY ORDERS nothing to that of the Master of Santiago, since here the lesser branch was also the elder, and abated no rights. Actually, the Order was called "of Ucles" often enough and the First Chronicle General, that tells in one chapter How the Masters of Cala- trava and of Alcantara and of Alcaniz conquered the Moors, relates on the next page Another good adventure of the Master of the Order of Ucles and his Brethren. Verbalists that we are, we would tie up the past as hard and fast as ourselves in formulae and phrases, but there was a kind of liberty of spirit while men thought still in images and emotions. When D. Pedro Fernandez de Fuenten- calada had not yet been to Rome about the Bull, he went down with his knights to Caceres in guerilla warfare, raided, burned and robbed, and got back safe to Coria; then helped the King and others to take Caceres, and received it as a gift for the new Order, and put a convent there. So they were called Freyles de Caceres, and helped the King at Badajoz, and many towns were given to be lost again. The HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN King of Castile gave them a castle on the Tagus near Fuentedeuna, and then shortly after, Ucl6s, six leagues nearer to the Moors. This was in 1174. The next year the Master crossed the sea with some freyles, and secured the Bull, having evidently stipulated the terms. "Like all the com- pany of the faithful, they are divided into married and single," it says: and this indeed must have been always a factor in the spiritual life of the Order, that a gentle- man could live normally, like those in the world about him, and yet keep his vows. The Chapter-General is held at All Saints' when the season of raids and expeditions is over, and indeed All Saints' is a fit day for Santiago as Lord of the Dead. Where a parish church exists, bishops are not to be defrauded of their rights, but in desert places and these newly recovered, if they build churches, the bishops are not to meddle, or to exact tithes. None of the Order may be excommunicated except by a Papal Legate. I AND MONOGRAPHS 181 The sanctity of married lift / 182 Ucl6s The gateway of the hills MILITARY ORDERS Like the other great seats and strong- holds of the Orders, Ucles is reared upon a grand site. The castle tops a low hill-crest, looking over the wide brown plain to the mountains that encompass the Castilian upland, straight towards where, unsleep- ing, like a chained lioness, Cuenca still couches in the gateway of the hills. Of the castle two brown towers and a curtain wall rise against the twilight sky from far, and battlements and ruins break the clear light, and two or three enclosed chambers yet stand that have been cloven or nibbled away here and there, and have harboured a few sheep in the wilderness. Just below, the huge cold mass of the sixteenth- century convent and church spread out four-square like a grimmer and lonelier Escorial: the road winds and turns, com- ing up from below, beneath its grey monotonous flanks; and before the huge portal, with flanking towers, pediment and buttresses, lies only a narrow parvis on top of enormous substructures. All day I had been travelling towards it, first in a train, then through a town in fiesta, lastly HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 183 for five leagues or more in the slow-moving carrier's cart over moors and between vineyards. From afar we had seen the landmark that defined itself more clearly as each successive eminence was topped, and the gentle folk my fellow-travellers had left their own discourse to question a little about my land. *'Ah, America!" said the old woman, *'silk, and panuelos de Manilla^': it was for them the place of dreams. The civil lad, who was a Singer Sewing Machine agent, asked me to state to the company whether he lied in affirming that his house in New York occupied a building fully twenty-two stories high : and I confirmed him, upon my word of honour: then the conversation turned to what seemed to them far more credible, an aerial railway — and the present writer endeav- oured earnestly to explain how it looked and functioned. As the castle loomed again in warm colour, now, above the white- washed houses huddling up from the river- bank, the death of the Prince D. Sancho was spoken of, and the immortal glory of the Knights of S. James. The Singer Talk on a journey AND MONOGRAPHS 184 Remem- bered glory of Spain Meditation in twilight The mystery MILITARY ORDERS Sewing Machine agent pointed from under the hood of the cart, to sum up : "Ruin and poverty and great memories — that is Spain!" said he. I did not leave the sad word undisputed. At eventide I was sitting on the short brown turf under the sun-warmed wall of the castle, and looking out over the plain in the darkening rose-coloured twilight, where the sky was streaked with pinkish brown and the endless earth lay before me, a brownish -pink like antique tarnished gold-work. It was like looking at some ancient Chinese painting, embrowned by the dusky centuries, fraught with the deep and untroubled wisdom of the timeless past. The warmed and windless air, the dusty rose of the ineffable distances, were elder even than the glorious past I had travelled so far and so painfully to evoke. They could appease. The Spanish land- scape, with its strange colourings, its mysterious and unaccustomed contours, its imperishable memories of a long-lived race, often hapless but never ignoble, has, I am disposed to believe, the same power as HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 185 the landscape of the age of Sung, to stir the spirit, and woo it and lead it away. Partly this may be due to the accumulated associations, by which a wayside stone, a mountain valley, and the half-mined tower of a parish church, can testify of ancestral virtues or poetic utterance not to be forgotten by men. Partly, however, as I think, it is due to the palpable and visible beauty of the land itself, that actual and respirable loveliness which is like the skin and hair of a beautiful woman, the sheer painting in the picture, the contours and shadows and patina in the statuary's art. The distances, the altitudes, the colourings, the drift of light and movement of cloud in Spanish landscape, are present to con- sciousness like the modulations of sound and enhancements of concrete imagery that it lays hold of in some great poetry, and this I think is a part of the power of Sung landscape also: the conception that constantly strives to penetrate beyond the presentation, and the immediate power of line and tone that will not let it escape. and the magic of Spanish landscape The sensuous and the significant in beauty AND MONOGRAPHS 186 Castles in the Holy Land MILITARY ORDERS turning it back upon the pure bodily apprehension and delight. I In 1176 the Master and knights were helping Alfonso IX against the King of Navarre who had seized Navarrete, Lo- grono and other places that made up the old Kingdom of Najera: the Moors raided Ucles and the King collected to help this Order, Templars and those of Calatrava, and they took Cuenca and on the way home recovered Ucles, Thence the Master went on to the Holy Land, perhaps to found a convent there: at any rate Bohe- mond of Antioch gave him certain castles. The Order of Calatrava still held the royal titles to Ucles, and now the Master was able to acquire these in exchange for the city of Alcobella. He died in that year and was buried in S. Marcos : I have quoted his epitaph in The Way of S. James. Two Masters were elected, but D. Frey Sancho Fernandez of Lemos, elected to Leon, HISPANIC NOTES The Hospital of San Marcos IN SPAIN 187 after two years resigned: he was a priest and the King gave him the monastery of S. Audito in the Buytrago hills, and Fer- nandez Diaz of Avila ruled the whole Order alone. Under him was founded the Hospital of Santiago de los Caballeros in Toledo; and other hospitals in Avila and Talavera; likewise a convent of nuns, S. Euphemia de Cozollos, which received also the wives of knights who elected to live celibate; this Ferdinand and Isabel re- moved to S. Fe in Toledo, where tourists may still remark the Cross of the Order. Two years later the hospital in Cuenca was founded and well dowered by Tel Perez de Meneses, and D. Pedro Gutierrez; likewise another in Alarcon; and the same Tel Perez, lord of Meneses, founded the hospital in Villamartin near Carrion. The Order still accepted its original obli- gation of the Works of Mercy and caring for those along the Road: it kept too its western affiliation and received the gift of certain heritages in Noya, on the blue tidal estuary of the Atlantic shore. When Castile and Leon went to war, there Men called it S. Tuy Hospitals AND MONOGRAPHS 188 At the Battle of Las Navas and after Alfonso IX, with all his mournful pride MILITARY ORDERS were two Masters again, and Ucles being left nearly empty, the Moors captured it. King Alfonso IX meanwhile cleared his kingdom of Castilians and seized castles. In 1213, however, at the time of the joint expedition which the Toledan Annalist records, when Templars, Calatrava and Santiago all were mustered, D. Nuno de Andrada rode with him as lieutenant of the Master, and all those who were natives of Galicia or Leon or held encomiendas there. They helped in taking Alcantara and Montanches, and recovered Caceres. It was already theirs, given in 1170, but the King would not recognize the original donation and they carried the case to Rome, and could not hold it. Through- out the thirteenth century, however, they owned Merida. Alfonso IX had a lofty spirit, though he lived under an evil star, and Luke of Tuy learned to love him well; when he went to war with Castile over the guardianship of his young son, who was to live to be Ferdinand the Saint, and the knights in Leon elected a Leonese Master, then he HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN saw the wrong therein and sent them back to their obedience. He bound them, how- ever, to support his daughters' claim to the Kingdom of Leon when he should be dead, and loyally they tried but could only secure a better compromise with Castile for the poor ladies, and found themselves bereft of castles of their own in consequence. I S. James now, in the thirteenth century, was the protector of travellers and the guardian of souls, as well as the warrior. All the functions that he fulfilled in his own land of Galicia may be perceived, though less clearly, wherever his Order appeared. The Master of Santiago had been stand- ard bearer at Las Navas. In 1224 discord broke out between the knights and the clerks in the Order, the latter claiming a tithe of all booty the former brought in: and when the Masters and knights out- rageously ejected the Prior and clerks AND MONOGRAPHS 189 S. James as wayfarer and psycho- pompos 190 The Pax of Ucles is the frontispiece here Apparitions in the Americas MILITARY ORDERS from Ucles, having taken all their goods, these in retaliation carried off with them all the plate from the sacristy. How much and how splendid will have been that gold and silver work, those chahces and paxes, patens and portable altars, it is hard to imagine, but one piece we may be sure was there, a Byzantine slab of dark ser- pentine carved in the tenth century with the Harrowing of Hell. S. James was the Conductor of Souls, and this piece had a special significance: it was superbly reset as a pax in 1565 by Cristobal Becerril, and bears the hall-mark of Cuenca. Now pre- served in Ciudad Real, it had come back to Ucles when a Papal commission of three Spanish bishops had adjusted the relations of lay and clerical there, the first clause of the arrangement providing that every one should forgive every one else and bear no grudges. Santiago was still their leader, and awake. At the battle of Jerez de la Frontera S. James and his white horse were seen by Moors and Christians. But indeed he was seen in the Americas, in battle, also. