Catholic Monarchs

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Ferdinand on the left with Isabella on the right. The inscription above identifies
them as Lord Ferdinand and Lady Isabella, Monarchs of Castile and of Aragon.
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The Catholic Monarchs[a][b] is the joint title used in history for Queen Isabella I
of Castile[1] and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of
Trastmara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; on
marriage they were given a papal dispensation to deal with consanguinity by Sixtus
IV. They married on October 19, 1469, in the city of Valladolid; Isabella was
eighteen years old and Ferdinand a year younger. It is generally accepted by most
scholars (John Elliott being an English-speaking example) that the unification of
Spain can essentially be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Some newer historical opinions propose that under their rule, what later became
Spain was still a union of two crowns rather than a unitary state, as to a large
degree Castile and Aragon remained separate kingdoms, with most of their own
separate institutions, for decades to come. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella was
constantly on the move, in order to bolster local support for the crown from local
feudal lords.

The title of Catholic King and Queen was bestowed on Ferdinand and Isabella by Pope
Alexander VI in 1494,[2] in recognition of their defence of the Catholic faith
within their realms.

Catholic monarchs or kings[b] can also be used in a generic sense (e.g., the Pope
had authority over Catholic monarchs...); the particular or generic use can be
distinguished from the context.

Contents [hide]
1 Succession
2 Domestic policy
3 Expulsion of non-Christians and the Spanish Inquisition
4 Exploration
5 Children and alliances
6 Motto and badges
7 Death
8 Notes
9 References
10 Bibliography
Succession[edit]

Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic Monarchs

Isabella was named heir to the throne of Castile by her half brother Henry IV of
Castile in the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando. She became Queen of Castile in
1474. Her niece, Joanna of Castile, attempted to gain the throne by bringing in the
foreign help of Afonso V of Portugal, leading to the War of Castilian Succession.
More recently, some speculate that Joanna was the legitimate successor, though
Isabella was able to portray herself as such.[3] Isabella's supporters came out
ahead in good part due to Aragon's support through Ferdinand, and she officially
won in 1479 via the Treaty of Alcovas. Ferdinand became the King of Aragon in
1479. Though their marriage united the two kingdoms, leading to the beginnings of
modern Spain, they ruled independently and their kingdoms retained part of their
own regional laws and governments for the next few centuries.

Domestic policy[edit]

Ferdinand and Isabella with their subjects

The Catholic Monarchs set out to restore royal authority in Spain. To accomplish
their goal, they first created a group named the Holy Brotherhood. These men were
used as a judicial police force for Castile, as well as to attempt to keep
Castilian nobles in check. To establish a more uniform judicial system, the
Catholic Monarchs created the Royal Council, and appointed magistrates (judges) to
run the towns and cities. This establishment of royal authority is known as the
Pacification of Castile, and can be seen as one of the crucial steps toward the
creation of one of Europe's first strong nation-states. Isabella also sought
various ways to diminish the influence of the Cortes Generales in Castile, though
Ferdinand was too thoroughly Aragonese to do anything of the sort with the
equivalent systems in the Crown of Aragon. Even after his death and the union of
the crowns under one monarch, the Aragonese, Catalan, and Valencian Corts
(parliaments) retained significant power in their respective regions. Further, the
monarchs continued ruling through a form of medieval contractualism, which made
their rule pre-modern in a few ways. One of those is that they traveled from town
to town throughout the kingdom in order to promote loyalty, rather than possessing
any single administrative center. Another is that each community and region was
connected to them via loyalty to the crown, rather than bureaucratic ties.[c]

Ferdinand and Isabella were noted for being the monarchs of the newly united Spain
at the dawn of the modern era. They had a goal of conquering the Muslim kingdom of
Granada and completing the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The
beginnings of a series of campaigns known as the Granada War began with the attack
on Alhama de Granada. The attack was led by two Andalusian nobles, Rodrigo Ponce de
Len and Diego de Merlo. The city fell to Andalusian forces in 1482. The Granada
War was aided by Pope Sixtus IV by granting a tithe and implementing a crusade tax
to invest in the war. After 10 years of fighting the Granada War ended in 1492 when
Emir Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra Palace in Granada to the
Castilian soldiers.

