Unlike previous episodes in this series, Isabella’s story is not 100% bound up in the famous man’s story. Isabella was a force of nature before Columbus ever set foot in her country, so it’s going to take me a while even to get to him.

Princess Isabella was born in what we now call Spain in April 1451. No one thought she was important.

Her father lived only until she was three, and the kingdoms of Castile and León went to Isabella’s much older half-brother, Enrique.

A String of Engagements

Isabella was about six years old when she was told that she would someday marry prince Ferdinand of the neighboring kingdom of Aragón. As royal engagements go, Ferdinand was a gem. He was about Isabella’s age. No one said he was repulsive, which is about as good as it gets for these arranged marriages (Downey, 41).

However, nothing is certain in this life, and at age ten, Isabella was told she would not marry Ferdinand. Instead, she would marry his older brother Carlos. Technically, this was an upgrade. Carlos was the heir. He was also thirty years older than her (Downey, 42).

King Enrique had troubles of his own. He was a weak king, and he was a weak husband. His first wife had had no children. His second wife, Juana, also had no children for six years. Then she did have a daughter, also named Juana. Most people were pretty sure Enrique wasn’t the father.

As a lady-in-waiting to Queen Juana, Isabella had a front-row seat to watch Enrique get manipulated by powerful nobles and publicly humiliated by his queen (Downey, 42-43).

Meanwhile, Enrique moved Isabella through two more engagements. Each fiancé was worse than the last, and the last one so repulsive that Isabella prayed to God for deliverance. Any deliverance. Including death.

God came through for her in a big way, for the man unexpectedly dropped down dead on his way to meet her. How’s that for a faith-promoting experience?

Rebellion

While Isabella’s marriage prospects were chaotic, so was the rest of the whole country. When a discontented populace decided to support her younger brother Alfonso in a rebellion against Enrique, Isabella sided with Alfonso.

Their chances were always small, and they became nonexistent when Alfonso suddenly died. Isabella could have tried on her own as queen, but if Alfonso’s chances had been small, Isabella’s were much smaller.

She chose prudence. She supported Enrique. But she demanded a price from him. First, he was to declare her his heir, cutting out the Juana who was not actually his daughter. Second, Isabella demanded that she have a say in who she married, though she also agreed not to marry without Enrique’s approval (Downey 68).

Enrique was always relieved to have someone present him with a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Hostilities ceased. But when new problems came up, he wanted to solve them by going back on his promises for the last crisis. He was soon negotiating new marriage contracts for Isabella, and he didn’t consult her.

A Marriage of Her Choosing

Here is where things start to get wild from a feminist point of view. On this podcast we’ve seen women who were sold into marriage. We’ve seen many women who were told who to marry. We’ve seen women who married against their parents’ will by eloping in a fit of passion.

But I think Isabella is the first who secretly negotiated her own marriage contract behind her guardian’s back. She basically eloped, but not in a fit of passion. She made sure there was a wheel of a deal in place.

The lucky groom was her original fiancé, Ferdinand of Aragón. He was now the heir apparent, because Carlos was dead. On March 5, 1469, Ferdinand agreed to a marriage in which he acknowledged that Isabella would be the monarch of Castile, not him. Ferdinand would not even be able to leave Castile without his wife’s permission. He would also pay 100,000 florins and provide her with 4,000 armed men (Tremlett, 55). Ferdinand’s father got a bishop to sign a dispensation saying it was okay for them to marry even though they were second cousins. They were married by proxy with Enrique being none the wiser.

Why would Ferdinand and his father agree to this? Well, they really wanted to dominate the Iberian peninsula. Marriage was quicker and surer than a war of conquest. They would probably have agreed to anything, confident that a teenage girl like Isabella would have no hope of enforcing it (Tremlett, 54).

The two teenagers were technically married, but they wanted an in-person wedding, for obvious reasons. To manage it, Isabella snuck out of the castle Enrique had forbidden her to leave. Ferdinand disguised himself as a mule driver and traveled 225 miles, mostly at night, so he could sneak into Castile. Hearts thumped, palms sweated, the works. It sounds like a movie plot.

On October 12, 1469, Isabella wrote Enrique of her plans. She did not ask for consent, and she knew it was too late for him to intervene. A week later, she was irrevocably married, in person, with consummation (Downey, 78).