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 191 though honest Bernal Diaz stoutly main- tained the horse was grey and the rider much Hke any one else, and indeed a man whom he knew. At the battle of Salada in 1340, he was seen in Hke manner and recognized: says Rodrigo Yanez of Seville, who wrote the Poem of Alfonso XI: Yusuf of Granada Alone bewailed his shame: Into the Alhambra A broken man he came : "Why didst, heart of copper, Not break with me to-day?" He broke his sword. "Granada To day has lost her stay. S. James, S. James of Spain He killed my Moors for me, He broke my gallant banner, Broke up my company. I saw him all that day, With many armed men : The sea was like dry land And all cross-covered them." A century before, in 1248, for a battle at the foot of the Sierra Morena, the hardy Master had asked God to hold back the viz., one Francisco de Morla At the Battle of Salada: V. p. 199 AND MONOGRAPHS 192 IS. Maria ten tu dial 'And when at last defeated in His wars . . MILITARY ORDERS afternoon sun till the work could be finished, as He did for Joshua, captain of the hosts of Israel ; and this being S. Mary's Day— he had said, S. Mary, stop your day! — and she interceding, the sun had been stayed for a very noticeable time. The death of the Master D. Gonzalo Ruiz Giron in 1280, though it is written in the contemporary Chronicle of Alfonso X, is stuff torn off from a romance. It was Saturday, the eve of S. John; the hOvSt under the Infant D. Sancho had entered the Vega of Granada and was awaiting reinforcements there: and the Prince gave it strictly in charge to D. Gonzalo Ruiz Giron, and an abbot from Valladolid, and another, to guard those who went out for forage, and for food and for wood. The expedition pushed as far as the castle of Moclin, and already the provisioners were safe again in camp, and the others strag- gling back, when near the castle came in sight a hundred Moorish knights. Then the Master, because his heart was great, waited for none of the others nor yet for his own folk but started to attack them HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 193 with a bare handful, and the Moors fleeing drew him on to an ambush where lay two thousand of the Moorish cavalry. These being discovered, assaulted, and they gave Gonzalo Ruiz the wounds of which he died; they chased the Christians back to the tents of the encampment and killed that day, between knights and footmen, two thousand and eight hundred: and there died the greater part of the freyla of the Order of S. James; and many knights and many others were taken prison- ers there. The Prince, when he knew it, mounted and went over all the camp, and lay there until Monday: then he ordered the Master of Santiago to go back to Alcadete for attention; they started to move him in a litter, but the soldiery were so terrified by what had befallen that hall the camp started to move off with him. Which seeing, the Prince ordered him back again, with bitter words: "The camp shall not be broken up for you," he said, and again, ''You have spoilt my sally into Granada meadow." And with that, as I think, the Master's great heart broke, for, . . . They have gone down under the same white stars . . ." AND MONOGRAPHS 194 MILITARY ORDERS Centrifugal and anti- clerical forces Crabbed youth and age says the Chronicle , "therewith the Master died." This was he that had stayed the sun once, trundled hither and yon in a Htter, chidden by a headstrong Prince. 1 After the death of King Ferdinand the Master had confederated with other nobles and with the Infant D. Fadrique, and was one of the foremost to compel the King to govern differently and not break the old fueros and privileges of the nobility, or fatigue the labourers with excessive tribute. The struggle between the central power and the centrifugal forces inherent in the Spanish race was already declared. Though between seculars and clerics the trouble had been adjusted, there was a gulf between old and young, and dissensions. The trezes, the thirteen Elder Statesmen, wanted to elect one of their own for Master, they too often succeeded, and such were useless in the field. The King D. Sancho HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN insisted on D. Gonzalo Martel, in 1284, who was de los muy modernos, but he died in three months by a fall from his horse and the old men came back: in 1324, for instance, the knights in the field had to serve under the Master of Calatrava. The accident was unlucky for the Mas- ter, Martel, but it was of a piece with all the ill-luck that hangs over the King his friend. This King D. Sancho the Bold was perhaps such another unhappy warrior as his father's grandfather, Alfonso IX of Leon, ill-starred in life, ill-spoken of there- after, for no wrongdoing of his own but by perversity of fate. He married his second cousin Dofia Maria, the daughter of the Lord of Molina, S. Ferdinand's knightly younger brother, and the Pope, though the degree was so remote, withheld his dis- pensation at the instance of the King of France, saying that D. Sancho had ustirped the kingdom from his nephew D. Alonso who by his mother, the Princess Blanche was a nephew of the King of France. The correspondence of another Pope, Innocent VI, with another French Blanche, the AND MONOGRAPHS 195 Fit figiire for classic tragedy 196 The Roman policy Till the Constable of Bourbon sacked Rome for the Em- peror Schism in Portugal MILITARY ORDERS Queen of King Peter, has lately been pub- lished. The fixed poHcy of the Roman curia was to keep Spain torn by intestine wars, in order to manipulate the balance of power. Spanish Kings had enough to do, at home and abroad, and could not retaliate in self-protection like the great princes in Italy. Meanwhile, and in con- sequence perhaps, towards the close of the thirteenth century a Bull of Nicholas IV permitted the Portuguese Comendador and knights to elect their own Master in com- plete independence. The whole Order pro- tested with such justice and force that Celestine V revoked it, but never again would the Portuguese recognize the IM aster of Castile and Leon. I King Alfonso XI, being in Cuenca when in 1338 the Master D. Vasco Rodriguez died, learned promptly of it, and sent mes- sages to the trezes forbidding them to elect a new Master without his presence and HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 197 licence, and summoning them to Cuenca for the purpose. They rephed that they would elect a person proper for the service of God and the King, but that it was not lawful to hold an election in Cuenca or any other town not of their Order, and at Ucles incontinently they elected D. Vasco Lopez. The King was not pleased. He seems to have moved out of their country into his own, and sent for them to come to him at Guadalajara: and there he explained that he desired to have his six- year-old son D. Fadrique elected. D. Vasco Lopez, hearing of this, went to Montanches and took the treasure and many precious things withal, and withdrew to Portugal. This was stated at the chap- ter in Ocana called by King Alfonso's orders, and it is quite credible: other accusations, Hke that of coining false money, and entering a city over the wall, are commonplaces of false-witness and may be dismissed. The chapter obediently D. Vasco L6pez elected the baby son of Leonor de Guzman, and consented that her brother D. Alonso Mendez de Guzman should be f rocked for AND JMONOGRAPHS 198 The honour of Guzmdn MILITARY ORDERS the interim. It was, of course, a scandal, though it gave the King a good soldier where he needed one, the policy of Alfonso XI being to keep his great lords too busy with war to have time to make trouble for him. The Chronicle has a spirited story which must fall about this time: how the Master on a raid into the Kingdom of Granada, being three times outnumbered, held a council but would not withdraw. The Mas- ters his predecessors, he said, did not worry when they were fighting the Moorish Kings, and even granting his lineage was no better than other Masters' before him, yet he could not do less than those of the lineage of Guzman whence he came: "Therefore I ask you kindly to come on into the battle," and without waiting for an answer he displayed his banner. A big, tough spirit had he, like all the race of Guzman. That Dona Leonor's sons were all thrice-dyed traitors and rebels irreconcilable, was due chiefly to their position as disappointed pretendants to royalty, and their apt use as tools for HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN those whose HveHhood was sedition. Henry of Trastamara honestly and candidly wanted to murder his brother from birth to death; D. Tello, on the other hand, King Peter believed in and trusted to the very last though he seems to have been the one whose heart was foul and whose tongue was double by nature. D. Fadrique was loyal and friendly at times, but capable of becoming at any moment a menace: and once too often the King mistrusted him. All this brood of half-breed princes were already in the field when D. Alfonso set out for the battle of Salada : the vassals of the Infant and heir D. Pedro were there with his banner, but he was left in Seville, being then five years old. « The battle of Salada is recalled as one of the glories of Spain, and the treasure taken in the booty there was so great that the value of the gold fell one-sixth in the AND MONOGRAPHS 199 and the bastards' characters The Battle of Salada y^ 200 MILITARY ORDERS A golden fleece Though anti-semi- tism is commercial, invasion is personal markets of Europe. "There sheep were sheared with fleece of gold," says the poem. It caught the last wave of invasion just as it broke, and thereafter Spain never lay in real danger, and the wars of Granada were for a sort of gallant play, and then for conquest and profit. There is but little difference, in truth, between the expulsion of the last Moors by the Catholic Kings and the expulsion of the Jews and Moriscoes thereafter: both were explosions of anti-semitism commercially accounted for. But at the river Salada the danger was real, and the struggle had still the consecration of self-defence and the aureole of a crusade. The Poem of Alfonso XI is the chanson de geste of that battle: it leads up to it and away again but the battle is the life and reason of the poem. Very gallant, in its short ballad-beat, is the account of the mustering: Gentry in great guise, From Castile the royal, Princes of Galicia And knights of Portugal. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN Castilian noblemen And many knights beside, For keeping of their vow Like brethren they ride. P'or a moment the crusading spirit has returned again; but the piece is a Httle artificial, like the ideals, and refers to Charlemagne, Oliver and Roland, and recalls, to its own disadvantage, the heroic age. Notwithstanding, it can stir the blood like the shrilling of trumpets and kettle- drums, as for instance in the passage where the whole army intones the Salve Regina, or that where the King waits for dawn, lying on his bed not coveting wealth but longing for the day that shall show him the enemy, stretched out with passion at heart, like a couchant lion, and praying for the light, till the planets finish their course and twilight begins, and dawn comes, and the light brightens, and the King makes a prayer. More often, however, it stays at the ballad level : 201 A right epical passage AND MONOGRAPHS 202 declining to a ballad's measure or even the blind beg- gar's whine MILITARY ORDERS Then up and rode for the frontier The Kings with all their noble men, And ever in the front of all The Master of S. James rode then: The Master of S. James was lord Of castle and of town by right, He was a noble gentleman A trusty leader in a fight. The Chroniclers account of the Pope's reception at Avignon of the news of the victory, is more splendid than anything in the Poem: the great banner beating in the autumn wind, the captured horses and armour, the four and twenty Moorish standards, Benedict the Pope in proces- sion, and the long, bright line of cardinals, and the thunderous chanting, Vexilla Regis pr ode unt fidget Crucis mysterium. But the Orders counted for little there. The Master of Santiago was killed that day: the poet is quite indifferent but does his duty: And where the press was thick. As men do still relate, Alfonso Mendez Guzmdn Therein has met his fate; HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 203 The Master of S. James, A well-approved lord, The stay of every nobleman And generous in reward; Whom all men spoke of well, Whose luck was sure and high. Now may his soul be safe with God In the kingdom of the sky! The Master D. Fadrique was installed at ten years of age, in 1343, and the King sent over his standard and his vassals to the Order at once. He was under age and a bastard but the Papal dispensations were at hand. Then in 1350 King Alfonso XI died, before Algeciras. Along with him died many another noble gentleman, some from far countries. It was the first appear- ance of the Black Death: two years before it had raged in Italy and England, and had reached the Spanish seaports: now it got into the serried camp. Among the dead the Chronicle recites are the King of Navarre, the Master of Alcantara, Gaston At this time the Black Death AND MONOGRAPHS 204 MILITARY ORDERS As the mourners stand around such tombs as