Expulsion of non-Christians and the Spanish Inquisition[edit]

Main articles The Alhambra Decree and Spanish Inquisition

Christopher Columbus at the Court of the Catholic Monarchs by Juan Cordero, 1850.
After a number of revolts, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain
of all Jews and Muslims.[4] People who converted to Catholicism were not subject to
expulsion, but between 1480 and 1492 hundreds of those who had converted (conversos
and moriscos) were accused of secretly practising their original religion (crypto-
Judaism or crypto-Islam) and arrested, imprisoned, interrogated under torture, and
in some cases burned to death, in both Castile and Aragon.[citation needed]

The Inquisition had been created in the twelfth century by Pope Lucius III to fight
heresy in the south of what is now France and was constituted in a number of
European kingdoms. The Catholic Monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to
Castile, and requested the Pope's assent. On 1 November 1478 Pope Sixtus IV
published the Papal bull Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, by which the
Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile; it was later extended to all
of Spain. The bull gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors.
[citation needed] Many of these claims are thought to be exaggerated as a result of
an anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda phenomenon known as The Black Legend.

During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and long afterwards the Inquisition was
active in persecuting people for offences such as crypto-Judaism, heresy,
Protestantism, blasphemy, and bigamy. The last trial for crypto-Judaism was held in
1818.

In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella ordered segregation of communities to create closed

quarters which eventually became what were later called ghettos. They also
furthered economic pressures upon Jews and other non-Christians by increasing taxes
and social restrictions. In 1492 the monarchs issued a decree of expulsion of Jews,
known formally as the Alhambra Decree, which gave Jews in Spain four months to
either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews emigrated
to other lands such as Portugal, North Africa, the Low Countries, Italy and the
Ottoman Empire. Later in 1492, Ferdinand issued a letter addressed to the Jews who
had left Castile and Aragon, inviting them back to Spain if they had become
Christians.[citation needed]

Exploration[edit]

Christopher Columbus (1450 1506) pictured by Sebastiano del Piombo around 1520
They authorized and financed the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who was given
the name of Admiral of the Ocean Sea by the monarchs, and who discovered the
Americas and brought the knowledge of its existence to Europe. Columbus' first
expedition to the supposed Indies actually landed in the Bahamas on October 12,
1492. He landed on the island of Guanahani, and called it San Salvador. He
continued onto Cuba, naming it Juana, and finished his journey on the island of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti, calling it Hispaniola, or La Isla Espaola (the
Spanish [Island] in Castilian).[5] On his second trip, begun in 1493, he found more
Caribbean islands including Puerto Rico. His main goal was to colonize the existing
discoveries with the 1500 men that he had brought the second time around. Columbus
finished his last expedition in 1498, and discovered Trinidad and the coast of
present-day Venezuela. The colonies Columbus established, and conquests in the
Americas in later decades, generated an influx of wealth into the new unified state
of Spain, leading it to be the major power of Europe from the end of the sixteenth
century until the mid-seventeenth century, and the largest empire until 1810.

Children and alliances[edit]

Isabella ensured long-term political stability in Spain by arranging strategic
marriages for each of her five children. Her first-born, a daughter named Isabella,
married Afonso of Portugal, forging important ties between these two neighbouring
countries which would lead to enduring peace and future alliance. Joanna,
Isabella's second daughter, married Philip the Handsome, the son of Holy Roman
Emperor Maximilian I. This ensured alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, a powerful,
far-reaching territory which assured Spain's future political security. Isabella's
only son, John, married Margaret of Austria, maintaining ties with the Habsburg
dynasty, on which Spain relied heavily. Her fourth child, Maria, married Manuel I
of Portugal, strengthening the link forged by her elder sister's marriage. Her
fifth child, Catherine, married Arthur, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne of
England, in 1501; he died at the age of 15 a few months later, and she married his
younger brother shortly after he became King Henry VIII of England in 1509.

Motto and badges[edit]