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Updated: May 12, 2025
While this grim and reluctant tranquillity prevailed along the Christian line, says Agapida, there rose a mingled shout and sound of laughter near the gate of the city. A Moorish horseman, armed at all points, issued forth, followed by a rabble, who drew back as he approached the scene of danger. The Moor was more robust and brawny than was common with his countrymen.
"Thus," says the pious Fray Antonio Agapida, "thus are the predictions of false prophets sometimes permitted to be verified, but always to the confusion of those who trust in them; for the words of the Moorish nigromancer came to pass that the people of Malaga should eat of those heaps of bread, but they ate in humiliation and defeat and with sorrow and bitterness of heart."
Light squadrons of the enemy were seen hovering about the plain, but never approached near enough to discover the deception; and thus in the course of a few days the wall was rebuilt stronger than before. There was another expedient of this shrewd veteran which greatly excites the marvel of Agapida.
These pious sentiments of the truly Catholic Agapida are echoed by Padre Mariana in his history;* but the worthy chronicler Pedro Abarca attributes the interference of the king of Naples not to lack of orthodoxy in religion, but to an excess of worldly policy, he being apprehensive that should Ferdinand conquer the Moors of Granada he might have time and means to assert a claim of the house of Aragon to the crown of Naples.
"When kings' treasures," says Fray Antonio Agapida, "are dispensed by priestly hands, there is no stint, as the glorious annals of Spain bear witness." Under the guidance of these ghostly men it seemed as if miracles were effected.
He had formerly been archbishop of Palermo, but had doffed the cassock for the cuirass, and, according to Fray Antonio Agapida, had gained a glorious crown of martyrdom by falling in this holy war.
* It is proper to mention the result of this mission of the two friars, and which the worthy Agapida has neglected to record. At a subsequent period the Catholic sovereigns sent the distinguished historian, Pietro Martyr of Angleria, as ambassador to the grand soldan. That able man made such representations as were perfectly satisfactory to the Oriental potentate.
It was to teach them that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that God alone giveth the victory." * Cura de los Palacios. The worthy father Fray Antonio Agapida, however, asserts it to be a punishment for the avarice of the Spanish warriors.
"It was a singular and miraculous victory," says Fray Antonio Agapida; "but the Christian knight was armed by the sacred nature of his cause, and the Holy Virgin gave him strength, like another David, to slay this gigantic champion of the Gentiles." The laws of chivalry were observed throughout the combat no one interfered on either side.
Having refreshed himself, as it were, with the description of this progress of Queen Isabella to the camp and the glorious pomp of the Catholic sovereigns, the worthy Antonio Agapida returns with renewed relish to his pious work of discomfiting the Moors.
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