Isabella: reigning queen and queen consort

Isabella of Castile
Public domain

Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) was the most remarkable ruler (not just woman ruler!) of her age. Contemporaries recognised her significance. Here are two contemporary quotations from Giles Tremlett's biography. (All subsequent quotations are also taken from Tremlett.)

The queen of Spain, called Isabella, has had no equal on this earth for 500 years.

The queen … is the greatest of all the feminine sex; she not only emulates men, but in spirit, prudence, and strength – not exactly a feminine quality – she matches the great heroes. 

This historian of Spain, Hugh Thomas states: ‘No woman in history has exceeded her achievement.’ 

The marriage of Isabella to Ferdinand of Aragon is often inaccurately described as the union of two crowns. In fact, they were the separate rulers of two realms and the only common institution was the Inquisition. Spain did not become a unified country until the accession of their grandson, Carlos I (Emperor Charles V) to the throne of Aragon. This also made him the de facto ruler of Castile, which he governed as nominal co-regent for his imprisoned mother Juana.

Controversy

Isabella is a controversial character. During the Franco period she and Ferdinand were used to justify the policy of centralisation and discouragement of minority cultures. Their symbol of the yoke and arrows  became the symbol of the ultra-right wing Falange.

The yoke and arrows
the symbol of Ferdinand and Isabella

Proposals for her canonisation have been blocked following protests from Jews and Muslims.

The Iberian Peninsula

At the time of Isabella's birth in 1451 there was no nation called ‘Spain’ but there was a shared idea of Hispania. Spain was the common name for the five states that occupied the Iberian peninsula: Moorish Granada, Castile (the most important of the Christian kingdoms), Portugal, Aragon, and Navarre. 

The succession war

In 1474 the weak and ineffective Henry (Enrique) IV of Castile (‘The Impotent) died.  His nickname was 'the Impotent' - which was significant! His heir was his putative 13-year-old daughter, Juana, known as ‘La Beltraneja’, after her supposed father, Henry’s steward, Don Beltrán de la Cueva. Her claim was challenged by the late king’s 23-year-old half-sister, Isabel (Isabella) de Trastámara, daughter of Juan II by his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. Henry had named her as his heir in 1468 but he had subsequently changed his mind and Isabella had to flee from him. What she needed to strengthen her claim was an advantageous marriage. 

She chose her second cousin Ferdinand, the heir to the crown of Aragon. In October 1469 Ferdinand and Isabella met at Valladolid and they were married on the 19th – without a papal dispensation. Isabella was 18, Ferdinand 17. Their daughter, Isabel, was born a year later. In December 1474.  Henry the Impotent died and Isabella claimed the crown of Castile.

Between 1474 and 1479 Isabella fought a war of succession with the supporters of ‘La Beltraneja’. Isabella moved with her army, and urged her troops to wage war without mercy. One chronicler described her as ‘more like a vigorous man than a woman’. In 1475 she addressed her nobles: 

Although I am just a weak woman, I would find out whether fortune was on my side or not before putting it to the test. From now on we should lose ourselves to fury rather than allow moderation to triumph, because war needs the counsel of the brave.… Things are only achieved by action.

Their position was enhanced in June 1478 when Isabella gave birth in Seville to a male heir, Juan. He was heir to both Castile and Aragon, and was therefore expected to rule most of Iberia. In January 1479 Ferdinand’s father, Juan II, died, and he became King of Aragon.  Isabella had not yet secured the throne of Castile, but she was now queen consort of Aragon.

Though the war continued, her enemies lost heart. The war ended officially in September 1479. Juana’s supporters renounced their claim and she was put in a convent. (She died in Lisbon in 1530, signing herself to the end as 'I, the Queen.') In November Isabella, now the undisputed Queen of Castile, gave birth to her second daughter, Juana.

Two monarchs, two kingdoms

The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella was a marriage of convenience but Isabella soon fell deeply in love with her husband and was made very jealous by his many infidelities.

Ferdinand and Isabella were king and queen of two separate kingdoms, with two separate parliaments. Ferdinand was the consort in Castile, Isabella in Aragon. But Aragon had just a quarter of the population of Castile, which had between 4 and 5 million people.  

Ferdinand, King of Aragon
Consort of Castile
Public domain

The joint monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella was a carefully balanced construction. It was summed up in a device ‘Tanto monta, monto tanto, Fernando como Isabel, Isabel como Fernando.’ This meant that it did not matter who gave the orders, as everything was to be done in their joint names. 

However, the kings of Castile traditionally had more power than the kings of Aragon and as soon as the war was over Isabella strengthened these powers still further. She unified the laws of Castile into a single collection of volumes and set up two permanent courts, one in Valladolid and a later one in Granada. She chose university-trained lawyers, many of them conversos (converted Jews), as her special advisors.

