Ferdinand and Isabella

J. Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317893448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book is about a couple, not a single, dominant ruler. Thus it raises issues of gender, and the dynamics of a marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power. The reader sees Ferdinand and Isabella struggle to establish their regime, and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and State. It sees them fight a 'total war', by fifteenth-century standards, against Muslim Granada, leading to that kingdom's conquest, and an equally 'total' war, through the Inquisition and the Church in general, to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and to reform and purify the religious and social lives of the established Christians themselves. For readers interested in Early European History.

Chapter 1
Inheritance and Apprenticeship

On the night of Saturday to Sunday 11–12 December 1474, Henry IV of Castile lay dying in the castle (alcázar) of Madrid. Already in poor physical and mental health, the king had for several weeks been seeking well-being by hunting in the nearby royal forest of El Pardo. He died in the early hours of the 12th, his death apparently being sudden and its direct cause uncertain.¹ What happened next can best be described as a partially constitutional coup, in which Henry’s half-sister Isabella immediately claimed the Castilian throne, thus precipitating four years of civil and international conflict. First thing on Sunday morning, one of Henry’s courtiers, Rodrigo Ulloa, travelled north to Segovia, where Isabella was awaiting events with her little court, having used the city, in which royal archives and treasure were stored, as her base since the beginning of 1474. Although, on the instructions of the committee of nobles that had been appointed to run the kingdom during his illness, Ulloa asked her to do nothing concerning the throne and to await a judicial determination between her and Henry’s officially recognized daughter, Joanna, the action she took was very different. The rest of that Sunday was spent in preparations for her proclamation as queen. She rehearsed the ceremony, but rumblings from those among her entourage who were subjects of John II of Aragon meant that much of the day was spent on legal niceties. Her husband Ferdinand was absent during the whole proceeding. The next day (13 December), being the feast of St Lucy, a simple ceremony took place in the main square of Segovia, in which Isabella swore to obey the commandments of the Church and respect its prelates, to seek the common good of the Castilian people and the expansion of its Crown’s domains, which she swore never to divide or give away. She promised to respect all the privileges, liberties and exemptions of the nobility and of the towns and villages. After this, she was accepted by the assembly as queen of Castile and this was confirmed by the conventional cry, led by the royal heralds, of ‘Castile, Castile, Castile, for the queen and our lady, Queen Doña Isabella and for the king Don Ferdinand, as her legitimate husband!’ The only other thing known for certain about the ceremony in Segovia on 13 December 1474 is that no first- or second-rank nobles were present and at most one prelate, the local diocesan bishop, Juan Arias Dávila. With this limited amount of open backing, she had not only to secure the allegiance of Castile but also to obtain the support of her husband, who was then over 200 miles away, in the Aragonese capital, Zaragoza.

The subordinate regions, known as ‘kingdoms’, of the Crown of Castile, which Isabella had effectively seized by means of a coup, covered about three-quarters of the Spanish landmass and contained a similar proportion of its natural and human resources. The Iberian territories of the Crown of Aragon, which her husband Ferdinand would inherit in 1479, amounted to no more than one-quarter of those of Castile, although the Aragonese king also ruled various Mediterranean islands, including the Balearics, Sardinia and Sicily, this last giving Ferdinand his current royal title. The independent kingdom of Portugal, which adjoined Castile, had less than one-sixth of the latter’s population, although it, too, was beginning to acquire an overseas empire in the Atlantic and interests on the African mainland (see Chapter 5). The Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre would retain its independence until 1512 and the Muslim emirate of Granada until 1492, but there was no doubt that Isabella’s decisiveness in Segovia, in December 1474, brought her the potential to achieve hegemony over the entire Iberian peninsula.

As every serious historian of her life and times has noted, Isabella’s path to the throne had not been straightforward, let alone inevitable.² Until the death of her brother Alfonso, on 5 July 1468, the princess had had no prospect at all of becoming queen of Castile and, even after that, the obvious successor was Henry IV’s daughter, Joanna, offspring of his marriage to his second wife, Joanna of Portugal, who had been born in February 1462. Much ink has been spilt in the attempt to assess the truth of the claims made by numerous chroniclers and propagandists, after Isabella’s accession, that Princess Joanna was in fact the result of an illicit alliance between Henry’s queen and one of his favourites, Beltrán de la Cueva, count of Ledesma – hence the nickname given to her by her enemies, ‘La Beltraneja’. Insofar as it is possible to determine the question, however, it seems right to accept Tarsicio Azcona’s contention, in a recent study, that the unfortunate Joanna was ‘misnamed’ (mal llamada) the ‘Beltraneja’ and was, in fact, the legitimate heir to the Castilian throne.³ What is undeniable, however, is that the existence of a rival candidate was to blight particularly the earlier years of Isabella’s reign and test the mettle of her husband as a military commander as well as a political leader. Henry IV had not helped the situation, first, by allowing both women to be sworn in as heirs by the Castilian parliament (cortes) – Joanna in May 1462 and Isabella in September 1468 – and, second, by leaving no clear will when he died in 1474.

