Peter I of Castile

“ In turn he made treaties with the kings of Castile and Aragon, who were at war with each other; promising to assist Peter the Cruel to regain his throne, from which he had been driven in 1366 by his half-brother Henry of Trastamara, and then assuring Henry and his ally Peter of Aragon that he would aid them to retain Castile. ”

“ He renewed the ban against Peter the Cruel of Castile, and interfered in vain against Peter IV. of Aragon. He made peace between Venice and Genoa, and in 1360 arranged the treaty of Bretigny between France and England. In the last years of his pontificate he was busied with preparations for a crusade and for the reunion of Christendom, and sent to Constantinople the celebrated Carmelite monk, Peter Thomas, to negotiate with the claimants to the Greek throne. He instituted in 1354 the festival of the Holy Lance. ”

“ Moreover his right to the throne was contested by others besides a large body of the Castilian nobility. King Ferdinand of Portugal, who had renewed the alliance which his father had concluded with Don Pedro, tried to win the crown of Castile for himself after the murder of the latter, on the ground that he, being the grandson of Beatrice, princess of Castile, was the only male descendant born in lawful wedlock. To support his claim he allied himself with Muhammed, the Moorish prince of Granada. Like Pedro IV of Aragon, he received with all honour the malcontent and fugitive Castilian nobles. ”

“ To carry one realm too far forward before going back to bring forward the other is destructive of a sense of synchronology, while the attempt to carry them simultaneously is as bewildering as it is difficult.
To carry Castile forward to that well-known time when Isabella wed Ferdinand of Aragon is to be compelled to retrace our steps for three centuries. It seems most convenient to do as follows: Leaving Castile at the moment of the death of that easily remembered monarch Pedro the Cruel, to take up Aragon and bring its history to the same point. ”

“ The ire of the French king is greatly roused by the ill-usage of his sister-in-law; Navarre is with him to a man, and Aragon friendly.
To many, Enrique has come as a saviour to a much-tormented land. No one was safe from the attacks of Don Pedro, and his own discontented subjects appealed to the Pope, who has placed Castile under an interdict.{110}
If Don Pedro dies, his brother will undoubtedly succeed him. If he lives, he is strong enough to fight him. ”

“ But after the flight of Don Tello, the infantry of Castile began to give way; and, after some desperate efforts by Henry to support the contest, resistance was abandoned. The number of slain, on the part of the vanquished, was eight thousand. Many thousands were made prisoners—all but a handful, who accompanied the defeated count into Aragon, whence he escaped into France. Success so splendid is seldom to be found in the annals of history: it at once restored Pedro to the Castilian throne. ”

“ By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. ”

“ Such was Castilian faith in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the grave.
If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon, by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, bishop of Pamplona, where he will find it recorded in the History of King Don Alonzo VI., on the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be lightly abandoned to the doubter. ”

“ The war with Genoa and the uprisings in Sardinia which had filled the reign of his predecessor gave trouble also to Pedro, but after a campaign in Sardinia in person he was able temporarily to get the upper hand. His intervention in the civil wars of Castile has already been noted, and from these he came out with some not greatly important advantages. He also cast his eyes upon Sicily with a view to restoring it to the direct authority of the Aragonese crown, although this was not accomplished in his reign, and he encouraged commercial relations with the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. ”

“ To all except the citizens of the great cities, a king would be acceptable; Peter was chosen with little opposition in a parliament at Palermo, and a struggle of twenty-one years began, of which Charles and Peter saw only the first stage. In fact, after Peter had helped the Sicilians to relieve Messina, he was very little in Sicily; he had to defend his kingdom of Aragon, which Pope Martin had granted to another French Charles. ”

“ No sooner had Pedro IV ascended the throne, than Queen Leonora, apprehensive of the consequences of her late quarrel with him, fled to Fraga, whence she implored the protection of her brother Alfonso, king of Castile. Alfonso naturally espoused his sister’s cause. The pope despatched a legate to exhort the two kings to settle their dispute by negotiations, and to insist on justice being done to Queen Leonora. Their deliberations ended in nothing, beyond a suspension of actual hostilities. ”

“ The fleet prepared for Constantinople had to be turned against the rebel islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game of his royal master, refused to mediate; the Sicilians thereupon declared that from St. Peter they would turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown to Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's daughter, Constance, who for some years had welcomed Sicilian refugees at his court and had been ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on Charles' great nephew Charles of Valois, a son of Philip III of France ”

“ His country had all the more reason to lament him, as a war with the Moors was imminent and a fresh regency in prospect.
Ferdinand, the brother of Henry III, had so fully won the esteem of the nation that the Castilian nobles tendered him the crown. This the high-minded prince [45] indignantly refused; but lest the kingdom should be left to the weak hands of a child and a woman, he undertook the government in conjunction with Catherine, the widowed queen, and displayed such admirable qualifications for rule that Castile was for many years spared the evils usually inseparable from a minority. ”

“ Castile's proud monarch to the nuptial bed
In happier days her royal daughter led:
To him the furious queen for vengeance cries,
Implores to vindicate his lawful prize,
The Lusian sceptre, his by spousal right:
The proud Castilian arms and dares the fight.
To join his standard as it waves along,
The warlike troops from various regions throng:
Those who possess the lands by Rodrick given,
What time the Moor from Turia's banks was driven;
That race who joyful smile at war's alarms,
And scorn each danger that attends on arms ”

