Archbishop of Toledo

“ In 1337 he was chosen archbishop of Toledo in succession to his uncle by the favour of the king, Alphonso XI. At the battle of Tarifa he fought against a great invasion from Africa in 1340, and at the taking of Algeciras in 1344 he led the armed levy of his archbishopric. ”

“ As archbishop of Toledo he exerted himself to protect the clergy from the obligation to pay the excises or octroi duties known as “the millions” and thereby helped to perpetuate the financial embarrassments of the government. His position rather than any personal qualities enabled him to play an important part in a great crisis of European politics. ”

“ The archbishop of Toledo, by virtue of his office primate of Spain and grand chancellor of Castile, was esteemed, after the pope, the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in Christendom. His revenues, at the close of the fifteenth century, exceeded eighty thousand ducats; while the gross amount of those of the subordinate beneficiaries of his church rose to one hundred and eighty thousand. He could muster a greater number of vassals than any other subject in the kingdom, and held jurisdiction over fifteen large and populous towns, besides a great number of inferior places. ”

“ On the evening of the 19th of September, a remarkable visitor knocked at the gate of Yuste. It was the new Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomè Carranza de Miranda—a name which stands high on the list of the Wolseys of the world, of men remembered less for their splendid success than for their signal fall. From a simple Dominican, he had risen to be a professor at Valladolid, a leading doctor of Trent, prior of Palencia, provincial of Spain, and prime adviser of Philip II. in that movement which Spanish churchmen loved to call the reduction of England. ”

“ It should be understood from this, of course, that they must have been guilty of some extraordinary and flagrant conduct, or they would not have been so harshly dealt with by so distinguished a functionary of the Church as a cardinal-archbishop, to whom the management of the affairs of the Church at Toledo was confided. No other supposition can be indulged, especially in view of the fact that, besides this emphatic denunciation, he placed their college at Alcala under interdict. ”

“ They print rare editions, collect rare MSS., debate in councils, rule the land, vociferate magnificently from the pulpit, decide on all questions of education and civil law, advise their sovereign, guide foreign{93} politics, voyage in foreign lands, win glorious battles, and write histories and verse! What modern life can match theirs? Even Mr Gladstone has neither built a great cathedral nor won a great battle! This Archbishop of Toledo, a mighty chancellor of Castille, was as charitable a pastor as Victor Hugo’s bishop. ”

“ And since his Holiness gave him authority to name some one as vicar-general, to have full power in all matters ecclesiastical—whereof I understand his highness hath informed your Majesty by means of the Archbishop of Toledo—he determined to root out of the army all blasphemies, oaths, and evil doings, and in particular the sin of heresy, promising me that he would not favour any one, even if he were especially attached to his person ”

“ But in the earlier half of the twelfth century, and precisely between the years 1130 and 1150, this desultory work was reduced to a system by the establishment of a regular school of translation in Toledo. The credit of this foundation, which did so much for mediæval science and letters, belongs to Don Raymon, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain. This enlightened and liberal churchman was by origin a French monk, born at Agen, whom Bernard, a previous Primate, had brought southward in his train, as he returned from a journey [46] beyond the Pyrenees. ”

“ It was inevitable that the Córtes of Cádiz and the constitutional Government of 1820-3 should partially carry out what Spanish publicists for centuries had demanded, and should earn the bitterest clerical hostility.
As a matter of course the wealth of so numerous, powerful and worldly a Church was enormous. As early as 1563 Paolo Tiepolo states that the clergy possessed little less than one half the total revenues of Spain. He rates the income of the Archbishop of Toledo at 150,000 ducats, and in addition the church of Toledo had 300,000. ”

“ Poetry, painting and sculpture engaged his mind at a very early period. In 1533 he went to Spain, and soon afterwards became secretary to the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, in a department of business which required no other qualification than that of writing Latin with elegances. ”

