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ISABEL OF CASTILE

AFTER A PAINTING IN THE PRADO GALLERY ATTRIBUTED TO MIGUEL ZITTOZ

FROM “TORQUEMADA AND THE SPANISH INQUISITION” BY RAFAEL SABATINI

ISABEL OF CASTILE AND THE MAKING OF THE SPANISH NATION 1451–1504

FOREWORD

Isabel of Castile is one of the most remarkable, and also one of the most attractive, figures in Spanish history. Her marriage with Ferdinand the Wise of Aragon brought about the union of the Spanish nationality, which had so long been distracted and divided by provincial prejudices and dynastic feuds. She is the ancestress of the Spanish Hapsburg line. But she is also important in Spanish history as a wise and energetic ruler, who rendered invaluable assistance to her husband and to some extent moulded his policy. Under their government Spain was reduced from anarchy to order and took her place among the great Powers of Europe. Isabel is perhaps best known as the patroness of Christopher Columbus and the unflinching ally of the Spanish Inquisition. But her career presents many other features of interest. In particular it reveals the problems which had to be faced by European governments in the critical period of transition from mediæval to modern forms of national organization.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I CASTILE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

There are some characters in history, whose reputation for heroism is beyond reproach in the eyes of the general public. There are others, however, whose claims to glory are ardently contested by posterity, and none more than Isabel of Castile, in whose case ordinary differences of opinion have been fanned by that most uncompromising of all foes to a fair estimate, religious prejudice. Thus the Catholic, while deploring the extreme severity of the methods employed for the suppression of heresy, would yet look on her championship of the Catholic Faith as her chief claim to the admiration of mankind. The Protestant on the other hand, while acknowledging the glories of the Conquest of Granada and the Discovery of the New World, would weigh them light in the balance against the fires and tortures of the Inquisition and the ruthless expulsion of the Jews.

One solution of the problem has been to make the unfortunate Ferdinand the scapegoat of his Queen’s misdeeds. Whatever tends to the glory of Spain, in that, if not the originator, she is at least the partner and moving spirit. When acts of fanaticism hold the field, they are the result of Ferdinand’s material ambitions or the religious fervour of her confessors; Isabel’s ordinarily independent and clear-sighted mind being reduced for the sake of her reputation to a condition of credulous servility.

Such a view has missed the consistency of real life. It is probably responsible for the exactly opposite summary of another critic, who denies Isabel’s superiority to her husband in anything but hypocrisy and the ability to make her lies more convincing. He even fails to admit that, this being granted, her capacities in one direction at least must have been phenomenal, since Ferdinand was the acknowledged liar of his day par excellence.

Faced by the witness of the Queen’s undoubted popularity, he sweeps it away with a tribute to Spanish manhood: “The praise bestowed on the character of Isabel is, to no small amount, due to the chivalrous character of the Spaniards, who never forgot that the Queen was a lady.”

Such an assumption must be banished, along with Isabel’s weak-mindedness on religious matters, to the realms of historical fiction. The very Castilians who extol her glory and merit do not hesitate to draw attention in bald terms to her sister-in-law’s frailties. Indeed a slight perusal of Cervantes’ famous novel, embodying so much of the habits and outlook of Spain at a slightly later date will show it was rather the fashion to praise a woman for her beauty than to credit her with mental or moral qualities of any strength.

The Catholic Queen, like other individuals of either sex, must stand or fall by the witness of her own actions and speech; and these seen in the light of contemporary history will only confirm the tradition of her heroism, which the intervening centuries have tended to blur. The odium that sometimes attaches to her name is largely due to the translation of Spanish ideals and conditions of life in the Middle Ages into the terms that rule the conduct of the twentieth century.

“Quien dice España dice todo,” says the old proverb,—“He who says Spain has said everything.”

This arrogance is typical of the self-centred, highly strung race, that had been bred by eight centuries of war against the Infidel. The other nations of Western Europe might have their occasional religious difficulties; but, in the days before Luther and Calvin were born, none to the same extent as Spain were faced by the problem of life in daily contact with the unpardonable crime of heresy, in this case the more insidious that it was often masked by outward observance of rule and ritual.

The greater part of the modern world would dismiss the matter with a shrug of its shoulders and the comfortable theory that truth, being eternal, can take care of itself; but this freedom of outlook was yet to be won on the battlefields of the Renaissance and in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. It would be an anachronism to look for it in Spain at a time when the influence of the new birth of thought and culture had extended no further than an imitation of Italian poets.

Isabel’s bigotry is an inheritance she shared with the greater part of her race in her own day, the logical sequence of her belief in the exclusive value of the divine in man’s nature, as against any claims of his human body. If she pursued her object, the salvation of souls, with a relentless cruelty, from which we turn away to-day in sick disgust, we must remember that Spain for the most part looked on unmoved. Where opposition was shown, as in her husband’s kingdom of Aragon, it was rather the spirit of independence than of mercy that raised its head.

