HISPANIC HISPANIC SOCIETY 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 OP AMERICA W GETTY CENTER IMW TO A GREAT AND GENEROUS LOVER OF SPAIN MILITARY ORDERS ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PA % Dedication v If Analytical Table of Contents ... vii ]f Illustrations ix ^ Introduction . 1 If Knightly Origins . 2 If Earlier Orders 4 If Calatrava Foundation • • • Privileges and Dignities .... 12 Zorita de los Canes 16 Alcafiiz 20 ^f Gains 21 Cordovan Civilization 22 Battle of Alarcos . 24 Epical Fragment 26 If Battle of las Navas 30 Foreign Contingent 31 It Goes Home 36 The Fight 39 vu HISPANIC NOTES viii M ILITARY ORDERS If Argote de Molina 44 If The Toledan Annalist 47 War, Famine and Horror .... 54 If Calatrava Acquires 57 The House of Padilla 61 f After King Peter 67 Portrait of a Master 68 D. Enrique de Villena 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 If D. Pedro Giron 85 Fuenteovejuna 90 D. Rodrigo 91 Romance 92 If Garci Lopez de Padilla 96 If The Castle of Calatrava 98 Annequin de Egas 99 1f 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 ix 131 1 33 144. lit yueen isaoei Jinas /in lot Lesser Orders: Monte Grvudio . . . 1 5Q 160 163 164 1 60 172 1 77 ill fr tt„i '„ loi 1 Sfi 1 OO U St. James as Psychopompos 189 1 on 194 1Qfi lyu IT Battle of Salada 199 ^ The Master D. Fadrique 203 Romance 208 H Tapestry Figures 213 214 English and Spanish Plays . . . 216 If The Infants of Aragon 217 Character of D. Enrique .... 222 AND MONOGRAPHS MILITARY ORDERS If D. Alvaro de Luna 223 Character 224 Life 227 Death 235 IF Poetry 236 If D. Beltran de la Cueva 244 If D. Juan Pacheco 247 If Contemporaries Not Impartial . . 255 Character of Enrique IV . . . .257 If D. Gomez Manrique 258 If Apologia pro RR. CC 262 Colonial Policies 264 The Orders Afterwards 265 In America 267 Tempering the Spirit 270 If Envoy 272 Bibliographical Note 273 HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN xi ILLUSTRATIONS tihe pax of ucles. . Frontispiece Published by the Exposition of 1904 at Saragossa. FACING PAGE tihe castle of calatrava ... 24 c/alatrava: mountain, rock . . 100 This and the foregoing were taken on the expedition of Miss E. H. Lowber for the Society in 1919-20. TIHE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA . . . 108 A Spanish photograph in the files of the Society. G1RECO: A KNIGHT PRESENTED BY This is probably a knight of Alcan- tara, wrongly restored as Julian Romero; from Cossio, El Greco. TIHE 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 Instituto de Valencia de D. Juan. AND MONOGRAPHS 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 C\t i~\~\f i lvT QQtpf T) n annnnp * in o t^t^t*/~\ cx i t*i iuiuy. 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! 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, and a Tomorrow I will find again great word the glory lost to-day. AND MONOGRAPHS 96 MILITARY ORDERS Garci L6pez de Padilla 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 97 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 Comendadoras 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 The Catholic Kings take hold Limpieza AND MONOGRAPHS 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. i 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 11 11*^ 1 i 1 1 j 1 1 1 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 MILITARY ORDERS not in Llaguno or Cean Ber- mudez Thunder- cloven pin- nacles of the mountain 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 (aljibe 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. i 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. G6mez his brother, grandsons of D. Rodrigo Gomez, Count of Salamanca, and related to the royal house of Aragon. Otip fancies them voune. eallant creatures like the Twins at Chartres or at Leon, with The Order of Alcantara AND MONOGRAPHS 102 MILITARY ORDERS White mantle and green cross their ardent vow sent ringing down eternity — "perpetual war!" A hermit from the mountains southward suggested to them something not unlike 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 Camino 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 Nufio 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. The domed architecture of the region i 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 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 off 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 aicowVitirfi Prnm the carved organ, corbelled up in the north transept, carvings The church despoiled for dealers AND MONOGRAPHS 106 MILITARY ORDERS The town easier to replace have been deftly picked away. Nothing was smashed — as at Poblet or Ripoll, 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 wrong. 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 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 107 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. i 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 thev haH in 3nd, poor ladies! to accept a compromise, HISPANIC NOTES 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 next 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 110 MILITARY ORDERS Civil war in Badajoz 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 Portuguese, 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 Moors, 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. Julian 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 Master 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, Dona 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 inHaprl for Vii oCVcIIlCCll. 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 Zufligas, the forces of the great houses flood and subside like 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 MILITARY ORDERS The first chapter I Ay, castillo de Mon- tanchest 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 Maestrazgo, 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 Clavero 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 Maestrazgo, 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 cotild not be found even HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 137 by searching through his linen 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 the Princes': lastly the lawyer's servants were all arrested. The third chapter is this. That night Doctor Franco talked long with the Comen- 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 139 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 Doha Isabel were at the head of the rebel nobles: at worst, it might have cost the kingdom. The Doctor listened: 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, r\t- cAmA cimVi * tmrl tVipti thp 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 Conspiracy and rebellion which chance defeated AND MONOGRAPHS 