Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, born as Gonzalo Jiménez de Cisneros to a poor family in Torrelaguna in Castile in 1436, had studied at Alcalá de Henares and Salamanca, afterward having been ordained a priest.

In 1459, he had traveled to Rome to work as a consistorial advocate where he attracted the notice of Pope Pius II.

He had returned to Spain in 1465 carrying an "executive" letter from the Pope giving him possession of the first vacant benefice, which turned out to be Uceda.

However, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, the Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, had refused to accept the letter, wishing instead to bestow the benefice upon one of his own followers.

When Cisneros insisted, he was thrown in prison.

For six years, Cisneros held out for his claim, free to leave at any time if he would give it up, but at length in 1480 Carillo relented at Cisneros' strength of conviction and gave him a benefice.

Cisneros had traded it almost at once for a chaplaincy at Sigüenza, under Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, the bishop of Sigüenza, who shortly after appointed him vicar general of his diocese.

At Siguenza, Cisneros had won praise for his work and seemed to be on the sure road to success among the secular clergy when, in 1484 at the late age of forty-eight, he had made the abrupt decision to become a Franciscan friar.

Giving up all his worldly belongings, and changing his baptismal name, Gonzalo, for that of Francisco, he had entered the Franciscan friary of San Juan de los Reyes, recently founded by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile at Toledo.

Not content with the normal lack of comforts for a friar, he voluntarily slept on the bare ground, wore a cilice, doubled his fasts, and generally denied himself with enthusiasm; indeed throughout his whole life, even when at the height of power, his private life is rigorously ascetic.

He had retired to the isolated friary of Our Lady of Castañar and built a rough hut in the neighboring woods, in which he lived at times as an anchorite, and later became guardian of a friary at Salzeda.

Meanwhile, Mendoza (now Archbishop of Toledo) had not forgotten him, and in 1492 had recommended him to Isabella as her confessor.

Jiménez had accepted the position on condition that he might still live in his community and follow the religious life, only appearing at court when sent for.

The post was politically important, for Isabella had taken counsel from her confessor not only in religious affairs but also matters of state.

Isabella's Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain, followed almost immediately upon Cisneros' appointment as her confessor.

Cisneros' severe sanctity had soon won him considerable influence over Isabella, and in 1494 he had been appointed Minister Provincial of the order for Spain.

Cardinal Mendoza dies in 1495, and Isabella had meanwhile secretly procured a papal bull nominating Cisneros to Mendoza's Archdiocese of Toledo, the richest and most powerful in Spain.

With this office is also given the office of chancellor of Castile.

Isabella tries to surprise Cisneros by presenting the bull as a gift in person, but he does not react as she had expected.

Instead, he flees her presence and runs away, only to be overcome by Isabella's guards and forced to accept the position against his will.

Despite this, Cisneros personally still maintains a simple life: although a message from Rome requires him to live in a style befitting his rank, the outward pomp only conceals his private asceticism.

Cisneros, from his new position, had set about reforming the Franciscan order in Spain.

The ordained friars have had to become celibate, giving up the practice of having "wives" (concubines, Spanish barraganas).

They now have to reside in the parish in which they are supposed to work, attend confession, and preach every Sunday.

There has been intense opposition.

By 1498, the reforms have been expanded to include not only Franciscans but other religious orders as well.

The resistance is so fierce that four hundred monks and friars have left for Africa with their "wives" and converted to Islam.

The Minister General of the order himself had come from Rome to attempt to temper the archbishop's strict reforms, but Cisneros, backed by the influence of a strong Queen, has managed to impose them.

Cisneros accompanies the court of the Spanish Inquisition in 1499 to Granada, and here interferes with the Archbishop of Talavera's efforts to peacefully convert its Muslim inhabitants to Christianity.

Talavera favors slow conversion by explaining to the Moors, in their language, the truths of the Catholic religion, but Cisneros says that this is "giving pearls to pigs," and proceeds with forced mass conversion.

He orders the public burning of all Arabic manuscripts that can be found in Granada—five thousand is the lowest figure the contemporary sources give—except those dealing with medicine.

The indignation of the unconverted Mudéjares (i.e., Iberian Muslims living in Christian territories) over this gross violation of the Alhambra treaty swells into the open revolt known as the First Rebellion of the Alpujarras.

The revolt is violently suppressed and they are given a choice—contrary to the terms of Granada's surrender—of baptism or exile.

The majority accept baptism.

Cisneros reports by 1500 that "there is now no one in the city who is not a Christian, and all the mosques are churches".

However, he has created a problem that will only end with the expulsion from Spain of Moriscos in 1609.

(Morisco will become the common term used for descendants of Iberian Moors in Spanish and Portuguese territory, regardless of their adherence to Christianity.)

Isabella of Castile had received the title of Catholic Monarch by Pope Alexander VI, a pope of whose behavior and involvement in matters Isabella did not approve.

Along with the physical unification of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand had embarked on a process of spiritual unification, trying to bring the country under one faith, Roman Catholicism.

As part of this process, the Inquisition has become institutionalized.

After a Muslim uprising in 1499, and further troubles thereafter, the Treaty of Granada had been broken in 1502, and Muslims had been ordered to either become Christians or to leave.

