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 NOTES TO THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER to have been agreeable rather than handsome; her features were regular, her green eyes vivacious, her complexion olive, her hair reddish blond, and her stature above the medium. Note 392, page 202. Ferdinand the Catholic, (born 1452; died 1516), was the son of Juan II of Navarre and Aragon, and is justly regarded as the founder of the Spanish monarchy. The means employed by him in building up his power were perfidy towards other rulers and ruthless oppression of his own people. Besides the other events of his reign, noted above, mention should be made of his cruel expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. These and his other persecutions, supposed at the time to be actuated by zeal for pure religion, were in fact chiefly a source of revenue, and the policy thus inaugurated, — of stifling the commerce, the industry, the free thought and the energy of the nation at the beginning of its greatness, — is now seen to have been one of the important causes of its decline. Note 393, page 204. Of these two remarkable queens, one was doubtless Federico Ill's widow, the Isabella del Balzo who is mentioned below (see note 400). The other may possibly have been her predecessor Joanna, the aunt and widow of Ferdinand II; or (more probably) Ippolita Maria, who was a daughter of the first Sforza duke of Milan and wife of Ferdinand II's father and predecessor Alfonso II, and of whom Dennistoun says (ii, 122): "It was for this princess that Constantine Lascaris composed the earliest Greek Gram- mar; and in the convent library of Sta. Croce at Rome there is a transcript by her of Cicero's De Senectute, followed by a juvenile collection of Latin apo- thegms curiously indicative of her character and studies." Note 394, page 204. Beatrice of Aragon, (born 1457; died 1508), was the daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabella de Clermont. In 1476 she married Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. On his death in 1490, she mar- ried Ladislas II of Bohemia, who for a time prevented the succession of Mat- thias's natural son John. However the youth attained the Hungarian throne with the aid of the Emperor Maximilian; whereupon Beatrice was repudiated by Ladislas and her marriage was annulled by Alexander VI. In 1501 she returned to Italy, resided at Ischia and died childless. Like her elder sister, the Duchess Eleanora of Ferrara (see note 399), she was a woman of culti- vation and taste, and in spite of her political intrigues, she is praised for having done much to strengthen the intellectual bonds between Italy and Hungary, to which country she invited Italian poets, scholars and artists. Note 395, page 204. Matthias Corvinus, (born 1443; died 1490), was the son of the famous Hungarian general Janos Hunyadi, and in 1458 was pro- claimed King of Hungary by the soldiers whom his father had so often led to victory. His life was a nearly continuous series of great enterprises, among the most noted of which were his campaigns agamst the Turks and his siege and capture (1485) of Vienna, where he thereafter resided chiefly and died. By 397