“ I, friend Luna, am of the stuff of young generals; it is the good luck of the family. My uncle, when he was only an acolyte, was certain he would become a cardinal, and he succeeded. I shall rise much faster. Besides, you know that to be an archbishop of Toledo is not a small thing. My uncle has many friends in the palace, and commands in the ministry of war just as though he were a general. In point of fact he is far more a soldier than a cleric! ”

“ This miracle,” he adds, “was beheld by many men of verity and worth,” probably the monks and priests who accompanied the army; “as well as by numbers of the Moors, who declared that the greatest slaughter was effected by those sainted warriors.”
It may be as well to add that Fray Antonio Agapida is supported in this marvelous fact by Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, one of the most learned and pious men of the age, who lived at the time and records it in his chronicle. It is a matter, therefore, placed beyond the doubts of the profane. ”

“ The increase was largely in the Mendicant Orders, whose systematic begging, that no one dared refuse, was a grievous addition to the tithes and first fruits.
A single instance will illustrate this inordinate growth. Cardinal Mendoza, Archbishop of Toledo, the “third king” under Ferdinand and Isabella, stubbornly refused to allow convents to be founded in his province, saying that there were already many that were injurious to the people obliged to sustain them, but this ceased with his death in 1495. ”

“ D. Pedro de Villada, Abbot of San Marcial and San Millan in the Churches of Leon and Burgos, the Licentiate Juan Lopez de Cigales, Canon of the Church of Cuenca, and Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo of the Order of Preachers, inquisitors as is said against heretical pravity, and with power and special commission from the Very Reverend D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Cardinal of Santa Cruz, Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, Grand Chancellor of Castile, and Bishop of Siguenza. ”

“ They had covered his face with a cloth, thinking that he had already expired, when he suddenly started, with great energy, opened his eyes, seized the crucifix again from the hand of Don Fernando de Toledo, kissed it, and fell back again into agony.
The archbishop and the other priests expressed the opinion that he must have had, not a paroxysm, but a celestial vision, for human powers would not have enabled him to arouse himself so quickly and so vigorously as he had done at that crisis. ”

“ The Cathedral of Toledo, deprived of the greater number of its functionaries,—including its archbishop and fifty-six of its sixty canons, and no longer possessing, out of an income of hundreds of thousands sterling, a treasure sufficient for providing brooms and sweepers for its pavement,—will, in perhaps not much more than another year, if the predictions of the inhabitants be verified, be finally closed to public worship. ”

“ During the Visigothic reign in Toledo, the Cathedral site was occupied by a Christian temple. It was transformed by the Moors after their occupancy of the city into their principal mosque; there they were still permitted to carry on their worship, according to the terms of the treaty made on their surrender of the city to King Alfonso IV in 1085. A year afterwards{130} King Alfonso went off on a campaign, leaving the capital in charge of his French queen, Constance, and the Archbishop Bernard, recently sent to Toledo at the King's request by the Abbot of Cluny. ”

“ There were but two witnesses against him—Pedro de Toledo, a chaplain of the archbishop, who testified to seeing him eat squabs on a Saturday and eggs in Lent and remove fat from meat. The other was María de Santa Cruz, a servant-girl, burnt for heresy, who on her way to the quemadero, being urged to clear her conscience by denouncing her accomplices, said that once when he was sick his father told him that he would not get well unless he sent some oil to the synagogue, whereupon he sent both oil and candles. ”

“ At four o'clock the Archbishop arranged with his suite to return to Yuste, and then an idea occurred to Jeromín. Without saying a word to anyone, he saddled the little Roman mule himself and went to the convent among the Archbishop's following. His presence surprised no one, as he was thought to be Luis Quijada's page, and without any difficulty he went to the black hung room next to the chamber where the Emperor lay dying. He found several monks there, the prelate, Juan de Ávila, the Conde de Oropesa, D. Francisco de Toledo, his brother, and Diego de Toledo, uncle to both. ”

