Valladolid - Itinerary Castilla y León -

Iglesia de San Miguel

City of special relevance for the life of Saint Francisco de Borja.

From the Muslim invasion of the peninsula until the 10th century, Valladolid experienced a long period of depopulation, which progressively improved at the beginning of the 11th century.

In 1208, the city was incorporated into the court of Alfonso VIII and became the cultural center of Castile, experiencing rapid growth, favored by the commercial privileges granted by Fernando III, Alfonso X and the regent queen María de Molina.

Thanks to a bull granted by Pope Clement VI, in 1346 the University of Valladolid was created, one of the first in Spain.

On October 19, 1469, the Catholic Monarchs celebrated their secret marriage in the Vivero palace. The Pope's legate, Cardinal Rodrigo Borja, would be in charge of bringing, two years later, the pontiff's dispensation to his consanguinity ties. Rodrigo Borja, already as for Alexander VI, would grant them the title of Catholic Monarchs in 1496.

It was in Valladolid where the marriage agreements were signed, in 1488, between María Enríquez (Ferdinand II of Aragon's cousin) and Giovanni Borja (Rodrigo Borja's son), The marriage of his son, Juan, with Juana de Aragón y Gurrea, was also sealed in this capital, in 1509. His son Saint Francisco de Borja would start at court with Charles V, where he would be a stableman to Empress Isabella and Viceroy of Catalonia.  

Francisco de Borja was a direct witness to the birth of Prince Philip and, as a Jesuit, he pronounced, in the church of San Benito, the elegy for Charles V at the emperor's funeral.

His participation in the autos de fe of 1559, events recounted in the novel El hereje , by Miguel Delibes, in which he assists and saves the life of his daughter's sister-in-law, Ana Enríquez, and the inclusion of his name in the index of prohibited books of the inquisitor Fernando de Valdés, forces him to leave Spain.

All the works of the Valencian Jesuit, former Duke of Gandia, collected in the court of Valladolid, were burned in the “auto de fe” of October 8, 1559 in the Plaza Mayor, with the presence of Philip II.

In the year 1601, Philip III's favorite, the Duke of Lerma, grandson of Saint Francisco de Borja through his mother's side, pulled strings to bring the Court of Madrid to Valladolid, which became, from 1601 to 1606, the capital of the Empire.

In 1606 he moved back to Madrid, causing the decline of the city.