"Grand Inquisitor"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23773, 28 September 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

"Grand Inquisitor"

By SCRIBA

TO begin a career at the age of fifty-six and leave a mark upon one's time is not the fate of every man. Yet Ximinez cle Cisneros was an obscure Franciscan monk when the , passing of the grim Torquemada called him to Isabella's side as Queen's confessor. And within three years he was Archbishop of Toledo. After the death of Isabella and Ferdinand, he was Regent of Castile, and at the age of seventy-three the mystic turned soldier and led a crusade against the Moorish stronghold of Oran.

Those were crowded, stirring years. Before he died in 1517 Ximinez saw the dawn of the Renascence white over Europe, he saw Columbus thrust the world's horizon west. There is ample searoom here for Dr. Walter Starkie's

Superi Picture of an Age

biography of the Spanish statesman. The author, as the unconventional wanderer in southern Europe who appears in his earlier book, won a unique first-hand knowledge of Spain, which his vivid pen has turned to good account in rich local colouring. The too fastidious may agree with John o'London that there is a touch of Wardour Stroet in the occasional dialogue ("Lead me, kind sir,. to a neighbouring inn, else shall I faint for weariness"). Held, however, by the lifelike picture of an age and a personality, few will be irked by this. The Inquisition and Spanish zeal for orthodoxy has damaged Spain disastrously in British eyes. We must welcome a book which finds the "good in Nazareth." The fanaticisms and persecutions, the intrigue and the oppression are not the whole story of the age of Columbus. "Grand Inquisitor," by Walter Starkio. (Hodder and Sfoughton.)