Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  The source of all this prosperity was the wool trade. Wool, the product of the kingdom’s great flocks of sheep and the primary source of wealth for the nation’s nobility, was the core commodity in Medina del Campo. The town’s affluence made wool seem a secure staple of life to Isabella and the nation’s nobles, and so they did not appear to pay much attention to the industrial and mercantile development that was under way elsewhere on the continent, new trends that were reshaping the economy of the rest of Europe.

  Certainly Isabella must have looked on the bright array of merchandise for sale in Medina del Campo with a great deal of longing, for her family’s finances were frequently straitened. That should not have been the case. King Juan’s will had provided comfortably for the widowed queen and her children. The queen was to retain custody of the children “as long as she remained chaste.”10 She was also to receive the tax revenue from the towns of Arévalo, Madrigal, Soria, and the suburbs of Madrid. Isabella was to receive the taxes from the town of Cuéllar, and on her twelfth birthday, she was slated to receive one million maravedis from the town of Madrigal. When her mother died, the tax proceeds from that town were destined to go to her, which would ensure a comfortable inheritance. Alfonso, the next heir to the throne, was provided for even more generously. He was to become the grand master of Santiago, the rich post that Álvaro de Luna had once held, and on his fourteenth birthday, he was to step into the job as constable of Castile. He was given the tax revenues from four towns and was slated to inherit the taxes from all his mother’s holdings, except Madrigal, when she died.

  But King Enrique “did not respect his father’s wishes,” chroniclers noted, and instead gave away the territories and properties that Juan had intended to provide for his second family’s support.11 He gave the mastership of Santiago to one of his favorite friends, and he made another the constable. And he later stripped the revenue from Cuéllar from Isabella and gave it away. Enrique “worked actively to deny” Isabella her inheritance, a course that caused the princess “financial hardship,” writes the scholar María Isabel del Val Valdivieso.12

  This left the family in a more precarious financial situation than they should have been in. In fact, one court chronicler, Hernando del Pulgar, wrote that Isabella had faced “an extreme lack of necessary things” in her childhood—something that must have been painful to a young girl who longed for fine clothes and jewelry, and who later dressed in such splendor that foreign diplomats found her appearance startling in its grandeur.13

  There were other signs as well that King Enrique did not have the best interests of Isabella and her family foremost in his mind. Shortly after Juan’s death, Enrique went to Arévalo to see Queen Isabel, his stepmother. He was accompanied by a courtier, Pedro Girón, who was ostensibly master of the order of Calatrava, a celibate religious and military order sworn to defend the faith. Girón, however, was not in fact a holy man but a degenerate roué who considered his vocation something of a joke, a tedious trade-off for the financial benefits the position conveyed. Enrique allowed Pedro, clearly the queen’s social inferior, to make some sort of a distasteful sexual advance to the pious twenty-six-year-old widow, which chronicler Alonso de Palencia said offended her deeply. The incident humiliated Queen Isabel and underscored the powerlessness of the onetime queen. She found it menacing. After that time, Palencia noted, she “closed herself into a dark room, self-condemned to silence, and dominated by such depression that it degenerated into a form of madness.”14

  What were the men thinking? Pedro Girón may have just been a lout, or he may have been genuinely interested in an amorous encounter with the queen, who was still attractive. And what about King Enrique? It’s possible that the new king thought it was funny to take his young and pretty stepmother down a peg. He might have thought it was comical.

  Or he might have had a more ominous motive. The sexual proposition, if it had been welcomed by the lonely young widow, could have also created an incident that would have allowed Enrique to claim that the queen had failed to remain chaste, as specified in her husband’s will. And if the queen were deemed to be unchaste, she would consequently lose custody of her children.

  The incident therefore raised the troubling possibility that Enrique and his allies intended to try to gain control of the children at some point. This event was one more reason that the queen and her mother kept the children out of the limelight, sequestered in Arévalo, where they stayed for at least seven years.

