Ferdinand and Isabella

8 Key excerpts on "Ferdinand and Isabella"

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  Speaking of Spain

  The Evolution of Race and Nation in the Hispanic World

  • Antonio Feros(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  12 1 Spains I n October 1469, two young princelings—Isabel, eighteen, and her cousin Ferdinand, seventeen—married in a small Castilian town in virtual secrecy. As members of the same Trastámara dynasty, their marriage was an attempt to establish order and stability in the peninsula following decades of conflict, regicides, rebellions, and civil wars. Isabel became queen of the crown of Castile in 1474 when she succeeded her brother Enrique IV. Five years later, in 1479, Ferdinand became king of the crown of Aragon. This was strictly a union of heads, not bodies: the marriage accords did not call for, or envisage, a true political and juridical union of the two crowns and their king-doms. Nevertheless, the practical result of the marriage was that for the first time in centuries, the two most powerful states in the Iberian Peninsula were dynastically amalgamated. Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians claimed that this fateful union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile stitched together a territorial unit rent asunder by the eighth-century Arab invasion of the peninsula and also unquestionably marked the birth of Spain as a nation and state. In the past few decades, however—at least since the establishment of democracy in Spain in the 1970s— historians have challenged this interpretation. In their view, the mar-riage of Ferdinand and Isabel did not forge a nation, and the old kingdoms survived as autonomous entities with deeply entrenched “national” identities that have endured until the present day. Alter-natively, a growing number of early modern historians have observed S P A I N S 13 that one of the key if unintended consequences of the marriage between Isabel and Ferdinand was not the creation of a nation-state so much as the emergence of a well-defined Spanish national iden-tity.

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  The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire

  • William Maltby(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon on October 18, 1469, began the unification of the Spanish kingdoms and created the nucleus of a much larger empire. Both countries had by this time suffered from decades of intermittent civil war. Isabella, supported by most of the Castilian nobility, succeeded her half-brother Enrique IV in 1474. In an effort to prevent her accession, a faction associated with the late king allied themselves with Portugal, and launched a bloody but unsuccessful war that ended only in 1479. In that year the death of Ferdinand’s father made him King of Aragon. Aragon and Castile were now linked by marriage, but the union of the two crowns was—and would remain—personal. By the terms of their marriage agreement, Ferdinand ruled Aragon but had only limited rights in Castile; Isabella as ruler of Castile would have even fewer in Aragon and its dependencies. After each died, their common heir would become ruler of Spain, but he or she would inherit the two kingdoms separately (plus Sicily), and each kingdom would retain its own government, institutions, and privileges.

  The arrangement could have been a recipe for disaster. The young rulers differed in interests and personality, and their marriage, in private at least, was not entirely tranquil. Ferdinand, a model for Machiavelli’s Prince , was cynical and devious but a capable soldier and a master of diplomacy. The deeply religious Isabella was more interested in domestic policy and had the surer grasp of what would today be called public relations. Both, however, were pragmatists at heart. While Isabella lived, the royal couple pursued a common policy.

  By necessity, that policy was expansionist. Ferdinand and Isabella are correctly regarded as the founders of modern Spain, but they knew nothing of the modern concept of nationhood and did not consciously set out to create either a nation or an empire. Instead, like other rulers of the day, they based their policies on dynastic interest modified at times by religious considerations. Their first priority was to strengthen royal authority in Castile, now badly eroded by decades of strife and misrule. The situation in Aragon was equally bad, but Ferdinand believed that the kingdom’s long-established fueros precluded serious reform. Castilian institutions seemed more amenable to change. Even there, however, Isabella lacked the resources or the inclination to impose her authority by force. She needed the cooperation of nobles and town governments, and knew that this required incentives. At the Cortes of Toledo in 1480 Isabella confirmed the nobles in their possession of lands taken illegally before 1466 on condition that they return those taken thereafter. Throughout her reign, she granted mayorazgos that allowed them to entail portions of their estates, thereby avoiding the trap of partible inheritance which diluted the wealth of their families. Mayorazgos were an important favor, as were mercedes

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  Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World

  • Marta V. Vicente, Luis R. Corteguera(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 The Gender of Shared Sovereignty: Texts and the Royal Marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt

  The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 created an unusual system of royal government, forging what might be called a “companionate monarchy.” According to their marriage capitulations and subsequent modifications, although each retained some specific prerogatives in their respective kingdoms, they ruled jointly. Thus, historians have often hailed their reign as an exceptional example of royal responsibility and prerogative balanced between male and female monarch. This perception is underscored by the abiding and documented affection between the two. Yet the novelty of their joint rule and images of romantic devotion have obscured a close examination of how they exercised their shared sovereignty. Arevealing starting point for such an investigation is the chronicles produced during their reign. These chronicles created a textual tradition that painted a different and often ambivalent picture of the practice—as opposed to the ideal—of shared sovereignty.