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 V alencia : when 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 came 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 enter 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 MILITARY ORDERS A man foredoomed 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 r*f t +■ c cpf + 1 n or f Vi p cAi rnti 1 r*1 pre; pa nti at n nt p the lesser stars. i Epilogue: A good knight of Alcantara AND MONOGRAPHS 144 MILITARY ORDERS A Chronicle Play: Part I, The fall of D. G6mez de Caceres A successor of his, D. Gomez de Caceres y Solis, 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 tablado 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 (juego de 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 accumulation 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 little war dragged on. Mosen Diego de Valera will have it that the Master ill-used Caceres, where the CI aver o 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 iicdr vjiictuciupc, went uuwii ll> ngnu 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 n cx c\ r\A^n nic 1 fWTQ 1 CAnntnr nnnroi ran r~\ rr IlctU. UCCH 1I1£> LKJycLl oCl V1LU1 U-IlWcl VC1 lilt. 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 147 armed, 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 Master 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 Brother in arms as in blood AND MONOGRAPHS 148 MILITARY ORDERS The on-looker appreciates the irony ot events Part II, the Rise and sovereign justice of God is such that he never leaves such ingrates without punish- ment. So, like David, the good chaplain comforts himself, in a world where he had seen the wicked nourishing 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 the 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 deSotomayor who was his mother's brother, but not from him had he learned rebellion and ingratitude, for the second Sotomayor, HISPANIC NOTES IN SPAIN 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 Medellm 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 149 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 151 more. The end of the story is as romantic and irrational as the rest: when the Catho- lic 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 Dona 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 Medellm, who held As interlude, the tragedy of D. Francisco AND MONOGRAPHS 152 MILITARY ORDERS Epilogue: Review of the protagonists t. Don Juan de Sotomayor 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 153 Master, stood D. Alonso de Monroy, Keeper: from their first appearance they were arrayed against each other, perhaps by old hostility 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 figure, 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 3. Don G6mez de Caceres 4. Don Alonso de Monroy The deuter- agonist D. Francisco de Solis The last Master AND MONOGRAPHS 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 VIII 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 innumerable 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. A ballad- literature that lacked its blind beggars i 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 nourished 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 riivcire^ uy iidiiic, d iicpiicw, i^utisui diiu 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, The Lesser Orders Monte Gaudio AND MONOGRAPHS 156 MILITARY ORDERS Count Roderick 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 Milicia 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 Mntip nf npr llvJllC LHIld ■ 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 MILITARY ORDERS Property over-sea, cf. pp. 58. 186. The founder's death perhaps when the King married a daughter of the house of Lara, and Castile had the say in Leon — the Aragonese gifts are mul- tiplied 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 1 1 QfS wac A/Tnc+or T?Jno1lTr miKj, in ii >u, wctb ivictbLtjr. r many ine 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 h is 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 like destiny. Founded in Fraga Monfrac V. Ponz, VII, vii, 13-14 Here ends Blazquez y Jimenez The Order of Trujillo AND MONOGRAPHS 160 MILITARY ORDERS The Order of S. George The source is Federico Pastor y Lluis 1 72 years of good work 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 life 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 MILITARY ORDERS 27 years of prosperity "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, Valencia 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 Ripolles 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 1343 by their son, tuc iiiL&LHi lj. reuiu ui rirdgon, count 01 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 MILITARY ORDERS The Order of Montesa Ruin of the Templars 1640, like so many other places small in size but noble in spirit, along that indom- itable east coast. i 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 165 heresy: that also was in vain. Mioravel withstood besiegers for nine months: Monzon held out till 1309. Yanguas 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 The dead will not hear Mariana and Villanueva tell the bitter truth AND MONOGRAPHS 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 Alcafiiz. 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 Peniscola. 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 169 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. Under Philip II, in 1588, the Mastership was incorporated in the Crown of 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 The Rule for refectory and dorter The ending D. Luis Despuig AND MONOGRAPHS 170 MILITARY ORDERS The Order of the Jar 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 like. 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 +Viq ?o/-v1<3+inr< ar\A tVlP intPPTltV of or. tne isolation, aim uic uibcgiibjr , Castile. i whom Philip II called "the most earned man in my realm." Dignities Levantine not Castilian AND MONOGRAPHS 172 MILITARY ORDERS The Order of Santiago The two at heart unlike Alfonso VII, 1126-1157 A very ancient brother- hood 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 /\iiurd.ua, dux many years berore 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 returns 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 175 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 white 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 The Order of S. Loy The official account AND MONOGRAPHS 176 MILITARY ORDERS A Scriptural standard Helpers and harbourers 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 unlike 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. i Humility essential 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 pcupic, diiu. wcic cxiirpdicu