Quest For Manciolino: Patron, Part 1
Sins of the Fathers: The Legacy of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Cabra
The Quest for Manciolino
This has been an ongoing series, fortunately you don’t have to be familiar with the earlier stories to understand this one, but if you want to check them out, here are the links.
Printers:
Part 1: The Mainz Diocesan Feud
Part 3: Nicolò 'lo Zoppino' d'Aristotile d'Rossi
This next portion of the series will focus on Manciolino’s patron, Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba y Zúñiga, we hope you enjoy!
Sins of the Father: The Legacy of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Cabra—Part 1
Introduction
To learn more about Antonio Manciolino’s life, it’s time we turn to the life of his patron, Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba y Zúñiga, Count of Cabra, Viscont of Iznájar, Lord of the house of Baena, Duke of Sessa, Terranova and Santángelo, Ambassador to the most Serene Pontiff, Adrian VI. The life of Don Luis is a compelling tragedy, he was born into a long line of legendary warriors and Spanish statesmen, the supposed sons of Roland. As such, he was forced to measure his accomplishments against those of his forbearers—thus, his struggle is one of legacy, and a harrowing story, as we’ll see.
In the late 15th Century the name Fernández de Córdoba became renowned, Luis was the progeny of a line that would rise from being mere border lords, rife with factional in-fighting, to the highest nobility who carried tremendous respect and authority not just in Iberia, but across Christendom. By the early 16th century, the Fernández de Córdoba lineage—from both branches, Baena and Aguilar—were recognized as first-families in Spain, great warriors, and peers of Most Catholic King, Ferdinand and his industrious and powerful wife Isabella. Through conquest and blood, they became tremendously wealthy, marked as one of the richest families in Españia by the 1520’s. The scions of the Fernández de Córdoba line were heroes of the Reconquista, the conquest of Grenada, and champions of the early Italian wars. In order to understand the life of Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba y Zúñiga, Duke of Sessa, we must understand the legacy to which he was beholden; that of his father, Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Cabra, and his uncle, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Enríquez de Aguilar, el legendario ‘Gran Capitán’.
One singular moment in the mid-fifteenth century almost changed the course of the Fernández de Córdoba lineage and prevented this story from ever unfolding. Prior to the unification of the houses of Castile and Aragon, Cordoba was a land rife with factionalism, it was a rough boarder-land bristling with hardened warriors who ruled with an ethos of frontier justice. At the time, the Fernández de Córdoba family was divided into two primary branches, the Baena and the Aguilar. The rivalry between these two clans was fierce and steeped in blood. As on one occasion, when Pedro Fernández de Córdoba, the father of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, was returning home to Montilla from Castile, where he served as Juan II and Don Enrique’s master of horse, with his new bride Elvira de Herrera, he was intercepted by Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Count of Cabra (The grandfather of Don Louis Fernández de Córdoba), his cousin, who came charging toward his retinue at the head of a raiding party determined to take both Pedro’s new bride and her dowry. Pedro quickly got Elivra, her ladies and her baggage into the nearby castle of Espejo, owned by another Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Lord of Alcuadete, who was Master of the King’s Pages, and nephew of the Diego (the Count of Cabra) ridding to attack Pedro (There are a lot of Diego’s in this story, so from now on, we’ll call this new Diego, Diego of Alcuadete and the other one the Count of Cabra). Having secured his bride and his fortune, Pedro turned on the Count of Cabra, unfurled his banners, and charged.
Pedro survived the battle with his cousin the Count of Cabra, and would go on to have two sons with Donna Elvira, Alfonso and Gonzalo. However, he wouldn’t live to see his boys grow to manhood. Alfonso was six, and Gonzalo was three when their father passed away—taken by a severe cold. The boys would grow up and learn the art of war from their father’s bannermen—hard warriors that carried the boys to battle on their saddles as good-luck charms. Pedro had chosen a knight, Don Diego de Carcamo, specifically as his son’s tutor, and made sure they were brought up with an education in court etiquette, chess, geography, the conduct of warfare and jousting. They were also taught about the history of the Roman ruins that surrounded their castle in Montilla. Gonzalo became an excellent horseman, some would say one of the best in Spain, proficient in both the Moorish and Spanish styles of riding, but his true love was swordsmanship, it’s said of—or perhaps even by Gonzalo himself that he, “…used to take a rapier and spend hours fencing in a room all alone where no one could see (him). For not only did swordsmanship come as naturally to (him) as walking or running, but it seemed to (him) an activity perfectly suited to the natural movement of the body.” (Purcell 1962, pg. 38).