The Inquisition

The two kingdoms were united by a common and fervent Catholic faith. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull allowing Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint inquisitors. This was the origin of the Spanish Inquisition. The first two inquisitors were appointed in 1480 and were sent to Seville to root out conversos, who were believed to be practising Judaism or Islam in secret. In 1483 the Dominican friar, Tomás de Torquemada became the Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisition was one of the first shared projects of the new Spain.

Torquemada
Public domain

Champion of Christendom

Both monarchs saw themselves in the frontline of the war against Islam (the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, the Moors in Grenada).

The conquest of Granada: The most notable of the achievements of Ferdinand and Isabella was the conquest of Granada when King Boabdil surrendered on 2 January 1492. This was the culmination of a ten-year war, after which Granada was annexed to Castile. In 1494 the Spanish Pope Alexander VI bestowed on them the title of The Catholic Kings.

Manuel Gómez-Moreno González,
The family of Muhammad XII (Boabdil)in the Alhambra
moments after the fall of Granada
c. 1880
Public domain

The expulsion of the Jews: The aftermath of the war meant that Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or be exiled. Isabella had begun her reign as the protector of the Jews, who were a substantial minority in Castile – about 80,000 (one for almost every fifty Christians) and a greater number of conversos. But the queen’s protection made them vulnerable – what if she withdrew that protection? With the setting up of the Inquisition, and in particularly the rise of Torquemada, her attitude hardened. On 31 March 1492 she and Ferdinand signed the order expelling them from Spain. 

We command that … if they do not obey and do as they are told or are found in our kingdoms or lands – or come here in any way at all – their goods be confiscated and given to our exchequer and that the death sentence be applied.

Isabella was bent on creating a religiously pure society, and she was indifferent to the human suffering involved. It has been estimated that between 120,000 and 150,000 fled the country, many to find refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Their indispensible place in the Spanish economy was taken by immigrants from Germany, the Low Countries, and Genoa.

The expulsion of the Muslims: Even before the conquest of Granada, the Muslim population was small – 25,000 out of 4 million Castilians. Aragon had a larger population. But with the fall of Granada, Castile’s Muslim population increased tenfold, while Christians poured into Granada. In 1500 a mass baptism campaign began in Granada, the new converts becoming known as moriscos. In September 1501 Isabella demanded that all who did not accept baptism must leave Spain. This was followed by a systematic move to eradicate all traces of Islam. Copies of the Koran were burned in market squares. The final expulsion decree was published in February 1502

The New World

In 1492 Isabella agreed to sponsor Columbus’s voyage to reach Asia by sailing west. His plan was cheap – three ships and ninety sailors. The chances of success were low but the budget was manageable. She probably did not attach great significance to her investment. But under her leadership Castile discovered an entire new world. It brought about a fourfold increase in what would be eventually termed ‘Western civilisation’ and helped provoke a tectonic shift in global power. The Spanish Empire became the greatest the world had ever seen. Gold and silver were to pour into Spain from the New World  - not necessarily to the long-term health of the Spanish economy.

Dynastic politics

Ferdinand and Isabella’s dynastic policy was carefully thought out, but it was also very complicated and was beset with problems.

Their eldest daughter, Isabel, was intended for Don Alfonso, the heir to the Portuguese throne. She married him in 1490 but in July 1491 he was killed from a fall from his horse after just eight months of marriage. The widowed Isabel was grief-stricken but her mother refused her plea to be allowed to enter a convent. She wanted her to marry again.

The double wedding: In 1496 the couple planned a double wedding. Their only son, Juan, Prince of Asturias was to marry Margaret, the daughter of the Habsburg ruler, Maximilian of Austria, who later became Holy Roman Emperor. Their second daughter, Juana, was to marry Maximilian’s son and heir Philip (known as 'the Handsome), the heir to the Netherlands. In August Juana travelled to the Low Countries to marry Philip. 

The loss of the male heir: Juan and Margaret married on 19 March 1497. But Juan had always been sickly and he died on 4 October 1497. This left Ferdinand and Isabella without a male heir. Their one hope was that his widow, Margaret, who was pregnant, would provide an heir. Instead, she miscarried of a baby girl. In 1500 she returned to the Netherlands (and that's another story).  

At the same time that Juan lay dying, his widowed sister, Isabel,  married her deceased husband’s brother, King Manuel I of Portugal. She became pregnant, and again Isabella hoped for a male heir. His inheritance would be the splendid one of the crowns of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, uniting the Iberian peninsula under one monarch. On 23 August 1498 she gave birth to a son, but she died an hour later. Little Miguel now seemed to carry the hopes of the dynasty. While still a baby, he was sworn in as heir to the crowns of Aragon and Castile. 

