In France, I reviewed the Margaret of Austria papers at the Archives du Nord in Lille. I spent many hours in London at the British Library and National Archives. Wellcome Library in London provided a welcome translation into English of Peter Martyr’s Opus Epistolarum.
I visited historic sites relevant to the New World chapters of this story in Panama, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. I am grateful to all the people with the vision and foresight to realize that our own hemisphere also has history worth preserving.
In the United States, I consulted collections at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, the Huntington Library and Art Collection in San Marino, California, the Chicago Institute of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Stephen A. Scharzman Building of the New York Public Library, Washington College’s Miller Library, McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library.
The excellent libraries in Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia, provided much material that has been published in the past two decades.
Marta Rueda, of the Segovia office of tourism, spent many hours with me, taking me all over the city and sharing with me her thoughts and perspective about Isabella, gleaned over a lifetime. She became not just a guide but a true friend. The proprietors of San Miguel Hotel gave me a room with a view overlooking the red-tiled roof of the Church of San Miguel, so I could look out at the site where Isabella took the throne. They were unfailingly warm and generous with me.
I also want to thank Louisa Woodville; Alexis Simendinger; Kim Winfrey; Camille Brilloit in Lille, France; Jesus Ibarra in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Luis Chaffo; Holly Hall; Laura Evenson; and Wendy Silverthorne.
The book could not have been written without the scholarship of those who went before me. Some of them are living, and some have gone to their rewards, and I list them in no particular order. I want to especially thank María Isabel del Val Valdivieso, Juan de Mata Carriazo, Jerónimo Zurita, Luis Suárez, Tarsicio Azcona, Peggy Liss, Nancy Rubin, and William Hickling Prescott.
My sister Elizabeth Gately initiated the work on the bibliography when I ran out of steam toward the end, and that was a generous gift of time and love. She’s a wonderful sister. My mother-in-law, B. J. Averitt, shared her knowledge and lifelong interest in Islamic art.
My beloved husband, Neil Warner Averitt, assisted me with the research for this book, with his own deep knowledge of world history a valuable resource for drawing connections among far-flung events. As our children like to say, he is the Big Book of Everything. He read the manuscript three times, carefully edited the text, and offered me the benefit of his insight and, most recently, his new interest in early church history and the story of Christ’s life. He educated me on many things I did not know about Christianity.
Our five children—John, Elizabeth, Amelia, Alex, and Rachel—all listened to talk about Isabella’s life for many hours and retained faith in me that I would get the book done. I want to thank them all once again.
And one of them in particular: My daughter Rachel and I went together to Spain, exploring the countryside, venturing into olive groves, hiking through fields of giant sunflowers to get to unique vantage points to see historic sites that were otherwise hard to access, wandering Roman roads and clambering up crumbling castle ruins. She has the same intrepid spirit as my mother, and she, too, has made my life more of an adventure because she has been there to share the journey.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469–1716 (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 103.
ONE: A BIRTH WITHOUT FANFARE
1. Nancy Rubin, Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 16.
2. King of Castile Don Juan II to the City of Segovia on the birth of his daughter Isabel, Madrid, April 23, 1451, Archivo Exmo, Ayuntamiento de Segovia.
3. Jerónimo Zurita, Anales de Aragon (Zaragoza: Instituto “Fernando el Católico” [C.S.I.C.] de le Exma Diputación Provincial, 1975), vol. 6, p. 33, “that they had been given herbs,” poisonous herbs, by Luna.
4. Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Comienza la crónica del serenísimo príncipe Don Juan, segundo rey deste nombre (Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, 1930), p. 633.
5. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 17.
6. Rubin, Isabella of Castile, p. 19.
7. Ibid.
8. Didier T. Jaén, John II of Castile and the Grand Master Álvaro de Luna (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1978), pp. 189–90.
9. Nicholas Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned: A Study of the Fall of Don Álvaro de Luna (London: Tamesis Books, 1986), p. 42.
10. Rubin, Isabella of Castile, p. 19.
11. Jean Descola, A History of Spain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), pp. 40–42.
12. Townsend Miller, The Castles and the Crown: Spain, 1451–1555 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1963), p. 17.
13. Descola, History of Spain, pp. 32 and 33.
14. Isidore of Seville’s History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi, trans. Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford (Leiden: Brill, 1966), p. 1.
15. John L. Esposito, The Oxford History of Islam (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 13.
16. Bernard Lewis, Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 2:xvi.
17. Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain: 710–797 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995), p. 63.
18. Ahmad ibn Muhammad Al-Maqqari, The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, trans. Pascual de Gayangos, 2 vols. (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1840–43), p. 1:250, referring to quote from Ayyeshah, widow of the Prophet.
19. Ibid., p. 1:18.
20. Ibid., pp. 1:264–65.
21. Ibid., p. 1:265.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 1:267.
24. Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad, p. 2:111.