The boy’s upbringing wasn't easy, they had enemies and jealous Lords all around them, all hardened warriors with deep seeded ambitions, who coveted the immaculate fortification of Montilla, they had to be careful. To stave off a potential attack from Baena branch of the Fernández de Córdoba, a match was arranged between young Alfonso, and the daughter of Diego Fernández de Córdoba, the Count of Cabra. However, old family tensions, and the influence of his father’s advisors meant this match never came to be. The two factions would remain divided, factions that later came to be known as the Aguilaristas and Cabristas.
The broader political character of the Spain that Alfonso and Gonzalo grew up in was that of a kingdom in tumult. The reigning sovereign King Enrique IV was weak, indecisive, and childless. To curry favor from the growing malcontents in the Spanish aristocracy, Enrique decided it was time for a crusade, and announced that he intended to conquer the last vestiges of the Nasrid caliphate holding out in southern Spain—that he would finally bring Grenada under the heel of House Aragon. He named Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Count of Cabra, as the principal commander for this mission, showing his favor to the Baena branch of the Fernández de Córdoba lineage. Naturally, when Diego made his call to arms, no riders approached the castles of his Aguilar cousins strewn throughout Córdoba or their Aguilarista allies. Much to the delight of the lords of Aguilar however, nothing came of this crusade, salacious rumors swirled around the expedition, going as far as to claim that Enrique spent more time hunting than attempting to fight—and that his hunting partners were often the Moors that he swore to set off and conquer. His army returned home penniless, petulant, and lacking in piety.
The shame of this botched crusade coupled with the problem of Enrique’s succession split the kingdom into warring factions. The Baena branch of the Fernández de Córdoba family backed their king, while the Aguilar branch sided with the rebel faction, stirring in Ávila who supported Enrique’s half-brother Alfonso of Castile. Things got tense in 1465, the Ávila rebels brought charges against the king, accusing him of being a homosexual, sympathetic toward Muslims, having a conciliatory and overcautious demeanor, and most importantly citing that the king was not the father of his heiress Juana, who they claimed was sired by Beltrán de la Cueva, giving her the epitaph Beltráneja to mock her dubious origins. Alfonso Carillo, Archbishop of Toledo, accompanied by other powerful Spanish lords, built an effigy of Enrique, removed the crown from his mannequin, followed by his sword and staff, each representative of the sovereign’s powers, and bestowed them on the young Alfonso “the innocent” of Castile, Prince of Asturias, in an event known to history as the Farce of Ávila. Then, to cap off the event Diego López de Zúñiga, threw the effigy to the ground, shouting, “to the ground, bitch!”
The Court of the Pretenders
Alfonso Fernández de Córdoba, meanwhile, had come of age and was now the Lord of Montilla, while Gonzalo was left to make his own way in the world as the second son of the family. Their mother, Elvira, thought it was best for young Gonzalo to find his path in the court of Alfonso the innocent or the pretender—depending on which side you were on—so, she sent the twelve-year-old boy to Castile with his tutor Don Diego de Carcamo. The court of Alfonso moved around constantly, meandering across Spain between the most powerful castles of their known allies. At the second battle of Olmedo in 1467, the rebel forces managed to fight the Kings army to a draw and forced Enrique to recognize Alphonso as his presumptive heir. Gonzalo was hardly at court a year before Alphonso suddenly died, he was 14. Cause of death was a trout pastry, or plague, or perhaps more likely—poison. Enrique IV was fond of assassins; he’d attempted to assassinate Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba’s de Herrera uncle not long before the Farce of Ávila, but the uncle managed to stop the attack and disarm his Moorish attacker—so suspecting dear King Enrique of assassinating his half-brother Alfonso, after a humiliating concession with a poisoned trout pastry isn’t that far of a stretch.
Next in line to the Spanish crown—barring a change in Enrique’s proclivities—was Doña Isabella of Castile, Enriques half-sister, and the sister of our trout-sickened prince Alfonso. Isabella, already the strategic and pragmatic matron that later history would come to recognize and revere, didn’t see the continued pursuit of the Succession War as beneficial to the health of the Spanish state, so she struck a deal with King Enrique IV. He would recognize her as his heir apparent on the condition that he would have the right to choose her future husband, with the caveat that Isabella would have the ability of refuse any potential suitors she deemed unfit, or disagreeable.
