Difficult Women: Isabella of Castile (part two)

Then this thing turned out so evil/ I don't know why I'm still surprised

Previously on Basically Game of Thrones In Spain But Actual History With No Dragons: Isabella of Castile escaped a haunted childhood castle to elope with a man named Ferdinand, overthrow her awful half-brother, force her half-niece out of the country, and declare herself Queen of Castile via coup-parade. It was, as they say, A Lot, and Isabella’s story was just getting started.

Isabella and Ferdinand were officially co-monarchs of both the large kingdom of Castile and the smaller kingdom of Aragon. They were an equal pairing, with Isabella given the same respect and responsibility as her husband. This feels like “so what” until you remember that this was the first time in Western history that a woman actively ruled a country. This was pre-Elizabeth I, pre-Catherine the Great, when the word Queen usually just meant “the King’s wife”. And so when Isabella, twenty-three years old and slightly built, paraded down the street with a giant sword and declared herself Queen the people were like, “What?” But by the middle of her thirty-year reign, those same people were like, “She is the greatest human being that the world has potentially ever seen, at least in the past 500 years.” So what made Isabella such a notable Queen?

Servant of God Isabella of Castille (Museo del Prado).

Well, first of all, she was able to turn around Castile’s finances through her careful and meticulous leadership. The past two kings—her half-brother El Impotente and her father, who had been the puppet of his evil pal Evil Del Luna—had been straight-up awful at the job. She inherited a country in massive amounts of debt due to her predecessor’s financial mismanagement, including El Impotente’s short-sighted plan to increase the country’s money by just minting more coins. Guess what? That never works. Isabella had paid close attention during her time in El Impotente’s court. She came into the job with numerous ideas about how to salvage this particular situation, such as putting an end to the excess coin manufacturing and forcing nobles to pay off their debts to the crown.

The ongoing war between Castile and Portugal had also been putting too much pressure on the country’s budget, so she used her brilliant strategic mind to end this war with several peace treaties. Among the terms of these treaties was Portugal’s agreement that Isabella’s half-niece, Juana La Beltraneja, would be confined to a convent for the rest of her life and forced to do many compulsory prayers. This is a peculiar clause, but it hints at how Isabella would proceed to wield piety and religious devotion as punishment.

Yet another terrible thing about the reigns of El Impotente and his father was that criminals had never really been tracked down or punished in any organized manner. This made sense because the country’s laws had never been written down in a book, so Isabella also hired a scholar to write out an eight-volume set of all of the laws of the land. She saw herself as the divinely appointed arbiter of all that was good and holy, and she was determined to have a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY against criminality, especially rape and sexual crimes. More rapists were tried and convicted during her reign than ever before.

BUT, IMPORTANT NOTE: Isabella considered homosexual acts in the same league of unforgivable criminality as she did rape, and the punishment for men convicted of sodomy was to be castrated and hanged (also the sentence for heterosexual rapists).

And because you can’t have Medieval Spanish law without Medieval Spanish order, Isabella also invented the concept of a state-sanctioned police department. Until now, justice was mainly meted out by ad hoc gangs of men called brotherhoods or hermandads, so Isabella called her new royally appointed squad La Santa Hermandad (The Holy Brotherhood).

Her predecessors had mainly been under the thumb of powerful aristocrats, who gave and accepted bribes for their self-interest. Isabella and Ferdinand ended this whole situation by positioning themselves as absolute monarchs. Now, obviously, being a dictator isn’t ideal under most circumstances, but this was one situation where it was their best and only option. The country’s allegiances had been scattered, and the new monarchs were determined to coalesce all support behind them. This also meant they removed all power from the nobles, consolidating it for themselves. Isabella had the nobles moved from active participants in government to mere audience members, replacing them with actual administrative staff like lawyers who would perform the actual tasks of running the country.