25. Collins, Arab Conquest of Spain, p. 97.
26. Ibid., p. 105.
27. Al-Maqqari, Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 1:272.
28. Ibid., p. 1:275.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 1:276.
31. Ibid., p. 1:279.
32. Ibid., p. 1:280.
33. Ibid., pp. 1:280–81. Gayangos said he believes this pattern was so consistent because Jews in Iberia may have already been in communication with North Africans. Of the Berbers who came from North Africa, some were of Jewish descent, and allied themselves with the Jews in Spain upon their arrival. Others may have been only superficially Muslim, and retaining Jewish customs and beliefs “felt great sympathy for their former brethren” (pp. 511, 531).
34. Al-Maqqari, Mohammedan Dynasties, pp. 1:282–88.
35. Ibid., pp. 1:291, 2:20.
36. Ibid., p. 2:41.
37. Diego de Valera, Crónica de España (Salamanca, 1499). Only three copies of this book survive, including one at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
38. Al-Maqqari, Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 2:34.
39. Descola, History of Spain, p. 82.
40. Jane I. Smith, “Islam and Christendom: Historical, Cultural, and Religious Interaction from the Seventh to the Fifteenth Centuries,” in Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam, pp. 318–19.
41. Ibid., p. 320.
42. Ibid.
43. Dario Fernández-Morera, “The Myth of the Andalucian Paradise,” Intercollegiate Review 41, no. 2 (Fall 2006).
44. Smith, “Islam and Christendom,” pp. 22, 23, 25, 29.
45. Al-Maqqari, Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 2:195.
46. Fernández-Morera, “Myth of Andalusian Paradise,” p. 27.
47. Ibid., pp. 27–28.
48. Bradley Smith, Spain: A History in Art (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 60–62, depicting works held at El Escorial.
49. Al-Maqqari, Mohammedan Dynasties, pp. 2:124–25.
50. Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: R
enaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 68.
51. Alonso Fernández de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Antonio Paz y Meliá (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1973–75), pp. 50–52.
52. George Sphrantzes, The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle, 1401–1477, trans. Marios Philippides (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), p. 70.
53. John McManners, The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 166.
TWO: A CHILDHOOD IN THE SHADOWS
1. Ana Sánchez Prieto, Enrique IV el Impotente (Madrid: Alderabán Ediciones, 1999), p. 7.
2. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 18.
3. Ibid., p. 20.
4. Diego de Valera, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla: Memorial de diversas hazañas. Crónica del rey Enrique IV, ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo y Arroquia (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1941), doc. 33, cited ibid., p. 14.
5. Condesa de Yebes, La Marquesa de Moya: la dama del descubrimiento (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1966), p. 13.
6. La Poncella de Francia, cited in Nancy Bradley Warren, Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p. 107.
7. Friar Martín de Córdoba, p. 94, cited ibid.
8. Antonio Blanco Sánchez, Sobre Medina del Campo y la reina agraviada (Medina del Campo: Caballeros de la Hispanidad, 1994), pp. 76–77 and 94–99.
9. Jaime Vicens Vives, “The Economies of Catalonia and Castile,” in Spain in the Fifteenth Century, 1369–1516: Essays and Extracts by Historians of Spain, ed. J. R. L. Highfield, trans. Frances M. López-Morillas (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 43.
10. Memorias de Don Enrique IV de Castilla. vol. 2, La colección diplomática del mismo rey (Madrid: Real Academia de Historia, 1835–1913), doc. 96, cited in Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 17.
11. “Cierto es que el nuevo monarca, Enrique IV, que subió al trono en 1454, no respetó los deseos paternos y entregó el maestrazgo de Santiago a su favorite Beltra’n de la Cueva y el cargo de condestable a otro de sus fieles, Miguel Lucas de Iranzo.”
12. María Isabel del Val Valdivieso, “Isabel, Infanta and Princess of Castile,” in Isabella la Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays, ed. by David A. Boruchoff (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 42.
13. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 13.
14. Alonso Fernández de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Antonio Paz y Meliá (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1973–75), dec. 1, bk. 3, chap. 2, cited in Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 14.
15. Diego Enríquez del Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Aureliano Sánchez Martín (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994), pp. 133–35.
16. Ibid., p. 134.
17. Ibid., pp. 138–39.
18. Malcolm Letts, ed. and trans., The Travels of Leo of Rozmital Through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, 1465–1467. Hakluyt Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1957), p. 96.
19. Enríquez del Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, p. 248.
20. Ibid., p. 163.
21. Ibid., pp. 146–47.
22. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 48.
23. Mary Purcell, The Great Captain: Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (New York: Alvin Redman, 1963), p. 29.
24. Alonso de Palencia, “Fiesta,” in Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Antonio Paz y Meliá (Madrid: Atlas, 1973), p. 75.
25. Crónica incompleta de los Reyes Católicos, 1469–1476, ed. Julio Puyol (Madrid: Academia de la Historia, 1934), p. 55.
26. Emilio Calderón, “Maleficio,” in Usos y costumbres sexuales de los Reyes de España (Madrid: Editorial Cirene, 1991), p. 70.
