The Rise of Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic Queen and King, and their Determination to Complete the Reconquista
Iberia in 1492. Map of the Iberian Peninsula, 1270-1492, showing the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, Navarre, Granada, Aragon, and Majorca.
https//www.ncpedia.org/media/map/iberia-1492. Located June 12, 2023. Public domain.
In 1469, Isabella of Castile, the daughter of King John II of Castile and León and Isabella of Portugal, married her second cousin, Ferdinand of Aragon. They both were descendents of John I of Castile and Eleanor of Aragon. The marriage was, as many royal marriages at the time were, based on political opportunity rather than love. King John II of Aragon, Ferdinand’s father, had arranged the marriage because he needed Castilian support to counter the French on his eastern border along the Pyrenees Mountains.
Upon the death of her half-brother, King Henry IV of Castile and León, Isabella became Queen Isabella I of Castile and León and Ferdinand became Ferdinand V of Castile and León, king consort. Upon the death of his father, he became King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella became queen consort. They ruled Castile and Aragon jointly as dynastically unified kingdoms, although Castile and Aragon remained separate until the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1707-1716 incorporated the Crown of Aragon into the Crown of Castile thereby creating the Kingdom of Spain.
Isabella’s rise to the thrones of Castile and León had been contested. In 1406, John, the son of King Henry III of Castile and León and Catherine of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt, the 1st Duke of Lancaster and the fourth son of King Edward III of England, and Constance of Castile became King John II of Castile and León. In 1418, John married Maria of Aragon, the oldest daughter of his paternal uncle, Ferdinand I of Aragon, and they had one child who survived infancy, Henry. After Maria died, John married Isabella of Portugal and they had two children, Isabella and Alfonso.
Henry married Blanche II of Navarre and after being married for thirteen years with no children, the marriage was annulled. The following year, King John II of Castile died and Henry became King Henry IV of Castile and León. Henry sought an alliance with Portugal so he married Joan of Portugal, the daughter of King Edward of Portugal. Seven years into that marriage, Joan gave birth to a daughter, Joanna.
Joanna was Princess of Asturias, officially proclaimed heir to the thrones of Castile and León, a title held by the heir apparent. A number of nobles preferred that Henry name his younger half-brother, Alfonso, as Prince of Asturias. They circulated a rumor that Joanna was not King Henry’s daughter but rather the daughter of Betrán de la Cueve, the alleged lover of Queen Joan of Portugal, the king’s wife. Joanna was nicknamed “Joanna, ‘la Beltraneja',” a mocking reference to her purported father. Under pressure from the nobility, King Henry stripped Joanna of her title of Princess of Asturias and named Joanna’s ten-year old half-brother, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias. Four years later, fourteen-year old Alfonso, who was called Alfonso the Innocent, was poisoned and his older sister, Isabella, became the Princess of Asturias.
After Henry died in 1474, both Joanna and Isabella claimed to be his successor. From 1475 to 1479, Joanna’s supporters fought Isabella’s supporters in what became known as the War of the Castilian Succession. The war took on an international flavor. Isabella was married to Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Crown of Aragon; Joanna was married to her uncle, King Alfonso V of Portugal. King Louis XI of France, a rival of Aragon for territory in Italy and Roussillon, intervened to support Joanna. The naval warfare in the Atlantic was an important aspect of the war because maritime access to the gold and slaves of Guinea was at stake. In 1478, the Portuguese navy decisively defeated the Castilian navy in the Battle of Guinea. The war concluded the following year with the Treaty of Alcáçovas. Portugal was recognized as the dominant power in the Atlantic, with the exception of the Canary Islands, and Joanna lost her claim to the Castilian thrones. Isabella and Ferdinand were recognized as sovereigns of the Kingdoms of Castile and León.
When Isabella became queen, Castile was in a state of disarray. She had succeeded the last of the weak late-medieval kings of Castile and León. Henry had overspent and had failed to enforce the laws of the kingdom so crime was rampant. Isabella set about centralizing her government, repairing her kingdom’s finances, promoting law and order, fulfilling what she perceived was her religious duty to create a solely Catholic Iberian Peninsula, and transforming a dynastically unified Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a major European power. These objectives were not beyond Queen Isabella’s capabilities. She was tough, determined, and iron-willed.
Ferdinand and Isabella’s desire for an all Catholic Iberian Peninsula was facilitated in 1478 when Pope Sixtus IV issued a papal bull authorizing them to name inquisitors to combat heresy thereby enforcing religious uniformity. The Spanish Inquisition would root out non-Christians, doubters and heretics.
From the beginning of their reign in Castile, Isabella and Ferdinand were intent on completing the Reconquista thereby driving the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista had begun soon after the Moors had invaded the peninsula in 711. Isabella and Ferdinand’s ten-year campaign culminated in 1491 when their armies laid siege to Granada, the last Moor stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. In November, the Treaty of Granada was signed setting out the conditions for lifting the siege and for the surrender of Granada. Under the treaty, Muslims would be allowed to practice their religion and live in peace. In early 1492, Queen Isabella received the key to Granada signifying the completion of the Spanish Reconquista.