Gonzalo was quickly becoming a favorite in Isabella’s wandering court. The young, handsome and highly capable caballero was everything a young courtier aspired to be, and he quickly became a favorite of the future Queen, earning the nickname the Prince of the Caballeros from Doña Isabella. He would remain in her service for four years while she struggled to settle on a suitable match. Enrique broke his word on multiple occasions, and tried to force her into marriages that weren’t to her liking, men like the decrepit and dying king of Portugal, the feeble and weak Duke of Guyenne of France, Don Pedro Girón Acuña Pacheco and Richard of Gloucester the brother of the King of England. On a few occasions the King went as far as trying to have the heiress kidnapped, like the time Gonzalo got word of armed men approaching them in the city of Ocaná, and had to quickly muster Isabella’s guard and escort her to Madrigal, then to Valladolid, with the king’s henchmen in hot pursuit: one hundred and eighty-seven miles (301 km) through varied terrain.
The rebellious lords that supported Isabella’s brother and now her claim to the throne finally presented a match of their own, the handsome and haughty seventeen-year-old Ferdinand of Aragon. Word eventually reached Enrique about the potential union of the Castilian and Aragonese houses, and he mobilized his men to keep a close watch on Isabella who was holed up in Castile, but the rebels were a step ahead of their sovereign. October of 1469, they disguised Ferdinand as a muleteer and smuggled him into the city. Despite almost being murdered by a sentinel and discovered after dropping his satchel full of the money sequestered for his journey, the young lord of Aragon wed his bride of Castile, and together they united the two great houses of Spain at last. Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Isabella’s Prince of Caballeros stood beside the bride as her royal page.
When news reached the King, he stripped Isabella of her title, and bestowed it upon his eight-year-old daughter Juana. To ensure there were no repeats of the Farce of Ávila, the King and Queen both solemnly swore a public oath that the patronage of their daughter was legitimate, then married her by proxy to the twenty-four-year-old Charles, Duke of Guyenne, of the house Valois, but the duke died in 1472 before the marriage was consummated. Gonzalo would remain in the court of Isabella and Ferdinand for another year after their nuptials, but eventually he pulled away and returned home to Montilla. It’s often speculated that Gonzalo was in love with Isabella, and that he didn’t want to distract her from her duty to her new husband. Ferdinand was a great rider proficient in the jinet and Spanish styles; but he wasn’t as good as Gonzalo, he was an avid chess player; but Gonzalo was better, and if he loved Isabella—it was clearly time for Gonzalo to leave. He was the better man.
Once Gonzalo left the court, he seems to have gone through a bout of depression, he tried to become a monk, but they wouldn’t take him on account of his patronage, then after a falling out with his brother, Gonzalo took up residence with the knights of a holy order, the Knights of Calatrava, where he again tried to devote himself to a life of chastity and service to God, but was again rejected. He was allowed to stay with the knights, train with them, and partake in their spartan lifestyle (their former master was the afore mentioned Don Pedro Girón Acuña Pacheco). This seems to have suited Gonzalo well enough, until he made peace with his brother—just in time for chaos to consume Córdoba.
The Massacre of the Jews and Converts 1473
The conversos, or New Christians in Córdoba (Muslim and Jewish converts) and Jews flourished under the governorship of Alfonso Fernández de Córdoba, he had used their loyalty to weed out the influence of the Baena branch of the Fernández de Córdoba in the city’s civic societies, but eventually their success and Alfonso’s favoritism drew the ire of the Old Christians in the city, and tensions eventually spilled over to open conflict in 1474. In the middle of a bloody riot, Alfonso rode out to quell tensions, but he was startled by someone approaching his horse aggressively and drove his lance through a local blacksmith marching on behalf of the Old Christians, a member of the Brotherhood of Córdoba. A procession of Old Christians carried the corpse of the blacksmith back to his villa, where the man was apparently revived by a miracle, and even greater fervor consumed the Old Christians of Córdoba. They started ransacking and looting the houses of the New Christians and Jews, murdering and raping their way through Córdoba, burning everything, murdering entire families.
Alfonso and Gonzalo hastily called upon the local militia, and attempted to bring order to the city, fighting side by side, street to street, alas their small force wasn’t enough to overcome the fervor of the mob and they were pushed to retreat inside the fortress of Alcázar of the Christian Kings. They tried everything they could to negotiate with the Old Christians surrounding the citadel, even going as far as declaring that the New Christians could no longer hold office in the city and agreeing that all of the Jews and New Christians would have to relocate to the old Jewish district in the city. This didn’t have the intended consequences they were looking for; the New Christians fled the city in masse, betrayed by their greatest allies—worse this revelation came just as Gonzalo and Alfonso’s Baena cousins were arriving with an army to stake their claim. Don Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Count of Cabra, rode into the city as the champion of the Old Christians, and turned the screws on his Aguilar nephews. The brothers were forced to cut their way out of the fortress and leave their dreams of ruling Cordoba to their hated rivals. Don Diego the count of Cabra wasn’t done, however, in the wake of the massacre, Alfonso had recognized that the strength of Aguilar family was waning, and immediately had Gonzalo marry Maria de Soto Mayor, a union that came with a sizeable dowry (100,000 maravedis) and the city of Santaella; money and men. Before Gonzalo had time to settle Diego attacked. He caught Gonzalo and his men off-guard, and despite a valiant attempt to hold off the Count of Cabra’s onslaught, Santaella capitulated, and Gonzalo was taken from the city in chains.
