Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  Copyright © 2014 by Kirstin Downey

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.nanatalese.com

  DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Maps by Gene Thorp

  Jacket design by John Fontana

  Jacket painting of Isabella by José da Rosa © Bridgeman Art Library / Monastery of La Rabida, Huelva, Andalus, Spain; swords © Kjolak / Shutterstock

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Downey, Kirstin.

  Isabella : the warrior queen / Kirstin Downey.—First edition.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Isabella I, Queen of Spain, 1451–1504. 2. Queens—Spain—Biography. 3. Spain—History—Ferdinand and Isabella, 1479–1516. I. Title.

  DP163.D69 2014

  946.03092—dc23

  [B]

  2014003895

  ISBN 978-0-385-53411-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-53412-3 (eBook)

  v3.1

  To Laura Gregg Roa, who sat on the seawall with me in Coco Solo, Panama, dreaming of sailing ships and distant lands, and the queen who sent the explorer to our shores

  1957–2009

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  ONE | A Birth Without Fanfare

  TWO | A Childhood in the Shadows

  THREE | Frightening Years

  FOUR | Isabella Faces the Future Alone

  FIVE | Marriage

  SIX | Ferdinand and His Family

  SEVEN | The Newlyweds

  EIGHT | The Borgia Connection

  NINE | Preparing to Rule

  TEN | Isabella Takes the Throne

  ELEVEN | The Tribe of Isabel

  TWELVE | The Whole World Trembled

  THIRTEEN | The Queen’s War

  FOURTEEN | Architects of the Inquisition

  FIFTEEN | Landing in Paradise

  SIXTEEN | Borgia Gives Her the World

  SEVENTEEN | Lands of Vanity and Illusion

  EIGHTEEN | Faith and Family

  NINETEEN | Turks at the Door

  TWENTY | Israel in Exile

  TWENTY-ONE | Three Daughters

  TWENTY-TWO | A Church Without a Shepherd

  TWENTY-THREE | The Death of Queen Isabella

  TWENTY-FOUR | The World After Isabella

  AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  A Note About the Author

  Illustrations

  Other Books by This Author

  PROLOGUE

  In a castle on a steep promontory overlooking the windswept plains of north-central Spain, a slender red-haired princess finalized the plans for a ceremony that was likely to throw her nation—already teetering toward anarchy—into full-fledged civil war.

  Her name was Isabella, and she had just learned that her older brother, King Enrique—known as Enrique El Impotente, which symbolized his failings, both administrative and sexual—had died.

  King Enrique’s lascivious young wife, who had occupied her time bestowing her favors on the other gentlemen of the court, had produced a child, but many people doubted that the king was actually the child’s father. Isabella had decided to end the controversy over the succession by having herself crowned queen instead. The twenty-three-year-old woman was essentially orchestrating a coup.

  No woman had ruled the combined Kingdoms of Castile and León, the largest single realm on the Iberian peninsula, in more than two hundred years. In many European countries, it was illegal for a woman to rule alone. On the rare occasions when women reigned, it was usually as regent for a son who was too young to govern. Isabella had a husband, Ferdinand, who was heir to the neighboring Kingdom of Aragon, but he had been traveling when the news of Enrique’s death arrived, and she had decided to seize the initiative. She would take the crown for herself alone.

  On that bitter-cold morning in December 1474, Isabella added the finishing touches to an ensemble intentionally designed to impress onlookers with her splendor and regal grandeur. She donned an elegant gown encrusted with jewels; a dark red ruby glittered at her throat.

  Observers already awed by the pageantry now gasped at an additional sight. On Isabella’s orders, a court official walked ahead of her horse, holding aloft an unsheathed sword, the naked blade pointing straight upward toward the zenith, in an ancient symbol of the right to enforce justice. It was a dramatic warning gesture, symbolizing Isabella’s intent to take power and to use it forcefully.

