Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella
The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, which took place on October 19, 1469, marked a pivotal moment in Spanish history, setting the stage for the unification of Spain. Initially, the couple appeared to be mere pawns in the political machinations of their respective kingdoms, influenced by their elders and embroiled in the power struggles of the Iberian Peninsula. Their union was complicated by internal disputes, including the weakened rule of Henry IV of Castile, who opposed their marriage due to his own political interests. However, Ferdinand and Isabella defied expectations, marrying in secret and ultimately consolidating their power following the civil war that erupted after Henry IV's death.
The couple's reign saw significant reforms and the establishment of royal authority across their kingdoms. They initiated the Spanish Inquisition, engaged in major military campaigns, and supported expeditions that led to Spain's emergence as a global power, particularly following Columbus's voyages to the Americas. Their marriage not only unified Aragon and Castile but also set the foundation for Spain's future territorial expansions, including strategic alliances through their children's marriages. The legacy of their union profoundly shaped the Spanish nation, leading to the eventual dominance of Spain in Europe and beyond.
Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella
Locale Valladolid, Castile (now in Spain)
Date October 19, 1469
Ferdinand and Isabella’s marriage combined the power and prestige of Aragon and Castile, the two largest kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, and defined the future Spanish nation.
Key Figures
Ferdinand V (1452-1516), king of Castile, r. 1474-1504, and later king of Aragon, r. 1479-1516, as Ferdinand IIIsabella I (1451-1504), queen of Castile, r. 1474-1504Alfonso Carrillo (c. 1422-1482), archbishop of ToledoPedro González de Mendoza (1428-1495), cardinal of SpainHenry IV of Castile (1425-1474), king of Castile, r. 1454-1474John II (1397-1479), king of Aragon, r. 1458-1479
Summary of Event
When Ferdinand, crown prince of Aragon, married his cousin, Isabella, disputed heiress of Castile, on October 19, 1469, they seemed pawns of their elders, notably his father. John II had made Ferdinand king of Sicily to strengthen his position in marriage negotiations. Castile dominated the Iberian Peninsula with about half of its land and three-fifths of its population. Internal rebellion under weak Henry IV of Castile had brought intervention by rulers of Iberia’s other kingdoms (Aragon, Portugal, Granada, and Navarre). Henry IV preferred that his sister, Isabella, marry a Castilian lord to strengthen his own position or a foreign ally to secure the succession rights of his own daughter, Princess Juana. Also opposed to this marriage, but ready to play a double game, was Juan Pacheco, master of the military Order of Santiago and Henry IV’s favorite. Most nobles adopted a wait-and-see attitude.
Supporting Isabella’s marriage to Aragon’s heir were the Enríquez family (Ferdinand’s maternal kinspeople) and Alfonso Carrillo, archbishop of Toledo, who became Isabella’s chief protector. Their marriage required considerable derring-do by the principals (who had never seen each other). Ferdinand traveled from Aragon disguised, with a few retainers. Isabella defied her brother and fled to Carrillo’s protection. In their haste to present Henry IV with a fait accompli, they married without requisite papal dispensation, which was needed because of their close kinship.
During the first years of their marriage, the young couple asserted their independence against their elders and built their own power base, including an uneasy reconciliation with Henry IV and an alliance with the Mendoza family. In 1472, support came from papal legate Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI), facilitated by Pedro González de Mendoza, who thereby gained a cardinal’s hat. A vassal of John II, Borgia provided the needed dispensation in part because of a barrage of slander against Princess Juana. Queen Juana, wife of Henry IV, had recently borne an illegitimate son, and rumors circulated that her (older) daughter was also illegitimate. Beltrán de la Cueva,, the supposed father of Princess Juana (Juana la Beltraneja), was another royal favorite and a Mendoza in-law. Despite such rumors, many modern historians accept Juana’s legitimacy.
The death of Henry IV, about the same time as those of Juan Pacheco and Queen Juana, brought civil war to the peninsula. Aragon backed Isabella; King Afonso V of Portugal, affianced to his niece, Princess Juana, invaded Castile in her interest. Surviving members of the Pacheco family also supported Juana, as did Carrillo, who was upset over the independence of Ferdinand and Isabella and blamed them for his failure to secure a cardinalate. After the couple’s five years of marriage, Castilians identified Ferdinand with his wife’s cause more than with Aragon; Portugal’s king seemed a foreign invader. Isabella played an active political role, whereas the juvenile Juana could not.
Thus, Ferdinand and Isabella gained adherence from most of Castile’s nobles and cities. John II supported them unconditionally, although he was harassed by Louis XI of France, who pursued his own interests in Navarre and Aragon, promising much and delivering nothing to Afonso V. Historians usually consider the 1476 Battle of Toro to have been decisive. Nevertheless, Ferdinand and Isabella did not control Castile until 1479, with the signing of the Treaty of Alcáçovas; by then, John II had died, and the couple also ruled Aragon.
In building control during the civil war, Ferdinand and Isabella shaped the Spanish nation. The Holy Brotherhood, a league of municipalities, had provided mutual assistance and protection to members. In 1476, the monarchs took control and used Brotherhood armies against Juana’s supporters. In the period from 1488 to 1495, Ferdinand tried to develop a brotherhood in Aragon. Isabella forced her husband’s election as master of the military orders of Santiago in 1477, Calatrave in 1487, and Alcantará in 1494, all of which provided sources of money and military power.
