"Isabella of Castile:  Reflections of a Queen"
 
by:  Joaquin Roy
     Professor at University of Miami
 
in:  Five Hundred Magazine, Volume 1/No. 1; May/June 1989,
     Coral Gables, FL  33146
     U.S. Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission
 
     Barcelona, April 1493:  In an open square, overshadowed by
an impressive Romanesque tower, crowd a large gathering of
noblemen in uniforms, bejeweled ladies, commanding clergymen and
common people of low rank, all avid to learn the news.  They
stand leaving a corridor free for the passage of a short cere-
monial parade.  All gazes are fixed upon a few strange human
creatures of dark, reddish skin, whose heads are crowned with
feathers.  The feathers, in fact, adorn the most picturesque
birds that, held in chains, try with nervous movements to fly
away.  Marshalling this parade, a white-haired man of piercing
eyes, solemn and unsmiling, walks at a very slow pace, but
nevertheless steadily.
     The viewers look now at this unknown gentlemen, then at a
couple sitting in regal composure on chairs made of fine woods
and leather, covered with velvet.  The man, his head elegantly
crowned with garnet, sits next to a lady whose rounded face is
framed by a white veil covering her dark hair that shows some
streaks of red, a royal crown resting on top.
     Both welcome the visitor, although not standing up.  The
lady fixes her bluish eyes on the tanned face of the newly
arrived, while everybody speculates about his identity.  The lady
smiles unexpectedly and bows her head slightly, in a majestic
gesture of gratitude.
     The visitor--slightly bowed, with snow-white long locks and
aquiline nose--smiles faintly, half ironically, half self-com-
placently.  His smile and her gaze are like passwords.  "You were
right," her eyes say silently, "We, milady, were both right," he
graciously replies without words.  And the lady remembers the day
when she met this man.
                              * * * *
     Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, has returned
to let the Queen of Castile know about the success of his mission
of exploration.  As a remembrance of this meeting, which took
place in the King's Square, shaded by the Cathedral of Barcelona,
on the stairs that lead up to the statue of the Discoverer,
crowning a tall column erected by the mouth of the harbor.
Columbus, with the index finger of his right hand, points vaguely
to the lands far beyond.  Five hundred years after his feat, this
statue will welcome thousands of athletes who will gather in
Barcelona for their traditional meeting that takes place every
four years:  The Olympic Games of our era.
     April 17, 1492, close to the border of the Kingdom of
Granada:  Columbus bows respectfully before Isabella, Queen of
Castile, and shows her a brief document whose contents are rather
precise.  Firm and broad strokes establish that the Crown of
Castile is committed to the journey, a most unusual expedition.
Three frail caravels would sail with a handful of adventurers,
visionaries and waterfront derelicts towards an unknown destina-
tion.  The Navigator has stated that, following the path of the
Sun, directly from the Andalusian outlet to the Atlantic Ocean,
it is feasible to find the shortest route to reach the Orient
and, consequently, to conquer and control the pathways of the
spice trade and the lands of gold, silver and other precious
metals.  As consideration for this agreement, the Queen grants to
this gentleman the title of Admiral, with plenipotentiary powers,
entitling him to receive one half of the riches to be obtained.
This is the first agreement, in the history of mankind, between
the State and private enterprise on an equal footing.
     Isabella remembers:  The Queen has had to overcome the
misgivings, the doubts and the envy of her courtiers, the denun-
ciations of heresy brought forward by the Church hierarchy, and
even the warnings of her husband.  Very little is known about
this mysterious navigator.  It seems that he is a Genoese who has
lived in Portugal and speaks the Castilian language with a rather
heavy Portuguese accent.  He does not speak any of the Italian
dialects and he always signs papers with the name "Colom."  His
theories concerning future and magnificent discoveries have not
been heeded by other European rulers.  But the Castilian Queen
knows that Columbus has already discovered another world beyond
the blue sea (and so is stated in the written agreement on
account of an odd lapse in its wording).  This is a very risky
bet, but the Queen does not back off her commitment.  She feels
that this is just one more link in life, always overrun with
dangers and challenging dilemmas.
     The manuscript of this agreement is carefully kept in the
Archives of the Crown of Aragon, in Barcelona, just a few meters
away from the same stairs where Columbus knelt down before Queen
Isabella and King Ferdinand.  The document is known by historians
as the Santa Fe Capitulations, after the name of a place at the
entrance of Granada, the city that had been recently regained
from the Moors.  The unusual agreement is not only exceptional
from a legal point of view, but also noteworthy because it is not
written in Latin, which is the traditional way, but rather in a
harsh Iberian language shaped through eight centuries by the
Vulgar Latin.  This way of speech had been adopted by the
Barbarian peoples who inherited the Roman remains left in the
Iberian peninsula, and was interspersed with Arabic words and
Germanic and Gallic influences.  It was known as Castilian
because it developed in the dry plains and mountains that cascade
down from the Cantabric region towards the warm lands once
occupied by the kingdoms, caliphites and "taifas" of the Moors,
globally referred to as "Al Andalus."
     Isabella also remembers the day, during that same spring of
1492, when she had curiously looked at another manuscript, more
complex and sophisticated, laid before her by another man who
showed the grave composure of a philosopher.  This man says that
his name is Elio Antonio Martinez de Jarava, but everybody calls
him "de Nebrija" (after Lebrixa, his birthplace, a small rural
town not far away from Seville).  Isabella, always a queen who
cares, carrying out her noble obligations, asks graciously the
purpose of such a book.  "The language, milady," answers the
