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Gonzalo Fernández De Córdoba Y Aguilar

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Gonzalo Fernández De Córdoba Y Aguilar GONZALO FERNÁNDEZ DE CÓRDOBA Y AGUILAR “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1453 September 1, day (Old Style): Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar was born in Montilla on the Iberian Peninsula as a “cadet son” (someone who, although not a hidalgo, indeed of legitimate birth, could nevertheless have no expectation of privilege, and would therefore need to plan to make himself useful in the military or the church unless and until the designated-heir son has died) of Pedro Fernández de Córdoba, count of Aguilar and Priego, with Doña Elvira de Herrera y Enríquez. He and an elder brother would be orphaned while quite young, but eventually he would make himself the Duke of Terranova and Santangelo, Andria, Montalto and Sessa, known as “El Gran Capitán” for having created the nearly invincible formation of pikemen, arquebusiers, and musketeers known as the tercio: NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1465 The influence of the Archbishop of Toledo and of the Marqués de Villena enabled Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar to enter the service of the “infante,” of Spain, Alfonso. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1483 King John II of Portugal refused to finance Christopher Columbus’s “The Enterprise of the Indies” proposal for a cockamamie wrong-way voyage. The visionary would need to relocate from Portugal to Spain, where the royalty knew less about the actual circumference of this planet. The initial military accomplishment of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar came at the conquest of the Fortaleza de Tájara. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1486 Christopher Columbus submitted a proposal for a westward expedition to the East, to Castile’s Isabella the Catholic and Aragon’s Ferdinand the Catholic: “Let’s all think outside the box, shall we, just for a moment? We’ve all been saying to ourselves, the way to get to the East is to go toward the east, and yada yada yada — but who is to say that going west might not be a better way to get to the East? Now (holding up his hand) let’s just think about this for a moment, shall we, just for a moment?” Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar successfully defended the advanced post of Íllora near Granada from its recapture by the Moors. Sword dancing was outlawed in Vitoria, Spain on account of “the scandalous behaviour and shedding of blood occasioned by them.”1 1. Such Iberian dances often feigned combat between Moors and Christians — this is suspected to be the source of the English term “Morris dancing.” HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1489 February 9, Monday (1488, Old Style): George Hartmann was born (he would design astrolabes, timepieces, etc.). February 14, Saturday (1488, Old Style): Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar got married with Luisa Manrique de Lara, one of the ladies in waiting to Queen Isabella I of Castile. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1491 November 25, late Friday night (Old Style): Abu l-Qasim al-Muhli put his signature on the document which ended the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The orderly transition of power from Muhammad XII Boabdil to the Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile was scheduled in this document for the following May (some of the Muslim leaders would desert their sinking ship early, and in consequence their ruler would need to rush the transition, so actually it would be on January 2d that the cross of Christendom would rise above the tower of the Alhambra). WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF November 28, Monday (Old Style): Since Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar was able to communicate in the Berber dialect of Arabic, he was made one of the team that was arranging the ongoing details of the capitulation of the Moors of the Alhambra of Granada. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA 1492 Pope Innocent VIII died, and the Spanish Cardinal Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia of Játiva in Spain became Pope Alexander VI, the 2d pope of the Borja family from the region of the Basque Pyrenees. HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA After Charles VII had been crowned by Joan of Arc, Charles VIII took control of affairs in France. Henry VII invaded France after the French threw their support to Perkin Warbeck, Flemish-born imposter, as claimant for the English throne. At the Peace of Etaples, France expelled Warbeck and paid England an indemnity of £159,000. Lorenzo de’ Medici died. His son Piero became ruler of Firenzi. For his services during the Catholic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar was granted land at Loja near the city of Granada. There were numerous Jews in the court of Queen Isabella of Castille and King Ferdinand of Aragon. They were divided for the moment into a group of unconverted ones led by Abraham Senior (the gent who had arranged the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469), and a group of conversos or “New Christians.” The unconverted Jews were in general unimpressed by Christopher Columbus’s agenda, while the converted ones were in general in support of it. (The reason for this difference is unknown, although there has been speculation that the conversos were hoping that Columbus could discover for them a new homeland to the west, to which they could migrate in order to finally free themselves from Spanish Christian suspicion and oppression.) It was after Columbus had been rejected at court, and had begun a journey toward Santa Fe, that one of these conversos, the Secretary of the Exchequer, Luis de Santángel, persuaded Queen Isabella to sponsor Columbus’s voyage into the Ocean Sea, by offering to loan her whatever money this would require. Thus it is especially ironic that Columbus’s departure toward a new world, and the final expulsion of the unconverted Jews from Spain, a Judenrein, would take place within three days of each other: And blindly giving themselves over to their vain hopes, they submitted to the hardships of the road and left their native regions, great and small, old and young, on foot and mounted on donkeys and other beasts, and in carriages, and made their way to the various points of departure to which each of them had to go. And on the roads and terrains over which they passed they encountered much hardship and misfortune, some of them falling HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA down, to be picked up by their companions, others dying, others being born, others getting sick, so that no Christian could look upon them without anguish, and many along the way tried to persuade them to accept baptism. And some in their grief converted and remained, but very few, for their rabbis were ever by their side giving them courage, getting the women and children to sing, and playing tambourines to cheer everyone up. And thus they left Castile, some going to the ports from which they then embarked, others going to Portugal. [this was written by Andrés Bernáldez, curator of the village of Los Palacios] ANTISEMITISM Not only was it not the case that Chris’s opponents believed that the earth was flat, but also, a fact seldom appreciated, Chris himself did not believe that the earth was an exact sphere. He believed that these others, traditionalists who thought of the earth as a sphere, were not sufficiently nuanced: his Earth was shaped like a pear, and somewhere on it was to be discovered a grand nipple-like elevation: I have always read that the world comprising the land and the water was spherical, as is testified by the investigations of Ptolemy and others.... But I have now seen so much irregularity ... that I have come to another conclusion respecting the earth, namely, that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear ... or like a round ball, in one part of which is a prominence like a woman’s nipple. Chris believed the tip of this nipple to be the Garden of Eden. He would come to be of the opinion that this great nipple was to be found by sailing up against the currents of the Orinoco River on the coast of South America. HDT WHAT? INDEX GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA GONZALO DE CÓRDOBA The more I reason on it, however, the more convinced I become that the place of which I have spoken is the terrestrial paradise. The oldest terrestrial globe still in existence, known as the Erdapfel (Earth Apple), was constructed by Nürnberg geographer Martin Behaim. Poor guy, he was evidently unaware of Chris’s nipple, as he was unaware as yet of the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica — but he was of course able to depict places Europeans had actually visited, such as the Azores and other Atlantic islands.
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