Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  San Antonio, Enrique’s boyhood home, had been converted into a monastery and later, under Isabella’s reign, into a convent of the Clarissa order. There the nuns performed spiritual and community outreach to workers who eked out their livings scrubbing woolskins under Segovia’s Roman aqueduct. In the convent the nuns cared for the infants whose mothers were unable to support them, either because of poverty or illegitimacy.

  Living in a cloistered order, the nuns kept the tiny piece of cloth as a sacred object and believed it to have miraculous powers in healing female ailments and diseases. A wisdom tooth was attached to it. The nuns believed the tooth belonged to Isabella, and she left it there so something of herself would always remain in Segovia and would rest next to something that had once belonged to Jesus Christ.

  Moreover, Isabella ordered that if it was impossible to transport her body to her intended burial spot in Granada, she should be placed at rest instead in that convent, or at the monastery and church she had ordered built in Toledo called San Juan de los Reyes.

  She asked to be buried in a Franciscan habit, with her beloved daughter Princess Isabel brought to rest by her side. She wanted a simple stone to mark her grave, level with the ground.

  She later added a codicil that included a number of small items she had overlooked and that set out two more instructions. Both reflected her awareness of the coming ecclesiastical and imperial challenges that her nation would face. She asked that the reform of the monasteries continue, “to avoid damages and scandals.” And she specified that the “principal intention” of the discoveries of the new lands across the Atlantic had been “the evangelization and conversion of the natives to the Catholic faith,” and the residents of the New World should not be injured but instead should be “justly treated.”15

  After Isabella died, King Ferdinand announced her death to the public and sent out messengers across Spain with the news. He reported that Juana was queen and that he would help her rule. He took responsibility for administration of the government, because Juana was not there. She would need to travel to Spain, and it would take a while.

  Ferdinand ordered the funeral cortege to set out for Granada right away. It was pouring rain, and people wondered whether to wait a while for a break in the weather, but Ferdinand insisted, and nobody wanted to question the king. He sent them on their way, hauling the coffin, but did not accompany the casket himself. Peter Martyr was part of the funeral procession, which he recalled later as a terrible ordeal: “We seemed driven by the storms of the sea.… We crossed through the valleys and plains, almost swimming, we had perpetual pools and lakes in the way. We were overwhelmed with clay and mud everywhere.”16

  They passed through Isabella’s childhood home of Arévalo and continued south. The leaders frequently took counsel among themselves, wondering if it made sense to continue to travel in such difficult conditions. In Toledo they seriously considered stopping until the weather improved, but they were afraid of angering Ferdinand and kept moving forward, slipping, sliding, straining through the freezing rain and mud. People died on the trip, swept away by flood-swollen rivers, and pack animals drowned. “Nothing more dreadful ever happened to me,” Martyr wrote. “… We did not progress even one mile in which we were safe from the face of death.”17

  At last, after weeks of travel, they reached Granada and placed Isabella’s body in a church of the Alhambra, until a more suitable resting place could be constructed.

  It was almost as though she was never really destined to be buried in Granada, and that all nature was conspiring to block her passage there. It would have been so much simpler to keep her remains in Segovia, the beautiful city that she and her brother Enrique had loved, but the attendants were fearful of displeasing Ferdinand, and so they had struggled through the mud and mire for weeks until they arrived at the former capital of the Nasrid dynasty. Somehow getting to Granada always turned out to be a terrible and unforgettable ordeal.

