ABSTRACT
One day in the early summer of 1453, an armed escort entered the plaza at Valladolid to the sound of wailing trumpets and a herald, loudly proclaiming a royal death sentence. 1 At some distance rode the condemned man shrouded in a black cape astride a mule decked in mourning, a lone Franciscan friar walking at his side. 2 After a day’s stay of execution to prepare himself and arrange his worldly affairs, Alvaro de Luna had spent much of the night in prayer. Early that morning, having confessed and heard Mass, he took a light breakfast, then mounted his mule to ride the last several hundred yards to the carpet-strewn scaffold covered by an awning.
