Isabella of Castile

by Giles Tremlett

  Amid this world-altering ‘Columbine exchange’ of plants, animals, diseases and technology, however, it is easy to forget that one of the most important exports to America was Christianity. The greatest beneficiary of the discovery of a new continent was western Christendom – that shared cultural, religious and political space that defined Europe and was the fifteenth-century home of Western civilisation. The beliefs and cultural assumptions of a small corner of Eurasia were thus extended to a vast new land mass and to many of the people there (or, at least, to those who survived the more lethal consequences of the European arrival). America, both north and south, was transformed – especially after explorers from Portugal, England, France and Holland joined the race for land on the American continent and in the Caribbean. That expansion brought not just extracted wealth to Europe but also, over time, a shift in the balance of growth and power towards the Atlantic and, eventually, across the ocean to north America – something that finally became apparent in the twentieth century. There was nothing inevitable about this. In terms of Eurasian history, fifteenth-century Spain and the rest of western Europe were peripheral in more than just the geographical sense. ‘Western Europe occupied the outer edge of world maps at the time,’ the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto points out. ‘Scholars in Persia or China, confident in the superiority of their own civilised traditions, thought Christendom hardly worth a mention in their studies of the world.’5 The later rise of Western civilisation, in other words, is inexorably linked to those three small vessels and eighty-eight sailors who departed from Palos de la Frontera in 1492.

  But what of Spain and its motor, Castile, after the death of its emblematic queen? When Miguel de Cervantes published his Don Quijote de La Mancha in 1605, a century after Isabella’s death, he was not just launching what is now seen as the tradition of the modern novel. He was also telling a nostalgic – if embittered – story about the values that had helped propel Castile to greatness, but were now becoming hopelessly idealistic and impractical. Cervantes’s foolish, book-crazed hero, Don Quixote, sets out on a comical and humiliating pursuit of knightly glory. He has been driven mad by excessive reading of chivalric romances and invents for himself an imaginary Spain in which opportunities for carrying out feats of gallantry appear constantly (even if that requires mistaking windmills for giants), and where these will be admired. He is wrong on both counts, but cannot see it. Crusading, chivalry and the strict orthodoxy that came with the Counter-Reformation in Spain were becoming old-fashioned or, at least, unsuited to the coming century. The Inquisition helped stifle intellectual debate and science. The Americas drew away population, while also making Spain overly reliant on its empire’s extracted raw materials and protected market. Wars elsewhere in Europe were both a distraction and a long-term waste of money. Grandiose ideals – of defending Christianity against Islam, of protecting Roman Catholicism against heresy or maintaining lands elsewhere in Europe – pushed Spain deep into debt, while preventing it from turning its energies towards looking after itself. Cervantes, a proud veteran of the Lepanto sea battle, appeared to realise that his country had exhausted itself in the apparently noble and heroic defence of Christendom and in its love of adventure, allowing others to reap the benefits. It is difficult not to see Isabella’s personal beliefs and priorities as one of the engines driving this dynamic. Cervantes’s death in April 1616 coincided almost exactly with that of William Shakespeare, a writer whose plays reflected the rising pride and self-esteem of England – a country that went on to build the only European-based empire which, in geographical terms, can rival the Spanish empire that had begun to emerge under Isabella’s rule.

  Internally, Spain remained a fractious collection of kingdoms with different rules and obligations that were difficult to manage. By the time Diego Velázquez was painting the moustachioed nobles, lantern-jawed monarchs and exaggeratedly wide farthingale dresses of little Spanish princesses in the mid-seventeenth century, there was already a note of decadence and corruption in the world he was portraying. The aristocrats painted the following century by Francisco de Goya were part of a different but often disastrous class of administrators, who allowed Spain to fall further behind the major nations of Europe. His darker paintings, of monsters, war, insanity and human folly, revealed the underbelly of decay hidden by the finery of his Grandee patrons and the idealised, romantic rural scenes he had also painted for them.