  The ugly scene was a good example of the contradictions at play within King Enrique’s character. For while he was in some ways a sensitive soul, he could also be a clumsy oaf. Even his physical appearance was an odd dichotomy. He was tall and blond, with large fingers and hands and “a fierce aspect, almost like a lion,” that struck fear in those who saw him.15 But his mannerisms were much at odds with his appearance, because he liked to sing, in a voice that was “sweet and well-modulated,” preferring sad and melancholy songs. Gruff and unpolished in demeanor, he was softhearted and malleable to those who had learned how to manipulate him. One of his few surviving portraits depicts him wearing a flowery hat, riding sidesaddle on the back of a horse festooned with ribbons and bells.

  Enrique initially basked in popularity in Castile and was known by the sobriquet Enrique El Generoso. He built many buildings and was a great benefactor to churches and monasteries. He was known to be contemplative and thoughtful and enjoyed long and uplifting conversations with clerics in beautiful and serene settings.16

  His favorite home was the majestic city of Segovia, the site of the towering Roman aqueduct and many beautiful churches, a place where he had found peace and happiness ever since his childhood. Although he moved around the kingdom a good deal because the Spanish royal court was essentially itinerant, Segovia was always his preferred destination. He fondly called it “mi Segovia,” something he did with no other place in Castile. He favored the city in many ways and financed public works and construction projects that provided many jobs, spreading affluence through the population. Residents of the city felt privileged and grateful for the royal association and the prosperity it created, and warmly welcomed him each time he arrived.

  A home had been built specifically for him in Segovia when he was a boy, and it was a place he always loved. It was known as the Royal Monastery of St. Anthony, or San Antonio El Real, located on the outskirts of the city, which allowed him easy access to city life, the Alcázar fortress, and also the great outdoors, as he spent many hours riding in the countryside and communing with nature. He probably intended to be buried there one day, because a large room adjacent to the nave seemed to offer suitable space for a burial chamber or memorial. He felt secure and safe in Segovia.

  Enrique was also a gentle animal-lover who kept his own menagerie, including lions, ocelots, deer, bear cubs, leopards, and his personal favorite, a large mountain goat. He spent long hours hunting in the forests surrounding Segovia and Madrid. But he employed such pursuits to avoid dealing with the unpleasant tasks of governing. Deferring troublesome decisions did not resolve them, however, and his indolence and aversion to hard work often caused small problems to worsen.

  Enrique was, in short, a man of placid good will, conciliatory, who sought to make friends rather than create enemies, and in another era he might have remained a well-loved figure. He and his father had been in fierce opposition to each other for much of Enrique’s young adulthood, but when his father died, the prince had been at his side. One of his first steps upon becoming king was to permit 159 of his father’s political appointees to keep their jobs, rather than putting his own appointees in the positions. “I don’t doubt that the death of the king, my father, who has gone to glory, has left you with great pain and sadness,” he told them.17 He also pardoned political adversaries who had been exiled, shunned, or imprisoned, returning their properties and titles to them, which allowed them to begin circulating around the kingdom once again.

  These were the actions of a kind and toleran
t man—but they had unfortunate political ramifications. Soon Enrique was surrounded by people who had no particular sense of allegiance to him and who came to view their posts as sinecures they held as a matter of right. Moreover, it gave the enemies of his family, notably his Aragonese cousins, envious of his Castilian domains, free rein to engage in treasonous activities designed to undermine his administration. Released to do mischief, they were not grateful but worked constantly to undermine him. It was a ruthless era, and Enrique had made a fatal error.

  Another aspect of Enrique’s life made him particularly vulnerable to attack. He enjoyed frequent and lengthy getaways with handsome young men, often meeting with them at his hunting lodges on the outskirts of town. He was almost certainly a homosexual. This would not have been a political problem as long as he managed to produce enough heirs to the throne to assure a smooth succession. But this he failed to do, and it happened at a time when attitudes toward homosexuality were hardening in Europe. Through much of the Middle Ages, there was tolerance and even romanticizing of same-sex relationships, but as economic times grew tougher and financial conditions more competitive, cultural attitudes began changing. The hedonism and cultural flowering of the early Renaissance was also causing a conservative backlash. Religious fanatics urged church faithful to renounce worldly ways and the pleasures of the flesh and vigorously chastised those who failed to do so. Born within one year of Isabella, for example, were two Florentine men, the painter and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, who was vividly and flamboyantly gay, and Girolamo Savonarola, a fiery, ascetic priest who preached against art as a contributing factor in the spread of vice and spiritual decay. The era’s clash of cultural values wasn’t limited to Spain.

