less contemporaries is, of course, Alvaro de Luna. Yet, superior as he no doubt was to his contemporaries, and to his inevitable successor, to the ungrateful Villena and to the scandalous Beltran de la Cueva, his renown is due rather to his domination of the feeble monarch who abandoned to him for forty years the absolute government of Castile, than to any enormous merits of his own. In spite of much historical glorification, Alvaro de Luna must be considered as a somewhat commonplace favourite, of the more magnificent order; a strong and unscrupulous minister, who ruled a weak and submissive king by the accustomed methods, and who perished in the accustomed manner. His success, great as it was, was purely personal. With almost unlimited power, his administration of Castile was to the last degree disastrous: and his strength of character was never for forty years displayed in the good government of Spain. Magnificent he certainly was, a commanding and an attractive figure in Spanish history, admired by his contemporaries, celebrated in a fascinating Chronicle, and ennobled by a tragic and dignified death, he may rank higher among the rulers of his country than Lerma or Godoy, but he is unworthy of a moment's comparison with Almanzor.1 1 I have derived much information from the Cronica de D. Alvaro de Luna, etc., etc., etc., ed. con varios apendices by D. Josef Miguel de Flores, Secretario de la Real Academia de Historia (Madrid, 1784). Among the apendices, printed at pp. 1-112, is The SEGURO DE TORDESILLAS, by Don Pedro Hernandez de Velasco, Conde de Haro, referred to in the text, and also the Libro del Passo Honroso defendido por el Excelente Caballero Suero de Quiñones, compiled by Pero Rodriguez Velena and edited by Juan de Pineda, pp. 1-68. The whole is preceded by a good Prologo, and makes a most interesting volume. (The archives of the present Count de Haro (the Duke of Frias) contain a great quantity of documents referring to the curious affair of the "Seguro de Tordesillas" by which the "good" Count de Haro guaranteed the safety of all parties to the conference. I am indebted to the Duke of Frias for the abstracts of these documents, of which also a full catalogue has just (1899) been printed in Madrid.-H.) |