  She first was buried, in accordance with her instructions, in an austere chapel in a former palace of the Nasrid dynasty that had been converted into a Franciscan convent.18

  Later, in 1521, Isabella was moved once again: her body was placed beneath an imposing marble effigy in a sumptuous cathedral that was constructed in the center of Granada. She had wanted a simple grave, with a marker level with the ground. She had wanted to be buried next to Princess Isabel, but her daughter’s body was never brought there. She lies surrounded by religious symbols, in the same way the Muslims had inscribed ONLY GOD IS VICTORIOUS, over and over, on the walls of the Alhambra.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE WORLD AFTER ISABELLA

  Just as members of her court had feared, Spain went into a tailspin at Isabella’s death. But within twenty years, building on the foundation she had laid, Spain had become the world’s first truly global superpower—envied, admired, and feared by all. A golden age of Spanish art, literature, and architecture was dawning, with masterpieces being created by geniuses in their fields—among them the writer Miguel de Cervantes, and the painters El Greco and Velázquez. And as the queen had hoped, in ways both good and bad, Isabella’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren took up her causes and committed their lives to them.

  But all this began with a period of chaos.

  Ferdinand’s shortcomings became apparent as soon as Isabella died. That same day he sent letters announcing her death to his peers in other kingdoms. He told England’s Henry VII, for example, that Isabella’s death was “the greatest affliction that could have befallen him.”1 His daughter Juana was the new queen, he told Henry, but promptly added that he was now in control of the realm.

  He did not accompany Isabella’s body on the dreary trek to burial in Granada, something that even the most estranged of spouses would normally have felt obligated to do. Instead he went into seclusion for a week with his counselors, then emerged to begin wreaking havoc.

  The first thing he did was dispose of her belongings in a most cavalier way. She had asked that her possessions be sold to benefit the poor and pay off her debts; seeing little advantage in maximizing their value, he sold them as quickly as possible, amid an unseemly display of “confusion, greed and a lack of transparency.”2 Courtiers and clerics snapped up objects at rock-bottom prices and resold them later. Objects of gold and silver were melted down for the value of the metal. Other items were allowed to deteriorate and were sold for smaller sums than they should have brought.

  Within two months, Ferdinand disposed of Isabella’s carefully assembled set of paintings of Christ’s life, even those that contained portraits of her family, at fire-sale prices of two to six ducados. The pieces did not appear to have been appraised; paintings that contained gold went for the same price as those that did not.3 Books, tapestries, music scores, and books of hours were scattered to the winds. One of the greatest art collections of the Renaissance was randomly dispersed. It was, wrote the historian Tarsicio de Azcona, as though “a brilliant day had been followed by a gloomy and bitter nightfall.”4

  Ferdinand then turned his focus to finding a way to elbow his daughter and her husband out of power. He quickly proposed that he remarry—initially reaching out to Juana la Beltraneja. This was the young woman, now middle-aged, who had been the child of King Enrique’s wife and had possibly been the legitimate heir to the throne, if she were indeed the child of the king. Ferdinand and Isabella, of course, had gone to war with Portugal, asserting that Isabella was the rightful heir, and thousands of people had been killed in the resulting battles.

  Now, however, if Ferdinand could convince people that Juana had been the rightful heir, and that the war with Portugal had been an unfortunate mistake, he could restore himself to the same power on the peninsula that he had enjoyed while being married to Isabella. This would mean extracting Juana la Beltraneja from the convent where she had been living, but he might have reasoned that she had embraced religious life only reluctantly in the first place. The proposed marriage, of course, would have had th
e effect of bumping his children with Isabella out of the line of succession, indeed would question the validity of Isabella’s entire reign.

  This idea drew stunned silence from all corners. Opposition began to coalesce quickly all over Spain. Ferdinand, it became apparent, was very unpopular, and the love that the people had shown for the sovereigns had been for Isabella, not for him.

  In Flanders, meanwhile, Archduke Philip, who had developed what Peter Martyr called “a panting hunger for the scepter,” had been kept informed about Isabella’s declining health and sought to control the situation by further isolating Juana.5 In early November 1504, he dismissed twelve of the attendants she had brought back with her from Castile and gave her Dominican confessor forty livres to return home to Spain.6 Using bribes and threats, he made sure that the people surrounding Juana were loyal to him and not to her. The remaining Spanish attendants, said the Castilian ambassador Fuensalida, were “all relatives of Judas; none of them has stayed faithful; each one is trying to do his best for the king.”7

  Even Fuensalida was intimidated by the attitude at the court. He too was informed that Isabella was dying but did not tell Juana. He was probably hedging his bets, waiting to see who would come out on top in the power struggle that was already beginning.