Her honeymoon phase was short. Enrique furiously stripped Isabella of her titles and possessions. Isabella got pregnant very quickly, which was good. The baby was a girl, which was not good. Worse still, it turned out that their dispensation to get married was forged. Which meant little Isabel was not just a girl, she was an illegitimate girl (Tremlett, 71-72).

On top of all that, it turned out that Ferdinand was something of a swine. Young, charming, and athletic, yes. But the eagerness with which he disguised himself to travel 225 miles through dangerous territory to marry a girl he had never met was a clue to his character. He was still interested in adventure and girls he hadn’t yet met. Stable married life did not appeal to him.

Isabella was hurt, lonely, afraid, and uncertain. Her family was untrustworthy on all sides. Her country was in perpetual civil war.

Becoming Queen

Enrique died on December 11, 1474. Vacillating to the end, he left the succession unclear. No one knew whether little Juana should inherit or Isabella. Neither candidate was ideal.

As soon as the funeral was over, an official announced to the crowd that as Enrique had no heir, Isabella would rule (Downey, 130).

Meanwhile Isabella was doing a quick change out of her funeral garb, and she arrived back at the same church dressed fit to kill and riding a white horse. Little Juana was not even mentioned.

Obviously, Isabella had been planning this for some time.

Juana’s friends were upset, of course, but so was Ferdinand. He was away at the time, as usual, and Isabella got herself proclaimed queen before he had any chance to get himself proclaimed king. It was all in accordance with their original marriage negotiations, but he was angry anyway (Downey, 135). The fact that Isabella didn’t tell him in advance suggests she knew how he would react. She had learned not to rely any promises made by her male relatives.

In the end, she and Ferdinand came to an agreement that saved his ego. They would act together, as joint monarchs, and his name would be listed first. But she held the right to appoint officials, the right to run the treasury, and it was her children who would inherit.

Feminists can boo at the optics here: clearly, Isabella deserved to be listed first (or alone) on official documents, but the fact is Isabella needed Ferdinand. A reigning queen was just too unusual for many people to accept. Some accommodation was necessary, and the surprise is that she retained as much power as she did.

Her partnership with Ferdinand was maybe not true love, but it was effective. In times of war, he led the troops on the field. She handled the logistics. Both lived on the front lines. Both excelled at their roles.

Bigotry and Persecution

First they warred against Portugal, because Portugal championed little Juana’s cause and lost. Then against the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, which also lost.

Here is where Isabella’s record starts to sound considerably less appealing to modern ears. Over ten years, she and Ferdinand crushed the Muslims and eventually out of the Iberian peninsula entirely. Those who stayed were told they didn’t have to convert, but that turned out not to be true. It was convert or get out.

Castile had long been a haven for Jews as well, including many who held important positions for Isabella. Eventually, Jews were also told to convert or get out.

Isabella also authorized the Spanish Inquisition which investigated and punished Christians who were suspected of being secret Jews or secret Muslims or otherwise insufficiently devout.

From our modern perspective, this is all bigotry of the very worst kind. The results were unimaginable suffering for hundreds of thousands of people. It is the absolute antithesis of the principles that Christ himself actually taught.

I don’t deny the validity of any of that. However, I often find it problematic when we issue a blanket condemnation of perpetrators like Isabella, saying they are just hateful, horrible people. Not only is it ungenerous to someone too dead to defend herself, but more importantly, I think it leaves us vulnerable in the present day. If we refuse to see the train of thought led good people (or at least average people) to do hateful, horrible things, then we are unlikely to notice when the exact same train of thought gets trotted out in the present day. Which it does. I don’t cover current events, so I will say nothing more about them. I’ll leave you to find the parallels yourselves.

But I am going to explain what I think Isabella’s train of thought was: First, she was very attached to the Catholic church and that is no surprise. Who else had she ever been able to count on? Certainly not her dead father, her vacillating brother, or her philandering husband. Her mother was still alive but locked in mental illness that no one at the time could treat or explain. The nobles and common people sometimes supported her and sometimes didn’t. The Church offered stability in a world that was wildly uncertain.

As a moral code, the gospel also appealed. Isabella had watched as Enrique’s wife had destroyed herself and her daughter through moral failures. Isabella lived by strict standards herself, and she expected the same from her underlings (Tremlett, 10, 301).

