Isabella of Castile
Isabella of Castile

Author: Giles Tremlett

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 163286522X

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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.

Isabella
Isabella

Author: Kirstin Downey

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0307742164

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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.

Castile for Isabella
Castile for Isabella

Author: Jean Plaidy

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0099510324

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Isabella became the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother and a virtual prisoner at the licentious court of her half-brother, Henry IV. Was she, at sixteen, fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious lechers in Castile?

A History of Medieval Spain
A History of Medieval Spain

Author: Joseph F. O'Callaghan

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 737

ISBN-13: 0801468728

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Medieval Spain is brilliantly recreated, in all its variety and richness, in this comprehensive survey. Likely to become the standard work in English, the book treats the entire Iberian Peninsula and all the people who inhabited it, from the coming of the Visigoths in the fifth century to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Integrating a wealth of information about the diverse peoples, institutions, religions, and customs that flourished in the states that are now Spain and Portugal, Joseph F. O'Callaghan focuses on the continuing attempts to impose political unity on the peninsula. O'Callaghan divides his story into five compact historical periods and discusses political, social, economic, and cultural developments in each period. By treating states together, he is able to put into proper perspective the relationships among them, their similarities and differences, and the continuity of development from one period to the next. He gives proper attention to Spain's contacts with the rest of the medieval world, but his main concern is with the events and institutions on the peninsula itself. Illustrations, genealogical charts, maps, and an extensive bibliography round out a book that will be welcomed by scholars and student of Spanish and Portuguese history and literature, as well as by medievalists, as the fullest account to date of Spanish history in the Middle Ages.

Isabel the Queen
Isabel the Queen

Author: Peggy K. Liss

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 0812293207

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Queen Isabel of Castile is perhaps best known for her patronage of Christopher Columbus and for the religious zeal that led to the Spanish Inquisition, the waging of holy war, and the expulsion of Jews and Muslims across the Iberian peninsula. In this sweeping biography, newly revised and annotated to coincide with the five-hundredth anniversary of Isabel's death, Peggy K. Liss draws upon a rich array of sources to untangle the facts, legends, and fiercely held opinions about this influential queen and her decisive role in the tumultuous politics of early modern Spain. Isabel the Queen reveals a monarch who was a woman of ruthless determination and strong religious beliefs, a devoted wife and mother, and a formidable leader. As Liss shows, Isabel's piety and political ambition motivated her throughout her life, from her earliest struggles to claim her crown to her secret marriage to King Fernando of Aragón, a union that brought success in civil war, consolidated Christian hegemony over the Iberian peninsula, and set the stage for Spain to become a world empire.

Ferdinand and Isabella
Ferdinand and Isabella

Author: J. Edwards

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 131789345X

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This book is about a couple, not a single, dominant ruler. Thus it raises issues of gender, and the dynamics of a marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power. The reader sees Ferdinand and Isabella struggle to establish their regime, and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and State. It sees them fight a ‘total war’, by fifteenth-century standards, against Muslim Granada, leading to that kingdom’s conquest, and an equally ‘total’ war, through the Inquisition and the Church in general, to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and to reform and purify the religious and social lives of the established Christians themselves. For readers interested in Early European History.

The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs 1474-1520
The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs 1474-1520

Author: John Edwards

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 2001-03-16

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780631221432

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This book provides a comprehensive and compelling history of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella form the origins and upbringing of the two rulers, through the events and circumstances of their rule, to the consequences for the following generations.