  When Philip learned of Isabella’s death, he decided to withhold the news from his wife, the new queen of Castile, whom he maintained in a state of near-incarceration. For a period of time, perhaps a week or more, he plotted what to do but kept his wife in the dark. King Ferdinand sent an official messenger, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, who delivered the news officially to the couple on December 12.

  Finally Juana learned the truth, which must have been painful to her. Her last meetings with her mother in Medina del Campo had been dreadful, and she had shown little regard for Isabella’s failing health when she had been at home in Castile. Now the word hit her hard, and she began emulating the exaggerated mourning rituals that everyone had admired in her sister, Princess Isabel, when she lost her husband Afonso. Juana asked to be left alone to mourn, spurned contact with others, and went into religious seclusion. Funerary customs were less dramatic in pleasure-seeking Flanders, and Juana’s behavior became another reason that the Flemings viewed her as odd or ridiculous.

  In the meantime, Philip busily planned his own coronation as king of Castile, León, and Granada, giving Juana only a small part in the ceremonies. In mid-January, he was crowned king at the Church of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, a grand Gothic edifice, with Juana standing at his side. The sword of justice, once famously held aloft for Isabella, was handed to Philip and not to Juana.

  After discussing the situation with the Spanish ambassadors at court, Juana wrote her father a letter and entrusted it to a servant to deliver. The servant, who was Aragonese and a subject of Ferdinand’s, shared it with Philip, who was unhappy with the contents. Philip ordered one of the envoys, Ferdinand’s personal secretary Lope de Conchillos, seized and thrown into jail, where he was tortured. The ferocity of Philip’s reaction suggests that Juana had told her father that he should prevent Philip from seizing the Castilian crown for himself. The envoy “was thrust into a foul dungeon as if he had committed a horrible crime,” Peter Martyr told his friend Talavera, adding that when Lope de Conchillos finally was released, stumbling into the sunlight, he was temporarily senseless and all the hair had fallen from his head.8

  After this breach in the wall of secrecy with which he had surrounded Juana, Philip ordered that no one in Flanders was allowed to communicate with anyone in Spain without his knowledge.

  Philip’s advisers next prepared an alternative letter ostensibly written by Juana that assigned her right to govern to Philip, saying it was because of her “love” for him. She objected to the word love and refused to sign the letter, so they forged her signature and sent it anyway, according to biographer Bethany Aram.9

  Then the bribery started. Philip reached out to Spanish noblemen, offering them lucrative properties, rights, and privileges if they would support his claim to the Castilian throne and repudiate Ferdinand. He began negotiating with the French to support him in seizing power from his father-in-law. That would not have been seen as an idle threat for the Spanish, who had fought with the French over both Roussillon and Naples and who viewed the French as their mortal enemies.

  Then the two men—Philip and Ferdinand—engaged in an intense propaganda war about who should rule. Both were angling for the right to the throne, but first Juana had to be shunted aside. Ferdinand and Philip separately and then together asserted that Juana was mentally ill, too mentally ill to be allowed to rule. Removing her from the picture would leave each man with only one competitor—the other man. Juana’s father and her husband both circulated rumors about her allegedly insane conduct. Stories of the scene at Medina del Campo, Juana’s seclusion, and her jealous attack on her husband’s lover, when she had cut off her hair, received wide circulation as examples of female madness. Alleging that women are insane is a time-tested way to discredit them if they contest male power or otherwise cause problems.

  In early 1505, according to Aram, Ferdinand called together the Cortes to ask that he be named regent for Juana. He referred to Queen Isabella’s will and said that the queen’s “modesty and sorrow” had prevented her from disclosing the reasons why Juana might be unable to rule—that Juana’s “passions” made her incompetent to govern.10 That set the ball rolling, and soon many people came to believe that Juana was “loca.”