Isabella and Ferdinand gained control over the country by having a vision and a plan. The pair of them—especially Isabella—also wound being effective in other ways, but their first steps were to take a struggling country and make it over into something productive. And in a sort of triage scenario, once they’d gathered all control into their own hands and had established law and order, they moved onto phase two: unify the country under a single religion.

She and Ferdinand were so pious that the Pope bestowed the name The Catholic Monarchs upon them. So it should be no surprise that they wanted everyone in their newly-unifying Spain to convert. This wasn’t conversion for conversion’s sake: Isabella saw herself as God’s hand on Earth and her role as savior to all non-Catholics. At the time that Isabella took over, Spain was populated not only by Catholics but also by some Muslims and the largest concentration of Jewish people anywhere in Europe. So, did this mean she ran around like a missionary, converting Jewish and Muslim people? No, this meant that she initially created policies forcing non-Catholics to convert, and then she later decreed that all non-Catholics were to be expelled from Spain without their money or possessions (which were then given to the crown, which also helped Isabella out financially).

Simultaneously to the expulsion of Jewish and Muslim people, Isabella and Ferdinand were also hard at work conquering the remaining Muslim strongholds in their area, which were run by the Nasrid dynasty. Isabella was actively involved with this multi-year campaign, helping to plan campaigns and accompanying troops near the battle field. Using the newly increased treasury, she amassed a more extensive arsenal of weapons than any previous monarch had ever acquired, including cannons strong enough to destroy castle walls. Her tactics and arsenal forced all European armies to change their battle strategies.

The final stronghold of the Nasrid empire was Granada, which finally surrendered to the Catholic monarchs in 1492. Isabella and Ferdinand entered the city and were ceremonially presented with the keys to the city. They then set out converting not only the people but the place itself—reconsecrating the primary mosque into a Catholic church, for instance. Their success in defeating Muslim expansion forever altered the global balance of power, which, to this point, had favoured the East. Spain was becoming the first Western superpower, paving the way for the domination of France, England, and then the United States on the world stage.

Isabella and Ferdinand had achieved massive success in their plans to consolidate the various parts of Spain into a single empire with themselves as supreme rulers. Rather than spreading themselves to the East, Isabella’s interest was piqued by a persistent Italian adventurer, Cristoffa Corombo, or Christopher Columbus, as his Anglicized name is better known. Corombo approached the Catholic monarchs numerous times to support his goal to voyage across the Atlantic to find a new trade route to the Indies. Still, she only agreed to fund his trip when he dropped his price to something Isabella found acceptable. The money she had seized from the expelled Jewish and Muslim people was used to fund this trip.

What’s interesting about this whole scenario is that Isabella was never comfortable with the idea of enslaving or mistreating the Indigenous people of the Americas. This was partly because she viewed Corombo’s colonies in the Americas as subsidiaries of Castile, which made the Indigenous people—to her—Castilian subjects. The law of the land was that Castilian subjects could not be enslaved. Furthermore, she was keen to convert the Indigenous people to Catholicism—and, to her, Catholics could also not be enslaved. (But, to her, Black people captured during her conquest on the African continent could be enslaved).

Of course, her desire to convert people to Catholicism was not limited to Indigenous people of the Americas. Isabella and Ferdinand were also consistently obsessed with ensuring that every single person living in Spain practiced the same religion they did, to the point that they began mistrusting people who claimed to be Catholic. Their goal was to build a country that was entirely homogenized—100% Catholics, 100% of whom fully supported the Catholic monarchs. And so they founded a royal Inquisition, aka The Spanish Inquisition. They weren’t the first people to do this, but they were among the most successful at it, by which I mean they captured and killed more than most other Inquisitions did.

Isabella’s religious fervor was not limited to her subjects; she applied similar high standards and problematic/abusive methods on her family members as well. And it was in the home front that she became caught in a sequence of events she couldn’t defeat with her cleverness or ruthlessness.

Isabella and Ferdinand had five children: Isabel of Aragon; Juan, Prince of Asturias; Juana of Castile; Maria of Aragon; and Katherine of Aragon. Isabella ensured her children were educated extensively, hiring Italian humanists as tutors. It was not standard for children to be educated to this extent, especially not girls. Isabella presented herself as a role model to her daughters in other ways, too, such as by bringing them with her when she accompanied troops into battle.

