108 WAR OF GRANADA. PART I. before the war of Granada, were borne along at his funeral, " and still wave over his sepulchre," sajs Bernaldez, " keeping alive the memory of his exploits, as undying as his soul." The banners have long since mouldered into dust ; the very tomb which contained his ashes has been sacrile- giously demolished ; but the fame of the hero will survive as long as any thing like respect for valor, courtesy, unblemished honor, or any other attribute of chivalry, shall be found in Spain. ^^ 26 Zui'ig-a, Annales de Seilla, p. 411. — Bernaldez, Reyes Cato- licos, MS., cap. 104. The marquis left three illegiti- mate daughters by a noble Span- ish lady, who all formed high connexions. He was succeeded in his titles and estates, by the permission of Ferdinand and Is- abella, by Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, the son of his eldest daugh- ter, who had married with one of her kinsmen. Cadiz was sub- sequently annexed by the Spanish sovereigns to the crown, from which it had been detached in Henry IV. 's time, and considerable estates were given as an equiva- lent, together with the title of Duke of Arcos, to the family of Ponce de Leon. Notice of Bernaldez, Curate of Los I'ala- cios. One of the chief authorities on which the account of the Moorish war rests, is Andres Bernaldez, Curate of Los Palacios. He was a native of Fuente in Leon, and appears to have received his early education under the care of his grandfather, a notary of that place, whose commendations of a juve- nile essay in historical writing led him later in life, according to his own account, to record the events of his time in the extended and regular form of a chronicle. After admission to orders, he was made chaplain to Deza, archbishop of Seville, and curate of Los Pa- lacios, an Andalusian town not far from Seville, where he discharged his ecclesiastical functions with credit, from 1488 to 1513, at which time, as we find no later mention of him, he probably closed his life with his labors. Bernaldez had ample opportuni- ties for accurate information rela- tive to the Moorish war, since he lived, as it were, in the theatre of action, and was personally intimate with the most considerable men of Andalusia, especially the marquis of Cadiz, whom he has made the Achilles of his epic, assigning him a much more important part in the principal transactions, than is al- ways warranted by other authori- ties. His Chronicle is just such as might have been anticipated from a person of lively imagination, and competent scholarship for the time, deeply dyed with the bigotry and superstition of the Spanish clergy in that century. Tiiere is no great discrimination apparent in
