The infante raised at once the flag of revolt against his father, and was only appeased by the concession of a large share in the government. The three murderers of Inez were sent out of the kingdom by Alphonso, who knew his son too well not to be aware that the vengeance would be tremendous as the crime. They took refuge in Castile. In 1357, however, Alphonso died, and the infante was crowned king of Portugal. Peter the Cruel, his nephew, reigned over Castile; and the murderers were given up as soon as required. Diogo Lopes escaped through the gratitude of a beggar to whom he had formerly done a kindness; but Coelho and Gonzales were executed, with horrible tortures, in the very presence of the king.
The story of the exhumation and coronation of the corpse of Inez has often been told. It is said that to the dead body, crowned and robed in royal raiment, and enthroned beside the king, the assembled nobles of Portugal paid homage as to their queen, swearing fealty on the withered hand of the corpse. The gravest doubts, however, exist as to the authenticity of this story; Fernão Lopes, the Portuguese Froissart, who is the great authority for the details of the death of Inez, with some of the actors in which he was acquainted, says nothing of the ghastly ceremony, though he tells at length the tale of the funeral honours that the king bestowed upon his wife. Inez was buried at Alcobaça with extraordinary magnificence, in a tomb of white marble, surmounted by her crowned statue; and near her sepulchre Pedro caused his own to be placed. The monument, after repeatedly resisting the violence of curiosity, was broken into in 1810 by the French soldiery; the statue was mutilated, and the yellow hair was cut from the broken skeleton, to be preserved in reliquaries and blown away by the wind. The children of Inez shared her habit of misfortune. From her brother, however, Alvaro Perez de Castro, the reigning house of Portugal directly descends.
See Fernão Lopes, Chronica del Rey Dom Pedro (1735); Camoens, Os Lusiadas; Antonio Ferreira’s Ines de Castro,—the first regular tragedy of the Renaissance after the Sofonisba of Trissino; Luis Velez de Guevara, Reinar despues de morir, an admirable play; and Ferdinand Denis, Chroniques chevaleresques de l’Espagne et du Portugal.
CASTRO, JOÃO DE (1500–1548), called by Camoens Castro Forte, fourth viceroy of the Portuguese Indies, was the son of Alvaro de Castro, civil governor of Lisbon. A younger son, and destined therefore for the church, he became at an early age a brilliant humanist, and studied mathematics under Pedro Nunez, in company with the infante Dom Luis, son of Emanuel the First, with whom he contracted a life-long friendship. At eighteen he went to Tangier, where he was dubbed knight by Duarte de Menezes the governor, and there he remained several years. In 1535 he accompanied Dom Luis to the siege of Tunis, where he had the honour of refusing knighthood and reward at the hands of the great emperor Charles V. Returning to Lisbon, he received from the king the small commandership of São Pablo de Salvaterra in 1538. He was exceedingly poor, but his wife Lenor de Coutinho, a noble Portuguese lady, admired and appreciated her husband sufficiently to make light of their poverty. Soon after this he left for the Indies in company with his uncle Garcia de Noronha, and on his arrival at Goa enlisted among the aventureiros, “the bravest of the brave,” told off for the relief of Diu. In 1540 he served on an expedition under Estevão da Gama, by whom his son, Alvaro de Castro, a child of thirteen, was knighted, out of compliment to him. Returning to Portugal, João de Castro was named commander of a fleet, in 1543, to clear the European seas of pirates; and in 1545 he was sent, with six sail, to the Indies, in the room of Martin de Sousa, who had been dismissed the viceroyalty. The next three years were the hardest and most brilliant, as they were the last, of his life—years of battle and struggle, of glory and sorrow, of suffering and triumph. Valiantly seconded by his sons (one of whom, Fernão, was killed before Diu) and by João Mascarenhas, João de Castro achieved such popularity by the overthrow of Mahmud, king of Gujarat, by the relief of Diu, and by the defeat of the great army of the Adil Khan, that he could contract a very large loan with the Goa merchants on the simple security of his moustache. These great deeds were followed by the capture of Broach, by the complete subjugation of Malacca, and by the passage of Antonio Moniz into Ceylon; and in 1547 the great captain was appointed viceroy by João III., who had at last accepted him without mistrust. He did not live long to fill this charge, expiring in the arms of his friend, St Francis Xavier, on the 6th of June 1548. He was buried at Goa, but his remains were afterwards exhumed and conveyed to Portugal, to be reinterred under a splendid monument in the convent of Bemfica.
