History has these things. So much time, so many people and so many individual stories necessarily give rise to many coincidences. Although there will be those who want to see it as something else and call it "divine justice" or "karma". This event occurred in Spain (or, to be correct, in Castile) in the year 1312, and its protagonist was the king Ferdinand IV that, because of this, went down in history with the nickname of “the Summoned ”.
Fernando IV was barely ten years old when he had to assume the throne of Castile in Toledo, under the tutelage of his mother, María Alfonso de Meneses , better known as Maria de Molina , queen three times. Fernando was a frail and sickly child who suffered from hemoptysis (coughing attacks in which abundant blood is expelled), a disease that would eventually lead to his death. The marriage of his parents, Sancho IV of Castile and María de Molina, had not obtained the pontifical dispensation for two reasons. In the first place, there was consanguinity in the third degree and, secondly, the then Infante Sancho had previously been married to Gillerma de Montcada , a wealthy Catalan heiress, although the marriage had never been consummated. Due to the illegitimacy of this marriage and the weakness of the young king, in the first years of his reign he had to face numerous insubordinations and intrigues to dethrone him (although it was rather María de Molina who confronted them), frequently led by John of Castile the one from Tarifa , son of Alfonso X and therefore uncle of Fernando, who aspired to the throne.
María de Molina presents her son in the Cortes of Valladolid – Antonio Gisbert Pérez (1863)
The fact is that, surely because of this, Fernando IV was a paranoid king who saw enemies, intrigues and conspiracies everywhere. His distrust of him was such that he had many of these opponents executed, whether they were real threats or the result of his psychosis. And he did it in a sibylline way, entrusting these “little jobs” to some trusted favorites of his. One of them was Juan Alfonso de Benavides , deprived of the king whom he held in high esteem and trust, and who was a skilled swordsman.
The Carvajal brothers
Two of these enemies of the king, surely imagined, were the brothers Juan Alfonso de Carvajal and Pedro Alfonso de Carvajal , knights and commanders of the Order of Calatrava. And Fernando IV commissioned Benavides to finish them off. It is not very clear, since the sources of the time do not mention it and there are several versions, if it was one of the Carvajal who killed Juan Alfonso de Benavides in a singular duel with a sword, or if he was vilely assassinated leaving the palace of the. In any case, the Carvajal brothers were accused of murdering the private.
The news reached the ears of Fernando IV while he was in Palencia about to leave with his hosts for the town of Alcaudete (in the province of Jaén). in aid of his brother the infante Don Pedro in his fight against the Moors.
The Rock of Martos
The fact is that being camped near there, in Martos , he sent for (or arrest) the Carvajal brothers, accusing them of the murder. They protested his innocence, but the king summarily sentenced them to death. And apparently beheading (which was the death reserved for the nobles in the Middle Ages) was not enough, since he sentenced them to be thrown from the top of the Peña de Martos inside an iron cage with spikes. It is evident that more than a sentence it was a revenge. So there they took the two brothers, chained, to the top of the rock. Imagine the picture:the king, the royal retinue, the nobles, the guard and perhaps some curious villagers, and the two brothers on the edge of the rock, with or without a cage (there are also versions of this). And there, before being thrown off the cliff, the Carvajal make their last plea of innocence proclaiming the unfairness of the sentence and summoning the king, within thirty days, to render accounts of such injustice before the divine tribunal. It was August 7, 1312, and the Carvajal brothers were released by the Peña de Martos in compliance with the royal sentence. The cage with the shattered and mutilated bodies was left on an esplanade at the foot of the rock. The marteños, afflicted by such tremendous injustice, took the corpses to the church of Santa Marta where they were buried (and where they still remain), and in their memory they erected a cross in the place where the cage stopped, the Cross of Weeping .
Last moments of Fernando IV – José Casado del Alisal (1860)
The summoned attends the appointment
The king continued his march to the site of Alcaudete , although shortly after he fell ill (I have already said that he was sickly since he was a child, at this time he was 26 years old) and he decided to retire to Jaén until he recovered. One day, feeling better and having received the news that his brother had taken Alcaudete from the Moors, he ate early to go there after his siesta. He never got up again, they found him dead in his bed. It was the 7th of September. The day before, the term that the Carvajal brothers had given him to render accounts before divine justice had expired.