Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/392

368 CHAPTER V. DEATH OF CARDINAL MENDOZA. — RISE OF XIMENES. — ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM. Death of Mendoza. — His Early Life, and Character. — The Queen his Executor. — Origin of Ximenes. — He enters the Franciscan Order. — His xscetic Life. — Confessor to the Queen. — Made Archbishop of Toledo. — Austerity of his Life. — Reform of the Monastic Orders. — Insults offered to the Queen. — She consents to the Reform. PART II. Death of Mendoza. In the beginning of 1495, the sovereigns lost their old and faithful minister, the grand cardinal of Spain, Don Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza. He was the fourth son of the celebrated marquis of Santillana, and was placed by his talents at the head of a family, every member of which must be allowed to have exhibited a rare union of public and private virtue. The cardinal reached the age of sixty-six, when his days were terminated after a long and painful illness, on the 11th of January, at his palace of Guadalaxara.^ 1 Carbajal, Anales, MS., aiio 1495. — Salazar de Mendoza, Cron. del Gran Cardenal, lib. 2, cap. 45, 46. — Zurita, Anales, tom. v. fol. 61. — Pulgar, Claros Varones, tit. 4. His disorder was an abscess on the kidneys, which confined him to the house nearly a year before his death. When this event happened, a wiiite cross of extraordinary mag- nitude and splendor, shaped pre- cisely like that on his arms, was seen in the heavens directly over his house, by a crowd of specta- tors, for more than two hours ; a full account of which was duly transmitted to Rome by the Span- ish court, and has obtained easy credit with the principal Spanish historians.