  Acknowledging nothing out of the ordinary, Isabella took a seat on an improvised platform in the square. A silver crown was placed upon her head. As the crowd cheered, Isabella was proclaimed queen. Afterward she proceeded to Segovia’s cathedral. She prostrated herself in prayer before the altar, offering her thanks and imploring God to help her to rule wisely and well. She viewed the tasks ahead as titanic. She believed Christianity was in mortal danger.

  The Ottoman Turks were aggressively on the march in eastern and southern Europe. The Muslims retained an entrenched foothold in the Andalusian kingdom of Granada, which Isabella and others feared would prove a beachhead into the rest of Spain. A succession of popes had pleaded in vain for a steely-eyed commander, a stalwart warrior, to step forward to counter the threat. Instead it was a young woman, the mother of a young daughter, who was taking up the banner.

  The means she used were effective but brutal. For centuries to come, historians would debate the meaning of her life. Was she a saint? Or was she satanic?

  As she stood in the sun in Segovia that winter afternoon, however, she showed no trace of fear or hesitation. Inspired by the example of Joan of Arc, who had died just two decades before Isabella was born and whose stories were much repeated during her childhood, Isabella similarly began to fashion herself as a religious icon. Inwardly infused with a sense of her own destiny, a faith that was “fervent, mystical and intense,”1 Isabella was confident to her core that God was on her side and that He intended her to rule. The questioning would only come much later.

  ONE

  A BIRTH WITHOUT FANFARE

  Throughout most of Spanish history, and particularly in the Middles Ages, when bloodlines determined who would rule, the birth of a prince or princess in Castile was a cause for national jubilation. The child’s arrival was breathlessly anticipated and often intimately observed by the nation’s highest-ranking families, who competed for the right to attend the delivery. Street festivals were orchestrated; gifts were exchanged; the child’s baptism was a particularly reverent celebration.

  But when Isabella, the daughter of King Juan II, arrived in this world in late April 1451, this was not the case. Castile already had a male heir, Isabella’s older half brother, Enrique, born to Juan’s first wife, and the line of succession seemed set. Prince Enrique was twenty-six, married, and already had a court of his own. Enrique’s children, when they came along, would presumably rule when Enrique died.

  Isabella’s own mother, who was twenty-three years old, was Juan’s second wife, and King Juan had not been there when the baby was delivered. Isabella was born on a Thursday afternoon “in a small alcove of an airless second-floor bedroom,” in an unprepossessing brick palace built around a Roman-style central patio.1 There was not even a fireplace in the room; a smoky coal brazier suppli
ed the only heat. The birth occurred in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, an out-of-the-way farm town in the north-central part of the Iberian peninsula, in a place where the men of the family frequently stashed unwanted female relatives. Just a few thousand residents lived there, huddled behind walls that protected them from attack. The baby’s mother, Juan’s wife, was Isabel of Portugal, and her mother in turn was Isabel of Barcelos, also from Portugal, and so the baby was named Isabel, or Isabella, after her mother and grandmother—Isabel in its Spanish and Portuguese forms, or Anglicized as Isabella. The baby was therefore half Portuguese. It was long-established custom among the ruling families of Iberia, whether Portuguese, Castilian, or Aragonese, to name children after their grandparents, and so Isabella was named after the Portuguese side of the family.

  Several days after his wife gave birth, King Juan sent out messengers to several large cities telling officials the news of the delivery, but he did so in such an offhand way that it has been difficult to determine the exact date. It was probably on April 22. In a letter dated April 23, sent from Madrid, Juan informed officials in Segovia that his wife had borne a princess “thanks to the grace of Our Lord,” on the previous Thursday.2

  Archivists are equally unsure where the child was baptized. Royal baptisms tended to be freighted with both political and religious significance. The baptism of an heir to the throne was generally performed with ritual splendor in one of the finest cathedrals in the land. No chronicle reports the king’s attendance at this ceremony, however. It was probably held in Madrigal at the local Church of St. Nicholas. The fact that nobody knows where Isabella was baptized underscores the general lack of interest in the baby’s arrival.