  Self-obsessed, quarrelsome and suspicious, Spain watched its empire disintegrate, taking much of its prestige and glory with it. The European possessions disappeared first, with half of the Netherlands declaring independence in 1580 and Portugal rebelling in 1640. The half of Italy that Spain still controlled was lost between 1713 and 1715, along with the remainder of the Spanish Netherlands (basically composed of Belgium and Luxembourg). Spain’s territories in the Americas rose up a century later, quickly achieving independence. The last few outposts of empire – Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines – were lost during a short war against the United States in the disastrous year of 1898. Some see this whole long decline reaching its nadir with a bloody civil war in the 1930s and the forty years of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco that followed. Others say that the centuries of decline have been exaggerated by historians in thrall to the black legend or afflicted by a dark and irrational sense of national pessimism. Either way, it was a sign of how desperate Spain had become for national heroes that Isabella would be held up by that regime as proof of the country’s ‘natural’ virtues. The symbols that Isabella and Ferdinand invented, of the yoke and arrows, were appropriated by Spain’s fascist-inspired Falange party and by Franco. A statue from that period still stands outside a foreign ministry building in Madrid, the plaque proclaiming Isabella to be ‘the mother of America … whose brilliant efforts completed the geographical and spiritual fullness of the world’. It was under Franco’s dictatorship that the official campaign for Isabella to be beatified was launched in 1958, with the archbishopric of Valladolid starting work on the required report that was eventually sent to Rome in 1990.6 There it gathers dust, amid controversy over whether she brought intolerance towards Christian converts in Spain along with genocide and economic plunder, rather than Christian love, to Latin America.

  Over recent decades, following the return to democracy in the late 1970s, Spain has enjoyed another, more modest, period of growth and prosperity – enough to establish it in its rightful place as one of Europe’s major countries, safely anchored (for the time being) in the European Union. That has also allowed it to shake off some prejudices and insecurities about the past, including Isabella’s appropriation by Francoism. The time is now ripe, in other words, to look back at Isabella without first donning the coloured lenses of political prejudice or of purely twenty-first-century values.

  She was, quite simply, the first great queen of Europe. In terms of the impact of her reign – and of her decisions – on the future course of world history, she is also the most important of those queens. She was the co-unifier of a country, Spain, and founder of an empire that eventually became one of the largest in Western history. The unity of Spain’s varied kingdoms was initially both fragile and temporary, but it would eventually stick. By sending Columbus off on an extraordinary adventure of blind, chivalric daring, she helped to reverse the decline of western Christendom and to alter the course of global history in the second half of the millennium. Western civilisation owes a lot to Isabella’s Castile, however much it now disapproves of her mistreatment of Jews, Muslims and conversos. Would any of this have happened without Isabella and her partner Ferdinand? Inevitably, much of it would have done. History is not purely, or even mostly, the result of a handful of decisions made by monarchs and other extraordinary individuals. But the world cannot reinvent, or undo, the chain of events that created the present. That is both good and bad for Isabella’s reputation. Some, for example, now draw connecting lines between waterboarding by the US military and the techniques of the Inquisition. Latin Am
erica’s history of economic inequality, violence and repression of indigenous peoples – not to mention the ravages of European disease – are as much a consequence of her decisions as the glory accrued to Spain.

  It may be wiser to ask ourselves how Isabella herself saw, or would have seen, her life. In an era of individual ambition and the constant assertion of personal rights, we are now encouraged to judge ourselves in terms of everyday happiness. By that measure, Isabella ended her life as a failure. The sombre-looking portrait of her as she enters her fifties is ample proof of that. Those three knife-thrusts of pain – brought by the deaths of her beloved son Juan, her daughter Isabella and her small grandson Miguel – cast misery over her final years. Even in terms of affairs of state, she seemed already to be handing much of the decision-making to Ferdinand in those final years. The dramatic arguments with her daughter Juana on the battlements of La Mota fortress showed Isabella putting her waning energy into a fight that we are all destined to lose – the one to control events after our death. Jealousy and, possibly, depression were also her lot.