Shortly thereafter, the Archbishop of Toledo recommended Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros to Queen Isabella as her confessor. The post under Isabella was especially important because she took counsel from Cisneros not only in religious matters but also in state matters.
Three months after receiving the key to Granada and most certainly upon the advice of Cisneros, Isabella and Ferdinand issued the Alhambra Decree ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and their territories and possessions. The Crown of Castile included the Kingdoms of Castile, León, and Galicia. The Crown of Aragon included the Kingdoms of Aragon, Majorca, Sardinia, and Valencia and the County of Barcelona. The expulsion of Jews was nothing new. Over half of the original 300,000 Jewish population in Spain converted as a result of the massacre of Jews in 1391. Another 50,000 converted by 1415. Following the Alhambra Decree, between 40,000 and 100,000 Jews chose to convert or emigrate.
In 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal sought the hand in marriage of Princess Isabella, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand’s eldest daughter. Manuel saw an opportunity to add the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon to his kingdom now that Princess Isabella’s only brother was dead and she was the Princess of Asturias. She would inherit the Kingdoms of Castile and León upon the death of her mother; she also would inherit the Kingdom of Aragon upon the death of her father. The children of Princess Isabella and King Manuel would inherit all three kingdoms. Isabella and Ferdinand believed that if their daughter would become Queen of Castile, León and Aragon and Jews were living in Portugal, their plan for an all-Catholic Iberian Peninsula would be stifled. Therefore, as a condition to the marriage, Manuel had to agree to expel all Jews from his kingdom. In December 1496, he decreed that all Jews in Portugal must convert to Catholicism or leave Portugal. Within months, Manuel’s edict of expulsion became an edit of forced conversion with no opportunity to leave the country. Those who converted were called marranos. In 1506, two thousand Portuguese marranos were massacred in Lisbon. After the massacre, Jews were allowed to leave Portugal and many did. Those who converted were carefully watched in the event they were practicing Judaism secretively and they were subject to the Portuguese Inquisition that was instituted thirty years later.
In 1499, Archbishop Cisneros accompanied the court of the Spanish Inquisition to Granada and began a forced conversion of Muslims to Christianity. The result was an open revolt that became known as the First Rebellion of Alpujarras. By the end of 1501, the rebellion was put down and the rights provided by the Treaty of Granada were withdrawn. The Muslims were given the choice to remain in Granada and be baptized, reject baptism and be enslaved or killed, or be exiled. The cost of safe passage out of the Iberian Peninsula left most without a choice. Within a decade of the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the entire Muslim population had become nominally Christian.
By the time Queen Isabella died in 1504, the Reconquista was complete and the Iberian Peninsula was now all Catholic. But would there be a cost? Over the years, attrition due to the plague and the continuing wars, especially the Italian Wars, had substantially reduced the population on the peninsula. As the population decreased, so did the tax base.
The economy in the Iberian Peninsula was basically agricultural. The Jews, a population who were multilingual, educated and literate, had been limited by law to money lending and to trade and therefore were urban dwellers. They played an important role in the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon maintaining their status as the dominant land and sea power. In addition to the unique role they played in the economy, their expulsion further reduced the kingdoms’ tax base.
The Muslim population, a group that had ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula for eight hundred years, had contributed advancements in agriculture, architecture, the arts, education, business, medicine and science and their expulsion further reduced the kingdoms’ tax base.
Furthermore, King Ferdinand was expanding Aragon’s empire to the east; Queen Isabella had expanded Castile’s empire to the west. The Spanish Empire would be difficult to sustain without the expertise and capital resources that these two important groups provided.
Isabella and Ferdinand could hardly imagine the next fifty years. Their grandson, Charles, would become Charles I of Spain and then Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Spain would become a part of the Habsburg Empire and Charles would need to govern by delegation.
Spain’s new colonies in the Americas would be explored and settled and soon would usher in the sugar and slave trades. The Aztec, Mayan and Inca Empires would be conquered and the Spanish would discover silver in Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico. Spain would become the richest country in Western Europe.
Balboa would see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of Panama and Magellan’s crew would circumnavigate the world. Spanish settlements would be created on the west coast of the Americas and in the Philippines, thereby opening Spanish trade with the Far East.
England and France would begin to challenge Spain for dominance as a world power and seven provinces in the Spanish Netherlands would revolt and become independent from Spain and form the Dutch Republic. It too would vie for status as a world power.
And finally, Western Europe and the world were about to be transformed by the Protestant Reformation. The Moors and the Jews may have been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula but new Protestant religions would threaten the exclusiveness of the Roman Catholic Church.
Martin A. Frey
February 21, 2024