It was the same even with so pious a monarch as Ferdinand the Catholic. When, in 1476, the archiepiscopal see of Saragossa became vacant by the death of Juan of Aragon, Ferdinand, with his father, Juan II, asked Sixtus IV to appoint his natural son, Alfonso, a child six years of age. The claim of the papacy to archiepiscopal appointments, based on the necessity of the pallium, was of ancient date and had become incontestable. In the thirteenth century Alfonso X had admitted it in the case of the archbishops, but when Isabella appointed Ximenes to the see of Toledo in 1495 the proceedings showed that the post was considered to be in the gift of the crown and the papal confirmation to be a matter of course.[36] So in the present case the request was a mere form, as was seen when Sixtus refused. The defect of birth could be dispensed for, but the youth of Alfonso was an insuperable objection, and Sixtus appointed Ansias Dezpuch, then Archbishop of Monreal, thinking that the services rendered by him and by his uncle, the Master of the Order of Montesa, would induce the king to assent. Dezpuch accepted, but Ferdinand at once sequestrated all the revenues of Monreal and the priory of Santa Cristina and ordered him to resign. On his hesitating, Ferdinand threatened to seize all the castles and revenues of the mastership of Montesa, which was effectual, and Sixtus compromised by making the boy perpetual administrator of Saragossa.[37]
[Sidenote: _ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION LIMITED_]
Isabella, despite her piety, was as firm as her husband in defending the claim of the crown in these matters against the papacy. When, in 1482, the see of Cuenca became vacant and Sixtus IV appointed a Genoese cousin to the position, Ferdinand and his queen energetically represented that only Spaniards should have Spanish bishoprics and that the selection should be made by them. Sixtus retorted that all benefices were in the gift of the pope and that his power, derived from God, was unlimited, whereupon they ordered home all their subjects resident in the papal court and threatened to take steps for the convocation of a general council. These energetic proceedings brought Sixtus to terms and he sent to Spain a special nuncio, but Ferdinand and Isabella stood on their dignity and refused even to receive him. Then the Cardinal of Spain, Pero González de Mendoza, intervened and, on Sixtus withdrawing his pretensions, they allowed themselves to be reconciled.[38] They alleged that whatever might be the papal rights in other countries, in Spain the patronage of all benefices belonged to the crown because they and their predecessors had wrested the land from the infidel.[39] So jealous, indeed, were they of the papal encroachments that among the subjects which they submitted to the national synod assembled by them in Seville, June, 1478, was how to prevent the residence of papal legates and nuncios, who not only carried off much money from the kingdom, but threatened the royal pre-eminence, to which the synod replied that this rested with the sovereigns to do as their predecessors had done.[40] It is easy thus to understand why, in the organization of the Inquisition, they insisted that all appointments should be made by the throne.