Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/129

ALF the crown of Castile. In 1128 he overturned the unworthy regency of his mother, and took the authority into his own hands. The king of Castile having interfered, was defeated, and obliged to acknowledge the independence of Portugal. The Moorish kings of Seville and Badajoz, having received reinforcements from the emperor of Morocco, resolved to attack Alfonso, but after some skirmishes, they were totally defeated at Campo Ourique in 1139. He next took Lisbon from the floors, by the aid of a body of English and French crusaders. Having interfered in the war between the kings of Navarre and Aragon, he was taken prisoner, near Badajoz, and only released on the cession of his late conquests. In 1184, the Moors, under Aben-Yakof, invaded Portugal, and laid siege to Santarem. Alfonso came to relieve the town, and speedily drove the enemy out of his dominions. He died the year following (1185), to the universal regret of his subjects. Equally noted as a warrior and a lawgiver, he has been compared to Alfred the Great.—J. W. S.  ALFONSO or AFFONSO II., surnamed, or the Fat, third king of Portugal, grandson of the foregoing; was born in 1185, and succeeded to the throne in 1211. An unprincipled attempt to deprive his sisters of their inheritance, involved him in war with the king of Leon, in which he suffered a defeat. He next made war against the Moors, whom he defeated at Alcacer del Sal in 1217. An injudicious attempt to tax the clergy, brought upon him sentence of excommunication from the pope. Alfonso made submission, but died suddenly before a full reconciliation had been effected, in 1223.—J. W. S.  ALFONSO III., a son of the foregoing, was born in 1210, became regent of Portugal owing to the misconduct of his elder brother Sancho, and on the death of the latter assumed the sovereignty. He expelled the Moors from Algarve, and annexed it to his dominions. The divorce of his wife Mathilda, and the desire of limiting the military orders, drew upon him the censure of the pope, and filled the remainder of his reign with troubles. He died in 1279.—J. W. S.  ALFONSO IV., was born at Coimbra in 1290. His early life was stained by repeated acts of rebellion against his father. In 1325 he succeeded to the crown of Portugal, and spent the first year of his reign in idleness. An indecisive war against Castile succeeded, terminated by a treaty in which both parties agreed to unite their forces against the Moors. In this war Alfonso distinguished himself at the battle of Tarifa. In his old age he caused Inez de Castro, the wife of his son Dom Pedro, to be murdered, a crime which involved Portugal in all the horrors of a civil war. The king, covered with shame and remorse, died in 1357.—J. W. S.  ALFONSO V. was born at Cintra in 1432, and succeeded his father Duarte in 1438, under the regency, first of his mother, and afterwards of his uncle. He embarked in a crusade against the Moors of Africa, and after a series of sanguinary conflicts made himself master of Tangier in 1471. He established a colony on the coast of Guinea. He endeavoured to seize the crown of Castile, but was defeated at Toro by Ferdinand of Aragon. He founded the first library in Portugal at Coimbra, and died of the plague at Cintra in 1481.—J. W. S.  ALFONSO VI., was born at Cintra in 1643, succeeded to the throne of Portugal in 1656, and, after a feeble reign, was deposed in 1667, to make room for his brother Pedro. Died in 1683.  ALFONSO I.,, duke of Ferrara, was born in 1476, and succeeded his father Ercole I. in 1505. Up till his death in 1534, he was almost constantly engaged in war, first with the Venetians, and then with the popes. It was Alfonso I. who commanded the papal troops, which, on the formation of the league of Cambrai by Pope Julius II., Louis XII. of France, and the Emperor Maximilian, were sent against Venice. He was successful in this campaign, in which the poet Ariosto was present. Pope Julius II. afterwards commenced hostilities against Duke Alfonso, because the latter refused to concur in his change of policy, and join him in a league with the Venetians against the French. Alfonso, however, defeated the papal troops, and subsequently also the Spanish auxiliaries sent from Naples. In 1512, the French commander, Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours, together with Duke Alfonso, defeated the combined papal and Neapolitan troops in a great battle before Ravenna, in which Gaston was slain. Fabrizio Colonna, the pope's general, was made prisoner in this engagement, but honourably liberated by Alfonso—a good turn which Colonna requited by contriving the escape of the duke from Rome, when, having repaired thither to make his peace with the pope on the evacuation of Italy by the French, orders