In July 1500 at the age of twenty-two months Miguel, died in Isabella's arms, wrecking her final hopes of a male heir. One chronicler recorded that ‘from then on she lived without joy’.

In October 1500 the widowed king Manuel married the couple’s third daughter, María. 

Juana: heiress: The deaths of her brother, sister and nephew left Juana the eldest surviving child of Ferdinand and Isabella, as Princess of Asturias and the heiress to the throne of Castile (though not Aragon). In February 1500 she gave birth in Ghent to a son, Charles, the heir through his mother and grandparents of the throne of Spain. Through his father and grandfather he was also the heir of Burgundy. It was to be a dazzling inheritance that would make him the greatest ruler in Europe.

The English marriage: With the departure of María for Portugal, only one child remained at home, their fourth daughter, Catalina. Since 1489, she had been betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales. For Henry VII, whose position was still precarious, the betrothal had been a diplomatic coup. In 1501 she travelled to England and married Arthur on 14 November 1501. Five months later Arthur died. A special envoy was sent to England with instructions to bring Catherine home, but this was a negotiating tactic. While Henry VII, to Isabella’s horror, was considering Catherine for himself, Ferdinand and Isabella were determined that she should marry Arthur's younger brother Henry. This began a long game of brinkmanship in which Catherine, widowed and isolated in a foreign country, was the victim.

The death of Isabella

Isabella died on 23 November 1504, at the age of 53, having reigned for thirty years. She saddened and disappointed by the deaths of her children and the very limited success of her marriage diplomacy. She named Juana as her heir. She was worried about Philip’s influence, and her hopes for the future rested with her four-year-old grandson, Juana’s son, Charles of Habsburg.

Conclusion

1. Though her marriage, Isabella had created a unique shared monarchy and paved the way for the unification of Spain. She and her husband strengthened the monarchy at the expense of the nobility and presided over a growing economy. They put Spain on the way to being the superpower of the sixteenth century.
2. Isabella was a champion of Christendom and expanded its frontiers against Islam at a time when the Ottoman Empire was encroaching in eastern Europe.
3. The conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims ended a centuries-old tradition of co-existence. The setting-up of the Inquisition meant that Spain was the leader in the fight against ‘heresy’.
4. Her sponsorship of Columbus meant that Spain’s territory expanded into areas that had previously been completely unknown. As wealth from the New World poured into Spain, the sixteenth century became its golden age.
5. The deaths of some of her children were personal and dynastic tragedies, but of long-term European significance.

Juana ('the mad'): her mother's tragic heiress

Juana of Castile
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Public domain

Juana’s marriage to Philip of Burgundy was one of the most important in European history. It was not an easy marriage, either politically or personally. Ferdinand and Isabella had ruled lands that adjoined each other and had common interests, but Philip’s territories were many hundreds of miles from Spain, and he had different priorities from his wife. But this did did not stop Juana from being devoted to her husband. When they quarrelled, she refused to eat.

Following Isabella’s death, a battle began between Ferdinand and Philip for control of Castile. Juana was legally queen, but Philip its king de jure uxoris.  With a foreigner now in control of Castile, there was always the possibility that Castile and Aragon would separate again. The eventual unification of Spain was not inevitable.

Ferdinand and Philip were rivals, but they had a common interest in preventing Juana from exercising her powers as queen. They claimed that her ‘infirmities and sufferings’ made her unfit to reign. However, Castile was saved from foreign dominance by the death of Philip in September 1506. His death seems to have tipped Juana, always emotionally fragile, into mental unbalance. She refused to be separated from his cadaver and carried his coffin round with her for years. 

However, she still seemed a valuable marriage prize and the widowed Henry VII put considerable effort into pursuing her. But she lost her value in the royal marriage market when, in 1507, Ferdinand forced her to hand over the government of Castile to him. In 1509 she was confined in a convent. Ferdinand died in January 1516 and his grandson Charles of Habsburg inherited Aragon. In November 1517 he secured from his mother her consent to have him rule Castile as her co-ruler. Juana was confined for the rest of her life in the convent of Santa Clara in Tordesillas.  

However, this did not mean that her claim was dead. In 1520 the Castilians revolted against the rule of a foreigner and attempted to make Juana the acting head of state. Charles had to go to Spain in person in order to put it down.

Juana died in 1555, still the nominal Queen of Castile. She was the last surviving child of Ferdinand and Isabella, and perhaps the most tragic.

Conclusion

1. Juana was a queen in her own right and produced two male heirs (Charles and Ferdinand), a daughter, Eleanor, who married François I, and another daughter, Mary, who in 1521 became Queen of Hungary and later governor of the Netherlands. 
2. But she never enjoyed her mother’s political successes. She was brought down by her mental problems and by the ambitions of her male relatives. 
3. Her sister, Catherine, met a different, but equally tragic fate.