Isabella Of Castile

A major biography of the queen who transformed Spain into a principal global power, and sponsored the voyage that would open the New World. In 1474, when Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania (present day Spain and Portugal), a twenty-three-year-old woman named Isabella ascended the throne. At a time when successful queens regnant were few and far between, Isabella faced not only the considerable challenge of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom riddled with crime, debt, corruption, and religious factionism. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon united two kingdoms, a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Their pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and setting the stage for its golden era of global dominance. Acclaimed historian Giles Tremlett chronicles the life of Isabella of Castile as she led her country out of the murky Middle Ages and harnessed the newest ideas and tools of the early Renaissance to turn her ill-disciplined, quarrelsome nation into a sharper, truly modern state with a powerful, clear-minded, and ambitious monarch at its center. With authority and insight he relates the story of this legendary, if controversial, first initiate in a small club of great European queens that includes Elizabeth I of England, Russia's Catherine the Great, and Britain's Queen Victoria.

An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and León. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain’s reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella’s influence. Using new scholarship, Downey’s luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.

Isabella became the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother and a virtual prisoner at the licentious court of her half-brother, Henry IV. Was she, at sixteen, fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious lechers in Castile?

This is an evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history's most famous and controversial queens--the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World.

The Queen who shaped the music, literature, architecture, and painting of late medieval Spain. This multidisciplinary volume was inspired by the quincentenary of the death of Queen Isabel I of Castile, early modern Europe's first powerful queen regnant. Comprising work by distinguished art historians, musicologists, historians, and literary scholars from England, Spain, and the United States, it begins with a theoretical examination of medieval queenship itself that argues - against the grain of the volume - for its inseparability from kingship. Several essays examine the complex ways in which the Queen and her advisers shaped the music, literature, architecture, and painting of fifteenth-century Spain and how these in turn shaped the sovereign's power and persona. Others analyze influences on Isabel's reign from Aragón, Portugal, and northern Europe. A third group deals with issues of periodization, arguing from a variety of perspectives for the modernity of Isabelline culture. The evolving construction of Isabel's image from the mid-fifteenth to the late-twentieth century is also studied. BARBARA WEISSBERGER is Associate Professor Emerita of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Minnesota. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS: Rafael Domínguez Casas, Theresa Earenfight, Michael Gerli, Chiyo Ishikawa, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Nancy F. Marino, William D. Phillips, Jr., Emilio Ros-Fábregas, Ronald E. Surtz

Legitimizing the Queen deals with a genre particular to the Middle Ages: the specula principum (mirror of prince). Its importance as an object of study may be understood in light of the political instability that wracked the Castilian fifteenth century. The many works written for and dedicated to Isabel I of Castile depict her kingdom as a shipwrecked boat, a wayward realm, and a land of bankrupt people. These works suggest the kingdom's need for redemption through the strong leadership of theCatholic monarchs. These largely propagandistic works were designed to garner power, and once maintained, further Isabel's agenda. This book frames the concept of sovereignty from the theoretical perspective of the speculum principum dedicated to her. It offers a Bourdieuian approach to the more literary specula texts used to legitimize and uphold Isabel's power. This book reveals propagandistic qualities promoting the ideology necessary to legitimize and support Isabel's claims to the throne. Written primarily between 1468 and 1493, these works are literary artifacts that mark the rise to power of a female sovereign. The study discusses the various strategies of legitimation employed by these propagandists whose works circulated within noble androyal courts, and presumably extended into Castile as justification for her sovereign claim to the throne. By analyzing fifteenth century texts from within a modern critical framework, this book reexamines Isabel's position as queen and contributes to the understanding of her shared sovereignty in a period political and social evolution.

Called by her people Isabella la Catolica, she was by any standard one of the greatest women of all history. A saint in her own right, she married Ferdinand of Aragon, and they forged modern Spain, cast out the Moslems, discovered the New World by backing Columbus, and established a powerful central government in Spain. This story is so thrilling it reads like a novel. Makes history really come alive. Highly readable and truly great in every respect!