Isabella I (Spanish: Isabel I; 22 April 1451 – 26 November 1504), also known as Isabella the Catholic (Spanish: Isabel la Católica), was Queen of Castile and León from 1474 until her death in 1504. She was also Queen of Aragon from 1479 until her death as the wife of King Ferdinand II. Reigning together over a dynastically unified Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Her reign marked the end of the Reconquista and also the start of the Spanish Empire, allowing Spain to become a major force in European politics.
Isabella's marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 created the basis of the de facto unification of Spain. With Ferdinand's help, she won the War of the Castilian Succession, securing her position as Queen of Castile. Isabella reorganized the governmental system, brought the crime rate down, and unburdened the kingdom of the debt which her half-brother King Henry IV had left behind. Her reforms and those she made with her husband had an influence that extended well beyond the borders of their united kingdoms.
Isabella and Ferdinand are known for being the first monarchs to be referred to as the queen and king of Spain, respectively. Their actions included completion of the Reconquista, the Alhambra Decree which ordered the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain, initiating the Spanish Inquisition, financing Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the New World, and establishing the Spanish Empire, making Spain a major power in Europe and the world and ultimately ushering in the Spanish Golden Age.
Together with her husband, Isabella was granted the title of "Catholic Monarch" by Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard. Her beatification process was opened in 1958, and in 1974 she was granted the title of Servant of God.
Isabella was born in Madrigal de las Altas Torres to King John II of Castile and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal, on 22 April 1451 (Maundy Thursday). At the time of Isabella's birth, she was second in line to the throne after her older half-brother Henry. Henry was 26 at that time and married, but childless. Isabella's younger brother Alfonso was born two years later on 17 November 1453, demoting her position to third in line. When her father died in 1454, her half-brother ascended to the throne as King Henry IV. Isabella and her brother Alfonso were left in King Henry's care. Isabella, Alfonso, and their mother then moved to Arévalo...
This is the letter that King John II sent to the city of Segovia to announce the birth:
I let you know that by the grace of Our Lord, this past Thursday, Queen Doña Isabel, my very dear and beloved wife, gave birth to a princess. I share this news so that you may give many thanks to God.
These were times of turmoil for Isabella. The living conditions at the castle in Arévalo were poor, and they suffered from a shortage of money. Although her father arranged in his will for his children to be financially well taken care of, Henry did not comply with their father's wishes, either from a desire to keep his half-siblings restricted or from ineptitude. Even though her living conditions were difficult, Isabella was instructed in lessons of practical piety and in a deep reverence for religion under the supervision of her mother.
When the king's wife, Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth to their daughter Joanna, Isabella and Alfonso were summoned to court in Segovia to come under the direct supervision of the king and to finish their education. Alfonso was placed in the care of a tutor while Isabella became part of the queen's household.
Some of Isabella's living conditions improved in Segovia. She always had food and clothing and lived in a castle that was adorned with gold and silver. Isabella's basic education consisted of archery, arithmetic, baking, chess, cooking, court etiquette, dancing, drawing, equestrian skills, falconry, French, good manners, grammar, history, hunting, Italian, music, the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving, painting, philosophy, Portuguese, rhetoric, reading, spelling, writing, and singing, as well as religious instruction. She and her ladies-in-waiting entertained themselves with art, embroidery, and music. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she rarely left Segovia since King Henry forbade this. Her half-brother was keeping her from the political turmoil going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and of her role in the feuds.
In 1464, Henry awarded Beltrán de la Cueva, a royal favorite, mastership of the Order of Santiago, angering a faction of the Castilian nobility headed by Juan Pacheco, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, and Pedro Girón. Desiring to depose Henry and establish Infante Alfonso on the throne, Pacheco and his followers circulated rumors that Infanta Joanna was actually the child of Beltrán de la Cueva and demanded that Alfonso be named the King's heir. Henry yielded to the demands of the nobles and designated Alfonso his successor, with the stipulation that the Infante eventually marry Joanna to ensure that they both would receive the crown.
However, Henry hesitated to fulfill all of the magnates' wishes, especially with regards to government reform, causing relations to sour. In February 1465, he renounced Alfonso as his heir and commanded Beltrán to mobilize a royal army. Civil war broke out in June 1465 after Carrillo, Pacheco, and other agitators conducted a ceremonial deposition-in-effigy of Henry outside the city of Avila and crowned Alfonso as a rival king. In 1467, the nobles clashed with Henry's forces at the Second Battle of Olmedo, which concluded as a draw. A month after the battle, rebels liberated Isabella from Henry's control and she returned to Arévalo to tend to her mother. Regarding his younger half-sister as a neutral party in the civil war, Henry decreed in November that Isabella could travel freely. Alfonso eventually joined his mother and sister in Arévalo and, in a document he signed as "King of Castile and León" on 8 December 1467, awarded Isabella the town of Medina del Campo.
Alfonso died at the age of fourteen in July 1468. The nobles who had supported him suspected poisoning. As she had been named in her brother's will as his successor, the nobles asked Isabella to take his place as champion of the rebellion. However, support for the rebels had begun to wane, and Isabella preferred a negotiated settlement to continuing the war. She met with Henry at Toros de Guisando and they reached a compromise: the war would stop, Henry would name Isabella his heir presumptive instead of his daughter Joanna, and Isabella would not marry without her half-brother's consent, but he would not be able to force her to marry against her will. Isabella's side came out with most of what the nobles desired, though they did not go so far as to officially depose King Henry; they were not powerful enough to do so, and Isabella did not want to jeopardize the principle of fair inherited succession, since it was upon this idea that she had based her argument for legitimacy as heir-presumptive.
The question of Isabella's marriage was not a new one. She had, at the age of six, a betrothal to Ferdinand, the younger son of John II of Navarre (whose family was a cadet branch of the House of Trastámara). At that time, the two kings, Henry and John, were eager to show their mutual love and confidence and they believed that this alliance would make their eternal friendship obvious to the world. This arrangement, however, did not last long.
Ferdinand's uncle Alfonso V of Aragon died in 1458. All of Alfonso's Spanish territories, as well as the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, were left to his brother John II. John now had a stronger position than ever before and no longer needed the security of Henry's friendship. Henry was now in need of a new alliance. He saw the chance for this much-needed new friendship in Charles of Viana, John's elder son. Charles was constantly at odds with his father, and because of this, he secretly entered into an alliance with Henry IV of Castile. A major part of the alliance was that a marriage was to be arranged between Charles and Isabella. When John II learned of this arranged marriage, he was outraged. Isabella had been intended for his favorite younger son, Ferdinand, and in his eyes, this alliance was still valid. John II had his son Charles thrown in prison on charges of plotting against his father's life. Charles died in 1461.