now uy swora 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 Friends of God AND MONOGRAPHS 178 MILITARY ORDERS Luke of Tuy yields evidence on cross-exam- ination of begin- nings amidst religious mysticism 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 followed I cannot say, for I have not access to the long-out-of -print original Historta de los 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 1 120 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 insipnia bv Pa rial nprmic:u r) 'n iaioa^axao. -a. O/tJCLl IJC1 llXloolUll • ct flic iiLt/Ll~ 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 a brotherhood marched in processions The constitution AND MONOGRAPHS 180 MILITARY ORDERS Called Order of Ucles at times Caceres 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 A pprpc o-nrl rppAi 1 t £i c: q cn ft for t n P V_'ClCClCOj dlKJ. ICL-CIVCU. lb cto Ct glib L\JL LJ.1C 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 181 King of Castile gave them a castle on the Tagus near Fuentedeuna, and then shortly after, Ucles, 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 The sanctity of married life AND MONOGRAPHS 182 MILITARY ORDERS Ucles The gateway of the hills 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 denned 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 MILITARY ORDERS Remem- bered glory of Spain Meditation in twilight The mystery 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-ruined 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, thesheer 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, -fViic T +V»inlr ic a T\ari~ f\f "tViA fiAwPf of anQ. UllS 1 IIHIIK lb ct pdl I Ul tile JJUWCi Ui 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 MILITARY ORDERS Castles in. the Holy Land 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 MILITARY ORDERS At the Battle of Las Navas and after Alfonso IX, with all his mournful pride 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. Nufio 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 189 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 S. James as wayfarer and psycho- pompos AND MONOGRAPH S 190 MILITARY ORDERS The Pax of Ucles is the frontispiece here Apparitions in the Americas 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 chalices 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 like any one else, and indeed a man whom he knew. At the battle of Salada in 1340, he was seen in like manner and recognized: says Rodrigo Yanez of Seville, who wrote the Poem of Alfonso XI: Francisco de Morla Yusuf of Granada Alone bewailed his shame: Into the Alhambra A broken man he came: "Why didst, 0 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." At the Battle of Salada : V. p. 199 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 AND MONOGRAPHS 192 MILITARY ORDERS IS. Maria ten tu dial "And when at last defeated in His wars . . 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 A l/onso X, is stuff torn off from a romance. It was Saturday, the eve of S. John; the host 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 1 back, when near thp radtlp name* 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 freyle* 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 litter, chidden by a headstrong Prince. i 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 195 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 Dona 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 usurped 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 Fit figure for classic tragedy AND MONOGRAPHS 196 MILITARY ORDERS The Roman policy Till the Constable of Bourbon sacked Rome for the Em- peror Schism in Portugal Queen of King Peter, has lately been pub- lished. The fixed policy 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 Master of Castile and Leon. 1 King Alfonso XI beinp" in PnpnM wVi^n 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 replied 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, like that of coining false money, and entering a city over the wall, are commonplaces of false-witness and may be dismissed. The chapter obediently elected the baby son of Leonor de Guzman, and consented that her brother D. Alonso Mendez de Guzman should be frocked for D. Vasco L6pez AND MONOGRAPHS 198 MILITARY ORDERS The honour of Guzmdn 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 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 199 those whose livelihood 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. i and the bastards' characters 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 The Battle of Salada AND MONOGRAPHS 200 MILITARY ORDERS A golden fleece Though anti-semi- tlsm 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 201 Castilian noblemen And many knights beside. For keeping of their vow Like brethren they ride. For a moment the crusading spirit has returned again; but the piece is a little 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 : A right epical passage AND MONOGRAPHS 202 MILITARY ORDERS declining to a ballad's measure 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 Chronicle's 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 prodeuntfulget Cruris mysteriutn. But the Orders counted for little there. The Master of Santiago was killed that day: the poet is quite indifferent but does VufV)f»r tV>P TTinCT of ArflPOTl T^llP 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 MILITARY ORDERS The Battle of Olmedo An Italian type 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 went 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 Doha 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 ruffiano that the comedies and novels have developed. # To him succeeded D. Alvaro de Luna the Constable of Castile. His predecessor in the Constabulary of Castile had been D. Ruy L6pez 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 tnax wnat ne is, we were, ciiiu. wiidu we die, he shall be." D. Ruy L6pez Davalos, Constable of Castile AND MONOGRAPHS 224 MILITARY ORDERS The legendt of D. Alvarc Character of D. Alvaro de Luna 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. J_y. ill V tti W UC JUUllcl Wdb ct IlldJl ■ OI gr6ciX 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 courage, 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 This is Salazar beginning to speak: was gamesome and AND MONOGRAPHS 226 MILITARY ORDERS "The setting sun and music at the close " given to laughter at apt times; very keen of wit. He was so compact, of flesh 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 inconven- 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 227 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 Canete, 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 Vi m 1 cp flnH Hppq 1 1 cp Ti p wfl