27. Memorias de Don Enrique IV de Castilla, vol. 2, p. 638.
28. Eduardo de Oliver-Copóns, El Alcázar de Segovia (Valladolid: Imprenta Castellana, 1916), pp. 99–105.
29. Purcell, Great Captain, p. 32.
30. Ibid., p. 31.
31. Nancy Rubin, Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 25.
32. Felix Grayeff, Joan of Arc: Legends and Truth (London: Philip Goodall, 1978).
33. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 18.
34. Warren, Women of God and Arms, pp. 89, 106–18.
35. Nancy Bradley Warren, “La Pucelle, the ‘Puzzel,’ and La Doncella: Joan of Arc in Early Modern England and Spain,” presentation at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Mich., May 12–15, 2011.
36. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 52.
37. Enríquez del Castillo, Crónica, p. 183.
38. Purcell, Great Captain, p. 29.
39. Rubin, Isabella of Castile, p. 23.
40. Teofilo Ruiz, The Other 1492: Ferdinand, Isabella and the Making of an Empire (Teaching Co., 2002).
41. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 53.
42. Memorias de Don Enrique IV de Castilla, vol. 2, p. 638.
43. Isabel I of Castile, letter of March 1471, in Memorias de Don Enrique IV de Castilla, vol. 2, cited in Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 60.
44. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 53.
45. Ibid., p. 47.
46. Nancy F. Marino, Don Juan Pacheco: Wealth and Power in Late Medieval Spain (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), p. 92.
47. Rubin, Isabella of Castile, pp. 31–32.
48. Charles Derek Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), p. 84.
THREE: FRIGHTENING YEARS
1. James Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, p. 1:31, cited in Charles Derek Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), p. 85; Cora Louise Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1967), p. 1:320.
2. Ross, Edward IV, p. 10.
3. Scofield, Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, p. 1:154.
4. Ross, Edward IV, p. 85.
5. Ibid., p. 90.
6. John Warkworth, A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of King Edward the Fourth, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1839), p. 3.
7. Ross, Edward IV, p. 89.
8. Scofield, Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, p. 1:320; Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters, Illustrative of English History, Including Numerous Royal Letters (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), series 2, p. 1:152; Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative, p. 1:31; Cora Louise Scofield, “The Movements of the Earl of Warwick in the Summer of 1464,” English Historical Review (October 1906), pp. 732–33.
9. Alonso Fernández de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Antonio Paz y Meliá (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1975), dec. I, bk. 5, chap. 2, cited in Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 54.
10. Ibid., p. 56.
11. Townsend Miller, The Castles and the Crown: Spain 1451–1555 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1963), pp. 40–41.
12. Ibid., p. 41.
13. Josef Miguel de Flores, Crónica de Don Alvaro de Luna, condestable de los reynos de Castilla y de León (Madrid: Imprenta de Antonio de Sancha, 1784), p. 15.
14. Teofilo F. Ruiz, Spain’s Centuries of Crisis: 1300–1474 (West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 89.
15. Ana Sánchez Prieto, Enrique IV el Impotente (Madrid: Alderaban Ediciones, 1999), p. 13.
16. Gregorio Marañón, Ensayo biólogico sobre Enrique IV de Castilla y su tiempo (Madrid: Colección Austral, 1997), pp. 30–31.
17. Ibid., p. 33.
18. Fray Gerónimo de la Cruz, an eighteenth-century historian who based his account on a fifteenth-century Castilian chronicle, cited in Nancy F. Marino, Don Juan Pacheco: Wealth and Power in Late Medieval Spain (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), p. 51.
19. Barbara Weissberger, “Alfonso de Palencia,” in Queer Iberia, ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 315.
20. Miller, Castles and Crown, p. 42.
21. Ibid., p. 45.
22. William Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1873), p. 181–82.
23. Diego de Colmenares, Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia, revised by Gabriel María Vergara (Segovia: Imprenta de la Tierra de Segovia, 1931), p. 276.
24. Mary Purcell, The Great Captain: Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (New York: Alvin Redman, 1963), p. 35.
25. Ibid., p. 34.
26. Ibid., p. 42.
27. Ibid., p. 41.
28. Ibid., p. 42.
29. Ibid., pp. 42–43.
30. Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 63.
31. María Dolores Cabanas González, Carmelo Luis López, and Gregorio del Ser Quijano, Isabel de Castilla y su época: Estudios y selección de textos (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2007), pp. 22–23.
32. Purcell, Great Captain, p. 37.
FOUR: ISABELLA FACES THE FUTURE ALONE
1. Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner, Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons (Cincinnati: Writers Digest Books, 1990).
2. Charles Thompson, and John Samuel, Poisons and Poisoners (London: Harold Shaylor, 1931), p. 83.
3. María Dolores Carmen Morales Muñiz, Alfonso de Ávila, Rey de Castilla (Ávila: Diputación Provincial de Ávila, Institución Gran Duque de Alba, 1988), p. 363.
4. Nancy Rubin, Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 50.
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