Albornos, Gilles Alvares Carillo

, an eminent Spanish statesman and cardinal, of the fourteenth century, | descended from the royal families of Leon and Arragon, was born at Cuen^a, and educated at Toulouse. Alphon­$us XI. appointed him, in succession, almoner of his court, and archdeacon of Calatrava; and lastly, although he was then very young, promoted him to the archbishopric of Toledo. He accompanied the king of Castille in his expedition against the Moors of Andalusia, in which his rank of archbishop did not prevent him from carrying arms; and he first displayed his bravery in saving the king’s life m the hottest onset of the battle of Tarifa. Alphonsus, in return, knighted him, and in 1343 gave him the command at the siege of Algesiras; but on the death of this prince, he lost his influence with his successor, Peter the cruel, whom he reproved for his irregularities, and who would have sacrificed him to the resentment of his mistress Maria de Padilla, if he had not made his escape to Avignon. Here the pope Clement VI. admitted him of his council, and made him a cardinal; on which he resigned his archbishopric, saying, that he should be as much to blame in keeping a wife with whom he could not live, as Peter king of Castille, in forsaking his wife for a mistress. Innocent VI. the successor of Clement, sent him to Italy in 1353, both as pope’s legate and as general, to reconquer the ecclesiastical states which had revolted from the popes during the residence of the latter at Avignon. This commission Albornos executed in the most satisfactory manner, either by force or intrigue; but in the midst of his career, he was recalled in 1357, and another commander sent on the expedition. He, however, having been unfortunate, the pope saw his error, and again appointed Albornos, who completed the work by securing the temporal power of the popes over those parts of Italy which have been, down to the present times, known by the name of the Ecclesiastical States. Having thus achieved his conquest, Albornos, as a minister of state, rendered himself for many years very popular. To Bologna he gave a new constitution, and founded in that city the magnificent Spanish college; and for the other parts of the ecclesiastical dominions, he enacted laws which remained in force for four centuries after. At length he announced to pope Urban V. that he might now enter and reign at Rome without fear, and was receiving him in pomp at Viterbo, when the pope, forgetting for a moment the services Albornos had rendered to the holy see, demanded an | account of his expenditure during his legation. Albornos immediately desired him to look into the court-yard of the palace, where was a carriage full of keys, telling him that with the money intrusted to him, he had made the pope master of all the cities and castles of which he now saw the keys. The pope on this embraced and thanked him. He then accompanied Urban to Rome, but returned afterwards to Viterbo, where he died August 24, 1367, regretted by the people, and by the pope; who, finding himself embarrassed with new cares, more than ever wanted his advice. Albornos’s body was removed to Toledo, at his own request, and interred with great pomp. He wrote a book on the constitutions of the Roman church, which was printed at Jesi, in 1475, and is very rare. His will also was printed, with this injunction, characteristic of the man and the age he lived in, that the monks should say 60,000 masses for his soul. His political life was written by Sepulveda, under the title “Historia de hello administrate in Italia per annos 15, et confecto abÆg. Albornotio,” Bologna, 1623, fol. ¹