Having grown up in a ghost castle and spent her adolescence leading a coup to steal the throne, Isabella hadn’t received much schooling in her childhood, so she worked to ensure her children would all get the best possible education. Isabel, Juan, Juana, Katherine, and Maria were all taught everything possible for that era and location: various languages, science, history, politics, archery, dancing, music, and more. As Juan was trained to become the new King, the girls learned the skills required to be a wife and mother alongside their other studies. Isabella and Ferdinand ensured that their family would be impervious to criticism, and each of the children was recorded as having been both accomplished and gorgeous. The girls all seem to have inherited many of the personality traits of their mother, as they all wound up expressing tenacity alongside very powerful streaks of stubbornness. Of all the children, Isabella clashed most often with Juana, perhaps because these two were more alike than any others.

One final part of Isabella and Ferdinand’s strategy for complete Spanish domination was to connect their dynasty with royal families in other countries. As such, they arranged the best possible matches for each of their children. Isabel was shipped off to marry the Portuguese king, while Juan and Juana were married to a Habsburg royal. Isabel’s husband died suddenly at a very young age, after which Isabel begged to be allowed to remain unmarried and to live as a nun. However, she needed to help establish the alliance with Portugal, so Isabella sent her daughter back to marry the new Portuguese King. Isabel died in childbirth a year later, her baby son soon passing away as well. Around this time, Juan—whom Isabella had always favored, referring to him as her “angel”—also died. This meant—much to Isabella’s grief and frustration—that her seeming least-favourite daughter, Juana, was suddenly and unexpectedly heir to the thrones of Castile and Aragon.

Isabella’s youngest daughters, Maria and Katherine, were sent off shortly for their own politically advantageous marriages—Maria, to be the second wife to Isabel’s widower, the King of Portugal, and Katherine off to marry Arthur, the English crown prince. (This did not go remarkably quickly for Katherine, which is what the new show The Spanish Princess will be about.)

These deaths in quick succession, combined with the heartbreak of having her children move away, severely affected Isabella’s health, including her mental health. She turned to prayer and fasting for strength, weakening her constitution. Isabella slowly succumbed to the dropsy effects but kept enough of her wits about her to compose her will. This document is part advice and instruction to Ferdinand (who would go on to rule for another twelve years) as well as their successors, in which she charges them to remain vigilant against the Devil and his minions (including Muslim and Jewish people), as well as to continue working to conquer the African continent and to continue the Inquisition. She also notes her desire for the Indigenous people of the American colonies to be treated fairly and not to be abused.

Queen Isabella died at age 53 on November 26, 1504, at the Medina del Campo Royal Palace, where she had been bedridden for her final months. Her tomb is in Granada, the site of one of her greatest military and political victories, in the Capilla Real. Queen Isabella is laid next to her husband, Ferdinand, as her daughter and heir Juana (who died 55 years later), Juana’s awful husband whom we don’t care about, and Isabel’s dead baby son, Miguel.

Isabella forever changed the course of world history. She founded the first cross-Atlantic colonial empire, creating a template for later use by the French and the English. Her successes in the wars against Muslim areas paved the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion through most of Western Europe. She was also the first European woman to be recognized as a monarch in her own right, changing the meaning of Queen to mean “a woman who rules” rather than just “the woman married to the King.” Isabella’s was one of European history's most consequential and essential reigns.

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VULGAR HISTORY A LA CARTE is a feminist women’s history comedy newsletter. It is the companion publication to the Vulgar History podcast. Click here to hear the latest episode of the podcast.

Ann Foster is a writer and podcaster. She’s currently writing a nonfiction biography of Caroline of Brunswick. Don’t know who that is? You will soon! She’s represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.

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References:

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey

Isabella of Castile: Europe’s greatest queen?

Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile