The year is 1462. In little Madrigal, a village on the edge of the Kingdom of Castile, an eleven-year-old girl lives a childhood already marked by the sign of suffering. Little Isabella is fatherless and lives with her mother, a lady tormented by mental disorders. Perhaps these early sufferings are the cause of her grave countenance, which reveals a seriousness beyond her years. Already noticeable in her personality are those dominant traits that will characterize her until the end of her days: piety, uprightness and an uncompromising firmness of principle.
However, in addition to her nobility of character, Isabella also has royal blood in her veins: she is the half-sister of King Henry IV of Castile and in line to the throne of the same kingdom.1
Entering the court and first clashes
One day, the king suddenly decided to transfer her and her brother Alfonso to the Castilian court. What had prompted him to call the young royals closer to him? Since he had no descendants, Henry was to be succeeded by Alfonso and, in his absence, by Isabella. Thus, motivated by political interests, he wanted to keep the two pretenders to the throne under his watch.
This represented a sudden change for the siblings. Gone were the quiet, melancholic days spent in Madrigal… and great struggles lay ahead.
How much the two infantes would suffer in the midst of the moral corruption that was rampant among the Spanish nobility! Even the queen herself invited Isabella to take part in the court’s debauchery… Faced with such an indecent proposal, the young woman turned in tears to her brother, only fourteen years old, who did not hesitate to harshly reprimand the sovereign and threaten her less modest friends with death if they tried to bring his sister to perdition again.
An unworthy suitor
But the difficulties would only increase. Henry had taken it upon himself to present a candidate for his sister’s betrothal. Proposals followed one after the other, until in 1466 he designated the ambitious Pedro Girón, advanced in age, of terrible reputation and devoid of any noble blood, to marry Isabella. Finding herself in a situation of such anguish, the maiden began a period of fasting and prayer. She beseeched God to take her life or that of her unworthy suitor.
A few days later, Girón contracted a serious illness. All night long, an invisible hand seemed to be strangling him. He died on the way to the wedding, blaspheming God and refusing the sacraments in extremis… The future queen could then breathe a sigh of relief.
Marriage to the Prince of Aragon
Despite her half-brother’s ambitions, Isabella decided on her own about her future. Her choice fell on Prince Ferdinand, heir to the House of Aragon. On October 18, 1469, the wedding ceremony took place in Valladolid, amid the general enthusiasm of the population… and without the consent of the Castilian king.
The marriage filled him with indignation against his sister. Henry declared that Isabella was disinherited from the throne of Castile – given the fact that this condition had been officially recognized years before, upon the early death of Prince Alfonso – and now he chose an illegitimate daughter of his wife as heir to the crown, since, as already mentioned, he could not have children.
Tensions continued until 1474, when a prolonged illness led to the sovereign’s death. After a brief two-day mourning period, on December 13 Isabella was proclaimed queen in Segovia’s Plaza Mayor.
A mission: to restore peace
The sceptre Isabella received in her hands was more than a sign of glory, it was an enormous burden: she had inherited a kingdom in complete civil and religious disarray. This, then, was her first mission: to restore order and peace. The new queen did not waste a moment. It was indispensable to crack down on the villains who had enjoyed such favour during her predecessor’s reign.
Many judged her to be too strict. However, the rigour employed by Isabella and Ferdinand is quite justifiable given the widespread insubordination in their domains. The sympathy that Henry lavished on murderers, the new monarchs instead reserved for the victims, their widows and their children.2 And in order to ensure that the peace they had won was maintained, institutions such as the Holy Brotherhood were established, a popular army of volunteers designed to quell the offences committed on the roads and in the countryside.
Year of conquests
We have finally reached 1492: a year of unique events in the history of Spain and the world.
Firstly, the Reconquista came to an end. At the beginning of the 8th century, nearly all of Visigothic Hispania had fallen under Arab rule. After almost eight centuries marked by wars over territory and religion, on January 2, 1492 the emir Boabdil handed Ferdinand the keys to the city of Granada, the last Islamic bastion on the Iberian Peninsula. Once this epic endeavour was over, the Queen of Castile could turn her attention to other matters.
The case of a mysterious character who had long requested an interview at court was pending. He was a Genoese navigator who, having been rejected by the kings of other countries, had come to the palace of Granada with conviction to present to the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon his unheard-of proposal: to reach India and Japan by sailing across the Atlantic Ocean… a feat to be accomplished in the name of the Spanish crown! Isabella listened with keen interest, but the conditions demanded by the enthusiastic adventurer were excessively onerous. What is more, Ferdinand insisted to his wife that it was unwise to subsidize such an undertaking at a time when the royal treasury was already strained by the war.