There is some debate about the order of events in the communication of the news from Segovia to Ferdinand, but it seems certain that the first person from whom he heard of the new regime was not his wife. The chronicler Alfonso de Palencia, who was on a diplomatic mission in Zaragoza at the time, reports that the news leaked through from various sources, the first being the archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, who was followed by a servant of the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza. On 16 December, as Isabella was issuing a letter from Segovia to the cities and authorities of Castile, which announced her accession and asked them, in the terms of the ceremony that had been held three days earlier, to recognize her as their ‘Queen and natural Lady and sister’, and Ferdinand ‘as my legitimate husband’, Gaspar de Espés arrived in Zaragoza with a short letter from his wife, which did no more than announce her half-brother’s death. Not surprisingly, Ferdinand was sufficiently alarmed to leave for Castile on 19 December and it was at Calatayud, on the 21st, that he finally received an account of the events in Segovia from his wife and from her faithful henchman Gutierre de Cárdenas, who had scandalized some by carrying the unsheathed sword of state before her on the 13th. Thus it was revealed to Ferdinand that Isabella, in her proclamation, had relegated him to the role of ‘king consort’, one that he was evidently unwilling to accept. On Christmas Eve, one of the king of Sicily’s legal advisers, Alfonso de la Cavallería, wrote on his behalf to John II, asking him to help reconcile the couple who, he indicated, had seriously fallen out over the manner of the Castilian proclamation.

The Aragonese court had evidently expected Ferdinand to have executive power in the neighbouring kingdom, where his father and other relatives had been so influential for many decades. He hurried to Segovia, only pausing at Almazán to celebrate Christmas, but received what looked like a further snub, when he was effectively refused entry to Segovia and made to cool his heels in the neighbouring village of Turégano, supposedly while preparations were made to receive him in state. Isabella’s few noble supporters, the Enríquez and the Manrique, came out of the city to kiss hands and finally on 2 January 1475, he made his formal entry. He swore at the San Martín gate to observe the city’s privileges and moved on to the cathedral to swear another oath to uphold the laws of the kingdom as a whole. He then went to meet his wife in the Alcázar where, after a banquet, the couple seem immediately to have begun a ‘debate’ about how royal powers in Castile were to be divided between them. By then, Isabella’s initial stance had received the backing of the archbishops of Toledo and Seville and several leading Castilian nobles, who had signed an agreement to that effect on 27 December 1474. The result of the January negotiations in the castle at Segovia was a concordat (concordia) between the spouses, who had been lobbied beforehand by three main groups. The first consisted of those Castilians who fully committed themselves to Isabella’s service and saw Ferdinand as no more than a king consort. The second group, consisting of Ferdinand’s Aragonese entourage, naturally wished him to have executive powers alongside the ‘proprietary queen’ of Castile, but Azcona has argued that the most militant pro-Aragonese stance was adopted by those Castilians who had supported the Trastamaran ‘Aragonese princes’ (infantes de Aragón), including Ferdinand’s father, during the reigns of the previous two Castilian kings, John II and Henry IV.⁴ Inevitably, a major bone of contention would be the matter of female succession, which was said not to be permitted in the Crown of Aragon, but the princess’s early upbringing had given her knowledge and experience of women with political power.

During the first few years of her life, Isabella lived with her mother, Isabella of Portugal, who is commonly portrayed as being devastated in 1454, when her daughter was only three years old, by the death of her husband, John II of Castile, ‘sinking gradually into despair and madness’, although the opinions of recent biographers vary on this point.⁵ Another important influence on Princess Isabella in her earlier years was her grandmother, Isabella of Barcelos, who arrived in Castile from the neighbouring and wholly independent kingdom of Portugal as a widow and was regarded as being of such political substance that she was invited by her son-in-law, John II, to attend meetings of the Royal Council (consejo real). After the king’s death, she accompanied her daughter to Arévalo, although she appears to have retained some political influence at the court of Henry IV, seeing that she was one of the negotiators of his marriage with Juana of Portugal. She died in 1465, just as civil war was breaking out in Castile. Also not to be forgotten is a third strong political woman, who had influence on the young princess of Castile. This is her aunt, Mary of Castile, who married Alfonso V of Aragon and Naples, and from 1434 until her death, in 1458, governed the diverse and difficult territories of the Crown of Aragon on his behalf. Noted for the contrast between the weakness of her body and the vigour of her political judgement and activity, Mary spent three years in Arévalo, between 1454, when she came to renegotiate Aragonese–Castilian relations after the death of her brother, and 1457.⁶ During her daughter’s subsequent reign, Iñigo López de Mendoza, first marquis of Santillana, hailed Isabella of Portugal, on that basis, as the ‘fourth liberator of mankind’, after Judith and Esther in the Old Testament and the Virgin Mary in the New. Clearly, Isabella of Portugal did once possess political acumen and strength, whatever her later psychological problems. It is also worth stressing, at this stage, the considerable Plantagenet and Lancastrian influence in Isabella of Castile’s dynastic background, which came through both her Castilian and her Portuguese descent. Not only was Catherine of Lancaster, regent of Castile early in the fifteenth century, her paternal grandmother, but her maternal grandmother, Isabella of Barcelos, was both the granddaughter of João I of Portugal and the daughter-in-law of Catherine’s half-sister, Philippa of Lancaster, who was herself the daughter of Blanche of Lancaster, the first wife of Edward III’s brother, John of Gaunt.⁷ These connections would be of renewed interest when Isabella and Ferdinand’s daughter Catherine married into the Tudor dynasty (see Chapter 7).