“ The rivalries between Castile and Aragon were of old standing, and no sharper contrast is to be found in Europe than that which existed between the primitive and poverty-stricken population of the Asturias, the proud Castilian noble, and the busy trader of Barcelona, the democratic capital of Catalonia. Nor was there more unity within the separate kingdoms themselves. The social divisions were deepest in Castile. There the nobles enjoyed numerous exclusive privileges, notably that of freedom from taxation. ”

“ Such was the condition of Castile when the death of the miserable Henry IV, December 12, 1474, cast the responsibility of royalty on his sister Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. The power of the crown was eclipsed; the land was ravaged with interminable war between nobles who were practically independent; the sentiment of loyalty and patriotism seemed extinct: deceit and treachery, false oaths—whatever would serve cupidity and ambition—were universal; justice was bought and sold; private vengeance was exercised without restraint; there was no security for life and property. ”

“ It was formerly the custom to introduce a living saint Peter—a character which belonged by a natural and inalienable right to the baldest head in the village—who acted the apostle’s denial, swearing by Christ, he did not know the man. This edifying part of the performance is omitted at Castilleja; though a practised performer crows with such a shrill and natural note as must be answered with challenge by every cock of spirit in the neighbourhood. The flourish of a trumpet announces, in the sequel, the publication of the sentence passed by the Roman governor ”

“ If criticism maintains that this benevolent government degenerated into despotism during the sixteenth century, while Spain became the tool and purse of imperial ambitions, it should be remembered that neither Castilian Queen nor Aragonese King could have fought the evils they found successfully with any other weapon than their own supremacy, nor is it fair to hold them responsible for the tyranny of their successors. Ferdinand indeed may be blamed for yielding to the lure of an Italian kingdom ”

“ The Castilian ecclesiastics were often lax in their morals. The higher prelates were possessed of great riches and authority. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the people in Castile had more power, compared with the power of the sovereign, than in any other European country. ”

“ The Aragonese Cortes however utterly declined to follow this example, declaring that they owed allegiance to Ferdinand and his male heirs alone; their obstinacy producing a public tension only relieved when in August, 1498, the young Queen gave birth to a son, whom all were willing to acknowledge.
The longed-for Prince, heir of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal was born at last; the highest ideals of Spanish unity seemed on the eve of fulfilment; but, almost within the hour that gave him life, his mother died; and the Infante Miguel, weak and fragile, was not destined to reach his second year. ”

“ His marriage with Catherine of Lancaster, a sister of Queen Philippa of Portugal, hastened the conclusion of peace with that country, and Castile then had leisure to restore her lost prestige abroad among Christians and Mohammedans alike. Although the king relied upon skilful diplomacy rather than upon arms and armies, his forces by land and sea were in such a state of efficiency as not merely to enable him to repel all attacks with vigour but to secure for him the authority of an arbitrator in quarrels between others. ”

“ Peter, in the midst of the court of the king at Barcelona, [1] where the kings of Aragon resided, led the life of a recluse, practising the austerities of a cloister. He gave no part of his time to amusements, but spent all the moments which the instruction of his pupil left free, in holy prayer, meditation, and pious reading. The Moors at that time were possessed of a considerable part of Spain, and great numbers of Christians groaned under their tyranny in a miserable slavery both there and in Africa. Compassion for the poor had always been the distinguishing virtue of Peter. ”

“ For this intent the Roman pontiffs gave them authority, and order was given that the princes should help them with their favor and arm. These judges were called 'inquisitors,' because of the office which they exercised of hunting out and making inquest, a custom now very general in Italy, France, Germany, and also in the kingdom of Aragon. Castile, henceforth, would not suffer any nation to go beyond her in the desire which she always had to punish such enormous and wicked excesses. ”

“ He had soon an army on foot with which two of his generals attacked, defeated, and took Ferdinand. [41] The infante, however, from fear of the king’s vengeance, was conducted into Castile. Pedro himself advanced against Saragossa, the very stronghold of faction. One instance of ill fortune had damped, as much as success had encouraged, the rebels: they received him with great humility, renounced the privileges of the union, and threw themselves wholly on his mercy. Thirteen of the most obnoxious ringleaders were put to death ”

“ Not only did the Peter’s Pence impose hard servitude upon Leo XIII but he was also the prisoner of papal tradition—the eternal King of Rome, riveted to the soil of Rome, unable either to quit the city or to renounce the temporal power. The fatal end would be collapse on the spot, the dome of St. Peter’s falling even as the temple of Olympian Jupiter had fallen, Catholicism strewing the grass with its ruins whilst elsewhere schism burst forth: a new faith for the new nations. ”

“ Peter III., king of Aragon (1236-1286) , son of James the Conqueror, and his wife Yolande, daughter of Andrew II. of Hungary, was born in 1236. Having married Constance, daughter of Manfred of Beneventum, he came forward as the representative of the claims of the Hohenstaufen in Naples and Sicily against Charles, duke of Anjou. Peter began the long strife of the Angevine and Aragonese parties in southern Italy. His success in conquering Sicily earned him the surname of “the Great.” ”

“ All but the second watch are asleep in their warm pavilions; the second watch sit by the mast, sheltered from the chilly gale by a broad sail-cloth; sleep begins to overpower them, and they tell stories to entertain one another. For beautiful, picturesque simplicity there is no sea-scene equal to this in the Odyssey, or Æneid.
[425] What time he claim'd the proud Castilian throne.—John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, claimed the crown of Castile in the right of his wife, Donna Constantia, daughter of Don Pedro, the late king. ”