Sometime during the first years of the sixteenth century, Leonor Pacheco and Martín de Córdoba y de Velasco celebrated their wedding. The bride and groom had grown up on neighboring estates in the verdant Andalusian countryside in southern Spain. The adjacency of their properties reflected the close blood ties that united their two families; Leonor and Martín were cousins who belonged to two interrelated branches of the up-and-coming noble lineage known as the Fernández de Córdoba. Their marriage, like those of other premodern elites, was crafted with biological, social, economic, and even political calculations in mind. In many ways, Leonor...

The Fernández de Córdoba lineage emerged in the city and region of Córdoba over the last 250 years of the Middle Ages. Topographic, ecologic, and demographic features unique to the locality of Córdoba favored the clan’s development and shaped its identity. Likewise, historical circumstances such as the process by which the region was incorporated into Christian Castile in the thirteenth century, the changes it underwent over the course of the late Middle Ages, and its long-term position on a precarious frontier shaped the evolution of the lineage. Investigating local geohistorical factors exposes the intimate connection the Fernández de Córdoba had...

Starting in the late fifteenth century, Spaniards embarked on an acquisitions spree that gathered an array of disparate territories into an empire. In a few short decades this realm came to encompass most of the Iberian Peninsula, chunks of the New World, a chain of presidios in North Africa, half of Italy, and even the Low Countries and much of central Europe. Despite the size and power it would eventually reach, the polity’s longevity and cohesion were predicated first on the ability of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to bequeath their Castilian and Aragonese possessions intact to a successor. Such...

At ten o’clock on the night of May 27, 1522, Captain Juan de Ribera, keeper of the gates of the city of Toledo, received the urgent dispatch quoted above. Reporting that Emperor Charles V had died fighting the French on the battlefields of Lombardy, the message warned the gatekeeper to prepare for insurrection among the city’s unsettled residents. Toledo’s officials raised the alarm, keeping in mind the city was the last holdout of the Comunidades Revolt, an uprising that had been suppressed only four months earlier.¹ The rebellion had lasted for two years and was a major challenge to royal...

From the suppression of a domestic revolt at the heart of Spain, Martín de Córdoba y de Velasco moved north to take over the governorship of Navarre in 1525. The Cordovan’s previous professional experience in Toledo, his personal connections, and the role that his ancestors had historically played defending the frontier of Granada all helped ease him into the new position.¹ However, connections and prior service went only so far to prepare the lord to face quite a different task: overseeing the administration of a formerly independent Christian kingdom still very much enmeshed in the international system of European states....

In 1534, Martín de Córdoba y de Velasco left Navarre for Oran, where he would serve as captain general for an unprecedented twenty-four years. He was the third Fernández de Córdoba to occupy this post. In 1509, his father-in-law Diego had helped conquer the enclave, where he served as governor until 1512. Diego’s son Luis Fernández de Córdoba succeeded his father in 1518 and held the position until 1534 when he handed it over to his brother-in-law. Martín served from 1534 until his death in 1558. After Martín, four more members of the lineage commanded the outpost, three from the...

Martín de Córdoba y de Velasco died leading a final expedition against Mostaganem on August 26, 1558.¹ His demise came a little less than a month before that of Charles V on September 21. The proximity of their deaths symbolizes the close collaboration that linked the nobleman to the emperor.² Since the tumult at the beginning of Charles’s reign, Martín had closely served his sovereign’s imperial interests. The preamble of his testament, cited above, left no doubt as to the role that service had played in his life. In the course of professing his allegiance to the Catholic Church, he...