those at Dijon of the Dukes of Burgundy King Peter's accession Count of Foix and Beam, and Henry of Lancaster the Earl of Derby. The Genoese had weighed anchor and spread sail, though the King contrived to retain them, nor would he consent to go. When the King himself was dead and the funeral procession set out from the camp black - cloaked, black-hooded, by tens and by hundreds, the Moors within the city came out by the gates and stood in silence hon- ouring a great King and a goodly enemy. So at the age of fifteen King Peter was left with a kingdom broken to war, and wealthy; with two strong women who panted for each other's death; with a band of well-grown brothers who had counted on inheriting the crown and the princely places. He certainly tried at first to trust them: he used them well. His mother declared her own life insecure — which may quite have been true — and had her will of Leonor de Guzman, nor did any much regret. The Master visited the King at Cuellar, and Maria de Padilla and the King's own friends tried to come to a good under- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 205 standing with him, but Albuquerque, as all historians agree, made mischief, for his own ends, between King Peter, and the Count of Trastamara and the Master; and with Blanche of Bourbon as an excuse they rebelled. Next the King tried to put in some one whom he could trust, D. Juan Garcia, Maria de Padilla's brother: the Comenda- dor Mayor and he met in battle at Tarancon (which lies between Ucles and Cuenca) and he was killed. Meantime Toledo had risen for the French Queen Blanche, and the Master and Count Henry were sacking the Jewry there, as the French had tried to sack it two cen- turies and a half before, and again, as then, some knights withstood them. The rebels held the bridge of Alcantara but the King made a brilHant move, forded the Tagus, and retook the town by the bridge of S. Martin. The brothers escaped and the Master elected for loyalty; next year, for service in the war with Aragon, he got back the Maestrazgo. Shortly after, when he was in Seville, King Peter was informed Henry of Trastamara was strongly anti- semite Cf. The House of Greco, pub- lished by the Hispanic Society. AND MONOGRAPHS 206 The death of the Master MILITARY ORDERS of other matters: false the story may have been but it was characteristic, and credible; he believed it, and sent for him. In the annals of the Order it is said that King Peter told his cousin, the Infant of Aragon, of knowing other treachery of the Master's and that he must die: and a certain clerk learned somehow of this, and went out by the road on which the IM aster should arrive, to warn him. He dared not speak plainly but conveyed it to him by enigmas and comparisons, but the Master paid no heed. Then when, says the Chronicle, the Master D. Fadrique had talked with the King he visited Maria de Padilla and the King's children, and D. Alaria who knew all could not conceal her sadness. He went downstairs and found the gates closed, but an Asturian of the order, Suer Gutierrez de Navales, said to him twice, "Master, the little gate of the yard is open," and again, ''Get out of the Alcazar for you have plenty of mules," meaning thereby freyles of the order, ser- viceable. *'If he could not escape, at least he should not die till many had died HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 207 before him" — a goodly saying, that, for the Chronicle of Pero Lopez de Ayala is gallant reading. But he came back to the King and by this time he was bewildered, and when the executioners came upon him his sword caught in the baldric so he could not draw it and they chased him from side to side, and at last one struck him down. This was in the delicate Mudejar apart- ments of the Alcazar of Seville, where the shifting shadows in the foimtain basins still weave a bewilderment and the air is heavy with sorrowful memories. The truth we shall never know: but it is likely the Master was plotting again. The popular fancy, which loves these tragic histories, has seized for an admira- ble Romance on this young comely figure, unsuspicious and almost fey. He died at twenty-six and left two children: the popu- lar imagination cherishes also the notion that one of these children was borne by Blanche of Bourbon, for whose sake and his honour's King Peter hated him. That IS incredible, though the great house of Perafan de Ribera, the Admiral of Legendary enhance- ments AND MONOGRAPHS 208 The Romance MILITARY ORDERS Castile, was pleased to countenance it In matter of legend nothing need stand or fall with anything else; but a legend is none the worse because belief is not of obligation. The piteous Romance, then, of the Death of the Master, is somewhat as follows. By a rare and vivid invention, the wronged man himself speaks : I lay in Coimbra city that I had taken in war. When a letter was sent from my brother Peter in Seville jousting there. I the Master was luckless I the Master was fey : I took a dozen mule-men, a score of horses that day, All with gold chains jingling and doublets of brocade! It was a fortnight's journey but in a week it was made. Once at the ford of a river my mule fell heavily, ^ I lost my golden dagger, my page was drowned by me. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN He was a little page-boy the nighest to my heart, I brought him up in my chamber and prized and set him apart. With all these evil chances at last at Seville I was, And met a clerk at the city gate that never yet had said Mass, "God keep you. Master: welcome! A son was bom you last night : You are but one and twenty, and we will christen him right." Then up and answered the Master — mark well what he must say — "Bid me not that, good father! It boots not, I cannot stay. I ride to answer a summons, the King my brother's claim." I spurred my mule through the gateway and into Seville I came. No hangings I saw on the houses, in the ways no tilting knight; I tu[*ned artd sought the palace and my brother King Peter's sight. When I had passed the gateway the gates behind me swung; They took my sword away from me that at my side had hung; AND MONOGRAPHS 209 Warnings on the way 210 MILITARY ORDERS The King's reproach They took my men away from me that all the way had come. These warned me then of treason my loyal men and true, And bade me still turn back with them for they could see me through. Nothing I recked of their warning because my heart was free And I went to King Peter's chamber who greeted me evilly. ' ' Never you come to see us save only once a year, Yet when you come, proud Master, you are fetched by force or fear. And now your head is begged me in largess or in fee." "Why so, good King? for never have I done ill to thee! I left thee not in battle nor when with the Moors we fought." "Come, warders, and do my bidding! You know it, what you ought!' ' Hardly the words were spoken his head was hacked off straight And to Maria Padilla sent in a silver plate. As though he stood there living the lady faced that brow : HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 211 "At last I pay you, traitor for yester-year arid now ! The evil council you gave as the King your brother has found. She snatched it up by the curls and flung it out to a hound. The faithful hound was the Master's, he laid it softly by, And with his wretched howling the palace echoed high. Then asked the King in anger "Now who has hurt the hound?" And bitter was the answer of those that stood around: — "Lord, the Head he is guarding, the Master your brother's head." Then up and spake an aged aunt of the living and the dead: — "How ill you served him, King! how ill you have served," she saith, "All for a worthless woman to do a brother to death!" Although he answered nothing when he had thought awhile He went to Dona Maria and bespake her in this style : "Take her, knights, as she stands and put her in sure hold, The Lady's revenge AND MONOGRAPHS 212 MILITARY ORDERS Was she a witch? Character of Maria PadiUa For I will give her such penance as ever more shall be told." Deep in his darkest dungeons the King has closed her up, With his own hand he carries her every bite and sup, And trusts to no one excepting a page that he brought up. In the popular imagination Dona Maria de Padilla was not only a worthless woman, una mala mujer, she was also a witch, and such to this day she remains in obscure phrases of folk-lore. The King's precau- tion in this Romance bespeaks the same power. In the romantic and accomplished narrative of Pero Lopez de Ayala she is a guiltless and lovely lady, whose only wrong was to have loved, gentle and kind beyond the ordinary, wistful, very touching. As such she has passed into histor>': the one figure is as fabulous as the other. 1 HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN It is hard not to see these figures as miniatures in a Book of Hours or Chroni- cles: slender youths in vivid green and scarlet, sinuous girlish forms in blue and rose, all inhuman as the flowers in the grass, as the bright birds in cages of osier or gilded wire. They have their passions, doubtless, and the death of the Master in the history is as terribly real as the death of Lear; for a moment the beating of time's wings is stopped. You feel hearts throb and sicken, but you turn on, and over the leaf find a quaint case of conscience. D. Pedro Ruiz de Sandoval was called Pig-face, perhaps for some personal deform- ity, but he was a gentleman of a nice honour. During the war between King Peter and his usurping brother two Mas- ters were in the field, and after D. Peter's murder one resigned. Now Sandoval was in command of a castle, which he had sworn to his lawful King that he would not give up without his leave: and he refused to admit the new Master. He resigned the command of the castle to his squire, and put himself in the hands of the 213 Miniatures A case of conscience AND MONOGRAPHS 214 Peribafiez and the Commander of Ocana MILITARY ORDERS Master as a freyle of the Order: and all said he acted as a good knight. It seems that a man's honour may cost him more pains than a love-affair. I Of another Romance about a Commander of the order, only two fragments have survived: it related how the Comendador of Ocafia loved the wife of Peribafiez, and what was the outcome we cannot surely know. The wife of Peribafiez was fair all else above ; The Commander of Ocaiia would have her for his love. So it begins, and we know the chaste wife's answer to an unlawful suit: ''For I love Peribafiez with his cloak of hodden grey More than yourself, Commander, al- though you go so gay." HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 215 This is the right ballad vein, and the ballad ending should be happy as well as virtuous. Lope de Vega, making a play out of the scraps he had picked up some- where, calls it a tragi-comedy, and here the wife for all her honesty would have fared ill but for her husband's sudden return. Peribafiez, surprising the Com- mander by night in his house, kills him: and when the King offers a reward for the person of the murderer, presents, in person, his wife to collect the price, which will give her wherewith to support her widowhood when he shall have been executed. An ingenious ending this, too clever by half for the Romances: in consequence, we doubt the outcome of the original Romance. But it is likely that the dramatist knew no more than he puts in the mouth of a reaper laid to sleep with his mates under a balcony through the short midsummer night. Lope de Vega is at his happiest in dealing with legendary matter, better by far than any of the English dramatists because more poetic and, at the same time, more sincere. Lope de Vega Casuistry AND MONOGRAPHS 216 MILITARY ORDERS English and Spanish plays compared Comparing with this play Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, one feels how shallow in that is the historical concern and how little the personages of the differ- ent intrigues have rightly to do with each other: comparing the Robert Earl of Hunt- ington plays, and the quite unconcerned adaptation of ballad matter to a chronicle form that drags out through ten acts, one perceives that the author was held to no particular standards dramatic or racial. The parallels are not very precise, but they may serve: it is hard to find closer, for the different temper of playwrights in the peninsula and the island, the latter preferring to take their history in chunks and go abroad for their romance, so that the strictly English comedies are the Roar- ing Girl, and .1 Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and in Measure for Measure (to take a single instance from a possible score) the setting and the issues are consciously exotic and alien. With Lope de Vega, the mater- ial and the sense for romance are racial both, and the play in question is a compact fabric, close-woven and even-coloured. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 217 background and love-interest alike. Like the best Spanish wine, it keeps a tang of the skin. 1 The Infants of Aragon come upon the scene. I think those who know nothing else in the history or the poetry of Spain, still hear like a ringing in the ears, that old question: (iQue se hizo el rey D. Juan? iLos infantes de Aragon Que se hicieron? D. Enrique de Aragon was the thirty- fifth Master. His father, the Infant Ferdinand of Aragon (el de Antequera) was set upon it, having one son already Master of Alcantara, and being himself Lord of Lara, Duke of Pefiafiel, Count of Mayor- aga, Lord of Cuellar, S. Esteban de Gormaz. and Castrojeriz, and by his wife Duke of Albuquerque, Count of Ledesma, Lord of Haro, Briones, Bellorado, etc., etc. Who should gainsay? The Infants of Aragon D. Enrique de Aragon AND MONOGRAPHS 218 The Princess" tragedy The convent- palace at Tordesillas MILITARY ORDERS The Infant was not yet satisfied. His father died first and then Queen Catharine of Lancaster, the young King's two guard- ians, and he was not yet appointed for the office, nor yet was the Princess Catharine given him to wife. She, poor lady, per- haps was fair, certainly was virtuous; and she was strong-willed, but not fortunate. He raised three hundred men and under pretext of visiting his mother, Queen Leonor, he went to Tordesillas and cap- tured the King. Mendozas were with him in this adventure, and the Constable Ruy de Avalos. They dismissed all the King's friends except D. Alvaro de Luna, and car- ried ofT D. Juan to Segovia with his sister. The Princess had taken sanctuary in the convent of S. Clare, in the lovely Mudejar palace that King Peter built for Maria de Padilla, with its cusped and carven arches of molded plaster around sun-steeped patios . its marvellous hall where on such interlac- ing arches a dome hangs like a great fruit and the perishing colours of frescoes yet glow on the walls as from afar. Thence she refused to come. She may have HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 219 remembered how Queen Blanche of Bour- bon had taken sanctuary once in Toledo cathedral and the town had risen in her defence. But she was no queen nor were the nuns strong burghers of a great city. When the Prince's party threatened the convent, she had to leave. Meanwhile the Infant D. Juan was in Navarre marrying Queen Blanche of Evreux: Fernan Alonso de Robles wrote to him and he gathered men at Cuellar and came on to Segovia for a rescue, but the King D. Juan professed himself content. A conference was arranged at Avila in which Queen Leonor set herself to make peace among her sons and other kindred — not easy when they were of that kind. It was during this stay at Avila that, says the Chronicle, the Infant D. Enrique made the King send an ambassador to Rome, the archdean of Guadalajara, D. Gutierre Gomez, to explain to the Holy Father how D. Enrique had been in the right through- out and how wrong had been the Infant D. Juan. But this was not all : the secret of the mission was, in the King's name, to The Infant's greed AND MONOGRAPHS 220 'For Prosperity doth best discover vice . . . MILITARY ORDER vS ask the following: that all cities and places which were attached to the Master- ship of Santiago should become the per- sonal and entailed property of the Infant D. Enrique, to be inherited by his offvSpring, and that the domain should be called no longer Maestrazgo, but Dtichy. This being, as he seemed to think, as good as done, he went on to take his wife; the King was apparently compliant entirely. As surely as the King was going from Avila to Talavera, without the knowledge of Queen Leonor who lay in Medina del Campo, aw^aiting a solution of the negotia- tions, so surely he was going with D. En- rique in spite of D. Alvaro de Luna's oppo- sition. The Constable forbade it. He went notwithstanding and lay one night in a mountain castle belonging to the Arch- bishop of Toledo, called Alamin, and there the Infant and the Infanta Dona Catalina saw each other and held converse. What else happened onl}^ those there and D. Alvaro de Luna knew : bii t Rades y Andrada says that they were privately married there. In Talavera, thereafter, they were HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 221 publicly married, and the Princess's dowry was the Marquisate of Villena. For a while the King moved restlessly about Castile in the custody of the Master D. Enrique, but finally he escaped under cover of a boar hunt. It is a good story for a winter's night. He had now the assistance of D. Alvaro de Luna, D. Fadrique of Trasta- mara, and D. Rodrigo Alonso Pimentel the Count of Benavente. Of these D. Alvaro was sincerely attached, as it would seem, and the others had their own plans. Fortune's wheel swung swiftly round in the days of John II. The Master, when he had others to reckon with than a girl and a foolish King, anon found himself in prison, the Mastership being administered by a deputy. Finally his brother, D. Juan, now King of Navarre, begged his custody and the two waited in Tarazona and were joined by the Princess Catharine and a third brother, the King of Aragon. The Castilian King John refusing to pardon and restore him, the three brothers joined with the Masters of Calatrava and Alcantara to overthrow the power of D. Alvaro de . . .but Adversity doth best discover virtue" AND MONOGRAPHS 222 The Battle of Olmedo An Italian type MILITARY ORDERS Luna. In the turmoil the Master ex- changed Villena for Trujillo, which had long belonged to the Order : there are some forged letters involved here. He being again found in open rebellion, the King confiscated all his goods and gave them to other knights. When besieged in the castle of Segura he escaped, and vv-ent on an enterprise over-sea against the Genoese, where all three brothers were taken and sent to Milan, and there at last the Duke of Milan set them free. Finally, being a widower, he married Dona Beatriz Pimen- tel, D. Rodrigo's daughter. A battle in open field at Olmedo followed hard on this, in 1445, where D. Enrique was so wounded that shortly afterwards he died in Cala- tayud, having been Master for thirty-six years. He is a picturesque ruffian, more like a Sforza or a Riario than most Spanish personages. Of royal blood, without an establishment, what could he do except live upon those of his relatives who had crowns and thrones? And as supple depen- dence was impossible to his character, the HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 223 only possible career was that of the pro- fessional bully. In his relation with D. Juan, which was sheer brutal coercion, with Dona Catalina, which was abduction and worse, with his own family, which was a superior sort of blackmail varied by complicity, he played out in palaces the role of the niffiano that the comedies and novels have developed. 1 • To him succeeded D. Alvaro de Luna the Constable of Castile. His predecessor in the Constabulary of Castile had been D. Ruy Lopez Davalos, who died in exile and poverty, though before, as men said, he could travel from Seville to Santiago de Galicia and lie every night in his own house. The Master being once in Valencia desired to visit him, but the old man sent back a message : '' Tell your lord D. Alvaro that what he is, we were, and what we are, he shall be." D. Ruy L6pez Davalos. Constable of Castile AND MONOGRAPHS 224 The legende of D. Alvaro Character of D. Alvaro de Luna MILITARY ORDERS It is good traditional matter, it may well be true. D. Alvaro is a great traditional figure and his legende is rich. He is reported to have said upon the scaffold: ''This is how the world serves its servants : I must have served the world since I am served thus." The English reader will remember Wolsey at the abbey gate. The Constable was Master for only seven years. The story of his life is too long and too magnificent to be summarised in these. The story of his fall should have been writ- ten by Roper or Cavendish, that English readers might have no less advantage than the Spanish. These may enjoy the admir- able portrait drawn by Dr. Salazar in his Apologia, and the Chronicle of the Con- stable, written by a loyal servitor as noble and lofty-spirited as that of the Chevalier Bayard, and like him, unknown except for his loyalty. D. Alvaro de Luna was a man of great parts, who rose without any considerable backing, or property, or high connections, to be the greatest man in the kingdom and the King's master. Nor throughout HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 225 his life, from the age of eighteen, when he was put about the King's person as a page, to the hour of his death by that same King's consent and procurance, was his loy- alty ever altered ; not so much as in the accu- sations of his enemies. What shall we say (his chronicler asks) of one who thus satisfied all that the world may ask of the good, and met every test — that of blood by his nobility, that of time by his discretion, that of adversity by his coiu-age, that of power by his knightliness, that of his King by pure loyalty? He was a very fine gentleman, the perfect figure of the courtier, as fit by agreeable- ness of his nature as by the love of all con- ditions: of middle height, straight, white and shapely and at every age slender; his neck rather long and straight, his eyes quick and always bright, his glance steady, dwelling on what he regarded. He carried his countenance high and glad, the mouth being large, the nose well shapen and not pinched, and the forehead broad: he was very early bald. He hesitated a little in beginning to speak: was gamesome and This is Salazar AND M ONOGRAPHS 226 "The setting sun and music at the close" MILITARY ORDERS given to laughter at apt times; very keen of wit. He was so compact, of fiesh and figure, that he seemed all bone and nerve. He loved and honoured women and was a good lover, discreet above most, so that none ever knew such things as should not be known: an excellent musician. He made many and excellent songs in which with great subtlety he declared his inven- tions, and at times opened many mysteries, and valiant actions. His dress was fit and whatever he wore became him, whether for the field, for feats or for hunting. In horsemanship he was surpassing, and de- lighted in having them curiously chosen and serviceable. In war he was hardy, and set himself in all extraordinary danger, and suffered well arms and the incon\'en- ience of a soldier's life. Always he spoke with particular reverence and dutifulness of the King, his lord. Hunting he relished when his occupations allowed, and was more skilled in that art than any other man of his time. He frequented much discreet and pregnant persons and sought them out for his household and relied upon HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN them. With the facetious talkers he was merry and very pleasant, but never made them partakers of his actions. He was the son of a gentleman of noble birth and quality, of an ancient house in Aragon, who had held office about the person of the late King of Castile. The Pope Benedict XIII was Peter of Luna and his great-uncle; another Peter his uncle was Archbishop of Toledo; another his cousin-german. Archbishop of Sara- gossa. His brother, D. Juan de Cerezuelos, he procured to be promoted from the see of Seville to that of Toledo, and his nephew he preferred to be Archbishop of Santiago. His mother dwelt in the village of Cafiete, near Cuenca, but by her name Maria de Urazandi she would be of Vas- congada: she married, later, the Alcayde of Canete; D. Juan de Cerezuelos was the son of this Warden. His father dying when he was still very young, his uncle D. Juan Martinez de Luna bred him up in his house, and because he was of a good wit, and very quick and ready, he was well liked by all, as much of the household as AND MONOGRAPHS 227 Life of D. Alvaro 228 The state of Spain MILITARY ORDERS abroad, and they looked that he should have great lordship and power and a bright name. His uncle, D. Peter of Luna, being appointed to be Archbishop of Toledo, he kept him with him there until, seeing that if he lived he would be a good knight, generous and of a great heart, he placed him at the court of King John. This was in the year 1408, when he was, as I think, about eighteen years of age. And the King received him for a page, and as he was a young boy, seeing the pleasantness and good