Isabella's confessor, Cisneros, who had been named Archbishop of Toledo, has been instrumental in a program of rehabilitation of the religious institutions of Spain, laying the groundwork for the later Counter-Reformation.

As Chancellor, he exerts more and more power.

Isabella and her husband have created an empire and in recent years have been consumed with administration and politics; they are concerned with the succession and have worked to link the Spanish crown to the other rulers in Europe.

By early 1497, all the pieces had seemed to be in place: John, Prince of Asturias, had married Archduchess Margaret of Austria, establishing the connection to the Habsburgs.

The eldest daughter, Isabella, had married Manuel I of Portugal, and Joanna had been married to another Habsburg prince, Philip of Burgundy.

However, Isabella's plans for her two eldest children did not work out.

John had died shortly after his marriage.

Isabella, Princess of Asturias, had died in childbirth and her son Miguel had died at the age of two.

Queen Isabella I's crowns will thus pass to her daughter Joanna and her son-in-law, Philip.

Isabella has, however, made successful dynastic matches for her three youngest daughters.

The death of Isabella, Princess of Asturias, created a necessity for Manuel I of Portugal to remarry: Isabella's third child, Maria, had become his next bride.

Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, had married England's Arthur, Prince of Wales, but his early death will result in her being married to his younger brother, Henry VIII of England.

Isabella, officially withdrawing from governmental affairs on September 14, 1504, dies the same year on November 26 in Medina del Campo, but it is said that she had truly been in decline since the death of her son Prince John in 1497.

Upon her death, her husband Ferdinand of Aragon claims the regency of Castile on behalf of their twenty-five-year-old second daughter Joanna, now incapacitated by insanity and known as Juana la Loca (Joanna the Mad).

Joanna’s husband Philip of Castile, son of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, opposes Ferdinand’s regency, as do a majority of the Castilian nobles.

The Kingdom of Tlemcen had made a disastrous attempt at expansion eastward; now increasingly weak, it had become intermittently a vassal of Hafsid Ifriqiya, Marinid Morocco or the Crown of Aragon.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the Kingdom of Aragon had gained effective political control, intervening in the dynastic disputes of the amirs of Tlemcen, whose authority has shrunk to the town and its immediate neighborhood.

Tlemcen’s port city is Oran, on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria.

It excels in the export of lead, wool, skins, fine burnous, carpets, haïks, cumin, nuts, and galls, as well as enslaved Sub-Saharan Africans.

The Portuguese had launched a failed expedition to capture the city in July 1501.

Mers-el-Kébir, originally a Roman port called Portus Divinus, had become an Almohad naval arsenal in the twelfth century, had fallen under the rulers of the Kingdom of Tlemcen in the fifteenth century, and eventually became a center of pirate activity around 1492.

It had since been occupied variously by the Ottoman Turks and Portuguese.

Cardinal Cisneros, whose religious zeal coincides with Ferdinand's prospect for political and material gain, personally equips the Spanish expedition that captures it in 1505.

Called by the Spaniards Mazalquivir, it is to serve as the base for the capture of neighboring Oran, just four miles (6.4 kilometers) to the west.

Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros, newly appointed Grand Inquisitor in 1508, has established the university at Alcala de Henares.

Its forerunner, the Universidad Complutense, one of the oldest universities in the world, had been founded by King Sancho IV of Castile as Studium Generale in 1293 in Alcalá de Henares.

With the patronage of Cardinal Cisneros, the University of Alcalá had been recognized in a 1499 papal bull.

During Muslim rule in Spain, the Jewish community of the city of Alcalá de Henares, one of the first bishoprics founded in Spain, had been granted equal rights as the Christians living in it.

In the Middle Ages, the Jewish congregation of the city paid taxes to the Archbishop of Toledo.

The Jews of Alcala are mentioned in the fourteenth-century Satire by Marrano Pero Ferrús.

During the fifteenth century, the Jewish congregation of the city is one of the largest in Castile, having about two hundred Jewish families.

Hebrew studies at the University of Alcala are encouraged by Jimenez de Cisneros, who brings some Jews and Marrano Hebraists to work in the city.

Don Pedro Navarro, Count of Oliveto, was probably born at Garde in the Navarrese valley of Roncal.

Little is known of his early life.

He began his military career in the service of Cardinal Juan de Aragon prior to 1485.

He fought against the Barbary pirates in Italy as a condottiere.

Enlisted by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba in 1499, he took part in the capture and siege of Cephalonia in 1500.

His skillful employment of mines had allowed for the breaching of the walls of the Turkish fortress.

He had continued in the service of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and gone on to Naples, and defended Canosa in 1502 and Taranto in 1503 against the French.

His supervision of the construction of the field fortifications at the Battle of Cerignola had enabled Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba to win his battle with Louis d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours on April 28.

He played a major role in the Spanish victory at the Garigliano River on December 29, 1503 and had been created count of Oliveto for his services.

After returning to Spain in 1507, he takes part in Cisneros’ expeditions to North Africa.

In 1508, Navarro assists in the capture of Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a natural island in the Alboran Sea, by employing a floating battery of his own design during the battle.