Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros

Spanish scholar-official

• Born: 1436
• Birthplace: Torrelaguna, Castile (now in Spain)
• Died: November 8, 1517
• Place of death: Roa, Spain

Jiménez worked to maintain a united Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He founded the University of Alcalá de Henares and sponsored the famous Polyglot Bible.

Early Life

Gonzalo Jiménez de Cisneros, the baptismal name of the future Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (frahn-SEES-koh hee-MAY-nays day sees-NAY-rohs), was the first son of a family of esteemed lineage and humble means. His father, Alonso Jiménez de Cisneros, was trained in the law and made a modest living as collector and administrator of the papal tithe in the town of Torrelaguna. Young Gonzalo received his earliest training in Latin and reading at the household of an uncle, Alvaro, a priest in Roa. He then traveled to Alcalá and continued his studies of Latin and humanities in a school operated by the Franciscan order. He entered Spain’s prestigious University of Salamanca in 1450 and remained there until he completed a degree in canon and civil law. He also became well versed in the philosophical currents of the day, showing particular affinity for biblical scholarship. Jiménez then traveled to Rome in search of more promising opportunities. In Italy, Jiménez made a living as a lawyer, representing cases before consistorial courts. He left Rome in 1465 and returned to his birthplace to care for his recently widowed mother.

Life’s Work

Aside from his ordination and legal experience, Jiménez’s most promising professional prospect on his return was the hope of fulfilling the terms of a letrae expectativae, a promissory papal letter appointing its possessor to any expected vacancy in a particular diocese. Jiménez had to wait years for a suitable opportunity. He lived in Torrelaguna until he received news of a vacancy in Úceda, in the diocese of Toledo. The Archpriest of Úceda had recently died, and Jiménez made a claim to that benefice in 1473. His ambitions were frustrated, however, when the powerful archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, blocked his candidacy. Jiménez’s stubborn refusal to relinquish his right to Úceda so enraged Carrillo that he had Jiménez imprisoned. Jiménez was jailed for six years and was released in 1479, when influential relatives pleaded on his behalf. Once out of prison, Jiménez took possession of the Úceda post.

By now in his forties, Jiménez would soon enter the most productive and important stage of his career. He had the good fortune to come under the protection of the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Pedro de Mendoza, and under his tutelage, Jiménez moved to the chaplaincy of the Cathedral of Sigüenza in the archdiocese of Seville. Mendoza, an enemy and rival of Carrillo, was the scion of one of Spain’s most influential and accomplished families and a political ally and confidant of Queen Isabella I of Castile. Jiménez’s advancement was now assured.

Mendoza promoted Jiménez once again, to the post of general vicar of Sigüenza, and even greater opportunities opened up when Mendoza succeeded Carrillo to the see of Toledo in 1483. Jiménez, however, opted for a different path. After his mother’s death in 1486, he decided to set aside secular concerns and enter the Franciscan order. He took vows in 1486, changed his name from Gonzalo to Francisco in honor of the order’s founder and began a new life devoted to prayer, fasting, and contemplation. The physical descriptions and portraits of Jiménez that have survived depict his slight build, weather-beaten skin, sharp profile, and thin body, features believed to have resulted from his rigid adherence to the physical rigors of monastic life.

Despite his attempt to withdraw from public life, Jiménez played a central role in the events that shaped the last quarter of the fifteenth century. His belated and somewhat surprising rise as a public figure began when, at the recommendation of Mendoza, he was invited to the royal court to serve as Isabella’s confessor. Isabella became devoted to her confessor. In the fall of 1495, in a bold move, she selected Jiménez to the archbishopric of Toledo. Mendoza had died earlier that year, and Isabella secured papal approval to appoint Jiménez to preside over Spain’s wealthiest and most important ecclesiastical see. She had to defend and impose her will over her husband, who wanted the prestigious post reserved for his illegitimate son. Jiménez accepted this great honor without hesitation and proceeded to reorganize the archiepiscopal see to reflect his religious convictions, tastes, and predilections.

A story associated with this period of Jiménez’s career merits repetition. When Jiménez moved into his new quarters at the archiepiscopal palace in Toledo, the story goes, he ordered his staff to live, dress, and eat with the simplicity and austerity of Franciscan monks. Believing that such external signs of humility would undermine the prestige of the see, members of his staff appealed to the pope, asking him to help persuade Jiménez to reconsider. It seems that Jiménez heeded papal advice rather well. The Toledean ecclesiastical palace became once again the model of elegance and splendor it had always been.

Jiménez undertook a series of building projects such as the reconstruction of the main altar of the cathedral, contracting for that purpose the most accomplished architects, sculptors, and artists of the period. He also commissioned plans for the construction of his proudest achievement, the new University at Alcalá de Henares, which he foresaw as a center for Humanistic learning. He entrusted the project to Pedro Gumiel, after receiving approval in a papal bull issued in April, 1499. The plans would come to fruition when several of the university’s many colleges opened in 1508.

A related project was Jiménez’s wish to prepare the world’s first edition of a Polyglot Bible , intended to contain parallel, annotated Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin versions of the Old Testament, and a Greek and Latin version of the New Testament. Jiménez gathered lexicographers and biblical scholars at Alcalá and purchased and borrowed an impressive number of biblical manuscripts from libraries throughout Europe for his scholars to consult and compare. The resulting six-volume work, known as the Alcalá or Complutensian Polyglot Bible, was printed in 1517 and distributed for the first time three years later.

Jiménez’s interest in learning, evident during his years at Salamanca and in his sponsorship of the university and important works of scholarship, contrasts with his harsh treatment of the Muslim population of Granada. According to the terms of Granada’s surrender in 1492, Spain’s new subjects were assured freedom of religion. Ferdinand II and Isabella I hoped, however, that all Spanish Muslims would eventually renounce their faith and adopt Christianity. Isabella had appointed her new confessor, Hernando de Talavera, to oversee this transition. In 1499, impatient with the pace of Talavera’s methods, Jiménez traveled to Granada to inject fervor and zeal into the process. When the Muslim majority protested his intrusion, Jiménez retaliated by ordering all Arabic books, sacred and secular, burned in public squares. He spared three hundred medical works, a collection destined for the bookshelves at Alcalá de Henares.

Jiménez’s harsh methods backfired and caused a number of serious and violent uprisings. He is held responsible for the unnecessary chaos, bloodshed, and distrust that ensued and for the wanton destruction of precious and irreplaceable Muslim books and manuscripts. This entire episode served to tarnish his image as a Humanist and lover of learning, although it did not affect his relationship with his patron, Isabella. He remained her trusted and respected adviser until her death in 1504.

Isabella’s death produced a political crisis in Spain by jeopardizing the partnership of the two crowns, Castile and Aragon, which made up the nation. The union between the two had come about through marriage and personal agreement, and the death of one of the partners threatened this fragile arrangement. The question of inheritance was, then, crucial.

Isabella’s choice of heir for the crown of Castile was her third daughter, Joan, who in 1496 had married Philip of Habsburg archduke of Austria and son of Emperor Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire. The couple lived in Flanders. Isabella, recognizing her daughter’s incapacity to rule Joan was emotionally unstable and is also known as “Joan the Mad” intended for the couple to rule jointly and to be succeeded by their first son, Charles. Isabella had also appointed her husband Ferdinand regent; he was expected to govern the country until Joan and Philip made their way to Spain. Rivalry between Philip and Ferdinand soon developed, however, and each side tried to recruit supporters from the always quarrelsome Castilian nobility.

Joan and Philip arrived in Castile in 1505, but their rule was a brief one; Philip died mysteriously in the fall of 1506, and Joan’s mental state took a turn for the worse. Jiménez, in the absence of Ferdinand, who had removed himself to Aragon and then to Italy, assumed the regency until Ferdinand’s return in 1507. As regent, he acted to protect the interests of Castile, while keeping in check the ambitions of a number of restless courtiers. That same year, Jiménez was elevated to cardinal by the Holy See, and Ferdinand conferred on him the title of inquisitor general of Castile.

Jiménez the statesman and clergyman was also, for a brief time, a soldier. Using the rich rents of his archbishopric of Toledo, he persuaded Ferdinand to order a military campaign against the North African port of Oran, a favorite refuge of pirates who raided Spanish ships and ports. Jiménez planned and executed the military campaign that captured the city in 1509. Oran was to remain in Spanish hands until the eighteenth century.

