by Andrew Rowen
In June 1474, Toscanelli responded to the cleric with a letter and chart,10 extolling the riches of the Indies and the possibility of sailing westward to them. The chart dramatically challenged the Ptolemaic conception of the breadth of the Ocean Sea, reflecting an uninterrupted open sea sailing distance from Lisbon to Quinsay of less than 6,000 miles, much shorter than the Ptolemaic calculation. Astoundingly, it indicated that the journey might be broken by harboring at Antillia—the lost island in the Ocean Sea to which it was said Portuguese clerics had fled in the eighth century to escape the invading Mohammedans—and Cipangu, making the longest landfall to landfall distance less than 3,500 miles.
Afonso and his advisers reviewed the letter and map and found Toscanelli’s reliance on Marco Polo inappropriate and the conclusion incredible and not worthy of superseding Ptolemy. As virtually all learned men, they believed Marco a charlatan and self-promoter. His account teemed with stories of kingdoms of fabulous riches and sophistication; brutal tortures and conquests; exotic customs, enormous harems, and sensual concubines; liberal tolerance of multiple religions; and peoples who ate human flesh. It also frequently glorified Marco’s own stature at Khubilai’s court.
To Afonso’s gratification, the exploration of the Guinean coast also was proving a tremendous success irrespective of achieving the Indies. By the end of 1474, substantial quantities of gold were being obtained at Samma, augmenting the Crown’s prestige and military strength. Afonso appointed his son Prince João, then nineteen, to administer the overseas expansion in Guinea, giving particular attention to the importation of gold.
Regardless of the breadth of the Ocean Sea, Afonso, João and their advisers, as Toscanelli himself, continued to share with Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Ptolemy—and most everyone living on terra firma—an unequivocal belief in the following fact: the Ocean Sea stretched from Europe to the Indies.
Toscanelli’s chart of 1470s, as reconstructed in Justin Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889).
ISABEL AND FERNANDO
Succession in Castile, Segovia, 1474–1476
King Enrique IV died after midnight December 12, 1474, in the alcazar in Madrid attended by Cardinal Mendoza, a priest, and a few advisers. A note was dispatched that night to Isabel in Segovia, which she received on December 12. Archbishop Carrillo sent a letter to Fernando in Zaragoza, where he was assisting his father at the Aragonese Cortes, which Fernando would receive December 14.
Then twenty-three, Isabel quivered when she read the note, not from surprise or elation, but from recognition that the final step to achieve her crown was at hand and demanded swift resolution. There were two other claimants to the throne whom she feared would seek it. The first, little Juana, still claimed to be Enrique’s legitimate heir, and, while Queen Juana had been discredited, there remained noblemen who might espouse her claim in intrigue with foreign princes. Isabel received a notice from Enrique’s counselors to wait for a determination whether she or Juana was the rightful heir, but Isabel was confident her own Castilian supporters would prevail over Juana’s.
Nevertheless, Isabel’s stomach churned with anxiety. The second was her own husband—the father of her child, her only lover, and her partner in seeking the Crown since their marriage. From the moment they first met, they had acted as one in sovereign affairs, and there was no doubt he expected to be crowned king when she was crowned queen and that he deserved that honor. But she feared—and in her heart knew—he wished to be crowned with her at his side, rather than him at hers, and to be recognized as Castile’s king in his own right, entitled to rule on her death instead of their daughter.
Isabel winced that her husband’s deepest desires were unacceptable—not only to the Castilian noblemen but to herself. She was pleased to share power with him but would not rely on his grace to do so. His children from any later wife or mistress could never steal young Isabel’s crown. She knew she couldn’t trust him and that any delay in her coronation risked his interference with her claim. She recalled her flight from Enrique at Ocaña and again resolved to seize the initiative over the man then most important to her. With trepidation that she risked Fernando’s rage and perhaps more, and with Bishop Mendoza’s secret concurrence, she ordered that she be anointed the next day, December 13. She dispatched her own message to Fernando announcing Enrique’s death but withholding that she would be crowned queen in his absence, knowing Fernando soon would understand it as betrayal.