  It would be wrong to take pity on her, though, for Isabella did not view life in terms of self-fulfilment or the quest for personal satisfaction. Of all the current measures of success, the only one she would have recognised would be the quest for fame – which she certainly achieved. Apart from that, hers was a world of duty, obedience and fear of God. That explains why, in her final days, she did not fret about the obvious cruelty of expelling the Jews, forcibly converting the Muslims or torturing the conversos. The aims – of pursuing heresy and purifying Castile – were clearly ones that her God must approve of. She would have thought of personal suffering as a potential route to atonement and salvation. Jesus Christ’s violent, slow and painful death by crucifixion – his ‘Passion’ – was proof of that. She could not, therefore, have seen her own suffering as a sign of any sort of failure and may even have taken secret satisfaction in enduring it. Wherever else she looked, she can only have seen success. Castile was pure and prosperous, or a lot more so than when she came to the throne. Her people were secure. And, whatever her concerns about the treatment of the peoples of the Caribbean, heretics and infidels were being chased off, or converted, at home and elsewhere. Western Christendom was, at last, expanding. She had, in other words, not just stuck to her principles – or those dictated by God – but had imposed them elsewhere. That was what a monarch’s power, however doubtful its origins in Isabella’s case, were for. Pride was a sin, but in her final moments of fear about what awaited, that knowledge can only have provided consolation and confidence.

  APPENDIX: MONETARY VALUES AND COINAGE

  Castile used a number of different coins whose values varied slightly during Isabella’s reign. Much like some modern-day Spaniards, who still price major items such as houses or cars in the long-disappeared peseta rather than in euros, Castilians used the old maravedi as the common pricing value for almost everything. Coins were then also given a value in maravedis.

  The following table provides official values for Castilian coinage as well as equivalencies for coinage from the kingdoms of Aragon and from Granada. I have included examples of what money could buy, which are extracted from Isabella’s own accounts books and elsewhere.

  COINS AND MONETARY QUANTITITES EQUIVALENT IN MARAVEDIS

  1 dinero granadino (Granada) 3

  1 silver pesante granadino (Granada) 30

  1 real 31

  1 florin (Aragon) 265

  1 corona, or crown 328

  1 libra, or pound (Valencia) 357

  1 doble 365

  1 ducado375 or 420

  1 dobla zahen grandino (Granada) 445

  1 castellano de oro 485

  1 justo 580

  1 cuento (quantity, not coin)1 million

  ITEM VALUE IN MARAVEDIS

  1 kilo of sugar 55

  1,000 dressmaking pins 62

  A clothes brush 62

  One day’s work by an embroiderer 62

  A small prayer book 77

  A pair of chapines clogs 135

  Two glasses from Valencia 280

  A brass sink for hairwashing 310

  Two hats (one cotton and one wool) 324

  Twelve pairs of gloves 375

  A barber’s payment for pulling out a prince’s tooth 485

  A book in Latin by the philosopher Boethius 485

  A mule’s bridle 530

  A vihuela (a type of viola) 1,125

  One year’s salary for a noble’s page 3,000

  One year’s hire of a mule and muleteer 4,500

  Seventy-two pairs each of soft borcegui boots and prince’s shoes 7,812

  An African or Canary Island slave 8–10,000

  A mule 12,000

  The ransom payment for a Muslim captive in the Granada War 13,000

  The largest gold nugget reportedly found on Hispaniola (estimated) 1.5 million

  Columbus’s first voyage 2 million

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION: EUROPE’S FIRST GREAT QUEEN

  1Alonso de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. A. Paz y Meliá, 4 vols, Madrid, Revista de Archivos, 1904–8, Década 2, Libro 10, Chapter 10.

  2Ibid.

  3Álvaro Fernández de Córdova Miralles, La Corte de Isabel I. Ritos y ceremonias de una reina (1474–1504), Madrid, Dykinson, 2002, pp. 44–6.

  4Antoine de Lalaing, ‘Relato del primer viaje de Felipe el Hermoso a España’, in Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal, desde los tiempos más remotos hasta fines del siglo XVI, ed. J. García Mercadal, Madrid, 1952, pp. 482–3, 486.

  5See J. A. Maravall, Estado moderno y mentalidad social (siglos XV a XVII), Madrid, Revista de Occident, 1972. See also Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492. El nacimiento de la modernidad, Madrid, Debate, 2010.

  6Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan, Penguin, London, 2010, p.28.

  7Norman Davies, Europe: A History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 409–13. Eugene Thacker, The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics and Culture, Cambridge, MA, and London, MIT Press, 2006, p. 218. Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000–1500, London, Macmillan, 1977, p. 183. Richard Britnell, ‘Land and Lordship: Common Themes and Regional Variations’, in Richard Britnell and Ben Dodds (eds), Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death: Common Themes, Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire Press, 2008, pp. 149–67.