breeding and the sprightliness, ease and grace of D. Alvaro de Luna, he was pleased with his service beyond any other's, and would have him to sleep at his bed's foot ; and took pleasure in him to want him always by him. And this ascendancy of the young man's was never altered or diminished. The state of Spain was such as I have said already, that all the nobility was divided into bands and confederations, that made war perpetual upon each other and upon the King, but for the most part counted the King's person as a pledge or HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 229 pawn of power, and the Seal of Castile as the lawful prize of victory in the field. The character of King John was such that whomsoever he saw in presence that urged something upon him, that one he obeyed: of this the Pledge of Tordesillas is the case universally known, but the matter was daily; and no man lived secure, howsoever great, but when in the King's company. Three times was the Constable cut off from the King's presence and sent abroad into his estates and three times he came back stronger than when he withdrew. The only charge historians had against him, even those most opposite in the fac- tions of the reign, was that of greediness in heaping up honours and places, and the amassing of great riches, and a vast follow- ing, and without distinction of great and small, so that the same day that the king gave him (''or more truly," said Fernan Perez de Guzman, "he took") a great city or dignity, if a King's lancer fell vacant, that too he would have: notwithstanding that none was ever so hardy as to say that he kept them for himself. As he pardoned El Seguro de Tordesil- las 1448 Con armas sangre y guerra, con las vidas y famas . . . AND MONOGRAPHS 230 Those that ate his bread MILITARY ORDERS many wrongs against himself, so he reward- ed services done to the King. With no inheritance of land or feudatories, his incessant need of the royal countenance appears in the roll of those who lived by his, those that were of his household, as the Romances tell — " Cuatrocientos sois los mios, los que comeis mi pan" — but where Fernan Gonzalez counted four hundred moss-troopers of those that ate his bread, in the Constable's following they were great lords of Spain: to read the roll of them — counts, prelates, and noble men, and many lords of fortified cities — is to evoke all Spanish history for three-quarters of a century; and his houses wherein they lodged and lived at his expense without reckoning castles and towns, or yet the commanderies of the Order, were situate in all the capitals and most principal cities of the Castiles and Andalusia and the south, from Estremadura to the Rioja and throughout the north. Quintals of fine HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 231 gold he distributed every year to knights and servants of his person: so great was his liberality, that he desired all should have a part of his goods and thought himself bom not for himself alone but for all the world. Yet none taxed him with prodi- gality though all men praised his magnif- icence. The archbishops he had made, for their own honour, though his familiars, vvere not of his family; but he gave lodging, allowance and benefactions to eight bishops at the least, and the Master of Alcantara D. Gutierre de Sotomayor. The great love of the King for this strong lover of his would seem to have been, by a law of nature, the romantic affection of the gentle for the strong; his duty to the King he took to involve the care of him in all kinds, even in his use of God's creatures, his table and his wife. By necessity the Master stood alone, except for his household and following, for whosoever would have tyrannized the King found him in the way. Therefore as the Queen Mother had sent him away at the commencement, so the new Queen This is the Loyal Servitor V.p. 173 A Queen's ingratitude AND MONOGRAPHS 232 The fall of the Master MILITARY ORDERS brought about his ruin at the close. And because fortune is a jade, it was in the matter of the King's second marriage that the tragic error entered into the play and D. Alvaro fetched her into Castile that should put him out thence. The King was desirous to marry the King of France's daughter, Madame Renee, being taken by report of her beauty and affability; being married to the Princess of Portugal, Dona Isabel, he was wont to say that though he was mar- ried the deed was the Constable's, and from that hour was remarked a notable falling off in his love, notwithstanding that he came to dote on his new Queen, and she that owed all to the Constable contrived his fall. The fall of princes is no new thing in the world, nor did Lydgate and Boccace rehearse the most tragical histories. In the thirty-two years that the Master ruled the kingdom, he had served his King and spared his enemies and now the ascendant was overpassed. A strange series of acci- dents fell upon him, street brawls threat- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 233 ened his safety; there was talk of retiring to his estates, till the bad weather should blow over, but his pride could not brook to turn his back. His trusted chamberlain Vivero, whom he had elevated from the dust of the highways, had grown to so great a menace that when justice was done on him in the end, though all men knew the doer, none could name him. In Lent the Master had recommended Vivero to see to his confession: on Easter Tuesday in Burgos, the gate of the Master's lodging was beaten in by those who called therii- selves the King's men. By accident, his son D. Pedro had been wounded in a tourney and was not yet healed; by treachery his son D. Juan was withdrawn with his men from the city. Zuniga, an ancient enemy, had come up from Plasencia to do the business, bringing his son's tutor, Mosen Diego de Valera, to see that the history thereof was rightly written. The principal companion of the Master was D. Gonzalo Chacon, one of those loyal and noble figures that history can often show in minor places, whose name men The assault at Burgos AND MONOGRAPHS 234 ' Swords may not fight with fate . . . MILITARY ORDERvS would not willingly let die. By his influ- ence he had wrought upon the Master, while the outer gate was still beset, to get away disguised into safety, but he turned and came back, saying he had rather die with his servants than be saved crawling through dark hidden drains like a rogue and a worthless man. The King sent a safe- conduct and a solemn promise to see him: and broke both. Chacon warned him that for the conquered the only remedy was to expect no remedy. He answered that he could not die in strife against the royal standard: he laid up papers in a coffer to be committed to the King's hands, he opened and distributed three chests of money; he ate a last supper with Chacon and those of the faithful, he gave them sound counsel and loving words as of one on the way to death. He sent for his seals and a hammer and broke them up, to fore- stall any shameful act. He did on a harness of great price, a gift of the King of France, and when he was in the saddle of a great charger he bid open the gates. They took him away and he never saw HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN the King. They put Chacon and the others in the common prison. It was told in after years that they kept him in a cage at Portello. Im.prisoned he was. while the mockery of a court was held: he was not present or represented and the judgement of that court could never be found again. By June he knew that he was to die on the scaffold, in Valladolid; and having made his peace with God, like the martyrs of the early ages he went to his death as to a banquet. No ignominy was spared: not the sack for the head, nor the tying of his hands before execution, nor the body left for three days upon the scaffold, nor a plate set to gather alms for his burial. A huge crowd filled the square; and though the}^ came as folk who are drawn to see a spectacle, when the moment approached a profound and ominous silence fell upon them and when the executioner held up the severed head they gave a great and terrible cry — "so dolorous, so sad and so grievous a wailing," says the chronicler, who was there, "as though each man or woman had lost his own father or some one 235 Earth still holds ope her gate... AND MONOGRAPHS "And one to me are shame and fame" 236 MILITARY ORDERS "But we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things" Portrait very dear." The Bachellor Cibdareal states that in these hours the King was very restless and wretched, and twice he called a servant and gave him a paper to carry, and twice he checked him again and said, ''Let be, let be!" So he flung him- self at last upon his bed and lay there awhile and no one told him it was ended till after dinner. This was the death of the best knight there was in his time in all the Spains and the best lord uncrowned, the good Master of Santiago. 1 His personal charm, and what we call distinction, was the rarest of his gifts, as perhaps it was the most potent: one recalls the pains at which are the speakers in the Book of the Courtier to define that last flower and fragrance of the perfect gentle- man by a word usually translated grace, "a certain virtue or perfection above other men." HISPANIC NOTES Old Portrait of Don Alvaro de Luna from his chapel in Toledo IN SPAIN 237 The Constable had this, whether you consider his authority when he sat, his graceful carriage when he stood, or his measure when he walked. If I tell you the Master was very humane and merry, how shall you know his pleasant and facetious humour? Or his gravity at the trial of great deeds? Or his repose or mildness when he was set? It was as though the remnant of the excellency of many long dead in him was preserved as an ensample; and who could be rude or common for whom his great house had been the school of magnanimity? As a poet we can hardly measure him, for the same fortune that scattered his goods, robbed him of the offspring of his wit. In Cancioneros and manuscripts his poems lie still ungarnered: and I have only a few to show as pieces in the courtly mode and the fashion of the age. They surpass others of their kind whether by Juan de Mena or by the Marquis of Santillana, in two things: in an apparent passion that even yet warms and lightens, and in a pulse or colour that seems not so much By the Loyal Servitor Poet The essence of poetry AND MONOGRAPHS 238 MILITARY ORDERS personal emotion as the sheer luminous throb that is pure beauty. Because the English reader is little used Walsh's is closer and better to the intricate concision of the Castilian concept, a version consciously unworthy is set here. Since all love's sighing His grief and crying Has known no stay; Since ceaseless praising And ever raising The stake I play Opens no way For what I pray "To save And long for ever, thee from For I know and say the blame I have less to-day Than when first a lover! — Since her pride unshaken My joy has taken I — turned to dearth — Would sooner, forsaken Sleep, and not waken. Under the earth ; HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 239 Since all my worth For which I had birth Is to feed love's fang, My joy henceforth And my only mirth, Shall be in the pang! The next piece, if little read, yet is often cited by hearsay as carrying extravagance rather near to a fantastical blasphemy. Yet it is because the Spaniard has always felt himself on such good terms with God, that he could take such liberties. If God our Saviour sweet Were looking for a love. He would be my rival meet; So, Lord, I long — by token That if Thou camest from high, For love of her to try Tourneys and lances broken. Though Thou wert the defender I should essay the emprize. And though Thou wert my rival Thou shouldst not bear the prize. Of aU my grief and graemel" The Celestial rival AND MONOGRAPHS 240 In heavenly likeness made MILITARY ORDERS These two pieces have kept the rhyming of the original and something not too unhke in effect to the measure. But because the feeling of this verse is, before all else, of the Renaissance, the remaining two are set to Elizabethan airs: and if perforce transposed into another key, yet that suits better an English voice. Lord, since Thou madest me love beyond all measure, Thou sure wilt pardon me If I forgetful be Of bounds which Thou hast set to mortal pleasure: Thou saidst mankind should love Thee all things else above Yet gavest to man the sight of such a treasure : A lady gracious in all goodness, stately, More lovely and liberal far Than any women are Else whom Thou madest : and whom I love so greatly, With love incomparable. More than