Diego Arias Dávila
Diego Arias Dávila · Historical & Religious Figures
Converso who rose from tax farmer to contador mayor of Henry IV of Castile, lord of Puñonrostro and founder of a Segovia hospital
vers 1400, Ségovie (ou Ávila), Castille (Espagne) — 1466, Ségovie, Castille (Espagne)
Ségovie
Diego Arias Dávila is recognized among Jewish contributors to Historical & Religious Figures — Converso who rose from tax farmer to contador mayor of Henry IV of Castile, lord of Puñonrostro and founder of a Segovia hospital
Origins and early life
Diego Arias Dávila was born a Jew, in Segovia or Ávila around 1400, and converted to Christianity in his youth, in the years of the preaching campaigns and the anti-Jewish laws that followed the massacres of 1391 — the Spanish historiography calls him, without ambiguity, a judeoconverso, and the Inquisition itself, twenty years after his death, would try his memory for having kept the faith he was born in.
Work and career
He began small, as a spice dealer and collector of taxes, and rose through the treasury of Castile until he held the highest financial office in the kingdom: contador mayor to Henry IV, the king's chief accountant and, in practice, the most powerful man at his court, feared by the nobles for the taxes he raised and the favors he controlled. He was made lord of Puñonrostro and built the fortified tower in Segovia that still bears his family's name, and he founded in the same city the hospital of San Antonio for the poor.
Later years
He died in 1466, and the family's later history is the history of the converso condition in Spain: his son Juan became bishop of Segovia and had to defend his parents' bones before the tribunals in Rome, and his grandson Pedrarias Dávila became the first governor of Castilla del Oro, on the isthmus of Panama. A non-academic source gives him a Hebrew birth name; it is not confirmed by the historians, and this fiche does not repeat it.
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Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Arias_D%C3%A1vila
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Converso who rose from tax farmer to contador mayor of Henry IV of Castile, lord of Puñonrostro and founder of a Segovia hospital
Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Arias_D%C3%A1vila