  Isabella’s birth was in many ways almost a distraction, for her parents were preoccupied by the political intrigue swirling around them. Her father was approaching an acrimonious, fatal parting of the ways with his closest friend and adviser, Álvaro de Luna, a man who was both brilliant and ruthless. Isabella’s mother was prodding her husband along toward this split. The consequences were likely to prove significant. Álvaro had orchestrated the marriage between Isabella’s parents, possibly after nudging King Juan’s first wife along to the afterlife by poisoning her. That first wife, María of Aragon, who had once ordered Álvaro de Luna to leave the court, had suddenly developed swollen purple marks all over her body and collapsed; her sister, an ally who lived in a distant city, died the same week from the same strange affliction.3 Queen Isabel had reason to believe that she too might be at risk if her actions were seen to be jeopardizing Álvaro’s steely grip over her husband and his administration. Yet she sought that outcome nonetheless.

  She may have believed she had no choice. The circumstances of Juan’s young queen had been precarious from the start. It had been difficult to win the king’s heart. Juan had preferred to take a luscious French princess for his second wife, but Álvaro, “secretly and without the knowledge of the king,” had decided that a Portuguese alliance was more advantageous for the realm.4 He negotiated the terms of the marriage without informing Juan, and the king had been miffed when he learned he would have no further say in the matter. The king’s displeasure had been common knowledge inside the court.

  Isabel, the unwanted bride, arrived in Castile in 1447, accompanied by a Portuguese retinue, and set about doing what she could to secure her husband’s love. Juan, forty-two, was a cultivated and sophisticated man who read philosophy and literature and was an avid enthusiast of the early Renaissance painting techniques being pioneered in Burgundy. Tall, blue-eyed, and ruddy-skinned, he was also worldly and pleasure-loving, with a roving eye. The nineteen-year-old bride soon found herself having to compete for her husband’s affections. She tried to make herself as agreeable as possible, doing as she was asked, but worried when she did not quickly become pregnant.5 If she failed to conceive, her husband might attempt to have the marriage annulled or have her sent away into seclusion and disgrace. Most women then were valued primarily for their ability to produce offspring, an obligation even more pronounced among royalty. If she failed to produce a child, she would be viewed as almost worthless.

  Not surprisingly, the queen felt threatened by the young and beautiful women at court. Even one of her own ladies-in-waiting, Beatriz de Silva, had attracted the king’s attention. Isabel must have been at the limits of her patience, because she had the offending woman seized and thrown into a cupboard in the basement, without access to food or drink, for three days. The woman finally emerged, claiming she had had a religious conversion during her imprisonment, kept her face covered for the remainder of her life to conceal her beauty, and went on to found a religious order. Queen Isabel’s furious reaction to a woman she perceived as a rival indicated that the marriage was on a rocky footing. As time went on, however, Juan became more fond of his wife. After baby Isabella was born, Queen Isabel bore the king a second child, the prince Alfonso, two years later, a birth that attracted considerably more favorable attention. King Juan now had a male heir and a spare.

  Queen Isabel’s testy relationship with Álvaro de Luna complicated the process of strengthening her marriage. Álvaro and King Juan were in the custom of going off together on debauched revels, with a nunnery-turned-brothel one of their favorite destinations. Álvaro maintained tight controls over Juan’s comings and goings, even dictating to the couple when they were permitted to enjoy conjugal relations. He held remarkable sway over the king, whom he had manipulated into transferring vast properties and honors into his hands, making him by far the wealthiest man in the kingdom. Álvaro had been appointed constable of Castile, which made him the kingdom’s leading military officer, and was also named grand master of the Order of Santiago, Castile’s wealthiest order of monastic knights. In that role alone, Álvaro controlled more than sixty towns and castles and commanded 100,000 vassals.6