  Taking as a case study the first year of their reign, this essay will explore specific examples of this ambivalence in the chronicles of Fernando del Pulgar, Alfonso de Palencia, Diego de Valera and Juan de Flores. In his representations of both episodes of high political drama and the daily demands of governing the realm, each chronicler wrestled with the political reality of joint rule. Questions of where authority lay within the royal court and the royal marriage hung in the balance. Could a woman exercise supreme sovereignty? Could her sovereign power extend to include power over her husband? Not surprisingly, the chroniclers’ answers to these questions frequently intersected with other medieval and Renaissance texts that engaged questions of gender and authority. Inspired in part by these discourses and by their own politics, the chroniclers communicate a surprising range of opinion, revealing a vigorous debate about gender roles.

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  The Man behind the Queen

  Male Consorts in History

  • C. Beem, M. Taylor, C. Beem, M. Taylor(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Isabella of Castile, the First Renaissance Queen (New York, 1991).

       7.   D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven CT, 2008).

       8.   C. J. Hernando Sánchez, El reino de Nápoles en el imperio de Carlos V: la consolidación de la conquista (Madrid, 2001), which despite its title has rich material on Ferdinand the Catholic; J. E. Ruíz Domènec, El Gran Capitán: retrato de un época (Barcelona, 2002).

       9.   J. M. Doussinagué, La política internacional de Ferdinando el Católico (Madrid, 1944); F. Elías de Tejada, Napoli spagnola: la tappa aragonese (1442–1503) (Naples, 1999), and subsequent volumes translated from the five-volume original.

  10.   P. Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge, 1991).

  11.   E. Belenguer Cebrià, Fernando el Católico (Barcelona, 1999).

  12.   W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic of Spain (Bentley, 1838); part of the work has been reedited as The Art of War in Spain: The Conquest of Granada 1481–1492 (London, 1995).

  13.   R. Gutiérrez Cruz, Los presidios españoles del Norte de África en tiempo de los Reyes Católicos (Melilla, 1999).

  14.   J. Vicens Vives, Fernando el Católico príncipe de Aragón, rey de Sicilia, 1458–1478: Sicilia en la política de Juan II de Aragón (Madrid, 1972).

  15.   A. M. Oliva and O. Schena, Acta Curiarum Regni Sardiniae: i documenti dei Viceré Giovanni Dusay e Ferdinando Girón de Rebolledo (1495, 1497, 1500, 1504–1511) (Cagliari, 1998).

  16.   J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London, 1963); Pierre Vilar’s views on the economic decline of late medieval Catalonia can now be read conveniently in a collection of his articles: Crecimiento y desarollo: economia e historia, reflexiones sobre el caso español (Barcelona, 2001), pp. 212–79; see also J. Vicens Vives, Approaches to the History of Spain (2nd ed., Berkeley CA, 1970).

  17.   M. del Treppo, I mercanti catalani e l’espansione della Corona d’Aragona nel secolo XV

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  The Monstrous Regiment of Women

  Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe

  • S. Jansen(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 2 T H E D A U G H T E R S O F I S A B E L L A O F C A S T I L E Queens and Regents in Spain andtheHabsburgEmpire A woman is never feared or respected as a man is, whatever her rank. —Mary of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands 1 QUEENS AND REGENTS IN SPAIN AND THE HABSBURG EMPIRE The daughters of Isabella of Castile—the women to whom she was related by ties of blood, marriage, and alliance—are to be found in royal houses throughout Europe, from the nearby kingdoms of Portugal and Navarre to the more distant lands of Denmark and Hungary. Before examining their roles in the political history of early modern Europe, we will look briefly at the vast and complex empire where they would assume positions as queens and regents in succeeding generations. Through her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon, Isabella had united the crowns of Castile and Aragon, but this union was a personal one, threatened after the queen’s death in 1504 when her daughter Juana succeeded her as queen, separating Castile from Aragon once more. With its greater wealth and population and with its New World empire, Isabella’s kingdom had been the dominant power in the union of los Reyes Catolicos, its interests quite different from those of Aragon, a Mediterranean kingdom that laid claim to territory in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples. Ultimately, Castile and Aragon would be permanently joined, not by Isabella of Castile but through her nonetheless, in the person of her daughter Juana’s son. In the western part of the Iberian peninsula, meanwhile, was the independent kingdom of Portugal; by negotiating a series of dynastic marriages between Castilian princesses and Portuguese princes, Isabella aimed at reuniting Portugal with Castile, a “reconquest” that would rival her defeat of the kingdom of Granada and unify the entire peninsula. 2 Despite her efforts, she did not achieve her goal, at least not during her lifetime.