a mind can tell; Thou madest her in Thy likeness ail- completely! HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 241 Me by Thine image, Lord, Thou hast beguiled Even in her sweet dress ToloveThyhoHness: Whoso conceived that figure undefiled And did it to me show, Is cause that I should so Forget Thee a while: so be Thou reconciled. The other is set to a lovely air of Cam- pion's: Always I was, person and life, professed Servant of one, nameless and unconfessed. God's was the deed when I was born to love, For His was the intent to send my ser- vice and approve. Lady, be kind to what you have long possessed And bring me soon to that glad hour that may not be confessed. When the Constable was wounded once in a tourney, the poems that were writ thereon would have filled a folio, but only one is known to survive. Juan de Mena's Lover's urgency AND MONOGRAPHS 242 MILITARY ORDERS Very doleful ballads Magic is here tribute in the Labyrinth was written before his fall, and was used as a poetical stake on which to hang an elaborate imitation of Lucan. The Marquis of Santillana la- mented him frigidly and composed a long discourse on Mutability and the Fragility of Favourites and the Fall of the Proud, which is not so much unlike as one could wish to the five-and-thirty ballads on the death of the Master collected by Duran in the Romancero General. In the popular imagination he had a place, and a lament, and lived on; he was such another as My Cid, and like him gathered marvels about him. The long episode in Juan de Mena's Trescientos is concerned with a witch and an evocation of the dead. The ridiculous document that was drawn up twenty years after his death to formulate his accusation, is concerned with such charges as that he kept a familiar spirit in a bottle for con- sultation; that he had enchanted the King with a ring he gav^e him; it was said that he bewitched the Queen with potions. His tomb in Toledo, erected in his lifetime with a marvellous effigy of bronze that rose HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN to kneel at Mass and lay down again, working by such a hidden mechanism as Villard de Honnecourt drew out in diagram for an angel to turn and bow — this effigy, though it was destroyed once in his life- time by his enemy, D. Enrique of Aragon. then Master of Santiago and in arms against the King, was demolished ulti- mately by that King's daughter, Isabel the Catholic, as savouring too much of magic. The Master was buried in the vault below his chapel and his wife Dofia Juana Pimentel there with him "A sacristan once penetrated there," said Parro in mid-nineteenth century, "and when he was a very old man I talked with him, and he said the dead sat there in two ancient chairs before a table, and the Master's head lay on the table." This sounds like what the peasant saw who entered the cave where Barbarossa still waits though his beard has grown quite through the stone slab: it sounds like what is told of Charlemagne and Frederick II. It is possible that in the AND MONOGRAPHS 243 and folklore 244 D. Beltran de la Cueva M ILITARY ORDERS popular imagination, dimly and half for- gotten, the Master also waits to come forth when Spain shall know her need. I After King John 1 1 , th e Infant D . Alfonso , and King Henry IV, had all been adminis- trators of the Tvlastership in commission, D. Beltran de la Cueva, by the King's wish, became Master. He married Dofia Mencia de Mendoza, the younger daughter of D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana and Count of the Real de Manzanares, afterwards Duque del Infan- tado; and the grandees of Spain were angry. It is curious that no portrait of D. Beltran can be found in an age and country much given to the analysis of character and the investigation of motives. The delightful book of Generations and Semblances ends too early to include him, and he is not reckoned among the Claros Varones. One thing we know of him surely, that his love never failed his lord: HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 245 whether or not he was the Queen's lover, he was the King's faithful friend. When D. Enrique was dead he served the Catholic Kings both in the Navarrese war and before Granada: his name figures as Duke of Albuquerque, among those of other grandees at the surrender of the city. His tomb , which was perhaps erected by a grand- daughter that foimded the Convent of S. Anne in Cuellar in 1572, stood in the Church of S. Francisco there, until that was destroyed. Since he had died, full of years, more than two generations before, the effigy can represent no more than a tradition : traditional he moves for a brief while across our stage, holding the Master- ship only from 1462 till at the King's bid- ding he renounced it: "as a loyal servitor and without treason or aught for which it should be taken away." This was in 1467, but possibly he was supplanted earlier, for Enriquez del Castillo reckons that he held the Mastership only three years. There is, however, a modem study by D. Antonio Rodriguez Villa from which this outline may be transferred : The King's good lover AND MONOGRAPHS 246 xMILITARY ORDERS Rodriguez Villa's summing up Even with such flecks and defects as are proper to all mankind and character- istic of his epoch, D. Beltran de la Cueva remains still the most gracious and admir- able figure of his age; the accomplished and charming page, the gallant and hardy knight, the loyal and dutiful counsellor, the splendid and free-handed grandee, and above all the consistently faithful vassal, ready to sacrifice his life and his interests for the King. The tourney at which his device was a golden letter that corresponded to the Queen's initial, was no more than a pretty compliment to his King's young wife. The "incurable lightness" of Queen Joan was never asserted until her royal daughter and her still-born son had long since been recognized as legitimate without a ques- tion. In later years, what with the King's other fancies and the nobles' studied insults, she had excuse if not justification for taking amusement where she could find it, and for accepting an impassioned loy- alty from her own kinsman that gave her shelter, and children, and a brief happi- HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN ness. If D. Beltran had offered her more than conventional homage, he never meant to pass beyond the courtly code of loving par amours, and was indeed not a little embarrassed when someone suggested the poor lady's seeking a refuge with him. His passion and devotion were all for D. Enrique, and in a conscious revival of the antique manner he offered them where they met a like loyalty and affection. ''The King could not be without his company, he was the ornament and splendour of the court, and many grandees sought his alliance and intermediation." I D. Juan Pacheco, the Marques de Villena, was the brother of the Master of Calatrava. At D. Beltran 's election he had cried Oiit Haro! alleging the Master- ship to belong to the Prince Alfonso, the late King's son, by right; now when D. Beltran was out he got himself elected without leave of King or Pope and held AND MONOGRAPHS 247 D. Juan Pacheco 248 MILITARY ORDERS Portrait by Hernando del Pulgar the office till death — dying almost as strangely as his brother, D. Pedro Tellez Giron. Hernando Pulgar admired him hugely: his portrait, in the Claros Vurones, is one of the most splendid, as rich and vigorous as his sumptuous tomb at El Parral. Pulgar says: He was of middle height, his frame slender and well shapen, his features beauteous, and a lively grace present in his carriage. His speech was seemly and abounding in reason, without superfluity of words: his voice shook a little by an infirmity and not by defect of Nature. fn youth's estate he had the wit and authority of age. He showed a great ability to govern in all temporalities: of tlie four things necessary thereto— which are a piercing jiidgement, prudence, and diligence, and long-suffering — he had more than any other man in his time. He considered well the quality of a business, time, place and person and the other circumstances which prudence must regard in the regiment of things. His judgement pierced so into persons that with little discourse he knew their HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN conditions and their needs, and giving to each the hope of his desires, attained often to what himself had hoped. He suffered long, that no ill word could move him, nor ill news could change him; and in the greatest distinctions of things he had the better will to consider and remedy them. He was such a man as with ripe deliberation used to determine what was to be done; nor ever forced the time, but forced himself to wait the time to do. By natural condition he seemed a tower of truth, and by choice his conversation was with true and con- stant men; although such as would acquire great goods and honours, and especially such as understand the govern- ment of great things, behove at times to feign and disguise, to simulate and dissimulate, either in the alterations of season or the variableness of business; and either to escape greater hanns or to touch greater gains, such men have to make alterations in affairs as time shall admit. [By which Hernando del Pulgar intends treachery and changing sides as well as disloyalty and armed rebellion.] He had sundry friends of them that good 249 Longani- mity AND MONOGRAPHS Macchi- avellian dissimula- tion 250 'Tis wis- dom and that high MILITARY ORDERS fortune brings alone; many enemies likewise, that covetousness of another's weal is wont to breed, who planned his death and destruction and indignation on the King D. John's part, and the Prince's his son whom he served; not- withstanding that divers times this came to the point of execution, yet by chances unguessed and most admired he escaped out of the snares of death that many times were laid for him. He was a brave man, and when need was he showed him- self an hardy: wise and temperate in eating and drinking, he seemed immod- erately given up to women, by the many sons and daughters he had besides the legitimate. After praising his judicious liberality and the immense property that he acquired, Pulgar passes to his humanity, so that he condemned none to death on his own account and but few in justice, and his indifference to vengeance, being wont to say that the man who broods torments himself rather than harms another. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 251 However great a quarrel he might enter into, he seldom broke into speech and less into action, but arranged rather a reconciliation of differences, feeling a sure peace better than uncertain victory. He liked not to trust, to the fortune of an hour, all acquired in life past: so by long-suffering and abiding the time, he augmented his honour and increased his goods. D. Enrique as prince had loved him well: he took up the side of D. Alfonso, the King's young brother, and was of the party that crowned him in Avila; then at the last came back to allegiance and held the King at his command. The phrase of Enriquez del Castillo is: "After the Master D. Juan Pacheco and the other tyrants of his party had seized the city of Segovia." The faith- ful chaplain, by the way, qualifies the Mas- ter as a quite marvellous liar, and cites his "vain words and but few true ones." About this time his son-in-law. the Count of Benavente, to whom King Henry had promised the Mastership, lay for him. So it was — this is in Segovia still — for men to use their fortune rev- erently" Enriquez del Castillo sees him otherwise AND MONOGRAPHS 252 MILITARY ORDERS Assassina- tion frus- trated that the Master D. Juan Pacheco being in the Palace of the Prince talking with the Infanta Dona Isabel, the Count with certain of his knights well armed came to the place to execute his intent when his father-in-law should come out. And if he had not been advised thereof, doubt- less he would have slain him there, but he came so quickly from the room that those watching could not lay hands on him_, nor had time to, so he escaped and came out whole from amongst them, but thereafter he went always cautiously, with plenty of folk to guard his person and always armed with secret arms and on horseback. And although thereafter the Count of Benavente, dissimulating, spake with him, always he had that rancour gnawing in his entrails, seeking and waiting a time to take vengeance. But the Master was wary and the Count went home. Either his life was more hazardous than most men's or his biographies were more picturesque. Enriquez del Castillo indeed knows how to tell a good tale; take for instance this: HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 253 The King went on his way to the town of Osuna; arriving there he determined to go to Jaen and sent on thither his chamberlains. And as the Constable, D. Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, held that city for the King, and had ever been loyal and faithful in his service, when he saw the chamberlains and read the letter that the King sent, he answered that this his loyal city of Jaen had always been and should be at his service, and that of his Highness 's coming they were not only glad and well content, but wishful to see his Royal Excellency, so he and all the place conjointly begged him to come straightway to his city with his loyal servitors; but that they prayed him of his grace and asked with all humility that he should not bring with him the traitors who had so foully dishonoured him and persecuted, for in no wise would they be received there; and this he said of the Master D. Juan Pacheco and divers others of those who came with his Highness. Then the Master, when he heard the Constable's answer, said he would wait in Osuna and the King went on to Jaen. When he got there, the A tale of the Consta- ble at Osuna AND MONOGRAPHS 254 MILITARY ORDERS who would not harbour traitors Constable came out to meet him with many horsemen. And at entering into the city he placed himself within the gate and as the King entered he said to the Bishop of Sigiienza: "Come in, loyal prelate deserving of much honour; for you and your line have served the King my lord always and followed him, like noble men of blood untainted." And behind, he let the counsellors pass in and the servants of the King, and as Roderick of Ulloa addressed himself to pass, he set the front of his lance against his breast, saying: **Stay out, Roderick of Ulloa, for the city of Jaen is not used to welcoming traitors, but only such men as are loyal to the King, my lord," and so shamefully the gate was shut in his face and he was left outside. And then he took the King right gladly and took him to lodging in his house in the joyfullest guise he could; and all the others were well lodged, and the King lay there a week right well pleased. But as the Master D. Juan Pacheco still ruled him, when the Master sent for him, the King went back from Jaen to Osuna. At last he came to die. It was 1474 now. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN He was at S. Cruz, in the west, arranging a Portuguese marriage for the Princess Joan, and trying to get his hand on the city of Trujillo, when the same malady struck him that had slain his brother, an imposthume of the throat, and he vomited blood and so died. But his men hid his death and set him in a chair, darkening the room, and the Alcayde surrendered the stronghold to the dead man. He had resigned the Mastership to his son, and the trezes and most of the knights ""had approved, too, perforce, but before the Bull could come from Rome, King Henry died, and D. Diego Lopez Pacheco could not hold what he had. He remained loyal, notwithstanding, to the Princess. I D. Enrique IV was now dead, having in his last hour declared that the excellent Lady Dona Juana was his daughter and his heiress — so the impartial historians believe. These are not the contemporary ones, as may be well understood, for it was AND MONOGRAPHS 255 A strange and sudden malady Contem- porary history not impartial 256 with the reigning dynasty to propitiate God's judgement and the ev^'ent of history MILITARY ORDERS in the reign of the Princess Isabel, his sister that they had to write, and they had indeed been of her faction long before. Alonso de Palencia spent a diligent life in her service and praise, and did as much as any man uncrowned to put through her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon. Hernando de Pulgar was titular Chronicler to the Catho lie Kings, and as careful in their interest as Pero Lopez de Ayala in that of Enrique II. King Henry's chaplain, Diego Enriquez del Castillo, suffered much for his loyalty dur- ing his master's life and afterwards; he was seized once at Segovia and his papers taken away: long after he had to write a piteous letter to Queen Isabel entreating that the money yet owing to him as salary might be paid. Three-quarters of a century ago Dozy pointed out that early Spanish churchmen had blackened the character of the Visi- gothic kings in the eighth century to save the case for God's justice. If misfortunes so terrible befell them and overwhelmed Spain they must have been abominable so to bring them down. Pero Lopez de HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 257 Ayala in the fourteenth century, in rebel- Hon against his natural lord and king, Peter I, set out to show that he too was deserving of God's judgement, and that the line of New Kings was God's punish- ment for the sins of the Old. Now a third time in the fifteenth, the historians of the stronger battalhons construct their case for God and depict the establishment of the CathoUc Kings as though the sun were ris- ing upon the earth after another destruc- tion of Sodom. Whether Enrique IV was really all that he was called is mightily to be doubted. He has been made out a sort of preliminary study for the invariable protagonist of J. K. Huysmans' novels, but it is more probable that he was only such another as the English Edward II, though he wanted a Marlowe: fantastical and unhappy, wayward and ennuye, corrupt and wanton, who wore his shame like purple with the pitiful effrontery of the helpless. 1 Character of Enrique IV AND MONOGRAPHS 258 The Catholic Kingswould be perpetual administra' tors of the Orders MILITARY ORDERS Coplas de Manriqtie As Princes, Ferdinand and Isabel had begged the Pope to appoint them adminis- trators: as Kings they asked it again and the Pope gave them the place to continue at his pleasure. Notwithstanding, the Prior of S. Marcos called a chapter and elected D. Alonso de Cardenas, and the Prior of Ucles did the like and elected D Rodrigo Manrique, him for whom his son George made the coplas. He was a good knight. He left no well-filled treasury. He heaped no pile of riches high, Nor massive plate; He fought the Moors, and in their fall City and tower and castle wall Were his estate And if of old his walls displayed The honoured and exalted grade His worth had gained. So in the dark disastrous hour. Brothers and bondsmen of his power His hand sustained. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN After high deeds, not left untold, In the stern warfare which of old 'T was his to share Such noble leagues he made that more And fairer regions than before His guerdon were. These are the records half effaced, Which with the hand of youth he traced On historj'-'s page; But with fresh victories he drew Each fading character anew In his old age By the tried valour of his hand His monarch and his native land Were nobly served; Let Portugal repeat the story, And proud Castile, who shared the glory His arms deserved .... Mosen Diego de Valera devotes a couple of diverting chapters to the contention for the Mastership at Pacheco's death, but he rises to a fine phrase where he admits that "not for that did the great spirit of D. Rodrigo Manrique, who called himself the Master of Santiago, leave off the under- AND MONOGRAPHS 259 Longfel- low's version 260 The last Master, and forty-first was elected in spite ot the Queen's great ride MILITARY ORDERS taking once begun, though the King and the Archbishop of Toledo willed otherwise." D. Alonso de Cardenas is reckoned the last ]M aster: he served the Catholic Kings very loyally, raiding Portugal and then when Manrique was dead he "came in," he and his men. He needed to be elected cleanly according to the constitutions of the Order, and with the consent of the King and Queen, as was the custom in Castile. Dona Isabel rode in three days from Valla- dolid to Ucles; gathered those of the habit of Santiago and bid them suspend the elec- tion as Royalty wished the Order to stay in commission: so he went on raiding Por- tugal and arguing with the Kings. They yielded at last, but he had to pay a great sum to be used nominally for the building and maintenance of castles on the frontier of Granada. Thereafter great exploits followed and the battle of Albuhera, the retaking of Merida, and the war of the Axerquia. Near Antequera, in some villages, they were hard beset, the horsemen got among gullies and valleys and the Moors sallied HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN out from the castle and, themselves untouched, killed the Christians with stones and arrows. Then said the Master: ''Let us die making a road with our hearts since we cannot with oiu* arms, and not die so dully. Come up this hill like men and lie not bogged to await death." But they did not know the ground and the Moors cut them in two and killed many; some got off by rough ways. This was in 1483. In 1499 he died. Ferdinand and Isabel got the Bull they wanted, then Charles V got one and in his time the Pope annexed the Mastership in perpetuity to the Royal Crown of Castile and Leon. At least the last Master was a gallant knight, and the last years of the Order were bright with panoply and plume and ringing with clash of arms and drum-beat: Las justas e los torneos, paramentos, bordaduras, e cimeras .... Like April sun they breathed away and were no more. But the name lived on, and AND M ONOGRAPHS 261 TiU 1499 he ruled 262 The Son of Thunder Apologia M ILITARY ORDERS to the conquest of the Americas the Breth- ren of S. James carried the ruddy sword and the cockle shell, and S. James, the Son of Thunder, was known by aborigines as the lightning's child. For the Spanish policy of the Catholic Kings there is more to be said than space affords here, even though if necessary it might still be granted that Isabel's reli- gious passion was tinged with the madness that possessed her mother and that she transmitted to her daughter; nay more, that Ferdinand was the same bogy at home as abroad, the sinister figure that looms in the background of // Principe. JMacchia- velli wrote a treatise on how to make a strong state at the expense of your soul. Ferdinand illustrated it. Spain was strong. In the two centuries since Ferdinand III took Seville the great houses had come up and they were stronger than the throne. For each reign history offered only three HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN chances: the nobles could be kept busy against the Moors, or they could be left to tear the land to pieces, or they could be broken. Alfonso XI, for instance, tried the first and succeeded: Peter, his son, tired the last and failed. In the reign of John II the Constable could not prevent the second: it went on in the reign of his son Henry. After Granada fell there were no more Moors. The Catholic Kings broke the great nobles and the great convents, and the land had rest. The peasant stepping down the red fur- row behind his yoke of brown oxen, the spectacled merchant leaning above his painfully amassed spoils of eastern traffic spread brilHant on the board at the shop front, tasted security. The flush of sunset faded from chivalry; the defence of Spain had ended and conquest had begun. Queen Isabel's breach of faith with the last Moors down by Granada, like Queen Constance's with the first Moors up in Toledo, is justified by history if the course of things can justify what outrages the spirit. So was the expulsion of the Jews: so was, AND MONOGRAPHS 263 Alterna- tives 1. war 2. discord 3. absolu- tism 264 The course of things runs counter to the spirit To "wage God's battles in the long grey ships . . " MILITARY ORDERS presently, the expulsion of the Moriscoes. It is vain as well as hypocritical to lay the exhaustion of a country bled white by its colonies to the application, four hundred years ago, of a policy that western Europe is now in a frenzy of applying. Why not layit to the Inquisition, or the orange trade of Florida, or the Argentine wheat? We may not be sanctimonious until we wash out our own cup and platter and clean out from our sepulchres the dead men's bones. In a sense, everything in history is the cause of everything after, but that proposi- tion is as general as gravitation and some- what more irrelevant. Spain took up in the seventeenth century the White Man's burden, the same charge that England assumed in the nineteenth. To the honest observer, between America and India, in their respective centuries, no difference will be apparent. Gomara and Kipling sing to the same tune. Spain was the earliest country in modem Europe to undertake colonies: so she was the first to feel exhaustion. The lesson learned, she has withdrawn the first. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 265 The story of the Conquistadores is, in the familiar phrase, another story. They were, many of them, nearly all of the great- est, knights and commanders in the Orders, but their greatness lay elsewhere, and these titles were now no different from others. So also were many good and great soldiers in the Italian wars, as later in those of Flanders. The Gran Capitan was a Knight of Santiago: Caro de Torres devotes forty-six folio pages to the Orders in the Italian campaigns. Ferdinand the Catholic paid for service in the Neapolitan wars — says La Fuente, quoting — with habits and crosses, which brought these into disrepute. The proofs of nobility were exacted with increasing strictness: we remember what pains one Sevillian gentleman took to prove his limpieza Castilian and Portu- guese, and to show that he had exercised the art of painting only as a genteel pastime and never professionally. His name was D. Diego de Silva y Velazquez. "The Orders were used by the Emperor in suppressing the violent commotion of the Communities of Castile" records Uhagon The Con- quistadores Soldiers in Italy and Flanders AND MONOGRAPHS 266 and in the rising of the Com- munities Velazquez and Calder6n MILITARY O R D E R vS with some unction, and goes on, with rehsh. to relate how the Comendador of Biedma, D. Alonso de la Cueva y Benavides, before the last battle swore by God and his cross to seek out Juan de Padilla. He kept the oath and took him prisoner, snatching the gtiion from him and taking his arms, and then turned him over to the governors of the realm — which means presumably Charles V's Flemings. Not always did the six- teenth century feel so compliantly: the Count of Benavente had sent back to Charles V the Golden Fleece, saying that he wanted no Burgundian insignia when in Castile there were others much older and more honourable in the crosses of the Orders, under whose holy protection his ancestors had fought against the infidel and conquered the kingdoms. Those crosses, we may remember, were worn as precious jewels by the shining lights of Spanish letters: if not, as long believed, by Garcilaso de la Vega, yet by Alonso de Ercilla the friend of Greco, by Francisco de Quevedo, and Calderon de la Barca, and many a lesser but still limiinous HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 267 star: and hagiography can count up its half-dozen or more of the blessed and the sainted. S. Domingo de Guzman himself began as a conventual /r 6 v/^" of Ucles. That Philip IV called out the Order against the insurgents in Catalonia, is reckoned by a Spanish historian among his gravest sins. But indeed for what they could be used was a hard question, now that not a Moor was left in Spain. Cis- neros when he took Oran offered to trans- port them to Africa and give them con- vents and churches and allow them all of Africa that they could conquer: if he might have had his way, the lot of Africa would be happier perhaps to-day. But the event of history was against his intention and they went, instead, to America; but not corporately. Estremadura supplied the greatest of those conquerors and the Order of Santiago counts their names. Says Caro de Torres: The war of Granada being ended with so much honour and advantage to all Spain, and the lordship of the Moors Africa offered America found AND MONOGRAPHS 268 MILITARY ORDERvS "Such were these men, worthy of their country expelled from the land, after so many years, the Catholic Kings turned their knights to new enterprises greater and more glorious than the past, all directed to the exaltation of the Christian religion, that their vassals should show their strength and use it in foreign lands and kingdoms, in Italy, France and Barbary and the farthest ends of the earth, that from stmrise to sunset there should be no spot where the trophies and blazons of their victories were not set up. The enterprise most memorable of the great- est honour and advantage that was ever undertaken in Spain was the discovery of the West Indies that are called the New World. One of these was Vasco Nunez de Balboa of Badajoz, a man of great heart: in 1513 he saw the Isthmus, and the Catholic Kings gave him the title of Warden of the Southern Sea. Hernando Cortes, a Knight of the Order of Santiago, in 1520 took Montezuma in his palace: he was the son of Martin Cortes de Monroy and of Dofia Catalina Pizarro of Altamura, descended of the lineage in Aragon of the Count of Molina, ricos HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 269 omes. Francisco Pizarro of Trujillo. when he had decided to go to the con- quest of the southern sea, drew a Hne with his sword's point as the term of immense labours necessary for the con- quest, and invited those who would to cross it with him: only thirteen did. When he went home he gathered his goods and his elder brother Hernando, and twice more he returned, but he died by the conspiracy of Almagro. They all died, somewhere, in the end. and their bones are not laid up any more in the convents and castles of the Order, the Cloister at Ucles or the Church at Alcantara, but in far-ofif lands. They were well content. Caro de Torres says again: One of the principal parts of the His- tory of the Military Order, which most touches them, is the conquest of the rich and great kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, because their captains, general and con- querors were D. Fernando Cortes, D. Francisco Pizarro, D. Hernando Pizaro, of the Order of the Lord S. for you that remain, pray for a safer fortune." AND MONOGRAPHS 270 'True valour doth her own renown command MILITARY ORDERS Tempering the spirit of man James, because so many times they saw the glorious apostle fighting in these conquests in defence of the Christians. My friend Bernal Diaz misdoubts the latter statement, and fully contradicts Gomara's Apparitions, but the glory was there and he saw that. In this age still, as in the mediaeval, riches were coveted but as the way to power and not power as the way to wealth: greatness was the end and gold was but the means. So success was prized for the sake of gloiy and energy was only the manifestation of passion. Therein, it had the advantage of ours. The institution of the three Military Orders in Castile had been a great instrument, not merely for the shaping and defence of a secure empire, but for the forging and tem- pering of the spirit of man. The tradition of a great past was there to fall back upon and what we call ''morale' ' was fostered by all the conditions of life and organization, but these enforced also — and thereby checked the dangers of bru- tality and pride — the religious obligation HISPANIC NOTES TN SPAIN of obedience and brotherhood. It is as hard for us to-day to understand in Isabel, and Cisneros, and their knights and con- querors, the passionate need to convert all men to the faith of the Cross, as to understand the actual democracy of human relations to-day in Spain: but it was there and it must be reckoned with. It goaded men like the sight of a body's agony. The doctrine of "invincible ignorance" was to be invented later, that men might live in peace together and sleep o' nights without dreams of those who unless converted would surely burn in hell. It is a conse- quence of the Spanish trait of realism, famous in literature and almost as active in life, that what a man sustained he was prepared to prove to the bitter end, and what he believed to be so he was aware of in his own flesh, whether it were the doc- trine of stoicism or the dogma of hell. The passion to save illimiinated men's lives. That passion burned above the wilderness and beyond the moimtain-tops of the New World and purified the breast of even the sorriest and most hardened 271 "Those to whom the miseries of the world . . AND MONOGRAPHS are misery and will not let them rest" 272 MILITARY ORDERS Envoy adventurer. It is a glory about the ending of the Orders, and a faint glow yet lingers in tlie shabby little pages of Otaiies' Manual of the Ceremonies at Receiving the Habit of Calatrava, printed in 1785, at Pueblo de los Angeles, in New Spain. 1 Children of the northern seas, reared under northern stars, we too have kindled to our conquests and suffered our disillu- sionment. The northern race has been tried out and found wanting and for hope we turn to the Mediterranean, as our fathers turned, belike six millenniums ago. HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Cronica de las tres Ordenes y Cavallerias de Santiago, Calatrava y Alcantara: en la qual se trata de su origen y successo, y nota- bles hechos en armas de los Maestres y Cavalleros de ellas: y de muchos Senores de Titulo y otros Nobles que descienden de los Maestres: y de muchos otros Linajes de Espafia. Compuesta por el Licenciado Frey Francisco de Radea^ Andrada Capellan de su Magesdad, de la ~nr3en~3e Calatrava. Impressa con Licencia en Toledo, en casa de Juan de Ayala, Ano 1572. Historia de las Ordenes Militares de San- tiago, Calatrava, y Alcantara desde su fun- dacion hasta el Rey D. Felipe Segundo, Administrator perpetuo dellas. Ordenada por el Licenciado Francisco Caro de Torres con acuerdo de los Senores ael Consejo Real de las Ordenes; Siendo comisso D. Fernando Pizarro de Orellana Cavallero del Orden de Calatrava Comendador de Viltera del mismo Consejo En Madrid, por Juan Gon- galez, 1629. Formulario Manual de las Ceremonias que se practican para recibir el Abito de la Inclita Militar Orden de Calatrava aprobada y con- firmada por la Sandidad de Alexandro Ter- cero, en veintycinco de Septiembre de mil ciento sesentyquatro. Bajo la Regla del Patriarca Sefior San Benito, y las que cor- AND MONOGRAPHS 273 The Old Histories 274 Let these suffice MILITARY ORDERS responden a su profesion. Saccada- ']« libro de las definiciones de dicha orden, con- forme al Capitulo General celebrada en Madrid el ano de mil seiscientos cinquenta y dos. Impresso en la Puebla de los Angeles en la oficina, 1783. Montesa Ilustrada. Origen, Fundacion, Principios, Institutos, Casos Profesos, Juris- diction, Derechos. . . Priviligios, Preeminen- cias, Dignidades, Oficios, Beneficios, Heroes y Varones Ilustres de la real inclyta y nobi- lisima religion militar de N. S. Santa Maria de Montesa, y San George de Alfama: por el Doctor Frey Hippolyto de Samper . . . catedratico de derecho en la insigne univer- sidad de Valencia. . . rector del real colegio de la misma orden y prior formado de la Iglesia del Senor San George . . . Valencia, 1669. Diffiniciones de la Sagrada Religion y Cavalleria de vSanta Maria de Montesa y Sanct Jorge, filiacion de la inclita milicia de Calatrava. Hechos por los ilustres Frey D. Alvaro de Luna y Mendoga Cavallero de la dicha Orden de Calatrava, y el Licenciado Frey Francisco Rades y Andrada, Capellan de su Magestad y Prior de la Coronada de la misma Orden Visitadores Generales: con asistencia del muy reverendo Padre Frey D. Hieronymo Vails, Abad de Valldigna, de la Orden de Cister, en el ano de MDLXXIII. Valencia, 1589. These are the authorities; modem histor- ians have added little: neither Fernandez Guerra in his sumptuous History of fte nor La Fuente in his Ecclesiastical History HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 275 nor even Uhag6n by the documents he pub- Hshed with his Discurso de Recepcion. But the elder historians have yielded much, and the following must be included: — Roderick of Toledo, " De Rebus Hispaniae," in Hispaniae Illustratae. Primera Coronica General, published by Menendez Pidal. Cuarto Cronica General, pubUshed as Cron- ica de Espaiia del Arzobispo D. Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada . . . y D. Gonzalo de la Hinojosa. . . in Documentos Ineditos CV and CVI. Florez, Espana Sagrada. Coronica Getteral de Toda Espana y especial- mente del Reyno de Valencia, . . . compues- ta por el Doctor Pero Anton Beuter, Maestro en Sacra Theologia, Impressa en Valencia en casa de Pedro Patricio Mey, junto a San Martin, 1604. Nohleza de Andalucia. . . Gonzalo Argote de Molina. (Jaen 1866). Nobiliario Genealogico de los Reyes y Tihdos de Espana compuesto por Alonso Lopez de Haro. . . En Madrid, por Luis Sanchez Impressor Real, ano MDCXXIL All the Chronicles of Spain in the three volumes of Ribadeneyra with the other historical and biographical works therewith printed. 1 with the Chronicles of Spain AND MONOGRAPHS • Printed for The Hispanic Society of America BY THE John C. Winston Co., Philadelphia, Pa. 10 2 3^787 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES COanEDlSb This voiaiiMr preserved with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.