Pedro Álvarez de Toledo

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Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Spanish Viceroy of Naples
Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Spanish Viceroy of Naples

Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo (1484-1553) was the first effective Spanish viceroy of Naples, 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. His father Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, 2nd Duke of Alba descended from the Old Christian nobility and the ennobled Jewish converso aristocracy alike.[1] His mother Isabel de Zúñiga y Pimentel, daughter of the Duke of Bejar, came from a similar mixed background; the Pimentel, one of the major Castilian aristocratic families, were of Jewish converso origin; for generations they intermarried with both the Old Christian aristocracy and other converso nobility.[2] His most important ancestor was his paternal grandmother María Enríquez de Córdoba, whose great aristocratic family was of mixed royal Castilian and Jewish background. Throughout their Enríquez ancestry, the Álvarez de Toledo family was related to the Habsburg Kings of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperors. María Enríquez de Córdoba's sister Juana Enríquez de Córdoba was Queen of Aragon, mother of Ferdinand II of Aragon and ancestress of Habsburgs. Through this relation, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain was a distant cousin of Don Pedro.

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 viceregal 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, the entire 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, the Castel Capuano—also known as the "Vicaria".

Don Pedro is remembered as the viceroy who tried—and failed—to institute the Spanish 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.

Don Pedro Alvarez de Toledo married his relative Maria Osorio Pimentel, Marquessas of Villafranca del Bierzo. They 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. Throughout her, Don Pedro Alvarez de Toledo became an ancestor of Bourbon Kings of France and Spain, Habsburg-Lorraine Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria and Austria-Hungary and Grand Dukes of Tuscany, several Stuart Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, Kings of Italy from the House of Savoy, and other nobles.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, "Los judeoconversos en España y América". Madrid, 1971. Because ancestors of Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo frequently took wives from the converso aristocracy, the Álvarez de Toledo family is often mentioned as itselves of converso origin but most probably originally they were the Old Christian nobility.
  2. ^ Norman Roth, "Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain", Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, pp. 94-95,333.

[edit] References

  • Amabile, Luigi. (1892) Il santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli, S. Lapi, Città di Castello; (photostatic reprint, 1987, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli).
  • Croce, Benedetto. (1915) Storia del Regno di Napoli. Bari.
  • De Seta, Cesare. (1981) Le Città nella Storia d'Italia: Napoli, 'Il Viceregno' ‘‘, pp 106-128. Editore Laterza, Roma- Bari. 1981.
  • Tejada, Francisco Elìas. (2002) Napoli Spagnola, vol. 2. Controcorrente, Napoli. (transl. From Spanish original: Nàpoles hispanico. Madrid. 1958.)

[edit] External links