  8Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, pp. 103–4.

  9Francisco Guicciardini in Jorge de Einghen et al., Viajes por España de Jorge de Einghen, del Barón Leon de Rosmithal de Blatine, de Francisco Guicciardini y de Andrés Navajero; traducido, anotados y con un introducción por Antonio María Fabié, Madrid, Librería de los Bibliófilos, 1889, pp. 211–12.

  10Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, Década 2, Libro 10, Chapter 10. MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages, pp. 58–9.

  11Joseph Pérez, Isabel y Fernando. Los Reyes Católicos, San Sebastián, Nerea, 1997, p. 91. MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages, pp. 58–9. Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica. Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1993, p. 243.

  12Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, New York and London, Verso, 2013, p. 62 (citing J. Vicens Vives, Manual de historia economica de España, pp. 11–12). Simon Barton, A History of Spain, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 93.

  13Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, ‘Las comunidades judías de la Corona de Aragón en el siglo XV’, in Ángel Alcalá (ed.), Judíos, sefarditas, conversos. La expulsión de 1492 y sus consecuencias. Ponencias del Congreso Internacional celebrado en Nueva York en noviembre de 1992, Valladolid, Ambito, 1995, p. 45. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, ‘El número de judíos en la España de 1492’, in Alcalá (ed.), Judíos, sefarditas, conversos, p. 171. Alexander Marx, ‘The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: Two New Accounts’, Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 20,
no. 2, January 1908, pp. 246–7. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, La España de los Reyes Católicos, Madrid, Alianza, 2014, p. 18.

  14Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull, London, Penguin, 1999, Chapter 21.

  15James Gairdner, Henry VII, London, Macmillan, 1889, p. 166.

  CHAPTER 1: NO MAN EVER HELD SUCH POWER

  1Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Crónica de Juan II, in Crónicas de los Reyes de Castilla, vol. 2, ed. Cayetano Rosell, Madrid, Rivadeneyra, 1887, pp. 595, 606, 683. Navagero in Jorge de Einghen et al., Viajes por España de Jorge de Einghen, del Barón Leon de Rosmithal de Blatine, de Francisco Guicciardini y de Andrés Navajero; traducido, anotados y con un introducción por Antonio María Fabié, Madrid, Librería de los Bibliófilos, 1889, p. 322. Isabel Pastor Bodmer, Grandeza y tragedia de un valido. La muerte de Don Álvaro de Luna. Estudios y documentos, Madrid, Caja Madrid, 1992, vol. 1, p. 253. Casimiro González García, Datos para la historia biográfica de Valladolid, vol. 1, Valladolid, Maxtor, 2003, p. 820. Modesto Lafuente, Historia general de España, vol. 6, Barcelona, Montaner y Simón, 1888, p. 48. Juan Agapito y Revilla, Las calles de Valladolid. Nomenclátor histórico. Datos para la historia biográfica de Valladolid, Valladolid, Maxtor, 2004, pp. 336–9.

  2See Carrillo de Huete, Crónica del halconero de Juan II, ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo y Arroquia, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1946.

  3Carmen Alicia Morales, Isabel de Castilla. Una psicobiografía, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Adoquín, 2013 (Kindle edn), loc. 4192. Luis Suárez Fernández, Enrique IV de Castilla. La difamación como arma política, Barcelona, Ariel, 2001, p. 29. José-Luis Martín, Enrique IV de Castilla. Rey de Navarra, Príncipe de Cataluña, San Sebastián, Nerea, 2003, p. 222. María Isabel del Val Valdivieso, Isabel I de Castilla (1451–1504), Madrid, Ediciones del Orto, 2005, p. 33. José Manuel Nieto Soria, ‘El “poderío real absoluto” de Olmedo (1445) a Ocaña (1469). La monarquía como conflicto’, En la España Medieval, no. 21, 1998, p. 208. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, pp. 13, 23, 105–9. Francisco de Paula Cañas Gálvez, El itinerario de la corte de Juan II de Castilla (1418–1454), Madrid, Silex Ediciones, 2007, pp. 481–2.