  Back in Flanders, impartial observers said she looked and acted just fine. The Venetian ambassador Vicenzo Quirini described an evening of festivities with Juana, who was “dressed in black velvet, looking very well”; he thought her “very handsome, her bearing being that of a sensible and discreet woman.” He greeted her on behalf of the Venetian Signory, and she made a “loving reply”; then together they strolled to a joust, which took place by torchlight in a spacious hall on the ground floor of the palace.11

  About six months later, in early 1506, according to Quirini, Philip sent an envoy from his court, Monsieur de la Chau, to Castile to meet with Ferdinand to make sure they had their stories straight—that Juana was “incapable and unfit to rule.” Quirini said many Flemish courtiers wanted Philip to do so because they had already begun receiving “pensions” from Castile, ranging from 500 to 3,000 ducats per year, and they feared that Juana would stop those stipends if she were to take the reins of government. They also hoped to find lucrative sinecures for their “children, grandchildren and remotest connections” through the three religious military orders that the monarch of Castile would command.12 “The ministers also seek to avoid an insurrection,” Quirini wrote.

  They fear lest Spaniards, who are turbulent naturally—especially the grandees, who love change and have feuds amongst each other—might rise and make some stir on the plea of choosing to be governed by the Queen, who is their legitimate sovereign. Their object now is, that before the arrival of King Philip, his father-in-law should circulate a report that Queen Juana is unfit to govern, as is generally believed here, and they hope King Ferdinand will accede to their wishes, both as it may prove to his interest, and also because, on the death of Queen Isabella, amongst the other reasons assigned to him for not ceding the government of Castile, he alleged that his daughter was incapable and unfit to rule; an opinion which he seems he retain, according to the last letters of King Philip’s ambassadors, who are doing their utmost to arrange this business, as it affects them personally: Monsier de Verre having an annual pension in Castile of 3,000 ducats, together with a promise of the first vacant bishopric for one of his brothers and Monsieur de la Chau a pension of 1,000 ducats; and all live in hopes that King Philip may provide their children, grandchildren and remotest connections with commanderies of St. James, of Calatrava or of Alcántara; for although King Ferdinand be master of these three orders, and has all the revenues, yet the vacant commanderies are in the alternate gift of either sovereign, and wh
en King Philip’s turn comes, King Ferdinand is bound to accept his presentations.13

  The Flemish courtiers were doing their best to sow discord between Juana and her father. The Spanish ambassador, the Count of Haro, was given a short audience with Juana, although Philip’s confederates warned him to make a short stay and to do “good service” to Philip. Juana warmly received him, according to Quirini, and she

  very tenderly made many inquiries of him how her father fared, six months having elapsed since she had received any news of him, and whether it was true that he wished her as much harm as she was told he did.… The ambassador replied that not one of these things were true; nay, that the King her father loved her and her husband as his very dear children.… Thereupon the ambassador took leave as quickly as he could. He told [Quirini] that he knew for certain that King Philip’s councilors had given the Queen to understand that her father bears her ill will, and would fain not see her in Spain, in order that on her going thither with this impression, she might, at their first meeting, treat him unbecomingly; whilst Ferdinand, being informed in like manner, that his daughter loved him not, and was such as they described her, would the more readily consent to deprive her of the government.14

  Whatever Ferdinand knew or did not know, he responded soothingly to Philip in mid-April that he would arrange matters “so as to satisfy all parties.”15 Ferdinand unctuously urged Philip to come to Castile so everything could be handled.

  Philip dragged his feet about going there. Still suspicious about how his friend, the archbishop of Besançon, had died so precipitously, he was afraid that Ferdinand would kill him if he set foot in Spain. Others shared his fear: in June 1506 a nobleman living in Rome wrote to Philip urging him to use extreme caution in dealing with Ferdinand to avoid becoming a victim of poisoning or other violence. He specifically urged Philip to avoid eating with Ferdinand at any time.16