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  Encounters Old and New in World History

  Essays Inspired by Jerry H. Bentley

  • Alan Karras, Laura J. Mitchell, Anand A. Yang, Kieko Matteson(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  67 F IVE The Sixteenth-Century World War and the Roots of the Modern World A View from the Edge Edmund Burke III R ETHINKING THE R ECONQUISTA On January 2, 1492, in a well-choreographed moment, Abu ‘Abdallah Mu-hammad XII (or Boabdil, as he was known to the Spanish) presented the keys of the city to the representatives of Queen Isabella. With this gesture, the last independent Muslim kingdom in Spain came to an inglorious end. The fall of Granada marked a culminating phase in the Reconquista, the Christian religious struggle to subdue and expel Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. Present at the scene was none other than Christopher Columbus, seeking to sew up a deal with Queen Isabella for a few ships. 1 Because a number of global, regional, and specifically Iberian pro-cesses all came together in this year, 1492 has long been thought to be a good date to begin a history of the modern world. Famously, Columbus made his first voyage to the Americas in 1492, stoutly maintaining all the while that he had reached Asia. Just ahead lay the establishment of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, the “Great Dying” of Amerindian populations, and the discovery of silver (which in turn facilitated the par-ticipation of Europeans in the multipolar Asian-centered world economy). As a date 1492 has additional important resonances. The Alhambra Decree of March 31, 1492, which ordained the expulsion of all Jews from Spain who had not converted to Catholicism, brought to an end a storied phase in Andalusian Jewish history. Those Jews who refused were compelled to leave Spain forever, eventually forming a diaspora that stretched around the globe. The fall of Granada accelerated a second diaspora, that of Andalusian Muslims. Many had already fled Spain by that time, more than one hundred 68 Chapter 5 thousand more of them departed following the failed revolt of 1496. Other revolts would follow until the definitive expulsion of the Moriscos in 1621.

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  Spain 1474–1598

  • Jocelyn Hunt(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 HOW SUCCESSFUL WERE THE FOREIGN POLICIES OF Ferdinand and Isabella ? BACKGROUND NARRATIVE Throughout the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, Aragon and Castile pursued foreign policies which were assertive and positive. Such policies, if successful, might have been expected to enhance the status of the monarchs, as well as extending their territory and trade opportunities. The risk of future foreign attacks would have been reduced as Spain’s reputation as a dominant and victorious power increased. On the other hand, defeat would have had a deleterious effect on the international standing of Spain, and, whether successful or not, aggressive foreign policies would have cost a great deal of money, and may thus have alienated public opinion at home at precisely the same time as the attention of the government was diverted abroad. This was certainly the experience of Charles, the successor of the Catholic monarchs. Both Isabella and Ferdinand inherited thrones which were under threat from foreign powers, and their first priority was bound to be to settle their own borders. The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand removed one of the traditional focuses of Iberian foreign policy. The two kingdoms no longer threatened each other, and their common border ceased to need armed forces to maintain it. It is possible to discern ‘a new community of interest which Castile and Aragon had not previously enjoyed’. 1 The traditional approaches of the two kingdoms seemed to blend well together. The Castilian commitment to ‘territorial conquest, personal endeavour and religious zeal’ 2 complemented the Aragonese desires to regain territory to which theTrastámara family had a claim, and to enhance and protect their Mediterranean trade. The combined strength of the two kingdoms was substantial. The diplomatic network which Ferdinand spread across the courts of Europe was staffed mostly by men of Castilian training

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  What Ifs of Jewish History

  From Abraham to Zionism

  • Gavriel D. Rosenfeld(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  But God in His divine mercy placed at the royal court great and noble advisors from the house of Judah. 9 And they silenced the tongues of these stammerers, and spoke words of peace and truth that the Jews and Moors of Spain were naught but loyal servants. And this just and pious king heeded their pleas. And those Moors who wished to go and live in the land of the Maghreb were allowed to leave, and indeed many did so, and they live there happily and securely even to this day. Others, though, could not 7 That is, 1492. 8 Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, who reigned jointly from 1475 to 1504. 9 Don Isaac Abravanel, a Jewish courtier and ancestor of Benveniste, is generally credited with interceding on behalf of the Jews at this time. 66 / Jonathan Ray Figure 8. King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. Although the king and queen were urged to expel the Jews of Spain, they refused to do so. bear to leave their homes and their fields, for the love of this rich and pleasant land, or for reasons of poverty and fear and dread of such a great journey to a land not their own. And so these Moors remained in their homes and in their fields, much like the Jews and also like the 67 / What if the Jews of Spain had not been expelled? Christians. So acts a righteous king, as well you know, for so acted your ancestors when they conquered the lands of the Greeks and the other Christians of the East and took under their protection Jew and Christian alike, letting each man pursue his trades and worship God as he saw fit. On the Jewish refugees from the Maghreb And so I come now to the heart of my petition, and that is to entreat Your Highness to intervene in this matter on behalf of our brethren.

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