Pedro Álvarez de Toledo

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Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Spanish Viceroy of Naples

Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo (1484-1553) was a Spanish viceroy of Naples. Don Pedro was the first important Spanish viceroy of Naples and the ruler responsible for considerable social, economic and urban change in the city and southern Italian kingdom, in general.

He was born in 1484 near Salamanca in Spain. Spain took over the Kingdom of Naples in 1503 and solidified her grasp after the final, failed attempt by France in 1529 to retake the kingdom. For the first three decades of the century, a succession of inconsequential viceroys ruled the vicerealm. Don Pedro arrived as viceroy in September of 1532.

Don Pedro’s rebuilding of the city went on for years. Old city walls were expanded and an entirely new wall was built along the sea front. Fortresses along those walls and further up and down the coast from the city were modernized, and the Arsenale—the naval shipyards—were expanded considerably. Don Pedro also built the vice-royal palace as well as a dozen blocks of barracks nearby, a square grid of streets lined with multi-storied buildings—unique in Europe for its time. (Today, that section of Naples is still called the “Spanish Quarter”.) The goal was to make not just the city of Naples, but the Gulf of Naples and eventually, the entire vice-realm invulnerable—that is, all of the southern Italian peninsula.

Socially, Don Pedro was harsh. He instituted summary execution for petty theft on public streets and made it a capital crime to go armed at night in the city. He was ruthless in dealing with feudal barons in the countryside and encouraged their moving into the city within reach of a central authority. This breaking-up of land holdings began a trend to urbanization as both the landed class and the landless peasant class poured into Naples. By 1550 the population of 200,000 was second only to Paris in all of Europe. Within the city, he centralized administration, moving all courts onto the same premises, Castel Capuano—also known as the "Vicaria".

Don Pedro is remembered as the viceroy who tried—and failed—to institute the Inquisition in Naples, in 1547. When the announcement of the Inquisition finally came in May of 1547, the protest was immediate, turning violent very quickly. It was not a "popular" revolution, but rather a revolt by many of the landed nobility in and around Naples and Salerno, property owners who knew that the Inquisition had a reputation for confiscating the wealth and property of those whom it questioned.

Don Pedro, upon the order of the emperor, Charles V backed down and the Inquisition was called off. In 1552, Charles V calmed the populace further by sending Toledo off to Siena to handle a local problem. The viceroy died in Florence the following year. Don Pedro's reputation as a city-builder has stood the test of time. The city of Naples still bears his stamp in countless places. He is entombed in the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli.

He had three children:

His eldest daughter, Ana Alvarez de Toledo y Pimentel married Lopo de Moscoso Osório, 4th count of Altamira.

His only son, Garcia de Toledo Osório became the 3rd marquis of Villafranca del Bierzo and married Vittoria Colonna.

His youngest daughter, Eleonora married the Grand-Duke Cosimo I de' Medici in 1539.

[edit] Bibliography

Amabile, Luigi. (1892) Il santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli, S. Lapi, Città di Castello; (photostatic reprint, 1987, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli).