Francisco Goméz de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma
Encyclopedia
Don (honorific)
Don, from Latin dominus, is an honorific in Spanish , Portuguese , and Italian . The female equivalent is Doña , Dona , and Donna , abbreviated "Dª" or simply "D."-Usage:...
Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, 1st Duke of Lerma (1552/1553 — 1625), a favourite
Favourite
A favourite , or favorite , was the intimate companion of a ruler or other important person. In medieval and Early Modern Europe, among other times and places, the term is used of individuals delegated significant political power by a ruler...
of Philip III of Spain
Philip III of Spain
Philip III , also known as Philip the Pious, was the King of Spain and King of Portugal and the Algarves, where he ruled as Philip II , from 1598 until his death...
, was the first of the validos ('most worthy') through whom the later Habsburg monarchs ruled. He was succeeded by Don Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Don Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar, Count-Duke of Olivares and Duke of San Lúcar la Mayor , was a Spanish royal favourite of Philip IV and minister. As prime minister from 1621 to 1643, he over-exerted Spain in foreign affairs and unsuccessfully attempted domestic reform...
.
Biography
The family of Sandoval was ancient and powerful. Lerma was born and raised at SevilleSeville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
, where his uncle was archbishop and his father the marquis of Denia
Dénia
Dénia is a city in the province of Alicante, Spain, on the Costa Blanca halfway between Alicante and Valencia, the judicial seat of the comarca of Marina Alta...
. As long as Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
lived, the nobles had little effective share in the government, with the exception of a few who were appointed viceroys or commanded armies abroad. The future duke of Lerma passed his time as a courtier, and made himself a favourite
Favourite
A favourite , or favorite , was the intimate companion of a ruler or other important person. In medieval and Early Modern Europe, among other times and places, the term is used of individuals delegated significant political power by a ruler...
with the young prince Philip
Philip III of Spain
Philip III , also known as Philip the Pious, was the King of Spain and King of Portugal and the Algarves, where he ruled as Philip II , from 1598 until his death...
, heir to the Spanish throne. The dying king Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
foresaw that Lerma was one of those nobles who were likely to mislead the new sovereign. The old king’s fears were, it is claimed by some, fully justified after his death. Others however, claim that Lerma was a fully capable favourite, as he lead Castile and the Habsburg dominions on a more modest and economically viable course of peace than both Phillip II and Olivares during the reign of Phillip III - both figures that have received far more positive recognition by historians.
No sooner was Philip III king than he entrusted all authority to his favourite, who amassed power unprecedented for a privado or favorite and became the "king's shadow," the filter through whom all information passed. Philip III, preoccupied with piety and indolence, soon created him Duke of Lerma (1599), pressured the papacy to form for his uncle Bernardo, a Cardinalship and delegated to him governorship of certain public offices and management responsibility of particular lands, authorized by the King and Queen, of the Roman Catholic Christian Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.
Gifts poured in from outside the royal court. From the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
in 1601 came an over-lifesize marble of Samson and a Philistine by Giovanni da Bologna
Giambologna
Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, incorrectly known as Giovanni da Bologna and Giovanni Bologna , was a sculptor, known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style.- Biography :...
, presented as a diplomatic gift. It had been made for a Medici garden, and though it had recently been in storage, it was a princely gift (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, London). Lerma assembled a vast collection of paintings. Duke Mario Farnese sent over a Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico , born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent"...
Annunciation
Annunciation
The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...
(it was a little old-fashioned), which Lerma passed on to the Dominicans of Valladolid and is now at the Prado, Madrid.
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
s and then with the French Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
s. Lerma's administration began with a treaty with France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Treaty of Vervins 1598, declaring peace, but he persisted in costly and useless hostilities with England till 1604, when Spain was forced by exhaustion to make peace. Lerma used all his influence against a recognition of the independence of the Low Countries.
Though in 1607 the monarchy declared itself bankrupt, Lerma carried out the ruinous measures for the expulsion of the Moriscos
Expulsion of the Moriscos
On April 9, 1609, King Philip III of Spain decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos . The Moriscos were the descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile from Ferdinand and Isabella in 1502...