were issued for his arrest. Leo X., who succeeded Julius, proved more placable than the latter, and once more Alfonso was made gonfaloniere or general of the papal forces; but Leo X. still refused to let him have Modena and Reggio, cities which belonged to his duchy. When Francis I. invaded Italy, the Ferrarese prince, true to his old policy, again joined the French, and thus found himself a second time arrayed against the supreme pontiff, who, uniting with the Austrians, defeated the French, and would have completely crushed Duke Alfonso, had not death stayed his hand. Alfonso enjoyed a breathing-time during the papacy of Adrian VI.; but he was only saved from ruin under that of Clement VII. (1523), by allying himself with the emperor Charles V., who finally confirmed him in the possession of Modena and Reggio. This able prince died in 1534. The celebrated Lucrezia Borgia was his wife. Alfonso's favourite arm in war was artillery, and in his campaigns he made great use of cannons of his own founding.—A. M.  ALFONSO II.,, last of the dukes of Ferrara of the house of Este, and celebrated as the prince at whose court the poet Tasso lived and loved so unfortunately, succeeded his father Ercole II. in 1559. His mother Renée was daughter of Louis XII. of France. After the death of his first wife, Lucrezia da Medici, he married Beatrice, sister of the Emperor Maximilian II., whom, in 1566, he aided with a contingent of 4000 men in his war against the Turks. In 1579, Alfonso II. married Margarita Gonzaga. He had no children by any of his three wives, and when he died in 1597 his line thus became extinct. Pope Clement VIII. claiming the reversion of Ferrara as a fief of the papal see. The court of Ferrara, though one of the smallest in Italy, was in the time of Alfonso II. perhaps the most splendid. One of his sisters was married to Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino; the other, Leonora, the object of Tasso's affection, lived and died single (1581), at her brother's court.—A. M. <section end="129H" /> <section begin="129I" />ALFONSO III.,, succeeded his father Cesare in 1628, not as duke of Ferrara, but merely as duke of Modena and Reggio. He abdicated the year following, and retired into a convent of the Capuchins, becoming a member of that order, under the name of Giambattista da Modena. He died in 1644. <section end="129I" /> <section begin="129J" />ALFONSO IV.,, duke of Modena and .Reggio, in 1658 succeeded his father Francis I., under whom he had served in the war against the Spaniards for the possession of Monferrat. The command of the French troops was, on his father's death, continued to Alfonso TV., who had married the niece of Cardinal Mazarin in 1655. To this prince the gallery of paintings at Modena owes its origin. His daughter, Maria Beatrix, became the wife of James II. of England. Died 1662.—A. M. <section end="129J" /> <section begin="129K" />ALFONSO, a Spanish rabbi, who, having become a Christian, was by Cardinal Ximenes employed on the preparation of the Polyglot Bible of 1514-17, printed "in Complutensi Universitate," in 6 vols. folio. <section end="129K" /> <section begin="129L" />ALFONSO, a Spanish theologian, professor at the university of Salamanca, lived in the fifteenth century. He published a work with the title, "Tractatus de Pœnitentiis et Actibus Pœnitentiarum et Confessionis, cum forma absolutionis et Canonibus Pœnitentiariis." <section end="129L" /> <section begin="129M" />ALFONSO —in Latin, Alphonsus a Sancta Maria—a Spanish historian, son of the bishop of Burgos, was born in 1396. He occupied successively the canonries of Segovia and Santiago of Compostella; and after a successful mission to one of the courts of Germany, on behalf of John II. of Castile, succeeded his father in the bishopric of Burgos. A history of Spain, from the earliest times, with the title, "Anacephalæosis, nempe regum Hispanorum, Romanorum Imperatorum, Summorum Pontificum, necnon regum Francorum," some devotional books, and a treatise on the laws of chivalry, were his principal works. He died in 1456.—J. S., G. <section end="129M" /> <section begin="129Nnop" />ALFONSO,, a celebrated navigator of the sixteenth century, was born at Cognac about the year 1500. An adventurer of the most enthusiastic character, he surveyed with admirable accuracy the shores of Asia and America, along which he performed numerous voyages. An abridgment of his narrative of these voyages, published in 1599 by a poet of the name of Mellin de Saint-Gellais, was a most valuable contribution to geographical science. A copy of verses prefixed to Mellin's work contains the only notices of Alfonso's life which have reached us, and these are of the most meagre description. He died probably about the year 1557.—J. S., G. <section end="129Nnop" />