There was also the weight of history. Castilians knew that their Christian ancestors had lived on this land during the Roman empire. In the Middle Ages, the Muslims invaded from North Africa, killing, raping, and (reportedly) eating Christians as they went. Muslims flourished for centuries before any Christians very slowly pushed them back. That was a process which began well before Isabella’s time. From the Christian perspective, they were retaking what Muslims had so brutally stolen. From the Muslim perspective, this was now home. They had been there for generations, so the Christians were the thieves. Both sides claimed the moral high ground (Tremlett, 2; Downey, 181).

In more recent history, the Muslim Ottomans were flexing their muscles and vowing to wipe out Christianity. The Ottoman empire might seem far away on a map, but the Mediterranean makes a great highway. An Ottoman army could land on Castilian shores at any moment. They had already landed on Venetian shores. Slaving ships did land on the Iberian peninsula. Europe was awash in stories about Muslims raping Christian princesses on the altars of the churches and capturing Christian girls to take back to work in harems. No doubt some was misinformation or exaggeration, but most Christians didn’t know that. And also some of the stories were true (see episode 4.3 on Roxelana).

Christians talked a lot less about how they were guilty of similar crimes against Muslims, but that was also true. No one’s hands were clean. Both sides were justifiably afraid of the other. When people think their way of life is at stake, it hardly even matters if they are right or wrong on the facts. Atrocities escalate either way.

So I think that when Isabella drove the Muslims out of Iberia, it was not so much because she was horrible person. It was because she genuinely believed that a Muslim kingdom there would be the frontline for the destruction of Europe. Jews got caught up in it because some European Jews genuinely were siding with the Muslims. So she did not feel that she could trust the Jews either. It does not make her actions good, but it is a justification that continues to get trotted out, even in the modern world.

Furthermore, there was another issue. In the modern Western world, the general consensus is that you can be whatever religion you want. It doesn’t affect me, so I have no right to complain. This may seem self-evident to you, but it would be absolutely baffling to many people in the past.

They did not think in terms of individual rights. Community was far more important than any individual. Life was precarious, and you depended on the people around you for survival. (I would argue that we still do, but money and technology sometimes allow us to pretend otherwise.)

Throughout the Bible (and other religious texts), the gods pass judgment on communities, not just individuals. Diseases, invading armies, earthquakes, floods, droughts, harsh winters—these things devastate groups of people, not just individuals. In a world where such things are a sign of divine disfavor, then it absolutely does affect me if my neighbors are incurring God’s wrath.

As monarch, Isabella was explicitly responsible for the spiritual welfare of her people. God would hold her accountable if she did not.

So from Isabella’s point of view, she was not persecuting religious and ethnic minorities that never did her any harm. She was defending her people against enemies in a fight to the death and even beyond death. That was her job as monarch. Again, I am not saying that I approve of her actions because I do not. But I can see why she did it.

Isabella was entirely successful in what she viewed as her job: She made the Iberian peninsula universally Christian.

Christopher Columbus and the Size of the World

At 2300 words in, I can finally get to the Genoese sailor who showed up in the mid-1480s. Cristóbal Colón was a magnetic personality, which was why anyone listened to his utterly stupid idea.

Contrary to what you may have heard, people at this point knew the world was round. Educated people also knew the world’s size. Sure, you could sail West to get East. That was not disputed. But the ocean was too big for anyone to survive the trip. Columbus’s idea was that the earth was a lot smaller than people thought.

He came to Isabella and said he could replenish her war-strapped treasury. He said he could connect her to the fabulously lucrative Silk Road described by Marco Polo. He said that she’d be able to fund a Crusade to take the Holy Land back from the infidel. All he needed was a few ships and a crew.

Isabella was intrigued. Not enough to give him the ships. But enough to keep him dangling nearby while she finished the rest of her to-do list.

Two separate commissions examined Columbus’s plans. Both reported that he was dead wrong about the size of the world. (And incidentally, he was wrong.) But he remained totally self-confident, promoting his idea, for years.

In 1492, Isabella finally defeated the Kingdom of Granada. But it was also the year that Columbus gave up. Not on his idea. Just on her. He was literally riding away, ready to try his luck at the French court, when she sent someone after him to say, all right, fine, you can have the ships.

Even so, she wasn’t going to pull from her own treasury for a risky venture like this. The town of Palos owed a fine, so she ordered them to produce two ships: the Niña and the Pinta. The Santa Maria was provided by its own captain and owner. Additional funds came from private investments. When Columbus had trouble finding men eager to sail out and die with him, Isabella pardoned criminals if they agreed to go (Downey, 244).