As early as July 1468, after her brother Alfonso had died and even though she refused to accept the title of ‘queen’ while her half-brother Henry still lived, Isabella began to receive personal advice on government. Martín de Córdoba, an Augustinian friar, dedicated to her his treatise entitled ‘Garden of noble ladies’ (Jardín de nobles donzellas), which he wrote in order to refute the arguments of those who opposed government by women:

Some men, Lady, of lesser understanding, and perhaps lacking knowledge of natural and moral causes, and not having turned the pages of chronicles of past times, thought it a bad thing when any kingdom or other polity comes under the rule of women, but I, as I shall state below, am of the contrary opinion.⁸

Fray Martín follows the example of his predecessor Juan García de Castrojeriz, who, in 1344, published a ‘Rule of princes’ (Regimiento de príncipes) and whose work was still influential in the late fifteenth century. Thus he stresses the need for a ruler to have a thorough education, in order to govern himself or herself, the royal household and the kingdom as a whole. He cites cases of powerful women in ancient times, including goddesses and sibyls, but notes the absence of examples of successful female rulers in his own day. In particular, contemporary candidates lacked letters, ‘because now, in our century, women do not give themselves to the study of liberal arts or of other sciences, rather it seems as though they are forbidden’.⁹ To Fray Martín, Isabella’s noble birth made her eligible to rule and he was fond of comparing her with the Virgin Mary, whom he also regarded as the daughter of kings. He noted, in the conventional manner of the period, that Mary, by her obedience to God in giving birth to His son, Jesus, redeemed the sin of Eve, in eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). If God created paradise for Eve, Mary was paradise in herself, an idea that was to be developed further by writers after 1474. In this context, Martín identified three degrees of female chastity – virginal purity, honourable widowhood and marital fidelity. Citing the example of numerous female saints, he vainly urged Isabella, just a year before her marriage to Ferdinand, permanently to preserve her virginity.¹⁰

In the Castilian context, the absolutist theory of monarchy had been fully developed in the second section of the seven-part law code of Alfonso X, the Siete Partidas, which had not received full legal force in the kingdom until 1348. According to this text, which provided the basis for monarchical government in Castile in the fifteenth century, the king governed by grace (gobierno de gracia). Chancery documents, both before and during Isabella and Ferdinand’s reign, habitually talked of the ruler’s ‘absolute royal power’ (poderío real absoluto), which he exercised by means of his ‘certain knowledge and by his own will’ (cierta ciencia y moto propio). This ‘absolute’ power was exercised through the granting to subjects by the king, as ‘natural lord’ (señor natural) of the kingdom, of lands and other Crown resources, in the form of royal graces or grants (mercedes reales). Thus the king was the sole repository of legal power and also exempt from subjection to his own laws, which he might annul or suspend, simply by exercising his ‘absolute power’ and ‘certain knowledge’ and will. During the reigns of John II and Henry IV, Alfonso X’s concept and project of monarchy had been further developed, so as to give much greater emphasis to the divine authority and attributes of monarchy. Thus, like the Jewish monarchs of the Old Testament, as well as the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium, Castilian rulers in the fifteenth century saw themselves as ‘anointed kings’ (reyes ungidos). As a result of the efforts of John II’s constable (condestable) of Castile and favourite (privado), Álvaro de Luna, after 1430, this ‘theological’ concept of monarchy was further developed, receiving its fullest expression at the Cortes of Olmedo, in 1445.¹¹ The conflicts of the later years of John II’s reign, as well as much of Henry IV’s, failed to dilute this Christianized form of monarchical absolutism, so that its continuation was effectively the only policy in Isabella’s mind, when she seized power in December 1474. The events of the previous decades had pointed up, however, the consequences of a ruler’s failing to live up to this exalted form of monarchism. Absolutism could never function without the co-operation of oligarchic groups, such as the nobility, the Church and municipal councils, so that Isabella and her husband’s aim was simply to restore an equilibrium that had tilted too far against the Crown. As for the other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Map
• Introduction
• 1 Inheritance and Apprenticeship
• 2 Building a Regime
• 3 The War against Islam
• 4 Defenders of the Faith
• 5 Diplomacy and Expansion
• 6 Court and Culture
• 7 Dynasty and Legacy
• Epilogue
• Chronology
• Monetary Values
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Index