Isabella I, Strong and Devout and Cruel

Isabella I of Castile, co-ruler of Aragon and queen of most of the Iberian peninsula, one of the strongest monarchs of the Medieval period, was born on 22 April 1451 in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Ávila.

She was the eldest child of John II of Castile and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. Her paternal grandmother was Catherine of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and his second wife Constance of Castile. Thus, her father was a 1st cousin of King Henry V and she was King Henry VI’s second cousin.

When Isabella was 10 years old, King Henry VI of England was deposed by another mutual cousin of theirs, the oldest son of the 3rd Duke of York, who was crowned King Edward IV. Young Isabella would watch a similar civil war and game of pass-the-crown happen in her own country … and she would win it.

As a newborn, Isabella had an older half-brother, the future Henry IV of Castile, and would gain a younger brother, Alfonso of Castile, so although she was in line for the throne of Castile, no one seriously expected her to get it. The birth of her niece, Joanna la Beltraneja, to King Henry IV of Castile and Queen Joan of Portugal on 28 February 1462 moved Isabella even further away from crown.  Fate, however, is mischievous, and politicians are savage, and things would changed drastically in 1464.

A group of rebellious peers, known as the the Aristocratic League, cast “doubts about the paternity of Henry’s daughter” and after seizing control of the king’s half-siblings, Alfonso and Isabella, forced Henry at the 1464 Representation of Burgos to repudiate Joanna and recognize Alfonso as his official heir.”  Backed into a corner, the king agreed to make Alfonso the Prince of Asturias and the presumptive heir, provide that Alfonso would be wed to the officially disowned Princess Joanna, so that Henry’s child would be queen, even if through marriage.

This seemed to satisfy the nobles, but the angry King Henry began to back his daughter’s claim to the throne as soon as he felt he was in a strong enough military situation to do so. In retaliation, the “nobles in league against him conducted a ceremonial deposition-in-effigy of Henry outside the city of Avila and crowned Alfonso as a rival king. This event is known in history as the Farce of Avila. Shortly thereafter, Alfonso began handing out land and titles as if he were already uncontested ruler. A civil war began. The most notable clash was at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467, which concluded as a draw.”

The civil war between King Henry and the men controlling his half-brother would have continued for longer, but Alfonso died in July 1468 – probably from the plague, but accusations of poisoning were also made against King Henry.  Now, only Isabella’s elder brother and his daughter stood between her and the throne. At least in theory.

Seventeen-year-old Isabella was now an even more valuable bride than she had been before. When she was only six years old, her older brother had arranged her potential marriage to Ferdinand (future Ferdinand II of Aragon), the younger son of John II of Aragon. King Henry IV, however, wanted to make an alliance with Charles of Viana, John II’s elder son, so he offered Isabella to Charles in 1458. When John II found out what they were doing he so angry that he actually imprisoned Charles of Viana rather than lose Isabella for his favorite son, Ferdinand. With Henry and John on the outs, in 1465 King Henry IV tried to marry Isabella to Alfonso V of Portugal, the brother of Henry’s new queen but Isabella refused to agree. She must have regretted her refusal a few years later, when she was almost wed to a commoner, Pedro Girón Acuña Pacheco, in 1468 just to quell the civil war.

Isabella, horrified at marrying so far beneath her, prayed that something would prevent the match. She believed that God had answered her prayers when Pacheco died suddenly on his way to meet her in person. This divine intervention reaffirmed Isabella’s belief in the Catholic faith … and assured her that the bloody and vengeful Lord she worship agreed with her that her enemies should die.

King Henry IV once again tried to get Isabella to wed his brother-in-law, Alfonso V of Portugal. Once more, Isabella refused. The king then offered her to Louis XI‘s brother Charles, Duke of Berry, but Isabella refused that offer as well. Instead, the ersatz bride was secretly negotiating with her uncle, King John II, to marry her cousin and originally intended groom, Ferdinand of Aragon.

There was much daring-do to allow Isabella and Ferdinand to wed. First, John II had to get aa dispensation from Pope Paul II. It was highly unlikely that the Pope would agree without telling King Henry IV what was up, so the John II turned to Valencian Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (later Alexander VI) for help. In the autumn of 1469 Borgia gave John and Ferdinand “a supposed papal bull by Pius II (who had died in 1464), authorizing Ferdinand to marry within the third degree of consanguinity,” allowing him to wed any cousin he wished – including Isabella.

