Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/397

373 MONASTIC REFORMS. 373 In one of her interviews with the djing minister, chapter the queen requested his advice respecting the nom- '- — ination of his successor. The cardinal, in reply, earnestly cautioned her against raising any one of the principal nobility to this dignity, almost too ex- alted for any subject, and which, when combined with powerful family connexions, would enable a man of factious disposition to defy the royal author- ity itself, as they had once bitter experience in the case of Archbishop Carillo. On being pressed to name the individual, whom he thought best qual- ified, in every point of view, for the office, he is said to have recommended Fray Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros, a friar of the Franciscan order, and confessor of the queen. As this extraordinary per- sonage exercised a more important control over the destinies of his country than any other subject, during the remainder of the present reign, it will be necessary to put the reader in possession of his history. ^ Ximenez de Cisneros, or Ximenes, as he is Birth of Ximenes. usually called, was born at the little town of Tor- wretched parents frequently de- 8 Salazar de Mendoza, Cron. del stroyed their offspring by casting Gran Cardenal, lib. 2, cap. 46. — them into wells and pits, or expos- Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 8. ing them in desert places to die of The dying cardinal is said to have famine. " TAe more compassion- recommended, among other things, ate," he observes, "laid them at that the queen should repair any the doors of churches, where they wrong done to Joanna Beltraneja, were too often worried to death by by marrying her with the young dogs and other animals." The prince of the Asturias ; which sug- grand cardinal's nephew, who gestion was so little to Isabella's founded a similar institution, is said taste that she broke off the conver- to have furnished an asylum in the sation, saying, " the good man course of his life to no less than wandered and talked nonsense." 13,000 of these little victims ! Ibid., cap. 61.