Cardinal, Regent, Conquistador
1436 – 1517
Meet Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, Bishop, Cardinal, Regent, Conquistador, and the antagonist in The Conquest of Liberty.
In the Conquest of Liberty, Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros is a principal antagonist, not because he was rotten to the core, but because his core so closely aligned with the very impediments to liberty. Where Archbishop Talavera believed deeply in persuasion and education of the Arab Moors living in Spain, Cisneros as reported by biographers,
“With the fervor of a zealot, Cisneros forced mass baptisms. He reported to Pope Alexander VI in December 1499 that some three thousand Muslims had been converted. Individual baptism was not possible for such a number and so water was sprinkled in passing over a kneeling crown to initiate them into the Christian faith.”
It is also alleged that Cisneros had thousands of Arab books publicly burned, excepting only books of medicine, philosophy, and history.
Where reform-minded contemporaries like Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and others promoted the idea that every Christian should be able to read the Bible, Cisneros protested that “in this disastrous and deplorable era, in a decadent world in which the minds of the common people have declined from the old standard of purity prevailing in St. Paul’s time, there could be no worse suggestion than to publish in the vernacular tongues the sacred words that were to be heard only by pure and holy men.”
See what I mean?
Cisneros came into great favor with Isabella and Ferdinand. His zeal for both church and state led him to appointments as Archbishop of Toledo, The Grand Inquisitor, conqueror of cities in North Africa, and the conquest of the Kingdom of Navarre, Regent of Spain, and Confessor to Queen Isabella, a role previously held by Cardinal Talavera before Talavera was appointed as Archbishop of Granada,
Even in the best light, Cisneros is described as stern, fanatical, and inflexible, even by the harsh standards of his time, with a confidence that became overbearing.
Freedom, liberty, choice, and agency were not in Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros’ makeup. Though he was personally dedicated to the church and the conversion of non-Christians to Christ. As the Grand Inquisitor, it was conversion, expulsion, or the pyre.
For this, the good, which there was much, was overshadowed by his stand against liberty.