While Gonzalo was locked in a cell in Cabra castle, one tragedy followed another. His wife died in childbirth, his son was stillborn, and Spain erupted in civil war when King Enrique IV died on 11 December 1474.
¡Viva el Rey y la Reina!
Upon the death of the king, both Isabella and Juana claimed the throne of Castille. In support of the Heiress Juana’s claim, the kingdom of Portugal, her maternal cousins, mobilized for war. Likewise in Spain, as the legal heiress, the Portuguese-Castilian princess had every right to claim sovereignty, and many Spaniards felt that it was absurd that Isabella was trying to usurp that right. As Portuguese troops crossed the frontier into Castille, uprisings sprang up across the country, with Juana’s powerbase centering in the towns and cities of New Castile, Andalusia, and many of the principalities of Old Castile.
For Isabella’s stake, the old alliance of rebellious lords reassembled, with new allies matrimoniously acquired by Ferdinands claims in Aragon joining the fray, like the Enriquez, Mendoza, and Alverez de Toledo. Here, ironically, the factions of the Fernández de Córdoba flipped their allegiances. The Count of Cabra, persuaded by Ferdinand, backed the claim of Isabella, despite his unwavering allegiance to Enrique IV, while Alfonso Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar, likely influenced by his father-in-law Juan Pacheco, supported the claim of Princess Juana (A little spiteful after his brother was rejected by Isabella perhaps)—obviously Gonzalo had no say in the matter, as he was still in prison.
King Alfonso V of Portugal’s marriage to Juana, at Plasencia, kicked off a brutal Castilian Succession war. During the height of the conflict, Isabella pressed the count of Cabra to release Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. The cantankerous count had no choice but to relent, and Gonzalo took the field under Alonso de Cárdenas, the grandmaster of the Order of Santiago. The bloody back and forth affair came to a head at the battle of Toro, where the left flank of the Castilian forces defeated King Alphonso’s forces, but their right flank was forced to retreat before the onslaught wrought by John of Portugal. When the dust settled both sides claimed victory, but the consequences of the battle were much more substantial for the Portuguese claimants. Ferdinand and Isabella were the first to get their side of the story out to the public, they had riders sent to all of the cities that supported the la Beltraneja claim and announced that they’d won a resounding victory at Toro. The la Beltraneja faction crumbled under the pressure, fearing the coming retribution, and left the Portuguese wandering through Spain with no one to call friend. King Alphonso V and John had no choice but to pack-up and head home.
With the kingdoms of Spain united under their control, Ferdinand and Isabella looked to complete the centuries-long ambition of the Spanish Kingdoms, by defeating the Nasrid caliphate, conquering Granada, and completing the reconquesta. On the fields of Loja, Tajara, Illora and Monefrio, up to the walls of the city of Grenada itself, the scions of Fernández de Córdoba, Aguilaristas and Cabristas alike, united under one cause, would forge a legacy that would last millennia.
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Works Cited
Purcell, Mary. The Great Captain: Gonzalo Fernández De Córdoba. [1st ed.]. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962.
Liang, Yuen-Gen. Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm. United States, University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated, 2011.
Prescott, William H. The Art of War in Spain: The Conquest of Grenada 1481-1492. [1st ed]. London: Greenhill Books, 1995.
Elliot, John. Imperial Spain 1469-1716. London. Penguin Group. 1963.
Quintanilla Raso, Maria Concepcion. Alfonso Fernandez de Cordoba y Aguilar. Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/45542/alfonso-fernandez-de-cordoba. Accessed 11/11/2023.
Franco Silva, Alfonso. Diego Fernandez de Cordoba y Montemayor. Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/42896/diego-fernandez-de-cordoba. Accessed 11/11/2023.
Franco Silva, Alfonso. Diego Fernandez de Cordoba y Cabra. Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/42899/diego-fernandez-de-cordoba. Accessed 11/11/2023.
Ruiz-Domenec, Jose Erique. Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba. Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/11225/gonzalo-fernandez-de-cordoba. Accessed 11/11/2023
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba - Wikipedia
Alonso de Cárdenas - Wikipedia
Isabella I of Castile - Wikipedia