Toledo, Álvarez Pedro de

TOLEDO, ÁLVAREZ PEDRO DE. - Spanish statesman, son of Federico, Marquis of Villafranca, and of Isabella Pimentel, b. at Alba de Tormes in 1484.

He was in the service of Charles V and was appointed by him viceroy of Naples in 1532; he governed with a rigor aimed at breaking the nobility by keeping it from participating in the government, making use for this purpose also of the common people. Being anxious to be not loved but feared, he dissolved the academies on suspicion of religious and political novelty, and in May 1547 he attempted to introduce into Naples the Spanish-style Tribunal of the Inquisition, provoking a popular uprising, soon repressed, and the opposition of Paul III, who since 1542 had organized the Roman Inquisition. In the war of the salt (1541) he had defended 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 take part in the Council of Trent. In vain the nobility attempted to obtain his recall from Charles V. He died at Salamanca in 1553. He had favored the building progress of Naples and had attended with harsh justice to the repression of brigands and malefactors.

His brother was JUAN, b. on 9 June 1488; having become a Dominican friar at S. Stefano di Salamanca, he became master of theology in Paris. Appointed bishop of Cordova on 21 Aug. 1523, he was transferred to Burgos on 11 Apr. 1538; he was created cardinal by Paul III on 20 Dec. 1538 and held in commendam the archbishopric of Compostela on 27 June 1550. He followed the rigorist and reformist ideas of Card. Gian Pietro Carafa; a supporter of the Inquisition, he was among its first members from the moment of its foundation in Rome in 1542. Always faithful 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 favored the foundation of the Collegio Germanico in Rome, desired by St. Ignatius, and was protector of the Barnabites during their crisis of 1552 (v. CONGREGAZIONE DI S. PAOLO). Bishop of Tusculum on 29 May 1555, he died in the Curia on 15 Sept. 1557.

Pio Paschini