After his military triumph, Jiménez returned to Alcalá de Henares to oversee the opening of the university and to attempt to recoup funds spent on the campaign. He remained in close contact with Ferdinand and might have been instrumental in persuading the king to cede the crowns of Aragon and of Navarre (annexed by Ferdinand in 1512) to his grandchild Charles, as Isabella had done with Castile. Ferdinand’s original choice had been his second grandchild and namesake who, unlike Charles, had been reared in Spain.

When Ferdinand died in 1516, Jiménez assumed the regency of Castile for a second time, in anticipation of the arrival and majority of Charles, who had remained in Flanders after his parents’ return to Spain. Charles arrived on September 19, 1517, and was poised to claim the throne of a strong and united state composed of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. The young king had intended to dismiss Jiménez, but Jiménez died on November 8, 1517, before receiving official notification of his dismissal. He was buried in the College of Saint Ildefonso at the University of Alcalá de Henares, and a magnificent marble monument was built over his grave two years later. The college fell into ill repair after the university moved to Madrid in 1836, and in 1857, the cardinal’s remains were transferred to the Church of San Justo y Pastor in the city of Alcalá.

Significance

Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros was, in many ways, the quintessential Spaniard of the Renaissance, embodying all the conflicts and contradictions of the period. Personally and intellectually devoted to rigid Christian observance, he nevertheless displayed great interest in scholarship and learning. He at once persecuted Muslims and collected their medical works. As inquisitor general, he investigated and intimidated some Jewish converts to Christianity, while employing others in his biblical project. A Franciscan by choice and training, he was committed to a life of austerity; yet his personal disregard for material comforts did not interfere with his sense of duty and the demands of the high office he occupied. As archbishop of Toledo, he was known to wear the coarse Franciscan hair shirt under the splendid robes of the office. Eager to devote himself to a life of contemplation, he led armies into battle more effectively than he led his own Franciscan monks to accept reform.

Jiménez’s greatest achievement, however, might very well be his years of loyal service to Isabella and, after her death, to Ferdinand and the couple’s heirs. As a statesman, he was dutiful and loyal, placing the interests of his patrons above his own and leading a life above reproach. While he did not introduce any significant new policies, through his patient and devoted service, he made possible the continued union of Castile and Aragon, which made Charles the most powerful king of his age.

Bibliography

Boruchoff, David A., ed. Isabel la Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Anthology of essays that seek to penetrate the carefully crafted public self-image of Isabella to gain insight into the actual woman. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Edwards, John. The Spanish Inquisition. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Tempus, 1999. Analysis of the motivations behind the Inquisition, its political and religious functions, and its cost in lives and suffering. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Lyell, James P. R. Cardinal Ximenes. London: Grafton, 1917. A brief account of the cardinal’s career, in which Lyell attributes to Jiménez a greater degree of cunning and deception than do most of his other biographers.

Lynch, John. Spain, 1516-1598: From Nation State to World Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: B. Blackwell, 1991. A serious and academic treatment of the first century of rule by the house of Austria; an excellent survey of all aspects of Spanish society during the 1500’s.

Mariéjol, Jean Hippolyte. The Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella. Edited and translated by Benjamin Keen. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1961. A favorable account of the role of Jiménez in the reign of the Catholic monarchs. The author praises Jiménez for undertaking the publication of the Polyglot Bible yet criticizes him for not requiring a more critical approach toward the material on the part of those who participated in the project.

Merton, Reginald. Cardinal Ximenes and the Making of Spain. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1934. A fairly detailed biography of Jiménez. Merton believes that King Ferdinand and Jiménez were essentially rivals. In this account, Jiménez emerges as a paragon of virtue and statesmanship.

Prescott, William H. History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. 3 vols. 15th ed. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1859. Reprint. Abridged by C. Harvey Gardiner. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962. The third volume of this classic work is devoted to a detailed narrative account of the final period of the reign of the Catholic monarchs. Prescott, a liberal thinker, is critical of Jiménez’s dogmatism and of his religious bigotry, assigning part of the blame to the society and period in which Jiménez lived.

Rummel, Erika. Jiménez de Cisneros: On the Threshold of Spain’s Golden Age. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999. Concise survey of Cisneros’s life and influence, with a final chapter summarizing his posthumous image. Includes genealogical table, two appendices, bibliography of works cited, and index.

Starkie, Walter. Grand Inquisitor. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1940. The author, whose interest in Spain is wide-ranging, approaches Jiménez as a cultural figure who embodies certain qualities associated with the national character, such as faith and the tragic sense of life.