author, "goes hand in hand with the Empire."  The book was the
first Grammar of a modern language, written when the ongoing
trend was to perfect the canons of the Latin language and to
force the vernacular into submission.  Moreover, the daring of
this philologist-turned-statesman, seems to go beyond reasonable
limits.  He prophetically tells the Queen that the language,
whose grammatical rules he has set forth in his book, will be
spoken through vast territories "once Your Majesty subjugates
many Barbarian peoples and nations of exotic tongues."  This
happens one year before Columbus returns from his first voyage to
the "Indies."  Isabella accepts the challenge posed by Nebrija
without the slightest hesitation, just as she had accepted the
challenge of Columbus.  There will be an empire beyond the ocean,
and its people will speak the same language spoken in the mother
country.  Scarcely one million dwellers of the Castilian plateau
and mountains spoke at that time the primitive dialect spuriously
born from the noble tongue that was firstly spoken in the Latium.
Five hundred years later, this would be the language of three
hundred million human beings in twenty countries of two
continents.
     Ten years earlier, in the land surrounding the Kingdom of
Granada, one day in 1482, the Christian armies are getting ready
to capture the last Muslim bastion in the Iberian peninsula.
Almost eight centuries have elapsed since 711 when the Berber
invaders of Northern Africa defeated the weak forces of the
decaying Visigothic Empire.  These eight centuries of unyielding
evolution, co-existence and reciprocal alliances and betrayals,
had made it possible for the Christian kingdoms to corner the
inhabitants of Granada, last heirs of the magnificent Muslim
civilization.  Internecine civil wars and family rivalries had
eroded the Muslim will to resist.  Finally, by the end of 1491,
Boabdil, the last Moorish King of Granada, feels that all further
attempts to resist are useless.  He had already endured too much
shame.  According to a legend, his own mother derided him with
these harsh words:  "Now cry like a woman, since you have been
incapable of living like a man."  Boabdil opened the gates of his
city to the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella.  On January 6,
1492, the Feast of the Epiphany (Adoration of the Child Jesus by
the Magi), Granada was subdued without a fight.  The rule of
Allah had come to an end in the Iberian peninsula.  Isabella,
who, as the legend goes, had promised not to change her camisole
while the campaign lasted, now rests and remembers.
     Valladolid, one of the royal cities in the Castilian
plateau, thirteen years before, October 19, 1469:  Isabella, a
young maiden of 18, born in the provincial town of Madrigal de
las Altas Torres, today part of the Province of Avila, is waiting
rather nervously for a young lad of 17.  They are going to marry
each other almost in secrecy.  They have met for the first time
just four days ago.  Her brother, King Henry IV of Castile, was
keeping her under arrest in her house in madrigal.  The groom,
Ferdinand, is the King of Sicily and the heir to the Aragonese
Crown.  He has just survived a murderous attempt on his life in
another Castilian town, and has been riding on horseback, all the
way from Saragossa, under the darkness of night, just to marry
the woman who will inherit the Castilian throne.  His luggage is
limited to the bare essentials, but he carries with him a Papal
bull that later proves to be a forgery.  Isabella was supposed to
choose between two other pretenders to her hand:  Alphonso V,
King of Portugal, a widower many years her senior, or Charles de
Valois, a son of King Charles VII of France.  Instead, she chose
the Aragonese, but under her own conditions:  her husband would
live in Castile and would fight for Castile, but not easily.  She
had to fight off the many intrigues of the Portuguese court, and
a bloody civil war.
     Even on her wedding day Isabella had a foreboding:  her life
was going to be an endless rosary of dramatic and dangerous
decisions.  When John II of Aragon passed away in 1479, her
husband Ferdinand acceded to the throne.  Both kingdoms were
confederated by virtue of their marriage.  But dangerous times,
signalled by some popular unrest, had not yet come to an end.
Fourteen years later, in Barcelona, while she was welcoming
Columbus, her husband Ferdinand had to prop up his back with a
cushion to lessen the pain from a recent would inflicted upon him
by a resentful peasant.  That day, in Barcelona, Isabella and
Ferdinand would remember that their obsession to unify those
lands, that later would be known as Spain, had begun back in
1469, when they had decided to marry.
     Medina del Campo, a town near Valladolid, November 26, 1504:
The Castilian autumnal season was slowly taking hold of the high
barren plateau.  Isabella was reviewing the decisions she had
taken throughout her life, feverishly bur firmly, always con-
fronting distinguished men, and always guided by different goals:
Henry IV, Nebrija, Columbus, Ferdinand.  She would remember as
well, perhaps tortured by her doubts, that document she had
signed in the most crucial year of 1492.  It had been submitted
to her by other gentlemen, the Inquisitors.  The Spanish unity
and the imperial destiny could not be guaranteed simply by the
marriage of two monarchs, nor by the approval of a grammar book,
not even by the signature of a document drafted to divide the
Earth globe between the major superpowers.  It was necessary to
reaffirm the existence of just one religious faith.  Isabella
probably winced when she affixed her seal to the Decree of
Expulsion of the Jews, as she would wince again two years later,
in 1502, when signing the Decree of Expulsion of the Moriscos,
submitted to her for approval by another man, the Most Eminent
Cardinal Ximnez de Cisneros.
     That afternoon in the autumn of 1504, a dying Isabella must
have reviewed the key events that had challenged her throughout
her whole life.  Many years later, her remains would be buried
next to Ferdinand's in the Royal Chapel, next to the Cathedral of
Granada, a symbol of her steadfast longings and her dreams.
 
Permission to reprint this article was given by Five Hundred
magazine.
 
                                                         ROY-01.ART