Isabella, not lacking in determination, told King Henry IV that she needed to go to  Ávila and visit her brother Alfonso’s tomb. There she met Ferdinand, who had “crossed Castile in secret disguised as a servant” at considerable risk to marry her. The couple were duly wed on 19 October 1469, in the Palacio de los Vivero in the city of Valladolid. Isabella had demanded (and gotten) a clear prenuptial agreement on sharing power beforehand, promising that as a monarch of Castile she would never be secondary to her husband. Instead, they would rule under the joint motto “tanto monta, monta tanto.” By the time King Henry IV found out what his sister had done, the marriage was consummated and could not be nullified.

As the official heir, Isabella was crowned as Queen of Castile and León after King Henry IV’s death in December of 1474, but an insanely bloody civil war broke out to challenge her place on the throne.a powerful faction, led by Diego Pacheco, the Marquis of Villena, and his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, argued that Henry’s daughter, Joanna, was the rightful queen. Pacheco and his uncle arranged to have Infanta Joanna marry her uncle, King Alfonso V of Portugal, who would provide and invasion army to put her on the throne.

Although heavily pregnant with her first child, Isabella, Princess of Asturias, Isabella worked with Ferdinand to defeat the Portuguese invaders and her Castilian enemies. It was Ferdinand, however, who eventually found the solution to their problem – defeating the rebels not on the battlefield, but in public relations.

On 1 March 1476 both Isabella and the Portuguese claimed victory at the Battle of Toro, but “while the Portuguese King reorganised his troops, Ferdinand sent news to all the cities of Castile and to several foreign kingdoms informing them about a huge victory where the Portuguese were crushed.” This was a bold-faced lie, but it was believed. Assuming they were defeated, the Portuguese allies in Castile disbanded and surrendered. Without interior support, the Portuguese had no choice but to retreat back to the home turf. Isabella was now the clear queen of the realm.

Having driven out the Portuguese with trickery, “Isabella took advantage of the moment and convoked courts at Madrigal-Segovia … where her eldest child and daughter Isabella was firstly sworn as heiress to Castile’s crown. That was equivalent to legitimising Isabella’s own throne.” Isabella and Ferdinand would continue to battle Portugal for trade dominion and imperial precedence for years, but they did so as the joint monarchs of Castile and Aragon.

Isabella, like King Edward I of England, was an excellent ruler if you were her subject and a monster if you were being subjected. For the Christians of her realm she was a God-send. She instituted a police force, tackled corruption, improved the economy, and shored up the royal treasure without resorting to middle-class taxation. If you weren’t a Christian, however, she was the nightmare under the bed made flesh. With a grand self-righteousness, she waged war on the Muslims and Jews in her kingdom (which she expanded into traditionally Muslim-Jewish areas like the Emirate of Granada). She and Ferdinand instituted one of the earliest ethnic cleansings and attempted genocides on record, and laid the groundwork for the Spanish Inquisition. Therefore — regardless of her intelligence, bravery, and idealism — I cannot think of Queen Isabella II of Castile and Leon with anything other than abhorrence.

Isabella ruled alongside Ferdinand for almost 30 years, until her death on 26 November 1504. Without Isabella, the influence and might of Spain took a serious beating, because Ferdinand was a shifty little light-weight wannabe compared to the perspicacious warrior-queen his wife had been. Her grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, would eventually inherit Castile, after Ferdinand declared his daughter Joanna insane and stole it from her. Needless to say, Isabella would have never allowed that to happen if she had still been alive.

Charles V would favor his maternal grandmother more than his grandfather, in that he would rule a great empire both wisely and well and ruthlessly. He honored his grandmother in death by interring her in the Capilla Real, the Isabelline Gothic-style Royal Chapel of the Granada Cathedral, as she had requested. Her tomb, in which she was later joined by Ferdinand, was sculpted by Domenico Fancelli and is a masterwork of Renaissance art.

In spite of her role in the ethnic cleansing of Spain, Isabella was given the title “Servant of God” by the Catholic Church in March 1974, although she was denied canonization. Revered in her own time, Isabella remained a heroine for many in Catholic Spain for centuries, and still remains a heroine for many people in the present day.

Although I do not doubt her sincerity or piety, I cannot help thinking about the thousands of Moors and Jewish men, women, and children burned alive or left to starve to death at her behest … and cannot think of her as either a heroine or a servant of God.