Isabel I of Castile (1451-1504) wrestled a fractious nobility into submission, defeated the Muslim kingdom of Granada, bore five children who lived to adulthood, reformed church and state, and launched Christopher Columbus across the ocean. She also installed the Spanish Inquisition and issued an ultimatum to Spain’s Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. In this volume Peggy Liss discusses all aspects of Isabel’s career unflinchingly and unapologetically, producing a biography that is as forthright and vigorous as its subject.
By imaginative use of religious tracts and visual imagery, Liss recreates the spiritual milieu that made young Isabel a Christian militant who viewed the presence of Jews and Muslims in the realm as increasingly anomalous. Royal chronicles and other printed sources allow Liss to track the princess’ difficult life as half-sister of the reviled king Enrique IV. Becoming skilled at statecraft and artful dissembling, Isabel garnered support for her succession to the throne against Enrique’s putative daughter Juana. Yet she openly defied the king by marrying Ferdinand of Aragón in 1469. Liss effectively demonstrates the love, mutual respect, and sense of purpose that defined their long marriage, despite frequent separations and Ferdinand’s infidelities.
In 1479 the royal couple emerged victorious from a civil war over Isabel’s succession, each firmly in control of a throne and with carefully defined and circumscribed rights in the other’s realm. A few years later, they began a war against their erstwhile tributary, the Muslim king of Granada, needing the promise of chivalric goals and land grants to keep the nobility in check. During the ten-year war, they also shaped the government into an effective bureaucracy and enforced Christian orthodoxy, believing that Spain had inherited the mantle of God’s chosen from the ancient Israelites. With increasing pressure for Jews and Muslims to convert, for clerical reform, and for an Inquisition to monitor the orthodoxy of all Christian observance, Isabel strove to create a unity of belief and behavior that would merit God’s continuing favor. Sponsoring Columbus’ search for Asian trade and potential converts, she astutely improvised an empire in the Americas when Asia proved elusive. By insisting on royal protection for her Indian subjects, Isabel followed legal and moral precedent and defended her sovereign rights. She could also move mercilessly against Indian rebels who challenged those rights.
Liss’s portrait of this extraordinary queen rings true as psychological biography, despite a certain laxity in using and documenting her sources. She often forms a trusting collaboration with royal chroniclers, rather than maintaining the wary skepticism that most of them merit. This approach allows Liss to follow an unambiguous line of argument regarding Isabel’s actions and even her thoughts, yet it sometimes neglects the complexities of human motivation. Sparse references can leave the reader wondering about the source of crucial matters of fact and interpretation, and the author indulges from time to time in anachronistic moralizing. Yet overall, Liss deserves to become the standard biographer of Castile’s warrior queen, because she recaptures the uncompromising zeal, ambition, toughness, and purpose that won the respect of Isabel’s contemporaries, if not always of the modern age.
