Isabella I
Isabella I of Castile, Queen of Castile and León
queen of Spain
byname Isabella the Catholic, Spanish Isabel la Católica
born April 22, 1451, Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Castile
died November 26, 1504, Medina del Campo, Spain
Main
queen of Castile (1474–1504) and of Aragon (1479–1504), ruling the two
kingdoms jointly from 1479 with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon
(Ferdinand V of Castile). Their rule effected the permanent union of
Spain and the beginning of an overseas empire in the New World, led by
Christopher Columbus under Isabella’s sponsorship.
Early life
Isabella was the daughter of John II of Castile and his second wife,
Isabella of Portugal. Three years after her birth her half brother
became king as Henry IV. Despite the fact that she had a younger
brother, Alfonso, and that her early years were spent quietly with her
mother at Arévalo, Isabella was soon drawn into Castilian politics. She
was brought to court when she was 13 in order to be under the king’s
eye. At first the opposition to Henry IV gathered around Alfonso, but
when the latter died in July 1468, the rebellious magnates naturally
turned to Isabella. She did not, however, play the role thus designed
for her, and the fruit of her wisdom was recognition as his heiress by
Henry IV at the agreement known as the Accord of Toros de Guisando
(September 19, 1468).
As heiress of Castile, the question of Isabella’s future marriage
became a matter of increasing diplomatic activity at home and abroad.
Portugal, Aragon, and France each put forward a marriage candidate.
Henry seems to have wanted his half sister to marry Afonso V, king of
Portugal. As between the Portuguese and Aragonese candidates, she
herself, no doubt assisted in her decision by her small group of
councillors, came down in favour of Ferdinand of Aragon. A third suitor,
the French duc de Guiènne, was sidestepped, and without Henry’s approval
she married Ferdinand in October 1469 in the palace of Juan de Vivero,
at Valladolid. The prospect of an Aragonese consort led to the
development of an anti-Aragonese party that put forward the claims of a
rival heiress, Henry’s daughter Joan, known as la Beltraneja by those
who believed that her true father was Beltrán de la Cueva, duque de
Albuquerque. The king encouraged this group by going back on the accord
of 1468 on the grounds that Isabella had shown disobedience to the crown
in marrying Ferdinand without the royal consent. He now rejected
Isabella’s claim to the throne and preferred that of Joan, for whom he
sought the hand of the duc de Guiènne. Although Isabella and Henry were
to some extent reconciled, the long-threatened war of succession broke
out at once when the king died in 1474.
Reign
When Henry died Isabella was in Segovia, which was secured for her
claim. She was supported by an important group of Castilian nobles,
including Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, the constable of Castile
(a Velasco), and the admiral (an Enríquez), who was related to
Ferdinand’s mother. The opposing faction, which put forward the
counterclaims of Joan, included the archbishop of Toledo; a former
supporter, the master of Calatrava (an influential military order); and
the powerful young marqués de Villena. They were supported by Afonso V
of Portugal, who hastened to invade Castile and there betrothed himself
to Joan. The first four years of Isabella’s reign were thus occupied by
a civil war, which ended in defeat for her Castilian opponents and for
the Portuguese king (February 24, 1479). Upon the death of John II of
Aragon in the same year, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon came
together in the persons of their rulers.
Spain emerged as a united country, but it was long before this
personal union would lead to effective political unification. Ferdinand,
indeed, in his first will (1475) made Isabella his heir in Aragon and
openly declared the advantages his subjects would derive from the union
with Castile. But each kingdom continued to be governed according to its
own institutions. The two sovereigns were certainly united in aiming to
end the long process of Reconquista by taking over the kingdom of
Granada—the last Muslim stronghold in Spain. In the end, however, the
conquest (which began in 1482) proved difficult and drawn out, and it
strained the finances of Castile. Although some of the features of the
campaign were medieval (such as the order of battle), others were novel.
Isabella took a close interest in the conduct of the war and seems to
have been responsible for improved methods of supply and for the
establishment of a military hospital. In 1491 she and Ferdinand set up a
forward headquarters at Santa Fe, close to their ultimate objective, and
there they stayed until Granada fell on January 2, 1492.
While she was at Santa Fe another event with which the queen was to
become personally associated was in the making, for Columbus visited her
there to enlist support for the voyage that was to result in the
European settlement of America. Although the story of her offering to
pledge her jewels to help finance the expedition cannot be accepted, and
Columbus secured only limited financial support from her, Isabella and
her councillors must receive credit for making the decision to approve
the momentous voyage. The terms on which the expedition was to set out
to discover a new route to the Indies were drawn up on April 17, 1492.
The New World that was explored as a result of that decision was, with
papal confirmation, annexed to the crown of Castile, in accordance with
existing practice in regard to such previous Atlantic discoveries as the
Canary Islands.
The queen and her advisers hardly needed Columbus to remind them of
the opportunity now offered for the spreading of Christianity. Yet the
unexpected discoveries quickly brought fresh problems to Isabella, not
the least of which was the relationship between the newly discovered
“Indians” and the crown of Castile. The queen and her councillors were
more ready to recognize the rights of the Indians than was Columbus; she
ordered some of those he had brought back as slaves to be released. The
queen was still concerned with these problems when she died in 1504.