“The Surrender of Granada”, by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz – Senate Palace, Madrid;
Had Christopher Columbus not had as his allies the queen’s former confessor, Fr. Juan Perez, and some of Isabella’s closest friends, he would most likely be completely unknown today. Taking their petitions to heart, the sovereign deigned to finance the expedition to the Indies by pledging her own jewellery. Thus, that same year, the New World entered the pages of history.
Inspired decisions made by providential souls can change the course of events. In this case, the Queen’s decision meant giving the Holy Catholic Church an entire continent before heresy would take a third of Europe from her.
In aid of Holy Religion
In 1492, Isabella of Castile was forty-one years old and the monarch of a peaceful and prosperous nation, but she did not allow herself to rest. She was not content to see her people enjoying simple civil tranquillity. She wanted to see her subjects filled with that same fervour for their Holy Religion that had filled her soul since childhood because, even before she became queen, Isabella had always been a devout Catholic. Not only did she attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass every day, but she also recited the breviary daily, as well as practising many other private devotions.
Her deep love for the Holy Catholic Church caused her to be extremely saddened by the deplorable situation of the clergy. As this was the social class responsible for the instruction and salvation of souls, their scandals had produced deplorable repercussions among the people. Isabella then found herself in a position of having to demand from its members the integrity that, unfortunately, the majority of bishops did not require.
With the bull Romanum decet of 1493, Alexander VI granted the kings of Castile and Aragon the authority to take action against scandalous prelates. Access to holy orders, previously granted with dangerous ease to anyone who requested it, now required aspirants to the priesthood to live a morally upright life under oath. In a missive, Isabella even criticized one of the men in charge of the Diocese of Cuenca for his reprehensible attitude of conferring holy orders on anyone who offered him a good sum of money.3
The Catholic Monarchs
Isabella and Ferdinand’s services to the Catholic Church and specifically to the Papacy were inestimable, especially with regard to the expulsion of the French from the Papal States, and as a result, the Holy See decided to grant them an honorary title. After debating the matter in a consistory, they came up with this unprecedented formulation: The Catholic Monarchs, a title that was later published in the bull Si convenit and with which the two monarchs went down in history, bequeathing it to their successors on the throne of St. Ferdinand.
It is also worth noting that this document contains the formula “king and queen de los Españas” for the first time, with no separate mention of their domains. So it seems that this was the period in which Spain appeared in the eyes of Christendom as a unified nation, albeit one rich in diversity, even more so after the discovery of the different domains of America.
The end of a reign
Countless virtues adorned Isabella’s person, but no honour was more fitting to crown the brow of a Catholic queen than the diadem of suffering.
If the dawn of her life was permeated with struggles and difficulties, her maturity can be said to have resembled a blazing sun of success and triumph. However, as is often the case, it was in the twilight that the king-star cast its most splendid rays, transforming the azure vault into a pageant of red and violet hues.
From 1497 onwards, death paid a visit to some of Isabella’s children. John, the very young crown prince, had just married Margaret of Austria. But he would die within a few months, leaving his wife pregnant with a son who, sadly, would be stillborn. The following year, the eldest princess – Isabella – who had succeeded to the throne, died giving birth to a son named Miguel who, in turn, lived only two years.
Isabella the Catholic, by José Rosa – Monastery of Santa Maria de La Rábida, Palos de la Frontera (Spain)
It is not surprising that events like these exhausted the queen’s strength, as she had never enjoyed good health. She felt her time was coming, but she did not neglect her duties of piety or the fulfilment of her serious responsibilities as sovereign. Her spirituality, always profound, was enriched by her heroic acceptance of the cross and by the detachment from earthly possessions that she displayed as never before. Under these conditions, Isabella travelled with great difficulty to the lands of her childhood, far from the Granada palace.
November 1504. The queen felt her life fading away. She drew up her will and received the Holy Sacraments, explicitly forbidding superfluous expenditure on her funeral. She only asked that the funeral rites be celebrated and that prayers be said throughout the kingdom for the salvation of her soul. Finally, on November 26, when Isabella was fifty-three years old, she gave her soul to God.
It would seem that everything ended there, but no. In the second half of the 20th century, over four hundred years after the death of the incomparable Queen of Castile, the glorious epilogue of her story began, written no longer in ink and paper, but in gold letters. It is the opening of the cause for her canonization. The process, which is still underway, sets out to judge – with the characteristic prudence of the Holy See – the cause of a sovereign who was in so many ways exemplary and, par excellence, Catholic. ◊
Notes
1 The historical information in this article was taken from the works: Dumont, Jean. La incomparable Isabel la Católica. Madrid: Encuentro, 2023; Walsh, William Thomas. Isabel la Cruzada. 4.ed. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1963; Azcona, OFM Cap, Tarsicio de. Isabel la Católica. Madrid: BAC, 1964.
2 Cf. WALSH, op. cit., p.58.
3 Cf. AZCONA, op. cit., p.470.
