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I' XV II Oviedo and ItaZy I. THE FALL OF KING FREDERICK THE chronicler's relations with the men, things, cities, and books of the peninsula call for closer scrutiny. We might pick up the story again with his arrival, at the age of twenty-two, at the Aragonese court of Naples (above, chap. XIV). For though, as we have seen, Oviedo traveled the length and breadth of Italy, from Milan and possibly Turin all the way down to Palermo, the most important moment, and most lasting memory, was his stay in Parthenope. Early in 1501 France and Spain had come to an agreement-adducing various hypocritical pretexts and with prompt pontifical blessing from the Borgia pope, Alexander VI-to split the Kingdom of Naples between them, France taking the Terra di Lavoro (the province of Caserta) and Abruzzi, Spain getting Calabria and Apulia. The act was accomplished with barely more formality than Russia and Germany's pact to carve up Poland in 1939, with the sole difference, entirely favorable to the aggressors of four hundred years ago, that on that first occasion the Great Captain, chivalrous as ever, sent the king of Naples a message informing him of the impending dual invasion. "And you can take my word for that," Oviedo was later to write, "because I was there myself." 1 The good King Frederick had no choice but to submit to the injunction addressed to him by the two greatest military powers of the time, and all those present burst into tears; it was Sunday, 4 July 1501. An anonymous commoner mockingly dramatized the sovereign's predicament in a semi-macaronic quatrain that Oviedo was to recall almost half a century later (1547 -1548) in America, comparing it with the natives' epic and plaintive songs: "A la mia gran pena forte Dolorosa, aflicta et rea, Diviserunt vestimenta mea Et super ea miserunt sorte." 2 1. A report can also be found in the unpublished Batallas (cf. Perez de Tudela. "Vida." p. xxixn69). There is an echo of this scandalous collusion in the Orlando Furioso (XVII. 74- 76), where Ariosto suggests that France and Spain would have done better to join forces for a crusade against the "foul Turk." 2. Hist., V, 1: I, 129a: "To my great and grievous sorrow,! To my anguish and affliction.! They have tom apart my 145 146 GONZALO FERNANDEZ DE OVIEDO The king left with his galleys and "all his artillery" for the island of Ischiagranted him for six months, the duration of the truce-this island being "a very strong thing" but to all intents and purposes besieged, by the French on the mainland and the Spanish at sea; and there, in that little island of marvels and terrors, golden sun and azure waters, miracle-working springs and devastating earthquakes, he gathered about him, as if on an enchanted isle, a little Shakespearean court. There was no Duke Prospero, of course, but the spirit of Ariel was present among the followers and retainers of the nobly proud and defeated king, surrounded as he was by the poet Sannazzaro, by children and women, by the young princes Don Alonzo and Don Cesare, and by four illustrious and most unfortunate ladies, a veritable quartet of weeping women, consisting of the repudiated queen of Hungary (Beatrice of Aragon), the exiled duchess of Milan (widowed by poisoning and bereaved of her son), the future queen of Poland, and the "Senora Escandarbeza," ex-queen of Albania. 3 From Ischia, shortly thereafter (2-3 August 1501), "the young queen, the king's sister, went over to Sicily with a fleet which the Great Captain sent for her on the order of their Catholic Majesties," and Oviedo, as a mark of King Frederick's honor and friendship, was entrusted with the task of accompanying Queen Juana4 first to Sicily (he was in Palermo in early August 1501) and then, in May 1502, all the way back to Spain, whence he never again returned to Italy. 2. THE DUKE OF CALABRIA Oviedo's work retains, however, another singular mark and lasting reminder of those last few months spent in Italy at the court of his Most Serene (and most unfortunate) Highness King Frederick of Aragon. At the moment of the collapse the king's oldest son, still a boy of fourteen, Ferdinand of Aragon, marquis of Bisceglie, prince of Taranto, and, since 1496, duke of Calabria (the ritual title of the heirs to the throne of Naples), took his oath...

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