Meanwhile, in 1480 the Inquisition had been set up in Andalusia.
There is little doubt that this represented the culmination of a long
and popular movement against non-Christians and doubtful converts, which
had manifested itself frequently in the late Middle Ages in Castile. The
expulsion in 1492 of those Jews who refused conversion was the logical
result of the establishment of the Inquisition. Yet, however meritorious
the expulsion may have seemed at the time in order to achieve greater
religious and political unity, judged by its economic consequences
alone, the loss of this valuable element in Spanish society was a
serious mistake.
It is difficult to disentangle Isabella’s personal responsibility for
the achievements of her reign from those of Ferdinand. But, undoubtedly,
she played a large part in establishing the court as a centre of
influence. With her blue eyes, her fair or chestnut hair, and her jewels
and magnificent dresses, she must have made a striking figure. At the
same time display was matched with religious feeling. Her choice of
spiritual advisers brought to the fore such different and remarkable men
as Hernando de Talavera and Cardinal Cisneros. A policy of reforming the
Spanish churches had begun early in the 15th century, but the movement
gathered momentum only under Isabella and Talavera. When in 1492
Talavera became archbishop of Granada, his place at the queen’s side was
taken by Cisneros, for whom the monarchs secured the crucial position of
archbishop of Toledo in 1495. The monarchs were interested in the reform
of the secular clergy and still more in that of the orders of monks,
friars, and nuns; Isabella took a particular interest in the reform of
the Poor Clares, an order of Franciscan nuns. Although when she died
there was still much to be done, the rulers and Cisneros together had
gone far toward achieving their goals.
Although Isabella was intensely pious and orthodox in her beliefs and
was granted with Ferdinand the title of the “Catholic Kings” by Pope
Alexander VI, she could be both imperious and pertinacious in her
dealings with the papacy. This was particularly true when she thought
the pope was making bad appointments to Spanish benefices or in any way
encroaching on the customary rights of the crown over the Spanish
churches. For example, for the vacant see of Cuenca in 1478 she rejected
the Italian cardinal appointed by the pope, who four years later
accepted her alternative Spanish candidate. Subsequently, she
successfully rejected the suggestion that the pope’s nephew should
become archbishop of Sevilla. In seeking to control appointments to
Castilian sees, Isabella was not simply inspired by national sentiments.
She also sought candidates of high standards; judged by her choices of
men such as Talavera and Cisneros, Isabella was remarkably effective in
achieving her objective.
Isabella was almost as interested in education as she was in
religion. After she reached the age of 30, she acquired proficiency in
Latin. At court she encouraged such notable scholars as Pietro Martire
d’Anghiera, whom she set up as the head of a new palace school for the
sons of the nobility. Naturally, many of the outstanding literary works
of her reign, such as Antonio de Nebrija’s Gramática Castellana (1492;
“Castilian Grammar”), were dedicated to her. She was also the patron of
Spanish and Flemish artists, and part of her extensive collection of
pictures survives.
The last decade of her reign took place against a background of
family sorrows brought about by the deaths of her only son and heir,
Juan (1497); of her daughter Isabella, queen of Portugal, in childbirth
(1498); and of her grandchild Miguel (1500), who might have brought
about a personal union between Spain and Portugal. Instead, her daughter
Joan, wife of Philip I and mother of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V,
became the heiress of Castile. However, this offered little comfort to
the queen because by 1501 Joan had already shown signs of the mental
imbalance that would later earn her the title of “the Mad.”
One of the achievements of Isabella’s last decade was undoubtedly the
success with which she and Ferdinand, acting on her initiative, extended
their authority over the military orders of Alcántara, Calatrava, and
Santiago, thus giving the crown control over their vast property and
patronage. These orders had been exploited for too long by the nobility
and were the subject of intense rivalry among those who sought to be
elected master of one or other of them. In 1487 Ferdinand became grand
master of Calatrava, and by 1499 he had acquired the grand masterships
of Alcántara and Santiago. With the capture of Granada, the main work of
the orders had been done, and a process that envisaged their ultimate
absorption into the lands of the crown was logical and sensible.
Throughout her long reign, Isabella also strove to strengthen royal
authority at the expense of the Cortes (Spanish parliament) and the
towns.
Assessment
Good sense and statesmanship were equally reflected in Isabella’s will
and codicil. Because she left no memoirs, her will is in many ways the
most reliable picture of her. In it she sums up her aspirations and her
awareness of how much she and Ferdinand had been unable to do. With
prudence she comments on the basis of her political program—the unity of
the states of the Iberian Peninsula, the maintenance of control over the
Strait of Gibraltar, and a policy of expansion into Muslim North Africa,
of just rule for the Indians of the New World, and of reform in the
church at home. If the overall impression is inevitably piecemeal, it is
also clear that Isabella gave to her successors an exceptional document.
It assures scholars that, in allotting to Isabella the foremost place
among their rulers, Spaniards do not misjudge this remarkable woman.
J.R.L. Highfield
Encyclopaedia Britannica