Between 1476 and 1480, the monarchs enacted major reforms through the cortes (parliament). Afterward, having received its mandate, Ferdinand and Isabella used the cortes infrequently and governed through the bureaucratic royal council, the Brotherhood (for military expenses), and special agents, such as corregidores, to handle local problems. The Council of Aragon, established in 1494 and composed of Aragonese personnel, was quite separate, but, meeting in Castile, it demonstrated an osmotic process of national unification. On the other hand, having established royal authority, the monarchs allowed great nobles considerable local autonomy. Similarly, fiscal dependence on the wool trade encouraged Ferdinand and Isabella to allow its guild, the Mesta, great independence. In 1498, no longer needing the Brotherhood, the monarchs allowed it to revert to local control.
In 1478, the pope authorized establishment of Spain’s Inquisition, and, from 1483, the same inquisitor general served in both Aragon and Castile. In 1486, the pope granted Ferdinand and Isabella control of church appointments and finances in the Canary Islands and territory conquered from the Muslim kingdom of Granada. This royal patronage extended to the Americas in 1501-1508 and eventually pertained to all of Spain. The Synod of Seville in 1478 witnessed genuine royal concern for church reform. In 1495, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, an ascetic Franciscan friar, succeeded Pedro González de Mendoza as archbishop of Toledo. Royal piety and political acumen combined in rallying Spaniards in the crusade that conquered Granada for Castile (1481-1492). Pope Alexander VI recognized this triumph with the title Catholic Monarchs, also held by subsequent Spanish kings. Edicts in 1492 and 1502 obliged Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Thus, the nation became Europe’s most formidable Catholic power.
Control within Spain made possible ambitious projects abroad. After Christopher Columbus returned from the Americas, Castile became a world power; with American treasure, Spain dominated Europe. From 1495, Ferdinand pursued Aragon’s rivalry against France in Italian wars in which Castilian Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba emerged as Europe’s greatest commander. Archbishop Jiménez led an army into North Africa serving Aragonese interests. Capping his career, Ferdinand annexed Navarre to Castile in 1512. Ferdinand and Isabella carefully educated their children and made strategic marriages for them with two aims: union with Portugal and encirclement of France. Princess Isabella and (after her death in childbirth) her sister Maria were married to Manuel I of Portugal. Their siblings Juan and Joan married Habsburgs of Germany and the Netherlands, and Princess Catherine married King Henry VIII of England. Thus, despite the stipulations in the marriage treaty of Ferdinand and Isabella that Aragon and Castile must remain separate kingdoms, the two kingdoms functioned together in their common interest in foreign and domestic affairs.
Circumstances, however, determined the separation of the two kingdoms. When Queen Isabella died in 1504, the throne of Castile passed to Joan (later known as Juana la Loca, or the mad) and her husband, Philip I, ending the Trastámara Dynasty there. Aragon was ruled separately under Ferdinand. The death of Philip I in 1506 and the mental instability of Joan enabled a restoration of unity under Ferdinand’s regency. By then, Ferdinand had married his great-great niece, Germaine de Foix to strengthen his position in that kingdom. Germaine’s baby, who might have continued Aragonese separation, died.
Significance
Ferdinand and Isabella’s marriage led to nothing less than the unification of Aragon and Castile, which formed the nation known today as Spain. After Ferdinand’s death in 1516, Archbishop Jiménez served as regent for Charles I (later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), son of Philip I and Joan, who ruled a united Spain. As the heir of Charles and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, Philip II conquered Portugal in 1580. The political union of Spain and Portugal continued until it was dissolved in a war for Portuguese independence (1640-1685).
Bibliography
Boruchoff, David A., ed. Isabel la Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Analyzes the carefully crafted public image of Isabella to gain insight into Isabella’s life beyond that image.
Elliott, John H. Imperial Spain, 1469-1716. Reprint. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. The classic account of Spain’s rise and fall as an imperial power. Emphasizes the barren and humble nature of its beginnings in contrast to the height of its power.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Ferdinand and Isabella. New York: Taplinger, 1975. Reliable and filled with humanizing details, this book provides an admirably balanced portrait, giving proper recognition to both husband and wife.
Hillgarth, J. N. The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1516. Vol. 2. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1978. More detailed than the work of Kamen, this book surpasses earlier standard works on the period.
Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Surveys the roles played by Ferdinand and Isabella in the fashioning of Spain’s global empire.
Kamen, Henry. Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict. 2d ed. Reprint. New York: Longman, 1996. A revisionist study that parallels coverage of the period provided by Elliott, who tends more to facts and figures.
Liss, Peggy K. Isabel the Queen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Notable for its superior scholarship, Liss’s biography provides an in-depth study of Isabella and the full range of her accomplishments.
Rubin, Nancy. Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Issued the same year as the work of Liss, Rubin’s biography takes a more popular approach that renders it more accessible for general readers.
Thomas, Hugh. Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. A decidedly conservative and Eurocentric history of Spanish colonialism during Ferdinand and Isabella’s rule.
Woodward, Geoffrey. Spain in the Reigns of Isabella and Ferdinand, 1474-1516. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. Comprehensive analysis of the social, political, religious, and economic aspects of Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign, as well as their foreign policies and relations.