Rodriguez Lucero was appointed inquisitor of Cordova and we learn from an uyuda de costa or gratuity granted to him, July 27, 1500, to reimburse him for the expenses of a journey to Granada, Malaga and other places, that he had been busy in organizing his subordinates throughout the newly acquired territory. He speedily acquired the unbounded confidence of Ferdinand by unscrupulous activity which was fruitful in confiscations, and his career was a tissue of atrocious fraud and cruelty which in 1506 led to a rising in Cordova and eventually to his deposition. We have no records as to his proceedings in Granada against the Moors, baptized or unbaptized, but his persecution of the Archbishop Talavera and his family, on the most absurd and extravagant charges of being engaged in a plot to convert Spain to Judaism by the arts of witchcraft, shows how little mercy was to be expected by those of lesser degree who might provoke his cupidity or enmity.2

Meanwhile Talavera, unconscious of the trouble which was to embitter his closing years, was earnestly pursuing his apostolate with constantly increasing success. Unfortunately Ferdinand and Isabella, who were in Granada from July until the middle of November, 1499, were not content with the progress of the work and desiring to expedite it they summoned to Talavera's assistance the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, who was busy at Alcala laying the foundations for his university. Much as Spain owes to this extraordinary man, his services were far overbalanced by the irrep

1 Archivo de Simancas, loc. cit.

2 I have considered the career of Lucero in some detail in a paper in the American Historical Review, Vol. II. p. 611,

arable mischief which he wrought in a work for which he was peculiarly unfitted. Of his disinterestedness there could be no question as well as of his zeal for religion as he understood it, but he was peremptory, inflexible and unforgiving, and even his admiring biographer admits that his temper was so imperious that he deemed force to be the only way of ensuring obedience and that in his atrabilious moods it was dangerous to approach him so that he sometimes acted through fury rather than prudence, as was seen in the conversion of the Granadan Moors and the attempt to conquer Africa.1

Such was the colleague allotted to the saintly Talavera, whose milder nature readily yielded to the stronger individuality. For awhile they worked successfully together and when the sovereigns left Granada for Seville it was with the injunction to proceed with gentleness and not provoke a revolt. Ximenes threw himself into the work with his customary ardor. He borrowed considerable sums which he lavished on the principal Moors whom he desired to win over, giving them silken vestments and crimson caps, of which we are told they were inordinately proud. In conjunction with Talavera he held conferences with the alfaquies and morabitos—the priests and teachers—explaining to them the Christian doctrines, and leading many of them to instruct their flocks in the true faith with such effect that applications for baptism became numerous and in a single day, December 18, 1499,

1 Gomecii de Rebus Gestis a Francisco Ximenio Lib. Iv. fol. 95, Lib. v. fol. 128, Lib. VII. fol. 218. How much his zeal overran his discretion as a statesman is visible in his attempt, in 1500, to unite Ferdinand, Henry VII. and Manoel of Portugal in a crusade.—Wadding. Annal. ann. 1506, n. 73,

three thousand were baptized by the simple expedient of sprinkling them in a body, and the mosque of the Albaycin was consecrated as the church of San Salvador.1

All this was legitimate enough, but Ximenes showed his temper when, alarmed by the progress of Christianization some of the stricter Moslems endeavored to check it by dissuasion. He promptly had them imprisoned in chains and treated with great harshness. The most prominent among them was a Zegri, proud of his royal descent and distinguished by eminent personal gifts. Him Ximenes confided to one of his priests named Pedro Leon with instructions to break his spirit, which was duly accomplished by starvation until the Zegri begged to be taken before the Christian alfaqui. In squalor and chained hand and foot he was brought into the presence of Ximenes, when he asked to be relieved of his fetters in order that he might speak freely. When this was done he explained that the previous night Allah had appeared to him and commanded him to embrace the Christian faith, which he was ready to do. Pleased with his conquest, Ximenes had him washed, clothed in silk and baptized, when he took the name of Gonzalo Fernandez Zegri, in honor of Gonzalo of Cordova, not as yet the Great Captain, with whom he had fought during the siege of Granada, and Ximenes further gratified him with a pension of fifty thousand maravedis.

It is apparent from these events that already the separation had been enforced between the Moors and the incoming Christians, the former being confined to a small Moreria, of about 500 houses, in the city, known as the Antequeruela and to a larger one of some 5000 houses occupying the Albaycin, a quarter of the town on higher ground, of rocky and uneven surface. The Moorish population of the city at the time was estimated at 40,000.

Having once given way to his imperious temper it would seem that Ximenes could no longer control it. Impatient of the slow process of persuasion he imagined that he could end the matter at a blow and he refused to listen to those who urged moderation and gentleness. He summoned the alfaquies to surrender all their religious books; five thousand were brought to him, many splendidly adorned with gold and silver and priceless illuminations. There were numerous applicants for these specimens of Moorish art, but Ximenes refused them all and the whole were publicly burnt, save a few on medicine which he reserved for the library at Alcala. All this foreshadowed still more forcible proceedings. The Moors were becoming more and more disquieted at the increasing disregard of their guarantees and it needed but a spark to cause an explosion.

Ximenes was not long in furnishing the necessary provocation. It will be recalled that among the provisions of the capitulation was one which protected all renegades from persecution. There appears to have been many of these, who, with their children were known as elches. To a rigid churchman it was insupportable that one who had once, by baptism, been subjected to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or his children who ought to have been baptized, should be exempted from it. Such cases came clearly within the cognizance of the Inquisition, which was not to be defrauded by any human compact, and Ximenes procured from Inquisitor-general Deza delegation of power to deal with them. He made use of this to arrest those who were proof against persuasion until it happened that one of his servants named Sacedo, with Bellasco de Barrionuevo, a royal alguazil, arrested in the

Albaycin a young daughter of an elche. As they were dragging her through the plaza of Bib-el-Bonut the principal one in the Albaycin—she cried out that she was to be forcibly baptized in contravention of the capitulations ; a crowd collected and commenced to insult the alguazil, who was hated by reason of his activity in making arrests; he answered disdainfully, passions were heated and in the tumult he was killed with a paving-stone while Sacedo would have shared his fate had not a Moorish woman rescued him and hidden him under a bed until midnight. The trouble spread, the Moors flew to arms, skirmished with the Christians and, regarding Ximenes as the violator of the compact, they besieged him in his house. He had a guard of two hundred men who defended him until morning, when Tendilla came down from the Alhambra with troops and raised the siege. For ten days the two archbishops and Tendilla parleyed with the Moors, pointing out the penalties they would suffer if they did not submit before forces should come from Andalusia, to which they replied that they had not risen against the sovereigns but in defence of the royal faith, that it was the officials who had caused disturbance by violating the capitulations and that everything would be pacified if these were observed. At length Talavera boldly went to the plaza Bib-el-Bonut with a chaplain and a few unarmed servants; the sight of his calm and benevolent features wrought a revulsion and the Moors kissed the hem of his gown as they had been wont to do. Tendilla followed with his halberdiers, but tossed into the crowd his crimson cap and rode bareheaded as a sign of peace; it was picked up, kissed and returned to him. Thus an armistice established itself; Tendilla and Talavera urged