On the morning of December 13, dressed in black in mourning, Isabel rode on horseback from the alcazar to the church of St. Michael in Segovia’s central square, where a funeral was held for Enrique and his standards lowered. After changing into a royal gown bedecked with jewels and gold, she mounted a platform at the church door and Fernando was proclaimed king consort and Isabel queen proprietor, signifying that her children would inherit Castile on her death, not Fernando. She swore on a Bible to aggrandize Castile, honor its clergy and nobility and their privileges, promote the common good, and maintain justice throughout the realm. Those present, her close supporters, pledged allegiance to her as proprietary queen and to King Fernando as her husband, whereupon she entered the church to pray that God direct her to fulfill her duty justly and wisely. She emerged to mount a horse as queen and, in accordance with Castilian tradition, parade through the city preceded by a sole horseman, an advisor who held an unsheathed sword aloft,11 an ancient symbol of the ruler’s authority to punish those who disobeyed.
Fernando received Isabel’s announcement of Enrique’s death on December 16 and left Zaragoza on December 19 in a torrential rain. On December 21, he received an adviser’s letter describing Isabel’s coronation. She had been queen for a week! Fernando was stunned. Isabel had indicated nothing of this. For over five years, they had struggled together to attain the throne, and, without forewarning, she had arranged the culminating public ceremony to involve her alone and to bar his right to succeed her! Fernando had never heard of the sword of sovereign authority drawn before a queen and was enraged at the usurpation of male authority. He bitterly recalled her very first letter to him and berated himself for having been taken a fool.
Fernando’s advisers harangued that a woman had no authority to be crowned without a king and that Isabel’s insolent, preemptory seizure of the throne revealed sinister motives of her own advisers. Fernando’s capitulation did not address Fernando’s status as king in the event of Isabel’s death, and Juan II reminded his son of their own claim to Castile’s throne and insisted that a lawyer immediately join Fernando in Segovia. While Fernando’s capitulation reflected Isabel’s right to inherit Castile, under Aragonese law a woman could not inherit as queen and the throne passed to the nearest related male heir. Fernando’s advisers now plotted to assert, for the first time, that this principle also applied in Castile and that Fernando was independently king as Enrique’s closest male relative. Isabel was queen by virtue of her marriage to Fernando, and Fernando would inherit Castile if Isabel died first.
As Fernando approached Segovia, Isabel braced for confrontation and resolved not to waver in the supremacy of her claim. The intent of Fernando’s capitulation was clear enough, as was the Castilian precedent that a woman could inherit the Castilian throne. She would not be usurped, ignored, or discarded as women had been throughout history! If the marriage faltered, Castile was her kingdom, alone. She understood better than anyone the daunting odds of successfully ruling without a husband and believed in her ability to retain him. To please him, she ordered extraordinary preparations in Segovia to welcome him to his kingdom.
On January 2, 1475, Fernando rode into Segovia to be met with extravagant honors and celebrations. His native caution intuited acquiescence in the ceremonies planned. He swore to protect Castile’s laws as king, and the nobility present pledged their allegiance to him as the queen’s husband the king. Fernando and Isabel met warmly in public, and he feigned appreciation of the honors.
; That night they dismissed every chambermaid and attendant from their bedroom and fought alone. Fernando spoke to her as he never had before.
“You betrayed me, lying as a whore, despicable as Judas.”
Isabel gazed at the floor, stealing herself. “Fernando, I received a warning to wait for a determination whether Juana was heir, but Mendoza and Carrillo advised me to take the Crown swiftly.”
“Juana’s supporters will name a price to be bought!” Fernando shook with anger. “And that isn’t even the point. Your own note to me didn’t say a word about your seizing the Crown alone!”
