TOLEDO, ALVAREZ PEDRO di. – Spanish statesman, son of Federico, marquis of Villafranca, and Isabella Pimentel, born in Alba de Torques in 1484.
He served Charles V, who appointed him viceroy of Naples in 1532. He governed with a severity intended to break the power of the nobility by keeping it from participating in the government, making use of the people for this purpose as well. Since he sought to be not loved but feared, he dissolved the academies on suspicion of religious and political innovations and, in May 1547, attempted to introduce the Spanish-style Tribunal of the Inquisition in Naples, provoking a popular uprising, soon suppressed, as well as the opposition of Paul III, who since 1542 had organized the Roman Inquisition. In the Salt War (1541), he had supported the cause of the rebel Ascanio Colonna; and in 1545 he had sought to limit to four the bishops of the Kingdom who were to participate in the Council of Trent. The nobility tried in vain to obtain his recall from Charles V. He died at Salamanca in 1553. He had promoted the building development of Naples and applied himself, with stern justice, to suppressing brigands and criminals.
His brother was JUAN, born on 9 June 1488; having become a Dominican friar at S. Stefano in Salamanca, he became a master of theology in Paris. Appointed bishop of Cordova on 21 Aug. 1523, he was transferred to Burgos on 11 Apr. 1538; he was made a cardinal by Paul III on 20 Dec. 1538 and was granted the archbishopric of Compostella in commendam on 27 June 1550. He followed the rigorist and reforming ideas of Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa; a supporter of the Inquisition, he was among its first members from the time of its foundation in Rome in 1542. Always loyal to the imperial party in the Curia, he was among the opponents of the transfer of the Council from Trent to Bologna in 1547. He supported the foundation of the Collegio Germanico in Rome, desired by St. Ignatius, and was protector of the Barnabites during their crisis in 1552 (v. APOLLO). Bishop of Tusculum on 29 May 1555, he died in the Curia on 15 Sept. 1557.