Isabella Of Spain The Last Crusader

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!

A new edition of William Thomas Walsh's classic Isabella of Spain: The Last Crusader from the 1935 edition. Contains extra materials on Queen Isabella, including a timeline of her life, an Author's page with an excellent depiction of his life and importance, and a preface by Dr. William G. von Peters. Queen Isabella is a Servant of God, and hopefully will be a saint in the near future. Her actions were the culmination of 800 years of warfare to drive the Moors out of Spain, restoring Spain as a major Catholic power, In addition, the Catholic Monarch's sponsorship of Christopher Columbus brought the Faith to the New World, ended human sacrifice and established Spanish civilization in Latin America. The book reads like fiction, but it is all true. It is vitally important for Christians to read in this age of constant attacks upon the Church and Faith, and appeasement by Churchmen of the evils of our time.

A breathtaking and monumental study of Spain's greatest queen, Isabella, and her direct role in three history-turning events: the expulsion of the last Muslim invaders from Western Europe, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus--events which all took place in the space of just one year, 1492. Written by one of America's foremost professors of English, Isabella of Spain traces in exacting detail the life of the queen from her parents through to her death, drawing upon her own writings and contemporary records. The gripping story which emerges reveals how the young queen led the last crusade against the invader Muslims, driving them back and finally defeating them at their last stronghold of Granada, ending their 700-year-long invasion of Western Europe--and how she personally sacrificed her wealth and health in this staggering achievement. Having defeated the Muslim invaders, Isabella's attention then focused on Spain's huge Jewish population, and, after determining the full extent of their control of Spanish society, their active collaboration with the Muslim invaders, the extent of their largely fake "conversions" to Christianity in order to avoid detection, and a particularly shocking case of Jewish ritual murder of a young Christian boy by a group of Jews, she took the momentous decision to expel them from Spain. At the same time, Isabella also financed and gave the go-ahead for Columbus's epic voyage which opened the New World to European colonization. Isabella was personally responsible for the introduction of all domestic animals to the Americas, and many of its now-common foodstuffs--while at the same time issuing sadly-ignored orders to outlaw slavery in those lands. When first published, this book, widely acknowledged as the most significant study of the Spanish queen ever written, generated huge controversy because of its detailed description of the negative Jewish influence in Medieval Spain and the role of the Muslim invaders in nearly destroying Western civilization. This new edition has been completely reset, and illustrated according to the author's original design. It also includes two new appendices, the first containing the entire text of the Jewish Expulsion Order, and the second, the complete text of the famous 1932 debate between the author and Cecil Roth, one of Britain's leading Jewish historians, on the subject matter of this book.

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.

The queenship of the first European Renaissance queen regnant never ceases to fascinate. As fascists to feminists fight over Isabel’s legacy, we ask which recyclings of her image are legitimate or appropriate. Or has this figure taken on a life of her own?

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.