See Jacinto Freire de Andrade, Vida de D. João de Castro (Lisbon, 1651), English translation by Sir Peter Wyche (1664); Diogo de Couto, Decadas da Asia, vi. The Roteiros or logbooks of Castro’s voyages in the East (Lisbon, 1833, 1843 and 1872) are of great interest.
CASTROGIOVANNI (Arab. Kasr-Yani, a corruption of Castrum Ennae), a town and episcopal see of the province of Caltanisetta, Sicily, 95 m. by rail S.E. of Palermo, and 56 m. W. of Catania, situated 2605 ft. above sea-level, almost in the centre of the island, and commanding a magnificent view of the interior. Pop. (1901) 25,826. Enna was one of the cities of the Sicels, and the statement of Stephanus Byzantinus that it was colonized by Syracuse in 664 B.C. is improbable. The question is discussed by E. Pais, Atakta (Pisa, 1891), 63. It does not appear in history before the time of Dionysius I. of Syracuse, who, after unsuccessful attempts, finally acquired possession of it by treachery about 397 B.C. Its natural position rendered it a fortress of great importance, and it is frequently mentioned in subsequent history. In 134–132 it was the headquarters of the slave revolt, and was only reduced by treachery. Cicero speaks of it as a place of some importance, but in imperial times it seems to have been of little account. In A.D. 837 the Saracens attempted to take it, but without success; and it was again only by treachery that they were able to take it in 859. In 1087 it fell into the hands of the Normans; and the existing remains of fortifications are entirely medieval. There are indeed no remains of earlier days. The cathedral, founded in 1307, is of some interest. There are no remains of the famous temple of Demeter, from which Verres, as Cicero tells us, removed the bronze statue of the goddess. The lake of Pergus, where Persephone, according to one of the myths, was carried off by Hades, lies 4 m. to the south. The myth itself must have had some local origin, but has had so much Greek detail grafted upon it that the very names of the earlier Sicel deities have been displaced.
CASTRO URDIALES, a seaport of northern Spain, in the province of Santander, situated on the bay of Biscay and at the head of a branch railway connected with the Bilbao-Santander line. Pop. (1870) about 3500; (1900) 14,191. Castro Urdiales is a modern town, although its castle and parish church date from the middle ages. It was destroyed by the French in 1813, but speedily rebuilt and fortified. Its rapid rise in population and prosperity dates from the increased development of iron-mining and railway communication which took place after 1879. Its chief industries are iron-mining, fishing, and the preservation of fish, especially sardines, in oil. Between 1894 and 1904 the exports of iron ore rose from 277,200 tons to 516,574 tons.
CASTRO Y BELLVIS, GUILLÉN DE (1569–1631), Spanish dramatist, was a Valencian by birth, and early enjoyed a reputation as a man of letters. In 1591 he became a member of a local literary academy called the Nocturnos. At one time a captain of the coast-guard, at another the protégé of Benavente, viceroy of Naples, who appointed him governor of Scigliano, patronized by Osuna and Olivares, Castro was nominated a knight of the order of Santiago in 1623. He settled at Madrid in 1626, and died there on the 28th of July 1631 in such poverty that his funeral expenses were defrayed by charity. He probably made the acquaintance of Lope de Vega at the festivals (1620–1622) held to commemorate the beatification and canonization of St Isidore, the patron saint of Madrid. On the latter occasion Castro’s octavas were awarded the first prize. Lope de Vega dedicated to him a celebrated play entitled Las Almenas
