Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros

Juan Francisco Sanjuán Benito (Segovia, 1948) is passionate about history. He graduated in Foreign Trade in England, has worked as a TCP for 40 years and has lived on three continents. His works include: Los Reyes Católicos, Un Paseo por la Historia y el Arte de Madrid y de Navarra, La Mesta.

In this work, Juan Francisco Sanjuán Benito presents a brief portrait of Cardinal Cisneros, describing his image from different angles of the cardinal's life. He begins with his humble origins in Torrelaguna (Madrid), passing through his eventful and long life until his last breaths in the town of Roa (Burgos). During the 15th and 16th centuries it was very difficult to rise socially in Spain. If you were born a lackey, you died a lackey, but Cisneros broke all the parapets that existed in that society to keep you subject to the class into which you were born, reaching the head of the two most important estates in Spain at that time, the archiepiscopal seat of Toledo with the primacy of Spain and the cardinal's hat; and the post of regent of the kingdom on two occasions, the first after the death of Philip I of Castile until the return of Ferdinand the Catholic from Naples, and the second after the death of Ferdinand the Catholic until the arrival of Charles I in Spain.