“Fernando, should I have risked that a note disclosing my intention be intercepted by those against us? Mendoza and Carrillo wanted it this way—it wasn’t my decision.” She looked into his eyes, as if lovingly. “Fernando, I did it for our kingdom—yours and mine. Nothing has changed between us. We will share power as king and queen, and you will be obeyed as king, I standing at your side.”
“You should stand at my side! Your acceptance as your kingdom’s queen is due as much to my presence and ability as your own!” He turned away. “You still lie, now to my face. You’ve named yourself proprietor, leaving me as the queen to your king, subject to the jest and scorn of everyone in this castle and throughout the realm. You yourself have scorned me, you’ve humiliated me, you’ve breached our understandings, and you’ve poisoned our love.”
“Fernando, I’ve done none of those, and my love for you is as constant as ever.” Isabel shed a few tears. “The ceremonies crowning both of us were simply those agreed to when we married. I made no choices in them. They were as agreed before—agreements critical to the Castilian noblemen. I can’t imagine a greater risk to our rule than violating them—the noblemen would swarm to assist Juana if they saw your heirs apart from me could inherit Castile.”
“For five years, we’ve done everything together—in unison. You had time to wait to be crowned—in unison!”
“I’ve done what we both needed to be done to secure our rule of my kingdom.” Isabel shed a few more tears. “Fernando, I would never seek to demean or dishonor you. I am wife to your husband. But Castile is my inheritance. Your advisers’ arguments that Castile is yours over mine are false and have never been discussed before now.” Isabel wiped her tears and frowned sternly. “You know they are false.”
Fernando could not stomach being upbraided by a woman. “I know that a king rules in his own right and that the sword of justice is borne before a king not a queen. Even your own counselors are shocked how you’ve demeaned me.” Fernando clutched Isabel by the shoulders and shook her. “We will change the ceremonies so I am king in my own right. If not, I leave for Aragón.”
For the true whores! Isabel screamed to herself. She repressed the urge to gloat that his Aragonese lovers weren’t queens, perceiving this the worst moment to upbraid his manhood. This was about her supremacy, not her jealousy.
Isabel began to cry and then lost control of herself and sobbed. “Fernando, nothing has changed, absolutely nothing. We have become king and queen as intended. If you leave, where are we then? I’m a queen without a husband. You’re a king without a kingdom.”
Fernando fought the urge to strike her. Aragón was a kingdom, a proud kingdom, and he would be its king. He gazed at their bed and despised that it reeked of Castilian supremacy.
Wife and husband stared grimly at each other. Each knew she had mistrusted him, and rightly so, and each knew she had been faithless, as he would have been—and that she had prevailed. Each asked God to redirect the actions of the other. They slept apart.
Their struggle continued for two weeks. Isabel repeatedly felt weakness and asked herself if she had erred and should relent. Regardless of his baseless legal position, her husband genuinely felt demeaned and deceived. Many of the Castilian noblemen who advised her were duplicitous. They demanded she maintain the position taken to safeguard their own entitlements. But they sympathized with Fernando because they, too, secretly felt she had usurped male prerogative.
Isabel surmounted her doubts, maintained her resolve, and asked God for the wisdom to retain both her kingdom and her husband. Fernando recognized that returning to Aragón accomplished nothing but squandering his opportunity to be king of Castile. Both remembered that they and their kingdoms were strong together, weak apart. Fernando humbled himself to return to Isabel’s bed, and her love and devotion began to mollify him.
Mendoza, Carrillo, and Juan II understood even more clearly that their own interests and both kingdoms would suffer if the couple failed to reconcile, and a mechanism was devised to dissipate the couple’s ill will. Cardinal Mendoza and Archbishop Carrillo would arbitrate whether a woman could inherit alone and submit their resolution to the Castilian noblemen then present.