“ The King, Alonzo the Sixth, the Archbishop Don Bernardo, and the court, were among the advocates of the new missal, which, being adopted in Rome, they were very desirous of establishing on the occasion of the restoration of the Christian supremacy at Toledo. The mass of the people were attached to their ancient forms. ”

“ On the upper stalls, where sit the canons of the church between red marble columns, are the holy mysteries of the faith, carved by Berruguete and Felipe de Borgoña, and above in alabaster is the genealogy of Christ. At the head of the choir is the archbishop’s throne, like the stalls of carved walnut, but supported by bronze pillars. Among other carvings on it is the legend of St. Ildefonso and the sacred Casulla, so popular at Toledo, and which has inspired the pencil of Murillo, Rubens, and other eminent artists. ”

“ Their ability and skill rendered them indispensable to monarchs, nobles, and prelates, and the complaints which arose against them on all sides were useless. Thus in the quarrel between the chapter of Toledo and the great Archbishop Rodrigo, in which the former appealed to Gregory IX, in 1236, one of the grievances alleged is that he appointed Jews to be provosts of the common table of the chapter, thus enabling them to defraud the canons; they even passed through the church and often entered the chapter-house itself to the great scandal of all Christians ”

“ The people, however, are not so indefinite in their opinion. With a true Oriental love of the marvellous, they not only attribute the foundation of Toledo to patriarchal times, but declare this church was built by the apostles, and that even the Blessed Virgin herself took a personal interest in its erection. It is at least certain that a church was consecrated here in the time of King Ricared the Goth, after the condemnation of the Arians by the Council of Toledo, Pg 789 and it was probably built on the site of a previous one. ”

“ The bishop is to have his residence near the church; he is to commit the care of temporalities to his archdeacon, and to occupy himself exclusively with prayer, study and preaching. In the church he is to have a higher seat than his clergy, but in the house he must recognise them as in all respects his colleagues, and never to suffer them to remain standing while he is seated. [14] Similar canons were passed in the first Council of Toledo, held two years later. ”

“ Nineteen bishops assisted at it, and the Bishop of Merida, Patriuno, presided over it, as the oldest present. The meeting took place in the church of Toledo, the bishops seated, and the deacons and congregation admitted, standing. In a long address the president exposed the scandals and vicissitudes of the times, and then discussed in ten different points various details connected with the church. Woman seems to have been the victim of austere episcopal reprobation. ”

“ By which we learn that the tunica or surplice was common to all the clergy, the orarium on the left shoulder proper to deacons, and on both shoulders the distinguishing badge of priests.—The fourth council of Toledo is most particular in these distinctions. For in one canon it says, that if a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, be unjustly degraded, and be found innocent by a synod, yet they shall not be what they were before, unless they receive the degrees they had lost from the hands of the bishops before the altar. ”

“ Sermons are never read in the gorgeous cathedral pulpits, and the Church, as even an ardent Catholic assured me, seems, at least locally, dead. The priests and the prosperous shop-keepers are almost the only beings in Toledo who look portly ”

“ Great patrons of art and science, they founded universities and cultivated the arts of peace, while they were often plunging the country into war, which they waged with valor and skill. Under them the city reached a degree of splendor unsurpassed in the dreamy reign of Oriental voluptuousness and taste. But when it succumbed, as it did to the great German Czar, and the court was removed to Valladolid, its sun went down, never to rise again.
The cathedral is a glory, even in Spain, which is richer in cathedrals than any other country. Toledo has always been favored by the Romish Church. ”

“ One of the attractions of Toledo is Santa Maria la Blanca, an ancient Jewish synagogue in the style of the mosque of Cordova, which, after many vicissitudes, has become a Catholic church. The name is derived from the ancient legend of Our Lady ad nives—of the snow—which led to the foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, and is evidently popular in Spain from the number of churches bearing the name. That at Toledo is very striking from the horse-shoe arches, one above the other, supported by octagon pillars with curiously-wrought capitals. ”