  King Juan had given him almost total control over the kingdom. Wits in Castile joked that thanks to Álvaro de Luna, Juan “had no other task except to eat.”7

  Queen Isabel was understandably unhappy with the situation, and even more so after she made a surprise visit to her husband in the important Castilian city of Valladolid and slept with him in his chambers that night. Álvaro was furious when he learned she was there and hastened over to the palace, where he pounded on the bedroom door. “Were you not told that you were not supposed to come?” he shouted angrily at her in front of a circle of court observers, who were astonished by the ferocity of the exchange.8 On another occasion, he made an explicit threat to the queen: “I married you, and I’ll unmarry you,” he said.9

  Queen Isabel was not the only person who viewed Álvaro de Luna with enmity. His privileged position stirred envy among many of the other nobles, particularly the king’s relatives, who thought they should be receiving King Juan’s bounty, instead of Álvaro de Luna. The man’s high-handed tactics and greed were widely criticized almost everywhere. Six years into his second marriage, King Juan finally summoned the courage to face down Álvaro and ordered him executed. The courtier was beheaded in 1453 in a humiliating public ceremony in the main square of Valladolid. This bold demonstration of royal power sent ripples of shock across the kingdom. Almost immediately, however, Juan regretted the decision, because it meant he needed to shoulder the burdens of rule on his own, something he had never wanted to do. He fell into depression and, within a year, died at the age of forty-nine.

  This loss of her husband was another blow to the unhappy young queen. She slipped into what chroniclers called profunda tristeza, or a deep sadness, speaking only seldom and staring vacantly into space, perhaps at first as a result of postnatal depression and then from loneliness and grief.10 She believed that she was being haunted by Álvaro de Luna and sometimes fancied she could hear his mournful cries in the wind on bitter nights. The young Isabella was left virtually parentless, observers noted, a condition that bound her tightly to the younger brother who shared her tenuous childhood. The two children clung to each other.

  The f
ateful breakdown in the lifelong political alliance between the king and Álvaro de Luna came at a bad time for Castile, which was already at a low point in its history. The kingdom was splintered by political squabbles between nobles and by even more dangerous rivalries between the king and his cousins in the adjacent Kingdom of Aragon, who were forever hoping to take control of Castile themselves. The countryside was wracked with crime, but its rulers were distracted by a nearly constant string of civil wars.

  Isabella’s older half brother Enrique took the throne at King Juan’s death, when she was three. The first few years of his royal administration were successful, but then many of the same problems that had haunted their father’s reign reemerged.

  The personal and political tumult reverberated in Isabella’s life. Enrique had many good qualities but also a number of character flaws, which were exacerbated in relation to Isabella because of tensions within the stepfamily. As ruler of Castile, King Enrique now possessed complete power over his stepmother, Queen Isabel, who as a dowager queen deserved to be viewed with maternal respect but was in fact three years younger than her stepson. The emotions among the siblings were a boiling cauldron of love and resentment. King Enrique did little to nurture his younger sister and brother, and instead their relationship with him became a source of tension and fear.

  With such an unpredictable childhood, it was not surprising that Isabella took consolation in an institution that provided the greatest single source of stability to her daily routine: the Catholic Church, whose rituals dominated the lives of European Christians during the Middle Ages. The tick-tock clock of life in the medieval world was the church and its ecclesiastical calendar. Church bells tolled to the schedule of services—matins, vespers, vigils at midnight; each day of the year belonged to a particular saint, who was due special reverence and specific forms of veneration. Religion played an even bigger role in Isabella’s life than for most people of the age, because the Castilian court was essentially itinerant, moving from palace to palace around the kingdom. Each residence also served as a monastery or convent to house priests and nuns who maintained the houses in the absence of the royal family and so were present in the homes whenever the family visited. Isabella grew up surrounded by clerics.