Fernando soberly recognized that his father’s vision of Aragonese control wasn’t achievable and that he had no alternative. He had learned many times to retreat or disengage when the battle couldn’t be won, and he consented to this solution, bitterly recognizing the outcome was foregone and waited merely articulation of a rationale. Isabel argued to the arbitrators that, since the couple yet had only a daughter, it made sense to allow a woman to inherit alone. While they listened to Fernando’s lawyer, the two Castilian leaders and the Castilian noblemen quickly ruled for Isabel and their interests, and Fernando ruefully concluded the matter by agreeing to abide by their decision, spared the ignobility of merely submitting to his wife. Adjustments were made to the terms of Fernando’s capitulation, some in Fernando’s favor, some not, and recorded in a concordia. Isabel’s relief was incomplete as she knew Fernando remained displeased, and, in future months, she would grant him authorities beyond those agreed.
After her coronation, Isabel had asked Cardinal Mendoza to recommend a new confessor for her, an educated person who could also serve as a religious adviser and administrator. Mendoza suggested Hernando de Talavera, the converso Hieronymite friar, vouching he was of the highest devotional, intellectual, and moral fiber. Talavera had resigned teaching moral philosophy at the university at Salamanca and served as the prior of a large monastery in Valladolid.
Isabel summoned him, and they spoke. He condemned heresy and believed it essential for Hispania that it be eliminated. But he thought heresy best fought through teaching and education, not threats or punishment. Isabel tested his thoughts on Córdoba.
“Should my brother have punished the murderers and rapists?”
“They were sinners, and God’s judgment on their souls will be most severe.”
“I understand that. But I’m asking what the king should have done to them on earth.”
“A sovereign must emulate and demonstrate God’s perfection, to the extent worldly achievable. That includes punishing sinners for temporal crimes.”
Pleased by the response, Isabel asked Talavera to take her confession, and they retired to the alcazar’s chapel. As she knelt, he sat on the bench before her, and she suspected he had never administered confession to royalty. She gently advised him of his mistake. “We should both be on our knees.”
“No, Your Highness, I will be seated as you kneel because confession is God’s tribunal, and I serve him here.”
Isabel perceived the older man was neither imposing an order nor asking approval. He appeared, without aggression or ego, simply to be reminding her that God was supreme and that he would receive her communication on his behalf. He did recognize that she was God’s instrument on earth.
Isabel appreciated the friar’s view of proper sovereign conduct, intellectual approach, and apparent virtue. She understood he lived ascetically and humbly, as had the founder of his order St. Jerome, and was chaste. Unlike Mendoza, he had no troops, amassed wealth, or possessions, or children, but simply an ever-present communication with God, and he appeared resolute in that outlook. He did seem worldly and practical, able to negotiate with those who did command troops or wealth. Unlike Fray Torquemada, he appeared compassionate.
As sh
e knelt before him, she decided that he would be her confessor. But it was premature to confess any impolitic thought to him. For this confession, she chose simply to confide that she quarreled with her husband sometimes.
In the spring of 1475, Archbishop Carrillo and several other Castilian noblemen found themselves disappointed with their appointments. They agreed upon an alliance with Portugal’s King Afonso V, whereby they would assist if little Juana, Afonso’s niece, succeeded to the Castilian throne and Afonso married her, thereby acquiring control of Castile. Recognizing that war was inevitable, Afonso, then forty-three, wrote Isabel and Fernando demanding they relinquish the throne to Juana, then thirteen, and forewarning that he would marry her to defend her claim to the throne. Isabel bitterly rued that, for all the torment she’d endured for crowning herself without her husband, she had been proven right for fearing noblemen would entreat young Juana to take it herself.
Isabel and Fernando rejected the ultimatum, and Fernando prepared to go back to war, this time as king of Castile to defend its independent existence. Isabel raised their army. They dispatched letters throughout the kingdom, criticizing the disloyal noblemen and rallying support. Isabel frequently rode by horseback from town to town to make their preparations. Afonso and Prince João were not deterred and invaded Castile with fifteen thousand troops, whereupon Afonso was betrothed to Juana and they declared themselves king and queen of Castile, although the marriage was postponed for failure to obtain papal dispensation.