Divers are the appreciations of the precise part played by Peter Martyr in the course of this war.  He spent quite as much time with the Queen’s court as he did at the front, and he himself advances but modest claims to war’s laurels, writing rather as one who had missed his vocation amongst men whose profession was fighting.  The career he sought did not lie in that direction.  In later years writing to his friend Marliano, he observed:  De bello autem si consilium amici vis, bella gerant bellatores.  Philosophis inhaereat lectionis et contemplationis studium.

Glorious as the date of Granada’s capture might have been in Spanish history, it acquired world-wide significance from the decision given in favour of the project of Christopher Columbus which followed as a consequence of the Christian victory.  Though he nowhere states the fact, Martyr must at this time[2] have known the Genoese suppliant for royal patronage.  Talavera, confessor to the Queen, was the friend and protector of both Italians.

[Note 2:  Navarrete states that the two Italians had known one another intimately prior to the siege of Granada. Coleccion de documentos ineditos, tom. i., p. 68.]

Fascinated by the novelties and charms of Granada, Martyr remained in the conquered city when the Court withdrew.  His friend Tendilla was appointed first governor of the province and Talavera became its first archbishop.  Comparing the city with others, famous and beautiful in Italy, he declared Granada to be the loveliest of them all; for Venice was devoid of landscape and surrounded only by sea; Milan lay in a flat stretch of monotonous plain; Florence might boast her hills, but they made her winter climate frigid, while Rome was afflicted by unwholesome winds from Africa and such poisonous exhalations from the surrounding marshes that few of her citizens lived to old age.  Such, to eyes sensitive to Nature’s charms and to a mind conscious of historical significance, was the prize that had fallen to the Catholic sovereigns.[3]

[Note 3:  In the month of June, 1492.]

What influences worked to prepare the change which took place in Peter Martyr’s life within the next few months are not known.  After the briefest preparation, he took minor orders and occupied a canon’s stall in the cathedral of Granada.  Of a religious vocation, understood in the theological sense, there appears to have been no pretence, but ten years later we find him a priest, with the rank of apostolic protonotary.  Writing on March 28, 1492, to Muro, the dean of Compostello he observed:  Ad Saturnum, cessante Marte, sub hujus sancti viri archiepiscopi umbra tento transfugere; a thorace jam ad togam me transtuli.  In the coherent organisation of society as it was then ordered, men were classified in distinct and recognisable categories, each of which opened avenues to the ambitious for attaining its special prizes.  Spain was still scarcely touched by the culture of the Renaissance.