You just get the sense that she knew this was a real, real long shot, and she was too sensible to gamble much on it. When the three ships sailed away on August 3, 1492, she must have known that she would probably never hear from Columbus gain.

Columbus Returns

So imagine her surprise, six months later, when he wrote to her in triumph from Lisbon.

Lisbon?!?

Portugal was the great rival! Columbus had no business there, and she wrote to tell him to haul himself to Barcelona double quick time. But she did address the letter to Don Cristóbal Colón. He had demanded a title of nobility if he succeeded, and he got it (Resendez, 18-19).

Isabella also wrote to the pope, who just now happened to be a Spaniard, an old friend of hers. Of late, Isabella had serious concerns about the pope. His moral standards did not match hers, but he certainly came through for her now. On May 3ʳᵈ and 4ᵗʰ he granted half the world to Castile and León. In other words: to Isabella. Not Ferdinand (Downey, 268).

Consider that Columbus only landed in Portugal in late February, factor in travel time, and the Vatican’s enormous bureaucracy: this was amazingly quick work.

Within months, Columbus was on his way west again, but this time he had 17 ships and 1,500 men. He also had instructions from Isabella regarding the Indians. She wanted them converted, but not mistreated. She explicitly said, “treat the said Indians very well and lovingly and abstain from doing them any injury.” She also gave him Columbus authority to punish any Europeans who mistreated the Indians in any manner (Downey, 278-279).

Sadly, her instructions were almost universally disregarded on this point. No one on either side of the ocean could have predicted the diseases. But as I related in episode 4.4 on Catalina, there are historians who believe the Native American populations would eventually have bounced back from disease. It was disease-plus-slavery that devastated them (Resendez). Slavery was not Isabella’s idea.

Columbus had promised the fabulous wealth of the Orient, and though he wouldn’t admit that he wasn’t in the Orient, even he could not deny that the people he found weren’t fabulously wealthy. The only readily available source of wealth was the people themselves.

When he returned from his third voyage with hundreds of slaves, Isabella was furious. “Who is this Columbus who dares to give out my vassals as slaves?” she said (Resendez, 24-28). She ordered that all of them be returned home and some of them were. But it was already too late for others. They died of disease and cold (Downey, 287).

Columbus wanted to be the only man in charge out there in the West, but Isabella was rapidly losing confidence in him, so she also sent out other explorers, and together they charted thousands of miles of coastline. Even so, Columbus ultimately led four expeditions. He didn’t get any better at following instructions. Her investigation into his handling of justice led to him getting sent home in irons where Isabella left him in jail for six weeks (Downey, 294).

Isabella’s Legacy

The results of Isabella sponsoring Columbus changed the world forever. It ultimately did make Spain (and Europe) fabulously wealthy. It established Isabella’s native language (not Columbus’s) as the majority language of what are today 21 countries and 500 million people. It transformed Catholicism from a religion that was mostly European into a truly pan-continental juggernaut.

It also led to the death, misery, and generational trauma of millions of people. But that was not Isabella’s intent. In fact, I think her instructions on how the Indians should be treated are the clearest sign that her own brutal treatment of Muslims, Jews, and backsliding Christians was more complicated than just pure bigotry. Non-Christian enemies were one thing. She had no reason to fear the Indians. They were not enemies, and she tried to treat them differently (Resendez, 26). It is interesting to think about what might have happened if anyone had obeyed her.

Isabella lived and reigned until November 26, 1504.

Long enough for her to know her own sorrows. Her son and heir died before her. Her oldest daughter and grandson also died before her. The right to inherit passed to her third child and second daughter, who was locked in an emotionally abusive marriage that took an enormous toll. She would eventually be known as Queen Juana the Mad.

There were also two more daughters, the youngest of whom was named Catherine of Aragón, and she also is the reason that a famous man is still famous. I’ll be telling her story next week.

Works Cited

Downey, Kirstin. Isabella : The Warrior Queen. New York, Anchor Books, A Division Of Penguin Random House Llc, 2015.

Keen, Benjamin. “The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities.” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 4, 1 Nov. 1969, pp. 703–719, read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/49/4/703/157405/The-Black-Legend-Revisited-Assumptions-and, https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-49.4.703.

Reséndez, Andrés. The Other Slavery : The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Boston, Ma, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Tremlett, Giles. Isabella of Castile. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 7 Mar. 2017.

The feature image is Columbus Before the Queen by Emanuel Leutze (1816–1868) (Wikimedia Commons)