  The overt homosexual behavior in Segovia was criticized by many Spaniards and noticed even by some foreigners. The Czech pilgrim Schaseck, traveling with a nobleman who was entertained by King Enrique at the Alcázar in Segovia, was shocked by the activities he witnessed at Enrique’s court. “Indeed they live such an impure and sodomitical life that one would be reluctant and ashamed to speak of their crimes,” Schaseck wrote in a memoir of his trip that was widely circulated upon his return home.18

  And sadly, as his father had done before him, Enrique developed attachments to certain men that allowed him to be easily manipulated, in ways that frequently damaged his own interests or hurt his family. The initial object of his affections was one Juan Pacheco, the brother of Pedro Girón, who had made the sexual advance to Queen Isabel.

  Pacheco in turn had been a protégé of Enrique’s father’s friend Álvaro de Luna and, in fact, had been introduced to the royal household by Álvaro, who was then acting as guardian to young Enrique, with his father’s acquiescence. Soon after he assumed the throne, Enrique named Pacheco to be the Marquess of Villena, a post that brought him great riches and that allowed him to advance the interests of his brother, the distasteful Pedro Girón, including having him named master of the prestigious and lucrative order of Calatrava.

  Enrique was mesmerized by Juan Pacheco and greatly influenced by him, even dominated by him, often in ways that would prove detrimental, for Pacheco did not possess the redeeming qualities or loyalty that Álvaro de Luna had displayed toward King Juan. Pacheco was cunning, duplicitous, and self-serving, willing to cause grave injury to others to obtain even a small advantage for himself. The normally mild-mannered chronicler Enríquez del Castillo described him as a “mirror of ingratitude, tyranny, insatiable disordered greed.”19

  Pacheco was not the only one who took advantage of Enrique. The king was generous to a fault and frittered away his treasury on gifts and grants to boyfriends who simply became greedy for more, making them impossible to satisfy. It was in this manner, rather than through spite on Enrique’s part, that the rents and properties that should have been given to Isabella’s family migrated elsewhere.

  Castillo, Enrique’s chronicler, reported that Diego Arias, Enrique’s chief accountant and treasurer, warned him that he was becoming overextended: “Certainly Your Highness has too many expenses, and without any benefit, because you are giving much to eat to many people who aren’t serving you, and who don’t deserve it, and it would be better if you changed course and paid only those who served you and not those who provide you with no benefit.” Enrique replied mournfully that he had no choice—that a spirit of magnanimity was expected of a king who wished to maintain the support of his subjects.20

  King Enrique temporarily moved his court to Arévalo in 1454 and 1455, when Isabella was about four years old, which is about the time most children begin to have an awareness of the broader world around them. Intense excitement followed in his wake, because he soon declared war on the Muslims in Granada. As was family custom, Enrique raised the standard of his ancestor, the Visigothic leader Pelayo. “As faithful Christians . . . we must destroy the enemies who persecute our faith,” he told his countrymen, winning cheers and applause.21 Many were eager for a new war. Some of course were eager to embark for religious reasons, but there was also the promise of booty. Even making the announcement of an impending military campaign got money flowing: additional taxes were levied against nobles, the towns, and the clergy to pay for the expense, and the Spanish-born pope, Calixtus III, who was from Aragon, gave Enrique the power to raise additional money by granting him the right to sell indulgences to soldiers, who could use them to wash away their sins. The pope later allowed Enrique to sell indulgences for posthumously removing sins of dead people, thus allowing relatives to ensure that their deceased loved ones made it to heaven, regardless of the extent of the transgressions during their lifetimes.22

  Moreover, a royal wedding was on the horizon, normally a festive and celebratory event that everyone would enjoy. Enrique was engaged in marriage negotiations with a beautiful Portuguese princess named Juana, who was much admired for her fine dancing skills. There was much excited chatter over the impending nuptials, which could affect the succession to the crown if Enrique produced an heir. And then Enrique and his courtiers were again on their way, this time to the wedding site in Córdoba, leaving Arévalo behind. His young siblings were not included in the wedding party.