, Moors who had converted to Christianity, from 1609–14, a decision affecting over 300,000 people. A policy motivated by religious and political considerations, in which no economic consideration played a part, the expulsion secured him the admiration of the clergy and was popular with the mass of the nation. It also provided a short-term boost to the royal treasury from the impounded property of the Moors, but would ruin the economy of Valencia for generations. Lerma's financial horizons remained medieval: his only resources as a finance minister were the debasing of the coinage and edicts against luxury and the making of silver plate.
Bankrupt or not, the war with the Dutch dragged on till 1609, when the Twelve Years' Truce
Twelve Years' Truce
The Twelve Years' Truce was the name given to the cessation of hostilities between the Habsburg rulers of Spain and the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic as agreed in Antwerp on 9 April 1609. It was a watershed in the Eighty Years' War, marking the point from which the independence of the...
was signed with them. There was constant anti-Spanish agitation in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, which had been dynastically joined to Spain since 1580.
In the end, Lerma was deposed by a palace intrigue carried out by his own son, Cristóbal de Sandoval
Cristóbal de Sandoval, Duke of Uceda
Cristóbal Gómez de Sandoval-Rojas y de la Cerda, known as the duque de Uceda , but also titled second marquis of Cea, fifth marquis of Denia, and knight of the order of Santiago was the official minister of state, also known as the valido or valued one, for King Philip III of Spain...
, Duke of Uceda
Uceda
Uceda is a municipality located in the province of Guadalajara, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 1,575 inhabitants....
, manipulated by Olivares
Olivares
Olivarez might refer to:* Olivarez, Seville, a municipality in the Seville province of Spain* House of Olivares* Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, seventeenth-century Spanish statesman* Olivarez de Júcar, Spain, a municipality in Cuenca...
. It is probable that he would never have lost the confidence of Philip III, who divided his life between festivals and prayers, if not for the domestic treachery of his son, who allied himself with the king’s confessor, Aliaga, whom Lerma had introduced. After a long intrigue in which the king remained silent and passive, Lerma was at last compelled to leave the court, on October 4, 1618.
As a protection, and as a means of retaining some measure of power in case he fell from favour, he had persuaded Pope Paul V
Pope Paul V
-Theology:Paul met with Galileo Galilei in 1616 after Cardinal Bellarmine had, on his orders, warned Galileo not to hold or defend the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus. Whether there was also an order not to teach those ideas in any way has been a matter for controversy...
to create him cardinal, the previous March, 1618. He retired to his palace in Lerma, and then to Valladolid, where it was reported that he celebrated mass every day "with great devotion and tears". When the dying Philip III was presented with a list of prisoners and exiles to be forgiven, he granted grace to all except the cardinal-duke of Lerma. When Lerma learned the news, he started from Valladolid to Madrid but was intercepted on the road and commanded by Olivares, favorite of the heir to the throne, who professed an implacable hatred for the cardinal, to return to Valladolid. The cardinal was in Villacastin and remained there until he learned of the death of the king. Then he went back to Valladolid to celebrate the requiem in the church of San Pablo. He was ordered by the count of Olivares to reside in Tordesillas
Tordesillas
Tordesillas is a town and municipality in the province of Valladolid, Castile and León, central Spain.It is located 25 km southwest of the provincial capital, Valladolid at an elevation of 704 meters. The population was c. 9,000 in 2009....
but he did not obey and appealed to the pope. Gregory XV and the Sacred College defended him, considering his banishment an attempt against ecclesiastical freedom and the prestige of the cardinalate.
Under the reign of Philip IV, which began in 1621, Lerma was despoiled of part of his wealth. The cardinal was sentenced, on August 3, 1624, to return to the state over a million ducates. Lerma died in 1625 at Valladolid
Valladolid
Valladolid is a historic city and municipality in north-central Spain, situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three wine-making regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales...
.
Domestic policy
When Lerma fell from power in 1618, his status as cardinal (which he had acquired for exactly this purpose 6 months earlier) give him immunity from prosecution by his numerous enemies, who instead turned on Lerma's trusted and unscrupulous secretary, Rodrigo CalderónRodrigo Calderón, Count of Oliva
Don Rodrigo Calderón, Conde de la Oliva de Plasencia, Marqués de Siete Iglesias was a favorite minister of the Duke of Lerma, while the latter was valido or valued minister of King Philip III of Spain...