Indeed the religious persecution was in no way disproportionate to the severity of the criminal procedure of the reign, as will be seen by a glance at the usual sentences passed on those convicted of any crime. The least with which a thief could hope to escape from his judges was the loss of a limb, but the more likely fate was to be placed with his back to a tree, and there, after a hasty confession of his sins, shot or burnt.

Many of Queen Isabel’s contemporaries remark her intolerance of crime and disorder, and a few of the younger generation who had grown to manhood in the atmosphere of peace she had established, condemn her justice as excessive. By modern standards it is undoubtedly barbarous; but long centuries of anarchy had bred a spirit of lust and brutality little above the barbarian level, and only drastic measures could hope to cure so deep-rooted an evil. Isabel herself, throughout her childhood, had been a forced witness of her brother’s policy of “sprinkling rose-water on rebellion” instead of employing the surgeon’s knife; and her strength of character despised the weakness, that under the pretext of humanity made life impossible for nine-tenths of the population.

It is her great achievement that she raised the crown, the mediæval symbol of national justice, from the political squalor into which seventy years of mingled misfortune and incapacity had thrown it, and that she set it on a pedestal so lofty, that even the haughtiest Castilian need not be ashamed to bow the knee in reverence. By this substitution of a strong government for a weak, of impartiality for favouritism, she secured peace at home and thus laid a firm foundation for Ferdinand’s ambitious foreign policy, and the establishment of Spain as the first nation in Europe.

It is perhaps difficult to apportion exactly the respective shares of Isabel and her husband in the administrative measures of their reign; for their unanimity of aim and action was in keeping with their motto tanto monta,—“the one as much as the other.” Yet in this connection it is necessary to realize the contrast between the two kingdoms. Aragon, with its three divisions of Aragon proper, Valencia, and the Principality of Catalonia, measured in all scarcely a quarter of the territory of its western neighbour. Moreover the spirit of the people and the democratic character of its laws rendered it a soil peculiarly ill-suited for the growth of the royal prerogative. Thus, in spite of the sovereigns’ best endeavours, it stubbornly withstood their centralizing policy, and the main burden of taxation and governmental measures fell on Castile. The latter, “the corona” or “big crown,” in contradistinction to the “coronilla” or “little crown” of Aragon, continued throughout the Queen’s lifetime to look on her husband as more or less of a foreigner; and all the many documents signed “Yo, El Rey” could not weigh with a true Castilian against Isabel’s single “Yo, La Reina.” It is she, who, when “Los Reyes” are not mentioned together, is hailed to-day in Spain as the chief representative of national grandeur, just as “castellano,” the speech of the larger kingdom, has become synonymous with our term “Spanish.”

The word “Castile” itself conveys to an imaginative mind a picture of that mediæval land of castles, whose ramparts were not only a defence against the Moors but also the bulwark of a turbulent nobility. In vain the Crown had striven to suppress its over-powerful subjects. The perpetual crusade upon the southern border proved too alluring a recruiting-ground for the vices of feudalism; and many a mail-clad count led out to battle a larger following of warriors than the sovereign to whom he nominally owed obedience.

So long as the crusade continued, rulers of Castile could not attempt to disband the feudal levies on which their fortune depended; and each acquisition of Moorish territory was followed by fresh distributions of lands amongst the conquering troops. Sometimes these grants carried with them complete fiscal and judicial control of the district in question, at others merely a yearly revenue; but, whatever the tenure, the new owner and his descendants were certain to take advantage of royal embarrassments and national disorder to press their claims to the farthest limit. A few communities, behetrias, succeeded in obtaining the privilege of choosing their own over-lord with the more doubtful corollary of changing him as often as they liked, a process fruitful of quarrels which not unnaturally resulted in their gradual absorption by more settled neighbours.

Since the practice of primogeniture was common in Castile and lands were inalienable, large estates were rapidly built up, whose owners, unable to rule all their property directly, would sublet some of their towns and strongholds to other nobles and knights in return for certain services. These dependencies, or latifundia, yielded ultimate obedience not to the King but to the over-lord from whom their commander had received them. On one occasion Alvaro de Luna, the favourite minister of John II., appeared before the castle of Trujillo and demanded its surrender in his master’s name. To this the “Alcayde,” or Governor, replied that he owed allegiance to the King’s uncle, John of Aragon, and would open the gates to none else: an answer typical of the days when aristocratic independence ran riot in Castile.

A great territorial magnate could also renounce the obedience he owed to his sovereign by the simple method of sending a messenger who should, in the King’s presence, make the following declaration: “Señor, on behalf of ... I kiss your hand and inform you that henceforth he is no more your vassal.”

The weakness of the Castilian Crown was further aggravated in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by disputed successions and long minorities; the nobles using the confusion these engendered to wring concessions from the rival claimants, or to seize them from inexperienced child rulers.