  Princess Juana, buxom and flirtatious, arrived for the wedding in May 1455, with a train of pretty Portuguese ladies-in-waiting dressed in gowns “cut to reveal rather than to cover.”23 Enrique, however, appeared less than enthusiastic about the wedding and maintained a dour demeanor, seemingly not in the mood for a “fiesta.”24

  The courtiers soon found that extravagant gifts and costly entertainments were the most effective way to make the young queen happy. At a lavish banquet in Córdoba, a bishop who wanted to curry favor with her passed around a bowl containing jeweled rings, allowing Juana and her attendants to each pick one out as a party favor.

  King Enrique was free to marry Juana because he had just succeeded in obtaining a divorce from his previous wife, his cousin Blanca, a “virtuous and beautiful” princess from Aragon.25 He had been married to Blanca for thirteen years. The union had started out on the wrong foot from the beginning when the prince, then a shy and awkward fifteen-year-old, failed to consummate the marriage on the wedding night. The nuptial night had been admittedly stressful—Blanca’s father, Juan, the ruler of Aragon, who was feuding with Enrique’s father, strode around in the hallway outside the bridal chamber, so it was not too surprising that the young couple failed to reach their goal. But thirteen more years passed, and they still failed to have a child. Finally Enrique elected to seek a divorce on the grounds of nonconsummation of the marriage, saying that he had been “bewitched” and unable to achieve an erection with the princess, most probably because of sorcery.26 He blamed all this on the unfortunate princess, arranging for two prostitutes to testify that he had performed admirably in their company. A three-priest panel approved the divorce, and Blanca was sent packing back home to Aragon.

  But in a grim reminder of Enrique’s previous wedding night, the marriage with his new bride, Juana, was not cons
ummated on this occasion either. Again, a crowd of court officials gathered in anticipation of viewing the bloodstained bedsheets, and again, they left disappointed. The wedding night “pleased nobody,” a court observer said.27

  Soon after the public nuptial ceremonies, Enrique and his new bride went to the king’s home in Segovia, where the bridal couple were feted at a seemingly endless round of balls, hunting expeditions, and entertainments. They split their time between two palaces—the Alcázar and another nearby residence called the San Martín palace, both in Segovia, where Enrique embarked on a round of architectural remodeling. The Alcázar was “completely renovated,” with the addition of much rich ornamentation, under the direct supervision of the king. The court’s reputation for “magnificent opulence and splendor grew moment to moment,” writes the historian Don Eduardo de Oliver-Copóns.28

  But as admiration grew in some circles, many other people came to view the king’s diversions as distracting him from the kingdom’s most pressing business. Criticism of his administration mounted. Leaders who see their power eroding frequently launch a military campaign to draw popular jingoistic support, but even this time-honored political tool backfired on King Enrique when he at last set off to reconquer Granada.

  The campaign had been financed with money contributed by the church faithful. It became common knowledge that a large share of the campaign money went to Beltrán de la Cueva, a charming and handsome courtier who had found favor with both the king and the new queen, while soldiers were left unpaid.29 Once on the road with his court entourage, Enrique treated the expedition as more of a burlesque than a campaign. The giddy young queen and her attendants trailed along. At one point the ladies rode out to the battlefield, and Juana laughingly shot arrows into the air in comic participation. The king seemed to take it all as a great joke, and in fact, he accepted gifts from North African leaders while purportedly assailing their allies. The king of Fez sent him melons, lotus fruit, and specialized horse fittings and, for his wife, musk, frankincense, and vanilla-scented balsam.30 Seasoned soldiers and those deeply concerned about Islamic intentions in southern Spain were “shamed and angry” and shared their concerns with the archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, for whom it became one more piece of evidence that conditions in Castile were deteriorating by the day. Coming just a few years after the fall of Constantinople, Enrique’s cavalier or benign attitude toward Muslims attracted much critical comment in Castile. Some came to see it as a betrayal of Castile’s culture and religion.