(d. 1621), who as Lerma's agent was made a scapegoat. Calderón was tortured and executed on trumped up charges of witchcraft and other crimes, which demonstrated what would likely have been Lerma's fate, if a cardinal's hat hadn't protected his head.
Lerma was also responsible for the appointment of Don Pedro Franqueza to reform royal finances, but who instead managed to embezzle enough funds to purchase the title of Count of Villalonga. He was placed on trial and forfeited his riches.
At a time when the state was practically bankrupt, he encouraged the king in extravagance, and accumulated for himself a fortune estimated by contemporaries at forty-four million ducats.
On the hilltop overlooking the village of Lerma in Old Castile
Old Castile
Old Castile is a historic region of Spain, which included territory that later corresponded to the provinces of Santander , Burgos, Logroño , Soria, Segovia, Ávila, Valladolid, Palencia....
that provided his grand title, the duke built a palace (1606–1617, by Francisco de Mora) capped with corner towers, on the site of a fortification, ranged round a double-arcaded courtyard facing an arcaded square and linked to the rebuilt church of San Pedro with a private passageway. Lerma was pious, spending lavishly on religious houses.
In fiction
In the picaresque novel Gil Blas (chapter iv), the hero ingratiates himself with the count Olivarez, his new patron:- "Well! Santillane, said he, are you satisfied with your rooms, and with my orders to Don Raymond? Your excellency's liberality, answered I, seems out of all proportion with its object; so that I receive it with fear and trembling. Why so? replied he. Can I be too lavish of distinction to a man whom the king has committed to my care, and for whose interests he especially commanded me to provide? No, that is impossible; and I do no more than my duty in placing you on a footing of respectability and consequence. No longer, therefore, let what I do for you he a subject of surprise; but rely on it that splendour in the eye of the world, and the solid advantages of accumulating wealth, are equally with in your grasp, if you do but attach yourself as faithfully to me as you did to the Duke of Lerma.
- But now that we are on the subject of that nobleman, continued he, it is said that you lived on terms of personal intimacy with him. I have a strong curiosity to lean the circumstances which led to your first acquaintance, as well as in what department you acted under him. Do not disguise or gloss over the slightest particular, for I shall not be satisfied without a full, true, and circumstantial recital. Then it was that I recollected in what an embarrassing predicament I stood with the Duke of Lerma on a similar occasion, and by what line of conduct I extricated myself; that same course I adopted once again with the happiest success; whereby the reader is to understand that throughout my narrative I softened down the passages likely to give umbrage to my patron, and glanced with a superficial delicacy over transactions which would have reflected but little lustre on my own character. I likewise manifested a considerate tenderness for the Duke of Lerma; though by giving that fallen favourite no quarter, I should better have consulted the taste of him whom I wished to please."
Gil Blas ruminates ironically upon the cardinal's hat that Paul V gave the Duke of Lerma: "This pope, wishing to establish the inquisition in the kingdom of Naples, invested the minister with the purple, and by that means hoped to bring King Philip over to so pious and praiseworthy a design. Those who were best acquainted with this new member of the sacred college, thought much like myself, that the church was in a fair way for apostolical purity, after so spiritual an acquisition."
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...
associated his surname with Lerma's title, which is an obvious fiction; even the family legend traced back the name to Thomas Learmonth the Rhymer
Thomas the Rhymer
Thomas Learmonth , better known as Thomas the Rhymer or True Thomas, was a 13th century Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston . He is also the protagonist of the ballad "Thomas the Rhymer"...
from Scotland, but not to Lerma. The poet painted an imaginary portrait of the "Duke of Lerma" and created some other works featuring Spaniards.
Anachronistically, a "Duke of Lerma" features as one of the minor characters in the opera Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
by Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
.
External links
- Biographical dictionary of the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church; illuminating backstory on the cardinalate.
- The Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma by Peter Paul Rubens, (1603) Prado, Madrid.
- The Duke of Lerma, Part I in a podcast series for the exhibition, "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III"